Who was the Spartan Invite winner? Adam Frezza from Oakland University? Did he come out of no where? Was he any good before? This no name guy beat some good runners. And where is oakland u anyway?
Who was the Spartan Invite winner? Adam Frezza from Oakland University? Did he come out of no where? Was he any good before? This no name guy beat some good runners. And where is oakland u anyway?
On the official results Frezza is listed as running for Oakland. However, on the Oakland athletic website it doesn't even mention him in the story and shows him as an unattached runner in their results.
I believe Oakland is in Rochester, which is a fairly nice suburb of Detroit.
Woods led after the pack spread out, but Frezza caught him with about 400 to go.
I'd put OaklandU in Auburn Hills/Rochester Hills, a couple miles from one of the Hanson's stores.
Frezza was a top high school runner in Michigan D1 his senior and jr years...I raced against him a little bit, he was all-state, but not a big recruit, just took a little while to make the jump to top level college racing i guess.
Frezza ran basically the same time last year at the Spartant Invite, so I don't know if this performance qualifies as coming out of nowhere.
He went on to finish 99th at the Great Lakes Region, which was probably a bad race based on his '03 Spartan performance. Nowitzke that finished 3rd at the Spartan Meet this year finished 62 at the Great Lakes Region last year.
Frezza told me about a month ago that he was planning on redshirting this season. I think he ran only a few seconds faster this year than he did last year at Spartan.
Oakland U. is a D1 school in the Mid Continent conference that only sponsors XC and not track. They are located about 30 minutes or so northwest of downtown Detroit.
Frezza is red shirting this year.
He's fast.
One note is that Adam is an alum of Lake Orion High School, the same school that produced steeplechaser Jordan Desilets.
clint verran
Nate Brannen runs 27:35 and is Michigan's last finisher. Why is he running cross country? Or more specifically, why is he running cross country so slowly?
Maybe he's injured, sick, using it as some sort of workout, I have no idea. Just wondering...
Since we're on the topic of Spartan Invite winners, how 'bout that MSU freshman Danette Doetzel from Saskatchewan winning by 21 seconds over UM's Rebecca Walter!
CFitz wrote:
Nate Brannen runs 27:35 and is Michigan's last finisher. Why is he running cross country? Or more specifically, why is he running cross country so slowly?
Maybe he's injured, sick, using it as some sort of workout, I have no idea. Just wondering...
or maybe that wasn't nate brannen, just joe schramski running under his name. yes, you have no idea.
keeping perspective wrote:
One note is that Adam is an alum of Lake Orion High School, the same school that produced steeplechaser Jordan Desilets.
Also produced a guy named Cliff Dwelle (Class of '86) who beat one Todd Williams at State Meet that year in the 1600, running a 1600m record of 4:12. In his junior and senior years Williams only lost to Dwelle on the track and Davis and maybe Kennedy in XC and maybe a couple other big dogs in the National 2-mile.
This is clearly Frezza's best race. He was just a solid high school guy, always getting beat by the better runners in his county (Greenless, Mobley, Tim Moore, Toloff, etc).
Interesting to note that Oakland Univ. used to be a satelite campus of Michigan State. They just went D1 in basketball (they don't have football) a few years back.
chuck d wrote:
or maybe that wasn't nate brannen, just joe schramski running under his name. yes, you have no idea.
Relax there, Chuck. He admitted he was unsure about the situation. How's he to know that Michigan would run someone under another runner's number?