Portland in 3rd! Over NAU, Syracuse and Oregon

What happened to David Perry? He won their conference meet a few weeks ago.

Stanford in 2nd! Over Portland, NAU, Syracuse, and Oregon

This has been a long time coming. Portland has been one of the most consistent teams the last few years in regards to top 10 finishes. Huge props to that program.

A tiny school like Portland beating Oregon is amazing. Well done.

The Pilots are one of only four teams in the country to finish in the top 14 at the NCAA's for eight consecutive years, joining Northern Arizona, Wisconsin and Oklahoma State. Portland's previous best finish was seventh, which happened in 2001, 2008 and 2013.

via -

http://portlandpilots.com/news/2014/11/22/MXC_1122142946.aspx

Looks like they only had 5 guys finish the race. Still a great race from the pilots.

I'm surprised that they don't routinely whip Oregon. Portland has culture. Oregon is a redneck town that loves football and thinks Steve Prefontaine was the pinnacle of American Distance Running. If you were a recruit, which would you pick: the place with art museums, good coffee shops, and plenty of trails or the place where country joe driving a pickup truck is your roommate...

What does tiny have to do with anything? Freaking Kenya is tiny compared to the USA and they kick our butt.

letsracer wrote:

I'm surprised that they don't routinely whip Oregon. Portland has culture. Oregon is a redneck town that loves football and thinks Steve Prefontaine was the pinnacle of American Distance Running. If you were a recruit, which would you pick: the place with art museums, good coffee shops, and plenty of trails or the place where country joe driving a pickup truck is your roommate...

Oregon has Hayward Field, Olympic Trials, Prefontaine Classic and NCAA finals while Portland does not have a track.

I like them both but UO clearly has some advantages.

Portland is a great team. Rob Conner is a great coach with a long tenure and program consistency. What he has created is amazing. Portland does have good scholarship support and no real track team, so they do have some things in their favor regarding xc scholarship money. That being said, they also miss out on some guys because of the lack of a track and full track team.

Why won't this school invest in at least a practice track? My God. Could you imagine the pay check if a football team pulled these finishes every year?

Alumni should demand they build a damn track. But that said, awesome trails in thei back yard.

Believe it or not it is all about women's soccer at UP. Go figure.

Believe it or not, U of Portland USED to have a track (way back before I moved here in 1995), but they ripped it out to put in another soccer field. They do have relatively easy access to Forest Park and their guys run there a lot.

One of the very poorest public high schools schools finally had a good track put in (and they put in a steeplechase pit for college use) and I think UP uses that - it's a mile or so away. (They used to share space with HS teams and Concordia down at Fernhill, but I only see them at Fernhill for xc practice once in a while).

Allegedly, there was some talk about putting a track down below the school on a superfund site, once they can get it detoxified. A really old timer once told me that they used to run xc meets on the campus, but for the life of me, I can't figure out where they would possibly do that.

Great job by the Pilots, although David Perry and Ryan Poland, both 5th year seniors, didn't finish and that must have given Rob a heart attack. But the rest of the guys, including little Danny Martinez (a sophomore) stepped it up big time. Very happy for the Pilots - and I'd only picked them (optimistically) for 4th.

...and they have Mary Cain as an undergrad

pretty amazing

an incredible performance from them. it has got to help a lot to be in a state with such strong distance traditions as well as to have the scholarships to put into xc. nevertheless, oregon gets not only the top recruits in the country, and in this case, the top transfer, a 13:18 guy, but also higher profile lesser depth, so for portland to finish 3rd, while oregon scores 3 points with their top two guys and then 218 points for 3-4-5, in the team scoring with numerous individual qualifiers in the race not being counted, that really says something about the quality of oregon's coaching.

Just one note, though, U of P typically does NOT get top Oregon recruits, in fact, it hardly gets any. One of their best recent Oregon recruits was a small schools champ in Oregon, which mean he got about zero attention from other schools. Conner recruits a lot in Washington (which actually has a much better high school distance tradition - or at least a lot more top guys) and not Oregon and generally goes to the WA state meet, not the OR one (except to watch his own kid).

Perry re-injured an achilles mid-race, was primed for top 40.

I was at the meet yesterday, and it was GREAT to see the Pilots do well. I wished Coach Conner good luck before the meet and he seemed pretty nervous. After all was said and done yesterday he seemed much more relaxed and pretty happy! Don't forget that they also had a woman finish in 15th in her first trip to Nats. As a side-note, conditions were generally pretty good: temps in the high 40's/low 50's. About 3 min worth of rain during the meet, but there was a wind that got stronger as the meet went on which made it feel much colder than it was. It was a pretty exciting day with the Oregon 1-2, and the Pilots 3rd.

Team depth comes from often overlooked WA and OR guys, but Fauble, Perry, Kincaid and Poland are all Colorado guys, which is where UP has picked up some great recruits over last few years (though Poland is a transfer).