What school is a Sleeping Giant?

Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Right next door to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.

Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Great pre-health school with awesome professional schools. Also, the program is in the big east and is showing tremendous improvement.

Cal Berkeley

The Ohio State University. With 57K students, some of them must be decent runners.

Without recent proven success, recruiting national class high school runners is very, very difficult, Has Vanderbilt ever had an All-American, let alone any recent NCAA qualifiers?

When John Goodridge was at Wake Forest he managed to create from the ground up a top 5 NCAA cross team in the 1980's by recruiting his ass off nationally and putting all his scholarships towards American distance runners. So it can be done with the right coach in charge.

Robert Gary is trying to do the same thing at Furman.

I would say that as quality as Furman Elite already is and the men's xc team automatically qualifying for the NCAA Championships say Furman on it's way.

Wayne State university in Detroit

Hahahaha....they have not been a factor since the mid 2000's in DII...Maybe, just maybe the womens program will get better with the addition of track.

Good school academically, but if you want that and a better XC/Track program, you go a couple hundred miles to the west and attend GVSU.

This thread could also be called "under-performance" and spotlight should be on Stanford. Every year, they get the #1 distance recruiting class.

Stanford is not a sleeping giant. Certainly sleeping and certainly giant but there is nothing you can do as Stanford coach to convince the bottom half or the injured members of the #1 recruiting classes to keep running. They just have too many other GREAT options and running is just too competitive.

Tartar wrote:

Hahahaha....they have not been a factor since the mid 2000's in DII...Maybe, just maybe the womens program will get better with the addition of track.

Good school academically, but if you want that and a better XC/Track program, you go a couple hundred miles to the west and attend GVSU.

Their womens team is top 5 in the nation. They compete in the hardest region and second hardest conference in the country. Their mens team barely missed nationals this year. They have top tier facilities. Plus they are fully funded.

George Atlas wrote:

Has Vanderbilt ever had an All-American, let alone any recent NCAA qualifiers?

.

hence the term "sleeping"... BUT I was thinking of teams like Wake, Stanford, and Duke (on the women's side) as a model. And Vandy is doing pretty well with their women's program, it can be done.

OSU is a good suggestion. Just due to it's size and conference they should be a top program every year.

Cal Berkeley, not a sleeping giant just coaches who have been a sleep for 30 years.

Iowa State

One reason: Martin Smith. They had one individual qualifier at nationals the past two years. They will be a top-10 program in the next 4 for sure.

UCLA and Cal Berkeley - they should perennially be top distance schools. No idea why they are not.

Washington: strong academics for a state school, the Pac-12 is a great track and XC conference, Seattle is a desirable city to live in, plus a lot of in-state talent there and on the west coast. Just look at what U of Portland does with 5% of the resources the Huskies have.

AW Pharmacy wrote:

Washington: strong academics for a state school, the Pac-12 is a great track and XC conference, Seattle is a desirable city to live in, plus a lot of in-state talent there and on the west coast. Just look at what U of Portland does with 5% of the resources the Huskies have.

spot on.