All these huge high school invitationals are great, so the best HSers can now duck each other like the pros.

Great for HSers wrote:

I particularly like how Grant Fisher and Matthew Maton managed to duck each other the entire year. This will prepare them well for college and beyond when the key to marketability is ducking your good peers. Quack quack!

Fisher and Maton didn't "duck" each other. They were both entered in the Dream Mile but Maton withdrew due to injury. It's not like he skipped it to run a different meet.

I gotta say though, I don't really like that every shoe company has its own end-of-season meet now. When I was in HS, Nike Outdoor Nationals was THE national championships. If you won that race, you could say you won nationals. The Dream Mile and Brooks PR get great fields, no doubt, but it's not the same.

While it is too bad that they have destroyed the prospect of a national championships, and that Nike has somewhat diluted the quality of the Footlocker XC champs as well, a NC meet was just not a good location for fast distance races in June. Better for them to run up north or west at this time of year. And the ultimate thing to take away from the past few weeks is that this is an absolutely incredible year in track and field at the junior/hs/junior hs ranks, with Cooper running 46.44 in 8th grade, the American junior and hs lj record being broken, Brazier's 1:47.55, Michael Norman's (?) low 20 and low 45 times, a 10.98 legal from a soph, two guys breaking 4 in high school, Maton and Fisher, the latter being beaten by a hs junior! in an 8:42 with a 55 close, a 2:04.00, a 53.0/4:25 double from a soph or junior in NY, national records in the girls' pv and hj, and quite a bit more.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Great for HSers wrote:

I particularly like how Grant Fisher and Matthew Maton managed to duck each other the entire year. This will prepare them well for college and beyond when the key to marketability is ducking your good peers. Quack quack!

Fisher and Maton didn't "duck" each other. They were both entered in the Dream Mile but Maton withdrew due to injury. It's not like he skipped it to run a different meet.

I gotta say though, I don't really like that every shoe company has its own end-of-season meet now. When I was in HS, Nike Outdoor Nationals was THE national championships. If you won that race, you could say you won nationals. The Dream Mile and Brooks PR get great fields, no doubt, but it's not the same.

Even back then, there were plenty of athletes and especially relay teams who weren't at NON to make it a "true" national meet.

+1

On the topic of "national champions", I'd like to think of it like this:

Dream Mile essentially crowns the HS Mile Champion. While Brooks PR also invites a hand-selected ELITE group of milers, the field is diluted a little as athletes can look to run the 800 or 2 mile instead. NBNO doesn't have the same quality in their field, and probably won't ever again.

Brooks PR essentially crowns the 400m, 800m, 2 Mile and High Hurdles Champion.

100m Champion could be argued either Dream Mile/100m or Brooks PR, as neither dilute the fields with other events (e.g.: 200m or Long Jump) and select the top 8 or so athletes in the nation.

NBNO crowns the closest thing we have to national relay champions (as long as Brooks PR doesn't host the event as an exhibition, such as last year's 4xMile), the 200m, Intermediate Hurdles, Race Walking and field events (which aren't contested at either Brooks or Adidas).

US Juniors comes the closest to crowning a 5k Champion, though I like that NBNO includes the event and tries to give the athletes that opportunity as well.

While none of that are absolutes, they never have been. Even during the NON and AOC years.

FLN and NXN is a worse situation, as most of the nation can't do both, however for the years when the best athletes in the nation CAN (FLMW and NXN-South states), there is the potential for a true National Champion.