Arcadia kid fails to take down Austin Tamagno's Mt. Sac record. And blabs about how soft it is.

I showed that interview to my HS son, and I told him never to conduct an interview in that manner. You should never call a record soft that you yourself didn't set. And, he went on about it; seemed very arrogant. Not a good idea. And then, he mentions some family stuff that he didn't want to expand upon, and that's fine, but then he says something like "I needed to get my act together." So was the family issue with regard to him? What was he doing that he has now stopped doing? If I were a future college coach of his, I would be concerned. The last thing he did was criticize milesplit for not rating Ben Veatch higher, whatever that means. He came off looking very bad in that interview.

first, with all respect to Jeff Nelson

i have always said people in sports who have achieved great things and did it before modern training, medical technology, nutrition, equipment etc were probably superior athletes. with that being said i would not want to speculate on his 14:31..... would it be faster on the slightly modified course yes, but by how much? we cant say because he didnt run on the modified course..... and im not a fan of time conversions unless it is a 1500 meter time heading to 1600 meters or something like that..... something that actually happened

if they did agree on an arbitrary conversion number they would have to pick a date at which the course was modified the most significantly and convert all of the times not just Jeff Nelsons and that would be nuts

make no mistake,Jeff Nelson is Great!

Senior Software Engineer: you said he could have run faster with someone with him but couldnt muster anything extra on his own

and if it was an hour earlier and cooler he could have broke it on his own.

well first everyone who has broke the record has had to finish alone and breaking the record is a testament of their greatness and fortitude to get the job done

second the weather is the luck of the draw, some years is cooler than others when the sweepstakes races are run

so who knows where the record would be if it was cooler and someone was running with the greats through the airstrip and gauntlet (final stretch of the course)

I give him a ton of credit for running that well alone all the greats have run alone when they have broken the record or come close...... but as far as dividing up the best between races? the sweepstakes races are designed to get the best competition together Tamagno could not race the day Rocha did because he had a test to take on saturday.

i have no problem with his confidence, i like it! runners should have confidence

i have said we have not had any interesting HS runners for a while and he just made HS running interesting

yeah we have the great talents but no personalities

but to call the record that you didnt break "soft" makes no sense

but if you come up short you come up short by yourself or not

if you ran easy and missed it by a second then you should have run harder

if he would have broken the record by a second

would he still be calling the record soft if he had run14:22?

no of course not

"Im in 14:19 shape"

AJ you have to give this kid some pointers on how to do an interview.

here we go

the internet, you got to love it!

http://archive.dyestat.com/archive/2005archive/October/12frontpage.htm

Austin and Phillip are good buddies, and I'm sure Austin would understand that Rocha was kidding around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBLOe96G9Ao

Johnny Gray didn't really start training until his junior year of high school.

This Dennis Young character is more delusional than Rocha. He's try to make it out that Rocha was the essence of humility? WTF?!

You all sound like a bunch of PC crybabies. Sack Up & Wake Up. Nobody wants to listen to some introvert drone pay his respects to the 'greats' that came before him, it gets boring and frankly, does nothing for our sport. Rocha, meanwhile, is a confident, albeit brash, phenom and he gets torn to shreds by a slew of messageboard nobodies. Of course

Austin Tamagno hasn't shut up for the past two years about how good he is. Watch any of his post race interviews (especially all of the ones from his 2015 xc campaign) and tell me this kid isn't full of it. His team had a shot at winning a national title and he bailed on them just to go take on Grant Fisher whom he had no shot at beating. If he had run nxn, his team could have easily been a podium team. Rocha was TOTALLY underrated going into this season and Tamagno was slightly overrated. While they both may have talked a little too much, I think Rocha has MUCH more of a right to blab a little based on him being overlooked and his three trips to nxn (to of them being with his team). I'd be shocked if Tamagno beat him this year to be honest.

Correction: (*2014 xc campaign

After looking at his interview I was ready to make him the new Pre, cocky and great.

But then I read on one of the post about German Fernandez's SOLO SOFT record of 14:24 at Woodward.

One of the competitors he mentioned was Herrera of Madera South. Herrera pushed him two weeks ago at the Clovis Invitational. Results Rocha 14:58, Herrera 15:01.

I'm not sure how he can get 35 seconds faster at Woodward. He was already pushed there and came 30 plus seconds short.

So I was wrong he is not the new Pre, cocky and great.

Here's what everyone has failed to notice.

In 2014 Tamagno set the course record in the DI Sweepstakes race even though Brea is a D3 school (in Cali division are based on school enrollment). He rearranged his race schedule to seek out competition and it paid off. This year he had a test on Saturday and the D3 race was Friday, so he raced with his team.

If Rocha was so confident he could have raced in the D3 race against Austin but he chose not to. This isn't a championship race where athlete have to race in their division. I guarantee if Rocha or his coach called the meet director he could have raced Austin. Austin is the course record holder and state champ, why should he have to leave his team to race Rocha?

Let's run sub 14 wrote:

Been There Done That B4 wrote:

True would be a contender, I think some of the US steeplechasers like Jager would make it interesting....... Bekele sub 13? i dont know as great as he was i would still have to see it to believe it but now all we can do is speculate

US challengers and finish order: Ritz for the win, Rupp, Webb, Jager, Kennedy, Scott, Derek, Meb, Hall.

You forgot to mention the best American elite cross country runner over the last few years whose name is Chris Derrick. He has run very well on tough, hilly courses in Europe.

No way would the Mt. Sac course be Rupp certified. There is way too much risk in terms of ruts, rocks, uneven surfaces, sharp turns and dust.

Flotrack elaborates on this topic

Listen "in the no" squat.

The invitational allows athletes only to move up divisions not down (how convenient for Mr. Tamango).

Yes, the Sweepstakes are Championship races and in most cases athletes MUST run in their own division, Except for the Div 1 & 2 "Individual" Sweeps. This race allows other/faster athletes from other divisions to run individually that otherwise do not have a strong team but, only a strong #1 man.

That is why in 2014 Tamagno (D3) yes, won the race but... no, DID NOT win the Championship Sweeps title because he was NOT from a D1 or D2 school! The title went to Rocha and true champion from a D1 school (Arcadia), which in all honesty who the race were intended for. Not making this up! look it up!

Furthermore, Rocha and his Arcadia team were in the Div. 1 & 2 "Team" Sweepstakes this year 2015 which does not allow athletes to move up for ANY reason! So, even if Tamagno could have raced Saturday he was NOT going to be in a Div. 1& 2 race that are designed for TEAMS ONLY therefore not race Rocha in any way shape or form.

That is why they have the Div 3 Sweepstakes/Championship race on Friday for. Unfortunate for Tamagno he cannot seem to find competition in his own division either!

D1 schools are extra large schools determined by enrollment

D2 schools are large schools determined by enrollment

D3 schools are large/med. schools determined by enrollment

The weather was bad at the Clovis invite. Dusty, with some sort of smoke haze (probably from the many fires California has had) and really hot. So not a good day for running. It got up to about 100 degrees in the afternoon and probably 85+ degrees when Rocha was running. I don't think Rocha is touching 14:24 on his best day, but he could put up a better time in better weather.

As for the person mentioning NXN, screw that. Just a watered down (team) thing that only pulls a few good runners away from Footlocker. Nike chooses to get in there and muck up high school running with their version of a nationals, although someone has been there doing it for 30 plus years already. Nike should just go away or try and work with Footlocker and maybe cohost a single event. I could not care less which team or individual wins NXN in the same way I don't follow the special olympics.