new mexico cross country women

innocent question wrote:

why are so many from GB?

Someone on NM staff has UK connection, sure others here could elaborate.

Quality of athletes at collegiate level are better than the US. Good club levee x-country in UK develops age groupers. Don't worry, because of poor post collegiate system in UK they will fade away if they go home.

sounds like an interesting human interest angle for someone writing 'run with the lobos'

sssssssstupid wrote:

innocent question wrote:

why are so many from GB?

Someone on NM staff has UK connection, sure others here could elaborate.

Quality of athletes at collegiate level are better than the US. Good club levee x-country in UK develops age groupers. Don't worry, because of poor post collegiate system in UK they will fade away if they go home.

There is no collegiate system in UK athletics worth talking about, athletics is based on an open club system.

Interesting how Frerichs has only been there months but pretty much dominated the interview. She ran well, though, put them into the books.

Notice that they don't put their date of birth in their profile.. Because they ARE ALL 25 and from GB. - it's the American way "find some way to cheat the system". Not butthurt here just calling a spade a spade. I'm happy the university won, just don't like to see the way that they stoop to do it.

If you are going to lie, make sure the truth isn't easily accessible.

Alice Wright just turned 21. DOB 11/3/94

Rhona Auckland is 22. DOB 5/11/93

Calli Thackery is 22. DOB 1/9/93

Molly Renfer is 22. DOB 8/22/93

Courtney Frerichs, Heelene Tambet and Whitney Thornberg are not from GB and are all 22 as well.

Not a bunch of 18 year olds but perfectly normal ages you would expect from a 5th year, 3rd year, 4th year, 4th year, 5th year, 4th year, 5th year squad. You are butthurt and a liar.

Frerichs - 22

Auckland - 22

Thackery - 22

Renfer - 22

Wright - 21

So all typical senior in college age. Source - IAAF database. Now, 4 of the 5 are from the UK. I personally find it hard to believe that a state run school would allow a coach to give state funded scholarships to foreigners as there is little chance of those individuals remaining in the state and paying taxes in the state after they obtain their degree, but I digress. I think Albuquerque is an attractive place for runners to want to train (altitude, trails, and mild winters), so they shouldn't have to resort to foreigners to field a competitive team. I have no problem with Syracuse enlisting a couple of Canadians as they are right on the border, and they are a privately funded institution, not responsible to the tax payer.

Having an age cutoff makes sense. Having good competition from around the world probably helps more than hurts local competition. Or do we just want to wait for international competitions and get beaten then?

Bayouself2 is clearly an idiot, or just seeking a fight for the heck of it.

Great job Lobos! I think Franklin is doing the absolute correct thing - he tries to recruit the best from NM high schools, and after that, he gets the best student athletes he can find. Top runners tend to be attracted to traditional powerhouses, so the best Franklin is likely to get will be from abroad - otherwise he loses the arms race against guys like Wetmore. Wetmore sounded like such a cry baby in the interviews at NCAAs - it was funny! He just wants guys like Franklin to take the US runners that he had no interest in, and is upset that Franklin nevertheless created a fantastic team.

Hope Franklin builds another great group around Alice and Rhona for next year. Perhaps the success the Lobos had this year will help him recruit here in the States, but if not, he should see if Alice and Rhona have any more fast friends back home that want to live in NM.

Quick question on Alice Wright. It doesn't appear that her running at the

Notre Dame Invitational as a true freshman in 2013 has impacted her eligibility -- she's listed as a sophomore this year. Did she get a redshirt for 2013 even though she ran? Or did she run unattached in that meet?

Agreed - the Albuquerque area is a wonderful place for runners.

Unlike joedirt above, I don't find it hard to believe at all that a state run school gives scholarships to non- US citizens. Surely, the state of NM gets revenue (taxes) as a result of foreign businesses and tourists. Indeed, I'd say the couple of XC kids are probably not getting their fair share of state revenue derived from foreign sources! A University that wants to be internationally recognized like most large US universities should be recruiting the best students and athletes from all over the world. I'd much rather see my NM taxes go to the likes of Auckland and Wright (if they get any) rather than to a high school athlete with no chance of being in the top 100 at NCAAs.

Real runners want to race the best, anywhere, anytime. Limiting the competition only hurts U.S. runners.

Alice Wright is a SO this year because she only ran 1 race as a true frosh.

"A special case involves the eligibility of a player who loses the majority of a season to injury. Popularly known as a medical redshirt, a hardship waiver may be granted to athletes who appear in fewer than 30% of team competitions (none after the midpoint of the season) then suffers a season-ending injury. Players granted such a waiver are treated for the purposes of eligibility as though they did not compete in that season."

So, for example, I think Annie Bothma (Boise State) is redshirted this year even though she competed in one race (Griak).

Those birthdays are about as trustworthy as Obama's birth certificate. They are all made up. So what next? One hit wonder.

Those are appropriate ages for 4x5th yr seniors and 1x4th year athlete. Definitely an old team, but certainly within bounds. Nothing like the old school BYU teams that had athletes with a red shirt, 2 years off for a mission and another year off to have a baby. They had 25 yr olds on their teams.

Of course Franklin knows he is losing some great girls on this team - but that doesn't detract from the fact that they just ran circles around the other NCAA teams. They could have scored their top 6 runners and still produce less points than Colorado's top 5.

I hope Franklin is able to recruit 2-3 top-notch new girls to run with Wright and Auckland next year. It would drive Wetmore crazy, and would be fun just to watch him say stupid things at the press conferences again -

I live almost as close to Albuquerque as I do to Boulder. I feel that our state universities should try to develop some of the best talent in our state as we have many great runners and great states to train in (altitude, hills and milder winters than most people realize). Filling up a roster with foreigners who typically leave right after graduation brings nothing back to the community that paid for them to go to school there. Unlike football (which actually generates income for the athletic department), cross country and track are drains on the athletic budget, so you really need people who are going to stick around in your state after graduation to justify investing scholarships in them.

I was a state champion in high school, but was not given athletic scholarship offers by any schools as I developed late (I was given partial academic), so I walked on at what I considered to be a second tier Division 1 school, as I had confidence in my abilities as a runner. At that school I beat most of the incumbent athletes who were on scholarship, but was not rewarded with an athletic scholarship as the coaches instead brought in 6 foreigners the following season. I transferred to a higher tier program in conference the following season as it was less expensive to attend the state school with no scholarship (I learned that state schools don't provide academic money to transfers even though I would have had a full tuition academic scholarship had a attended as a freshman) than the private college I was at (even with the academic money). I ran my remaining three years at a top tier program and exacted some revenge by beating some of the foreigners they brought in at conference meets.

IMO recruiting foreigners is lazy on behalf of the coach and hinders the development of domestic talent. You can cheer on your lobos if you want, but there is not a single NM resident in their top 7 on the women's team (five foreigners, and two senior transfers from other states, it doesn't appear that a single one started at UNM as a freshman, so you can't even argue they developed the talent). It's almost as bad as Kentucky at basketball (one and done).

joedirt wrote:

IMO recruiting foreigners is lazy on behalf of the coach and hinders the development of domestic talent. You can cheer on your lobos if you want, but there is not a single NM resident in their top 7 on the women's team (five foreigners, and two senior transfers from other states, it doesn't appear that a single one started at UNM as a freshman, so you can't even argue they developed the talent). It's almost as bad as Kentucky at basketball (one and done).

Your understanding of the situation is incorrect. The purpose of these teams is not to develop NM talent. The purpose of these teams is to win. It's not lazy and it does not affect the development of local talent.

To joedirt:

The problem that certain states have (New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming,etc) is that they do not produce enough talent to sustain any competitive teams. In New Mexico there are MAYBE 8 total boys and girls a year that are capable of competing in DI and some of them will be ineligible via NCAA initial eligibility standards as NM is a very low achieving academic state (ranked in bottom five nationally). So there is no way for UNM to have a viable and competitive team unless recruitment is done outside of the state. The real problem that UNM has is that as both a university and athletic department US kids just don't want to come to a place like NM. Coach Franklin recruits the US very hard, but kids just aren't interested. So his only option is to recruit from where he has had success. The university wants to diversify its student population, so what the cc/track team is doing is directly in-line with what the university wants them to do. The president of UNM has stated that he wants to gets new students from all over the world, so what the athletic department is doing is cooperating with the administration. You may not like what UNM is doing, but to have a competitive program Coach Franklin is simply doing his best.