Wiess signs with Slippery Rock!!!

Nice choice of words but you clearly cannot read. All my points apply to all types of runners with the exception of #4. If Weiss was a well-trained high school runner than his jump in volume and intensity wouldn't be as much as a undertrained talented high school runner. You can figure out how the rest apply or you can choose to continue lacking basic reading comprehension skills.

stater of the obvious wrote:

Somers, Cummings, Hansloven, Rowe, Stallings, Carney, Petrini, Spence.....

Other than Spence and Carney what are these guys credentials? None would have qualified even provisionally for a Division I national meet while in college. Yet Division II runners, like I assume you are, continue to hold them on a pedestal.

stallings 29:20ish guy. somers 3:50 1500, cummings 4:08 indoor mile, hanslovan 14:15 5k, not sure what rowe's prs are. you look at their high school times and they don't get much more than a sniff at d-1. they go to a comfortable environment, get individual attention from their coaches and patiently develop over time. a school is an individual choice. there's pros and cons at any program. there's too many d-1 programs to count that don't approach what some of the psac schools provide. of course, weiss had his choice of any top progam, but isn't it possible that they all looked the same to him and slippery rock was a place that stood out because of it's familiarity. not sure if people remember, but alan webb left a big time, very successful program to run under his high school coach on familiar grounds and has done pretty well for himself since. it was right for him. again, picking a school is an individual choice and what works for one person won't work for someone else. i'll get a good luck at him and some other d-2 also rans up at bucknell this weekend. i'll remind them to just try and be top d-2 guy.

I think you're all wrong, and Jeff just chose to go to SRU so people with no lives would talk about him all day long on a running forum.

Weiss is the man and is a solid racer. Thanks for deciding to go to the Rock. Good luck at Bucknell to him and all those competing there from PSAC and DII. -Jorge

Jorge

Usted tambien tiene mucho talento como coredor, y queremos aprender como tu te entrenas - cuantos kilometros por semana, y cuales son tus entrenamientos de pista?

Gracias por tu tiempo, y mucha suerte para tu futuro como atleta de alto rendimiento.

chris.moulton@mail.mcgill.ca

"stallings 29:20ish guy. somers 3:50 1500, cummings 4:08 indoor mile, hanslovan 14:15 5k, not sure what rowe's prs are. you look at their high school times and they don't get much more than a sniff at d-1."

Last time I checked Stallings had improved a shit load in his 5th year at Penn State, more than he had at Millersville his entire career. Even more than that, his biggest strides have come in a post-collegiate professional environment.

Who knows how good these other guys would have, or could have been if they had the balls to challenge themselves and step out of their comfort zones?

It seems like you are suggesting everyone takes the easiest path to success, never really challenging themselves with higher expectations.

Instead of being comfortable and satisfied with running 4:08, which is a solid improvement over his highschool PR, maybe with the higher expectations of a DI University Cummings would realize 4:08 just ain't that good and continue to push himself to even faster times.

Come on now...you can't justify going to a DII school by saying that the environment improves slow highschool guys to a level of moderate success (i.e. 3:50 1500, 14:50 5k)for top guys because in reality those times suck. Again...they DON'T EVEN PROVISIONALLY QUALIFY FOR DI NATIONALS.

Mark Stallings never ran for PSU. I believe you're referring to Jim Carney.

4:08 for the mile? That is damn good. Maybe not D1 national level, but it's a helluva lot faster than what most people can do and I can see Cummings getting faster before he's done.

PSAC guys, you have a choice, Bucknell this weekend. Lot of solid D1, post collegiate runners, just go out win some races and post huge PRs in doing so. Shut these naysayers up...

I'll be there, I know my time's gonna suck, thats what I get for half-assed training with a tiring 50 hour a week job...

Dirt

Am I the only one on here not from the PSAC? Because you guys are all pretty damned biased.

Yeah I agree with the previous poster in the sense that although those times are good in D2, they don't even scratch the surface in D1. I mean...I was a dual meet last year, early in the season, at Princeton and like 10 guys ran right around 3:50. If my recolection serves me right, sommers has only ran that once and hasn't really come all that close to that since. Moving onto Rowe...when he graduated he had run 14:01 at outdoor nationals and finished 2nd. Now this is a great time, but he wouldn't have made it to Nationals. In all honesty though, who knows if he would have ran faster at Arkansas then he did at Edinboro. No one will ever know. This Weiss character, a great talent, but only for D2 and the Psac conference. I doubt that he will ever be able to run and compete against the top guys in D1, like he did against the top D2 comp. in Cross Country. His times, in peak performance just don't equate. However, we all must remember that the season is early and he still has a lot of big races coming up, like Penn. Some additional potential could be realized and I think we should all give him a chance.

you're probably right. these guys probably put a limit on themselves and would've been sub 3:40, sub 13:45 type guys by now had they gone d-1. they also might've been buried somewhere, getting very little individual attention, and hammered themselves into the ground not reaching their potential. there's hundreds of d-1 guys that haven't run anywhere close to what these d-2 guys have run. why haven't they been able to? if you have the facilities, the funding, the coaching, the athletes to push you, the high standards to meet... why do literally hundreds of d-1 guys never approach what these d-2 kids have run? you talk about how fast the top end d-1 guys have run, but if you get almost all the top end high school kids, you sure as hell better have a lot more kids running a lot faster than d-2 and d-3 kids.

also, stallings ran 29:20s while at millersville and hasn't run faster for 10k since. carney ran 14 flat at millersville indoors and didn't break 14 while at psu for his 5th year. obviously, he's moved on to bigger and better things. a lot of good psac kids will be running at bucknell tomorrow and at penn later this month. if you get a chance, make sure you check them out. and if you're actually running against them, make sure you don't get beat by them.

yeah, since weiss is in his first outdoor season, maybe we should give him a chance. somers has run 3:50 stopping at the wrong line at bucknell last spring. since then he was 2nd in the region and 21st at xc nationals. he ran 4:13 indoors. he's improved every year and has learned how to race. there hasn't exactly been a drop off in performance. 16 total college guys ran sub 3:50 at the recent stanford invitational. your slight exaggeration of 10 guys running 3:50 at an early season princeton dual meet last year is noted.

/ wrote:

Another good runner wasting his talent at a DII school. Tons of good PA runners go to the PSAC and they don't get even close to meeting their potential...why?...because they can.

Conversely, plenty of PA kids go to DI schools and run solid and meet their potential...why?...because they HAVE TO. It's a raised bar in DI.

Too bad. This Wiess kid will be running 14:50 against Ship kids and thinking he is the man when he could be running 14:00 against DI talent. Why would anyone want to be a big fish in a little pond?

Just figured i would revisit this for a quick laugh....pretty sure he ran 14:04 at penn relays as a sophmore this year. I'm sure someone will still come on here and say he'd be better at a D1 school...complete b.s.

psac wrote:

I'm sure someone will still come on here and say he'd be better at a D1 school

he'd be better at a D1 school

psac wrote:

/ wrote:

Another good runner wasting his talent at a DII school. Tons of good PA runners go to the PSAC and they don't get even close to meeting their potential...why?...because they can.

Conversely, plenty of PA kids go to DI schools and run solid and meet their potential...why?...because they HAVE TO. It's a raised bar in DI.

Too bad. This Wiess kid will be running 14:50 against Ship kids and thinking he is the man when he could be running 14:00 against DI talent. Why would anyone want to be a big fish in a little pond?

Just figured i would revisit this for a quick laugh....pretty sure he ran 14:04 at penn relays as a sophmore this year. I'm sure someone will still come on here and say he'd be better at a D1 school...complete b.s.

those people are idiots...just because a school has d1 in front of their name means nothing. what a bunch of fools.

you can't call us fools for saying he could've gotten a better education elsewhere. Duke, Stanford, etc...he was top 10 at FL Finals. With even an OK GPA he could've gone pretty much anywhere. heck, even close (within a few hours)to slippery rock he could've gone to Carnegie Mellon, Bucknell, Penn, Columbia....

I guess Nicodemus Naimadu and Michael Aish were a couple idiots too for running D2

when you graduate and look for a job....guess what? it doesn't matter a whole lot where you got your degree from....you have to sell yourself into a job and a career. just like in running; a guy with an Adams State jersey will kick the ass of most D1 guys in the country; when you get to the starting line YOU have to win yourself, not your jersey.

Dirt wrote:

I guess Nicodemus Naimadu and Michael Aish were a couple idiots too for running D2

Steve Spence, too. Hey, what was up with all those losers going to Adams State in the 1980's? That's not a D-1 program, so they must suck. And Jess Baumgartner, if he really cared about his running, would have gone to BYU, not Southern Utah. What a moron. Plus that Joan Benoit chick who only went to Bates College, she can kiss her career goodbye.

Does the Rock still have that god-awful hill at the start of their XC course? I loved that thing.

those posters who cry "D1 or nothing" are most likely high school kids who have no idea what they are talking about and will probably not even run in college when they go to the D1-State U. (or will end up quitting before their freshman year is over- seen it a million times).