utefan wrote:
While Utah does not devote all 18 scholarships to distance, it clearly has been their focus since they fired their throws coach in 2015 and hired a distance assistant, giving them 2 distance coaches (Kepler is a distance coach). They made it to XC nationals in 2015 and 2016, so it was looking like a moderately successful experiment, but have been backsliding since then. Stride Report has them at #25 this year, so maybe they're poised to recover. But if they want any continued success, they'll need to find a good recruiter to replace Wartenberger, as Kepler has struggled over the years to compete for heavily recruited athletes. Any guesses for who might be on their short list?
The challenge for Utah is that they are distance focused and have a butt load of talent. It doesn't seem that they are getting a fraction of the results they should get given the talent they have. A lot of their women get slower and a lot miss many seasons.
Looking at their track roster, they have about 20 true distance women (might be a middle distance girl in that count). That includes 4 Internationals in the long distance group. At least 12 of those women came to Utah with 3200m times (or 3000m equivalent times) under 11-minutes. They have four girls who came with sub 10-minute 3000m times, and girls as fast as 10:13 for 3200m in high school.
It seems that a PAC-12 Power-Five school, with 20 long distance women, strong internationals and that many girls coming in with sub-11 3200m times should be at least qualifying for xc nationals every year (nearly every year) and should be well represented at NCAA I National Prelims and Finals in Outdoor Track.
Utah may not care though. XC and Track are low interest sports for many administrators and it may be that as long as there are no complaints, violations or issues it doesn't matter.