Iowa state Kenyan plan

Under Coach Bergan and his staff, the Cyclones were competing for trophies in both XC and T&F. Maybe the top talent in the distance ranks were foreign born but looking at the overall program there certainly were plenty of Americans mixed in, some from Iowa that ranged from NCAA champions to All-Americans to point getters in the Big 8 at least on the T&F side. Middle distance, jumps, throws, sprints and hurdles. He had balance and event areas covered. He built a national powerhouse program in Central Iowa, of all places, that could approach and surpass Arkansas on occasion and finish ahead of many other great programs at the time. USC, UCLA etc... He did develop Iowa's best to become major players in those championship track efforts. Maybe Iowa just doesn't produce that many capable of competing at that high of a level in XC on the men's side. The best 18 yr old Iowan couldn't develop fast enough to compete at that level. Nonetheless, it was an era that would be hard to duplicate for IA ST.

The best female Iowans leave the state and have done remarkably well in the past 15 years or so at places like Washington, AZ ST, Missouri, Nebraska etc... Something to be said about not being able to keep your best at a local University not just IA ST. Has to be a good fit, right?

As far as Ihmels and Smith go, they definitely don't look for Iowa HS talent to produce competitive teams on the men's side and barely on the women's under Ihmels but they did have a couple Iowans that excelled. They can't be competitive immediately if they did. Personalities aside, they just can't. I'm sure Iowa HS coaches would love to have their athletes stay close to home but they have to go where they will have the best chance. Putting all of their eggs in the distance basket won't have much chance to compete at a national level in track either. That era is gone. Even Arkansas had a lot of help from amazing jumpers sprinkled with sprinters.

It seems like they get the best iowan almost every year Pollard has probably been the most successful of the bunch but even he has struggled largely due to injury and medical issues and that is out of everyone's control but it seems like every year they get great talent because they know how to recruit really well but they dont k ow what to do once they get the guys. And that happens in tons of d1 programs. Development happens much more in d3 where they aren't as good in high school and there is much more room to grow.

They sort of get the best Iowa guy. They only saw success with 1 of the past 7.

19 Sindt redshirt

18 Sieperda not racing - Carmody running better at ND

17 Bose quit- Murphy running better at Arkansas

16 No Signee - Schweizer at ND

15 Pollard doing well at ISU

14 Evans transferred

13 Thomas quit

Look at their national results. Good mix of athletes to me

Pretty sure your name is mentioned in this thread. It is silly to do anything other than praise a team that placed top 5 in XC and is ranked very high in track. After all, it is by far the best program located in an unattractive area.

Flotrack has them ranked 4th. They may have the best combined track/XC program in the country. Sounds like the yelling and riding in golf cart must be working.

coach wrote:

I guess you're being prepared for the real world. Thank the coach.

Bingo. Can't get the job done? Sorry, bud, we'll find someone who can.

On top of that, IAst has an extremely long history of a pipeline to Kenya. Look up Yobes Ondieki.

What’s ironic with Martin having a team full of Kenyans, is he despised OSU when they had a bunch of foreigners. Except he had to use Kenyans to finally beat OSU.

Not really ironic. He matured and learned. Iowa State is a P5 school in the middle of nowhere and yet they are dominating both sports right now.

Yeah isn’t the point to recruit the best possible runners. They could be from Antarctica for all I care. It’s high level college sports not rinky dink high school anymore.

I am beyond impressed at the coaching in the state of Iowa at this time. Martin (I will get to him in a minute), Woody at Iowa and Paulsen at UNI have all done a wonderful job. I felt like Drake was going down the right path as well prior to Carroll departing.

From the outside, it appears that Jeremy Sudbury is a key to Martin recruiting well and to the relational aspect of the program. He is absolutely worth whatever he is being payed.

We have spoken about ISU distance which has a very good tradition of Iowa, US born and foreign born runners. I am pleased to see that tradition continue. What ISU has done remarkably well is development of MD runners. Roomes was found on the ISU running club. Frank Hayes was a highly regarded recruit before leaving to go back to Ohio. Gentil has a wonderful freshman year getting to 1:49 in the 800. Not much to say about Festus other than he is fantastic and breathtaking to watch run. The ISU program falls back a bit after this year on the track but remains interesting in XC.

The Iowa program appears poised to break out again in 2021 and they will be very good again this year. Two different approaches but very successful. ISU's distance approach would still be effective in the B1G but would absolutely not be a dominating as it has been against Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and other. The Iowa long sprint success would not happen as strongly in the Big 12 against Baylor, TT and even UT.

An almost shocking stat last season was that ISU had the best 800 group in the country and Iowa was 2nd. Best as determined by scoring 4 runners against all other squads of 4 runners. ISU did it with non Iowa guys. Iowa did it with 4 Iowa natives.

It appears that despite hosting the Drake Relays - Drake has given up on XC and track - zero support

How can you say that? They hired a higher profile coach than almost P5 school has. Not their fault he bailed.