How Are Podium NCAA Cross-Country Teams Built?

By LetsRun.com
November 25, 2014

The NCAA Division I Cross-Country Championships always produce a ton of data and we here at LetsRun.com try to present it to you in a number of interesting ways. One of the ideas suggested to us was to show how each podium squad was assembled, in terms of where the athletes came from, which we’ve done below. The tables below show how each athlete on every podium team of the last 10 years arrived at his/her school. We’ve listed transfers, foreigners and foreign athletes who attended U.S. high schools. The data is pretty interesting and we’d encourage you to check it out.

Some of the purists prefer that teams be built with homegrown US talent. As you’ll see that usually is a losing proposition.

Key
Foreign in bold
Transfer/5th-year grad student in italics
*Attended U.S. high school

WOMEN

MEN

Some interesting conclusions:

• This year’s Michigan State women became the first championship team, male or female, to win without a foreigner or transfer since the 2007 Stanford women. Even more impressively, six of the Spartans’ seven runners are from the state of Michigan (Katie Landwehr is from Ohio).
• In the 10-year period we examined, no men’s teams won the title without a foreigner and/or transfer. Only three teams won without a foreign-born athlete: Mark Wetmore‘s Colorado teams of 2006, 2013 and 2014.
• The 2009 Alabama men and 2014 New Mexico women were the only ones to make the podium without a single American non-transfer.
• The Iona men have made the podium four times but of its 20 scorers on those teams, only two — Ryan Sheridan and Jason Weller in 2008 — were American.
• Stanford and Colorado have had success mostly without foreigners/transfers (15 total podiums, 6 titles, 5 transfers, 1 foreign-born athlete). Oklahoma State and Oregon have had almost as much success, but are more dependent on foreigners/transfers (11 podiums, 6 titles, 11 transfers, 14 foreign-born athletes).
• The top women’s teams are becoming more dependent on foreigners/transfers. In 2005 and 2006 combined, there were just 2 foreigners and 2 transfers. This year alone, there were seven foreigners and three transfers; there hasn’t been fewer than seven combined transfers/foreigners on women’s podium teams since 2006.