Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Stanford Invitational Meet Preview

http://ca.milesplit.com/articles/191710-stanford-invitational-meet-prevew

Feel free to comment below on any individuals and teams that I may have missed. Lots of schools will be competing this Saturday and many are from out of state. Do you know who will be the biggest surprise this Saturday as an individual or team? Who is the biggest favorite in the entire meet? What race are you most looking forward to watching? Goals for this Saturday?

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

anyone have the schedules for CCS and State this year?

Fire is now 90% contained with new finish date of 10/15. Toro will be occupied at least till then and most likely a few weeks after while Cal Fire mops up. It is a certainty that they did some damage to the start area. When will CCS make the call on moving to CS?

Albert Caruana said...

CCS
The order is IV, V, I, II and III with first race at 10am.

State Meet Hankbook:
http://static.psbin.com/1/g/plkk2fwrkzhrhj/2016_XC_Handbook.pdf

I think the CCS site is still up in the air but CCS should be giving an update soon.

Sal said...

I didn't hear anything about the SF boys. Are they running D2 or seeded? If Bell can still be expected to finish high in the seeded race without an injured Richardson, then surely SF can make a good showing. They were only 13 points behind Bell at the Ed Sias with the basically same lineups.

Albert Caruana said...

I definitely missed St Francis and will add them when I get a moment. I believe they are running their A squad in the seeded race and their B squad in Division 2.

Anonymous said...

I think the beauty of this year's edition is that there not any really overwhelming favorites; any one of 3-5 boys will be in the hunt for the seeded race's title and while Great Oak might be the favorite, I would not be remotely shocked to see them get toppled. For those reasons, I am really looking forward to the High School Boy's Seeded Race. With the right conditions, I believe you could see 5 boys go under 15:00 (only 2 made it last year, Rocha and Teare).

Anonymous said...

Guys, let's be real. Great Oak will win.

They have TWO freshman in the 15's. On ran 15:15.

The race is for second.

Anonymous said...

Is great oak one of those evil CCS private schools?

Anonymous said...

bell was missing 4 varsity runners at ed sias. also one of the top 3 was sick that day.

Anonymous said...

@ 9:07. One could argue that they were only missing 2, I'll give you up to 3, but no way were they missing 4 varsity runners at Ed Sias. Regardless, I believe the comment was that SF should be considered for a good placement if Bell is projected to do well without Richardson (who also missed the ES). I tend to agree.

Coach Tim said...

@9:07 - Not sure if you're jesting or sincere, but no - Great Oak is a public school. It's in Temecula, CA (Riverside County). They are, however, bigger than every school in CCS, with a CBED enrollment of 3476.

Their XC program has won six state titles (4 girls, 2 boys) and are the defending NXN champions on the boys side. Their girls were NXN runners-up in 2014.

Albert Caruana said...

Great Oak girls also finished in 3rd place in 2015.

I think for the most part, the most successful schools in the state are large public schools. What we have in CCS with the WCAL dominating the entire section in most sports is not the norm. Look at NCS and the best schools in that section. Except for Division V which is primarily small private schools, the teams that do well in the other divisions are public schools.

Anonymous said...

When it comes to Cross Country, size matters. If you look at the merged team results for the state meet last year, there is a very close correlation with school attendance and performance. Unfortunately in California, the sections decide who from their section goes to the state meet and apply their own logic to the process, as in the infamous Competitive Equity model that pushes McFarland in to D1 where, at the state level, they compete (to the best of their ability) against teams like Great Oak that have literally 500% more students to cull talent from.

Albert Caruana said...

There is no question that the size of the school directly correlates with the strength of a cross country team. There is data out there that proves this point very clearly in that the largest schools run the fastest times. Until the state mandates that every section follows the same enrollment numbers for each division, we will not have a fair competition at the state meet.

pmccrystle said...

I agree with Albert...to a point. What is the biggest school in California? Paramount, 4700+. Third biggest? Downey 4200+. What is the biggest school north of the Southern Section? Central High School in Fresno, 4000+ students. So, I do not agree there is a direct correlation, or else these three schools would be powerhouses...but, obviously, there is relationship between school size and the potential for the school to find success...other important things being equal!!

Albert Caruana said...

Patrick, I forgot to mention that the other common factor at large, successful cross country programs is a good coach. You take a look at most of the successful programs and they have had a coach or two that have been instrumental in their success.

I am looking up Paramount right now and seeing if they need a PE teacher and cross country coach :D

Anonymous said...

Maybe I should clarify, large schools, with top notch coaches who leverage the attendance base they have to pull from. How many kids run for Bellarmine and for Great Oak? About 100+? How does that compare to Paramount or Downey, inner city schools where cross country holds interest for but a small percentage of students and, despite their size, struggle to find 7 kids willing to commit? I am not being critical of schools or coaches that are successful in maximizing the talent they have at their disposal, I even seem to remember Great Oaks' Coach Doug Soles being asked what were the keys to creating a successful cross country program and his reply being, "start by finding the largest school you can with a cross country coach opening." The only thing I am saying is that there should be a consistent model for athletes and teams to compete at the state level.

Albert Caruana said...

Part of being a good coach is to attract hard working athletes to your sport.

Anonymous said...

Go look at Great Oak on Google Maps. The surrounding area and terrain surely doesn't hurt. $3000 elliptical bikes are pretty nice too.

Anonymous said...

Financial support and a supportive parent base is the number one factor in classroom success. It comes down to community.

Next is talent. Then coaching.

Anonymous said...

Is it time to have 2 separate states (north and south) for cross country championships? We could all just adjust our divisions down (Bell would be D2, etc.) but what is the point of that? We just need to face the fact that the large public schools in the SS are always going to beat up on our kids. Also, we could all stay home for thanksgiving and run at Crystal Springs. There is no downside.

Anonymous said...

"We just need to face the fact that the large public schools in the SS are always going to beat up on our kids."

Tell that to Aptos and SLV.

Anonymous said...

D3 and down is more equal... When was the last Northern California team to win in D1 or D2?

Mountain View?

Albert Caruana said...

The key link to successful teams is coaching. Yes, you need talent to win but good coaches attract and develop talent consistently.

Albert Caruana said...

Mt View was last Norcal team to win Division II in 2009. Del Campo was the last Division I state champ from NorCal in 1995.

RunStretchRun said...

I think there is no reason to split from the SoCal schools. Yes they are bigger but they also promote running as a "real sport" and their athletes have chosen their sport as their primary focus. Our program has a few guys who enjoy running but the reality is with 800 kids who play multiple sports, participate in a myriad of activities having a strong "top 7" is difficult and sometimes impossible based on injuries etc. That said the goal is to compete with the entire State and get better, even if we are not in contention to place. "Running Up" if you will? My guy wants to run in college, we won our League because it's not overly competitive. Our division will be harder with the D3 schools that have moved in but we don't run against most of those teams until NCS. Running against faster guys at Stanford helped my kid run for a PR yesterday. If he wants to be the "fastest guy" he can stay home, if he wants to get better he needs to run against faster guys. Just a thought.

Rob Collins said...

Actually none of the Division are fair when it comes to School size vs Southern Section.
Div1 2500 plus
Div2 2499-2080 (580)
Div3 1460- 2079 (619)
Div4 601-1459 (858)
Div5 600-Below (600)

Anonymous said...

Under the limits listed by Rob, the CCS would have only 8 D1 teams, SF would be D3, and Aptos and SLV would be D4. Is this what we want to do to become competitive at state?

Albert Caruana said...

That is what NCS has done. It has certainly made Divisions 2-4 more competitive.

Anonymous said...

It's a question of priorities. Approximately half of the teams in CCS qualify for the championships, and less than 25% of those advance to State. Do we want to lessen the experience for the half the section that races at that level, in order to improve the placing of the small percentage that advance?

If you think the section meet wouldn't be worse, keep in mind there are only 8 schools that qualify as D1 and 9 that qualify as D2. Aside from Bellarmine, only one of the D1 schools has placed in the top 5 at CCS over the past five years. Theoretically, you could end up with a field of four teams racing for the championship, one of them being Bellarmine. Who is that situation good for?

Anonymous said...

The Southern Section is so much bigger than most anyone outside of it realizes. There are 91 schools in SS D1, and 120 schools in CCS in all divisions combined. SS D1 has 32 schools with enrollment over 3000, including 4 schools with enrollment over 4000(CCS and NCS each have 3 and 0). Plus the 59 other schools in the 2500-3000 range.

It's probably not going to be competitive no matter where you draw the lines.

Anonymous said...

Agree with 3:57. No change is going to make it better for our kids. That is why we should have a NorCal championship at CS. Let the SS have their meet and let us have ours, based on the makeup of our communities. Just because the state boundary was drawn where it is doesn't mean that we have compatible ways of designing school populations and sports programs.

Anonymous said...

State is too much of a cash cow to ever stop it. The CIF gets a check from CUSD every year from XC and track. Every other sport, even football costs money. No one gives a crap about this sport but it finances the ones they do care about. State meet isn't going anywhere.

Anonymous said...

Just a thought; I don't think the athletes themselves (who we actually do this for) would like the idea of two "state" championships. XC/TF isn't a sport that caters to "hiding out" from the best competition and kids generally seem to want to test themselves against the best there is. Sure, you won the NorCal D1 title, but are you better than Great Oak? Maybe you won the SoCal D5 race, but are you faster than Cooper Teare?

With that said, I think the small field sizes at our state meet fail to do our state justice in terms of how competitive it really is.

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