The SW region should get 2 at large bids. They are much deeper/faster than last year. Last year Herriman’s average at regionals was 15:40 before they went on to place 3rd at NXN. Yesterday the course was very sloppy/muddy. It was was arguably a slower course due to the conditions yet the team averages were much faster. Niwot in 4th place had a 15:41 team average.
California hasn’t run yet so I won’t rank them. I can’t imagine Plainfield South is even in the conversation at this point.
Really, it seems like there will probably be 6 teams vying for the 4 spots. I imagine it will be 2 SW, 1 S, 1 NW with CA #3 and Rocky on the outside looking in.
Does Rocky have the resume if they traveled to Nike Portland and won that instead of winning the Gary Ward Invite that weekend over the 6th best team in Idaho’s 4A meet?
Does Rocky have the resume if they traveled to Nike Portland and won that instead of winning the Gary Ward Invite that weekend over the 6th best team in Idaho’s 4A meet?
They beat Dana Hills (without Hernandez) at Bob Firman. But even if Hernandez raced and won, Rocky Mountain still would have beaten them.
Also, the Niwot boys team hasn’t beaten any autoqualifiers at all. I wonder if this will affect their chances of being selected.
Does Rocky have the resume if they traveled to Nike Portland and won that instead of winning the Gary Ward Invite that weekend over the 6th best team in Idaho’s 4A meet?
They beat Dana Hills (without Hernandez) at Bob Firman. But even if Hernandez raced and won, Rocky Mountain still would have beaten them.
Also, the Niwot boys team hasn’t beaten any autoqualifiers at all. I wonder if this will affect their chances of being selected.
Already commented that Dana was ranked 5th in California at the time of Bob firman. Rocky was ranked third. They were supposed to be Dana.
Dyestat rankings from 9/21 (a couple days before Bob Firman)
Dana Hills was California #5 like people have said. Rocky was not in the top 5 for Northwest…..just want to be clear that they weren’t the NW 3 when they beat Dana Hills. Doesn’t really matter in the long run, getting 4th at NXR never gives you a great shot at NXN…they needed top 2 to be safe since they don’t travel.
Dyestat rankings from 9/21 (a couple days before Bob Firman)
Dana Hills was California #5 like people have said. Rocky was not in the top 5 for Northwest…..just want to be clear that they weren’t the NW 3 when they beat Dana Hills. Doesn’t really matter in the long run, getting 4th at NXR never gives you a great shot at NXN…they needed top 2 to be safe since they don’t travel.
That is very true. That’s the reason why Jesuit CA was not selected in 2019. Yes, 2 best teams in the nation were from California, but they were very far behind the third place CA team - Dana Hills.
The reason why Granada was selected last year (as a 4th place team) was because they beat Great Oak more times than Rocky Mountain did.
Dyestat rankings from 9/21 (a couple days before Bob Firman)
Dana Hills was California #5 like people have said. Rocky was not in the top 5 for Northwest…..just want to be clear that they weren’t the NW 3 when they beat Dana Hills. Doesn’t really matter in the long run, getting 4th at NXR never gives you a great shot at NXN…they needed top 2 to be safe since they don’t travel.
Surprised to see a self-professed parent of a Rocky runner acknowledge the issue about not traveling. Serious question- if your kid was in the top 7 and running at NXN gave them another opportunity to get noticed and run in college, wouldn’t you want that for them?
The college that I ended up running for noticed me on a travel cross country trip to Oregon. I would have never made the connection otherwise. It does impact kids. Rocky is an affluent program in an affluent area. They traveled 100+ kids to Tiger Grizz. They could have traveled an hour more to go to Portland or Spokane, and basically the same amount of time to go to Salt Lake. Border Wars was the week before Firman and they could have raced Skyridge, Layton, Orem, Mountain View and Lone Peak. That would have been a huge boon to their resume even if they got a close third. Hell, get 5th without Heemeyer and people would still be praising them.
Running at NXN is a bonus and is a difficult thing to earn. They ran the best they could on the day at NXR and were 30 points from winning the Northwest, if they get in awesome, if they don’t get selected they understand that they didn’t do enough to earn the spot. It’s about the honor of the battle and teaching kids to enjoy the journey and that it’s not about outcomes…it’s about the kids developing as human beings.
Running at NXN is a bonus and is a difficult thing to earn. They ran the best they could on the day at NXR and were 30 points from winning the Northwest, if they get in awesome, if they don’t get selected they understand that they didn’t do enough to earn the spot. It’s about the honor of the battle and teaching kids to enjoy the journey and that it’s not about outcomes…it’s about the kids developing as human beings.
I don't disagree with any of that. I also think there is some truth to the statement that the coaching staff could have done more to put themselves in a position to have a better argument.
I 100% agree that kids should learn to race, they should learn the process of setting goals, either failing or succeeding in hitting those goals, resetting goals, how to go about that... and I think the Rocky Mountain coaches are doing a good job of that. I also think that a coach's job is to put your team in the best position possible to achieve those goals. They were very aware of the fact that their schedule from last year held them back. They repeated that series of actions this year.
Big races are also totally different than races with 100 guys, but only 30 of them will run sub 17:30. It's not that different for Landon Heemeyer or Cody Lucas, who will run up near the front and not have to work through traffic. But for guys like Sam Jensen and Pierce Richardson, it's critical to get the feeling of going out faster than you want to in order to get into an okay position, and then have to work through traffic still. Instead of being 8th at Gary Ward with a 165.61, Sam Jensen would be in 40th at Nike Portland with that same speed rating, in a field of 250 guys where 184 broke 17:30. With the same speed ratings at Gary Ward, they would have had a 28 point win at Nike Portland once you adjust for placement.
Once again, the Rocky coaches seem to do a great job of the soft skills side of coaching, and are clearly deft at the hard skills. I understand their reasoning for not traveling, but I also feel like there are legitimate arguments to be made that they are overstating how difficult it is to travel an hour more to a meet than what they already are. The goals of the team should be discussed prior to the season starting, and the staff should do everything they can to put them in a position to succeed. I was on a high school team that traveled 90+ kids to an out of state meet 7 hours away. We went on three charter busses, with a coach, a parent chaperone, and a school staff member on each bus (our AD, two VP's traveled with us). It appeared to me at NXR that Rocky had 5 staff members. It's well within their capabilities to do a trip like Nike Portland if the chose to do it, and travel the entire team.
With the state meet being at Eagle Island next year, they have a hole in their schedule where they have typically traveled to race the preview meet. They should be pretty good again next year. I hope that they take advantage of that once every 3 year situation and fill it with a quality meet instead of some local meet where they beat up on the 16th best team in the state.
Running at NXN is a bonus and is a difficult thing to earn. They ran the best they could on the day at NXR and were 30 points from winning the Northwest, if they get in awesome, if they don’t get selected they understand that they didn’t do enough to earn the spot. It’s about the honor of the battle and teaching kids to enjoy the journey and that it’s not about outcomes…it’s about the kids developing as human beings.
I don't disagree with any of that. I also think there is some truth to the statement that the coaching staff could have done more to put themselves in a position to have a better argument.
I 100% agree that kids should learn to race, they should learn the process of setting goals, either failing or succeeding in hitting those goals, resetting goals, how to go about that... and I think the Rocky Mountain coaches are doing a good job of that. I also think that a coach's job is to put your team in the best position possible to achieve those goals. They were very aware of the fact that their schedule from last year held them back. They repeated that series of actions this year.
Big races are also totally different than races with 100 guys, but only 30 of them will run sub 17:30. It's not that different for Landon Heemeyer or Cody Lucas, who will run up near the front and not have to work through traffic. But for guys like Sam Jensen and Pierce Richardson, it's critical to get the feeling of going out faster than you want to in order to get into an okay position, and then have to work through traffic still. Instead of being 8th at Gary Ward with a 165.61, Sam Jensen would be in 40th at Nike Portland with that same speed rating, in a field of 250 guys where 184 broke 17:30. With the same speed ratings at Gary Ward, they would have had a 28 point win at Nike Portland once you adjust for placement.
Once again, the Rocky coaches seem to do a great job of the soft skills side of coaching, and are clearly deft at the hard skills. I understand their reasoning for not traveling, but I also feel like there are legitimate arguments to be made that they are overstating how difficult it is to travel an hour more to a meet than what they already are. The goals of the team should be discussed prior to the season starting, and the staff should do everything they can to put them in a position to succeed. I was on a high school team that traveled 90+ kids to an out of state meet 7 hours away. We went on three charter busses, with a coach, a parent chaperone, and a school staff member on each bus (our AD, two VP's traveled with us). It appeared to me at NXR that Rocky had 5 staff members. It's well within their capabilities to do a trip like Nike Portland if the chose to do it, and travel the entire team.
With the state meet being at Eagle Island next year, they have a hole in their schedule where they have typically traveled to race the preview meet. They should be pretty good again next year. I hope that they take advantage of that once every 3 year situation and fill it with a quality meet instead of some local meet where they beat up on the 16th best team in the state.
I've spoken to Jeff Howard before the season started and when I asked him if they were going to travel to increase the chances of an at-large, he actually wanted to.
Unfortunately, the schedule just didn't work out, as Woodbridge was before the timeframe that the NXN committee looks at, and meets like Desert Twilight or Border Wars conflicted with crucial meets that are a Rocky tradition (such as Tiger Grizz) or didn't have enough competition to justify potentially thousands of dollars.
They used Gary Ward as a chance to work on some weaknesses (such as starting fast like you mentioned) that’s why there was some variability in their results at Gary Ward, they sent the first mile on a challenging part at that course.
The funny comments to me on here about the coaches being old D1 runners and knowing you must beat good teams…..this isn’t D1 with a huge budget to fly to the big meets. This is high school XC and just to be in the mix for NXN bids each year is a blessing. The team fundraises money, the coaches do the best they can to use that money fairly across two full team travel trips and attempt to prepare the kids the best they can for courses they will run.
Pierce Richardson and Sam Jensen both dropped huge time from NXR 2022 to 2023 (17:16 to 16:10 and 17:50 to 16:14). A team that wasn’t suppose to be close to CDA or Crater coming into the fall seemed to do alright without compromising their values to spend team money flying “fast” kids all over the place in hopes that all that money would be worth an at-large bid.
I don't disagree with any of that. I also think there is some truth to the statement that the coaching staff could have done more to put themselves in a position to have a better argument.
I 100% agree that kids should learn to race, they should learn the process of setting goals, either failing or succeeding in hitting those goals, resetting goals, how to go about that... and I think the Rocky Mountain coaches are doing a good job of that. I also think that a coach's job is to put your team in the best position possible to achieve those goals. They were very aware of the fact that their schedule from last year held them back. They repeated that series of actions this year.
Big races are also totally different than races with 100 guys, but only 30 of them will run sub 17:30. It's not that different for Landon Heemeyer or Cody Lucas, who will run up near the front and not have to work through traffic. But for guys like Sam Jensen and Pierce Richardson, it's critical to get the feeling of going out faster than you want to in order to get into an okay position, and then have to work through traffic still. Instead of being 8th at Gary Ward with a 165.61, Sam Jensen would be in 40th at Nike Portland with that same speed rating, in a field of 250 guys where 184 broke 17:30. With the same speed ratings at Gary Ward, they would have had a 28 point win at Nike Portland once you adjust for placement.
Once again, the Rocky coaches seem to do a great job of the soft skills side of coaching, and are clearly deft at the hard skills. I understand their reasoning for not traveling, but I also feel like there are legitimate arguments to be made that they are overstating how difficult it is to travel an hour more to a meet than what they already are. The goals of the team should be discussed prior to the season starting, and the staff should do everything they can to put them in a position to succeed. I was on a high school team that traveled 90+ kids to an out of state meet 7 hours away. We went on three charter busses, with a coach, a parent chaperone, and a school staff member on each bus (our AD, two VP's traveled with us). It appeared to me at NXR that Rocky had 5 staff members. It's well within their capabilities to do a trip like Nike Portland if the chose to do it, and travel the entire team.
With the state meet being at Eagle Island next year, they have a hole in their schedule where they have typically traveled to race the preview meet. They should be pretty good again next year. I hope that they take advantage of that once every 3 year situation and fill it with a quality meet instead of some local meet where they beat up on the 16th best team in the state.
I've spoken to Jeff Howard before the season started and when I asked him if they were going to travel to increase the chances of an at-large, he actually wanted to.
Unfortunately, the schedule just didn't work out, as Woodbridge was before the timeframe that the NXN committee looks at, and meets like Desert Twilight or Border Wars conflicted with crucial meets that are a Rocky tradition (such as Tiger Grizz) or didn't have enough competition to justify potentially thousands of dollars.
woodbridge is fine for travel. the nxn committee may not account for head to head wins at woodbridge. but it shows you try to find the competition and compete, and if you do well, it shows you are one of the best in the west.
They used Gary Ward as a chance to work on some weaknesses (such as starting fast like you mentioned) that’s why there was some variability in their results at Gary Ward, they sent the first mile on a challenging part at that course.
The funny comments to me on here about the coaches being old D1 runners and knowing you must beat good teams…..this isn’t D1 with a huge budget to fly to the big meets. This is high school XC and just to be in the mix for NXN bids each year is a blessing. The team fundraises money, the coaches do the best they can to use that money fairly across two full team travel trips and attempt to prepare the kids the best they can for courses they will run.
Pierce Richardson and Sam Jensen both dropped huge time from NXR 2022 to 2023 (17:16 to 16:10 and 17:50 to 16:14). A team that wasn’t suppose to be close to CDA or Crater coming into the fall seemed to do alright without compromising their values to spend team money flying “fast” kids all over the place in hopes that all that money would be worth an at-large bid.
Sam Jensen also ended the year hurt last year. He ran 16:12 to open the season at Caldwell and 16:49 at Firman. Pierce Richardson ran 16:34 at Middleton last year and 16:27 at Bugtown.
Those are really inaccurate statements about who those runners were last year.
Everyone knew Rocky was going to be good this year. They returned 8:59, 9:12, 9:54, and a bunch of guys that had run sub 4:40/10:10/17:00. They were on TullyRunners watch list for the top teams in the country. Literally everyone thought they were going to be good.
Nobody said anything about flying all over the place. I specifically said bussing the entire team. You really twisted my words there into something that I didn't say at all.
I've always wondered why the NXN committee seems to ignore momentum and peaking. Personally I would like to see the teams that peak at the end of the season go to NXN as at large bids rather than the teams that are losing steam. It normally isn't a problem though I've seen several teams miss out on NXN over the years that I think would have been contenders for top 10.
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