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College Racing Vibrant in the U.S.

College Racing Vibrant in the U.S.

The NCAA system provides the perfect breeding ground for the next generation of stars
By Brian Metzler, Jay Johnson
As featured in the May 2010 issue of Running Times Magazine
A year ago, Galen Rupp was on the verge of winning six NCAA titles during his senior year at Oregon and Colorado's Jenny Barringer was in the process of rewriting the NCAA record books for women's distance running.

While those athletes deservedly got loads of attention and praise, as well as being named the male and female recipients of the inaugural Bowerman Award as the country's top track athletes, their stellar seasons both overshadowed and epitomized the huge progression in NCAA distance running over the last decade. And with that gradual advancement over the last 10 years, the American collegiate system is strikingly better, and more relevant in many ways, than it has been in decades, perhaps ever.



Compared to the mid-1990s and even as recently as 2002, there is considerably more depth at the collegiate level than ever. For every Rupp, Barringer, German Fernandez, Andrew Wheating and Chris Derrick, there are dozens of runners like Angela Bizzarri, Ryan Vail, Andrew Bumbalough, Patrick Smyth, Molly Huddle, Amy Hastings and Brandon Bethke who have risen to the NCAA elite with national-class times, and, in some cases, are continuing to blossom in post-collegiate settings. (And that's not even considering top recent Division II runners like Scott Bauhs and Aaron Braun or Division III stars Will Leer and Nick Symmomds.)

Faster times reflect that as well, although men's depth has improved more dramatically in the distance events, while women's times have dropped more in middle-distance races. For example, the men's 15t-best Division I times in the 5,000m and 10,000m have both dropped dramatically from 2002 to 2009 (13:56 to 13:49 and 29:11 to 28:54). While it's difficult to compare specific years or season-leading marks because of weather and the availability of fast races, the top-15 and top-25 rankings in intermediary years reflect the trend enough to make it statistically significant. Perhaps more indicative of men's progress is that there were just eight sub-28:40 times in the 10,000m during the 2002 and 2003 seasons combined, but 26 during the last two outdoor campaigns.

On the women's side during the same span, there has been steady improvement based on the 15th-ranked times in the 800m (2:05.54 to 2:04.14), 1500m (4:19.7 to 4:17.1) and 5,000m (16:10 to 16:06). In 2002 and 2003, there were nine sub-2:04 800m performances, compared to 20 total in 2008 and 2009. In the 1500m, there were nine marks under 4:16 in 2002-2003 and 17 during the last two seasons. (The 10,000m has shown gradual improvement, too, but that event is a bit harder to judge at the collegiate level because of the infrequent number of fast women's 10,000m races.)

The bottom line is that everyone is getting faster from 800m to 10,000m.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

So why the increased depth and faster times? First, there's been a distance-running surge at the high school level in the U.S., fostered both by a huge generational boom -- the current generation of 15- to 28-year-olds, known as Generation Y or the Millennials, is about 70 to 75 million strong, twice the size of the previous generation of people who are now roughly 29-49 and were in college during the 1980s and 1990s -- and enormous growth in cross country and track participation at the high school level. (Track and cross country programs are cheaper and easier to maintain than numerous other equipment-intensive sports that have fallen victim to the sharp edge of the budget axe.)

Collegiate running has also benefited by the world (especially the Millennials) being much more connected by technology now than during previous generations. For the past decade, the online opportunities for coaches, athletes and fans to promote running, compare times and squabble over ridiculous nuances of the sport have played a huge role in the rebirth of competitive running at the high school and collegiate levels.

The ability to see results immediately after a race (or watch a race via streaming video) and the ability for coaches, athletes, agents and fans to interact instantaneously has forever changed recruiting, coaching, training, sponsorship and even being a fan. It doesn't change the basic concept of the sport -- a runner still needs some level of endurance prowess, an enormous amount of hard work and the ability to race well -- but the electronic interactivity has created interest that was lacking at the collegiate level for so long.

Consider that when Bob Kennedy was the surprise winner of the NCAA cross country championship as a freshman in 1988, news traveled primarily by word of mouth, daily newspapers that carried the results and monthly magazines that reached subscribers and newsstands two to three months after the race. Compare that to last fall's NCAA championship, which was broadcast live via streaming video by NBC'sUniversalSports.com. Before the women's race was even over, news of Barringer's mid-race collapse had been posted on numerous Web sites, was the subject of hundreds of Twitter updates and was being discussed live via message boards. Everybody involved with competitive running can be as connected as they want to be at any given moment.

The point is that the current generation of high school and collegiate athletes are technologically enabled and interact like never before. A good example is that Kenyan-born NCAA cross country champ Sam Chelanga is Facebook friends with top American pros Adam Goucher, Dan Browne, James Carney and Josh Cox, up-and-coming miler Stephen Pifer, distance coach Brad Hudson and high school star Lukas Verzbicas.

Furthermore, the greater societal trend in distance running participation among Americans has played a role, even if it's hard to draw statistical conclusions. In other words, many of the current crop of young distance runners were likely influenced positively by their moms and dads being active runners and training for a 10K, half marathon or marathon.

COACH CLASS

Not to be overlooked has been the turnover in the coaching ranks in the last decade. A lot of good coaches have retired or changed jobs, creating new opportunities for up-and-coming young coaches who have blended some of the hard-and-true philosophies of their mentors with new ideas they picked up from their experiences as competitive runners or assistant coaches. It started about the time Frank Gagliano left Georgetown in 2001 and continued when Vin Lananna left Stanford after the 2003 season through Arkansas legend John McDonnell's retirement in 2008.

During that span, a talented new crop of young coaches has emerged, including, among others, Stanford's Jason Dunn, Virginia's Jason Vigilante, Illinois' Jeremy Rasmussen, Oklahoma State's Dave Smith, Iowa State's Corey Ihmels, Alabama's Joe Walker, Northern Arizona's Eric Heins, Florida State's Karen Harvey, New Mexico's Joe Franklin, Arizona State's Louis Quintana and Washington's Greg Metcalf and Jason Drake.

There's still plenty of the "old establishment" producing top young distance runners and developing those less-talented but hard-working runners that are key to a program's success, both in daily workouts and at meets. Among them are Lananna (now at Oregon), Colorado's Mark Wetmore, Princeton's Peter Farrell, Michigan's Ron Warhurst, BYU's Ed Eyestone and Patrick Shane, Wisconsin's Mick Byrne and Villanova's Marcus O'Sullivan and Gina Procaccio.

The good college coaches have returned to high-mileage running and backed off the too-frequent racing (especially during cross country and indoor track) that tends to leave a runner frazzled by outdoor conference, regional and national meets. Many coaches have paid more attention to developing general strengthand other ancillary workouts common among successful professional runners.

The reality is that American high school kids have a better chance at developing as distance runners in the U.S. college system than ever before. And combined with the best high school running the U.S. has ever known and more post-collegiate opportunities since the early 1980s, the collegiate system is playing a crucial role in the resurgence of American running. Those are some of the reasons Barringer, Rupp, Wheating, Dorian Ulrey and Leo Manzano have competed for the U.S. at the Olympic and world championships while still in college in recent years, but more of a factor behind runners like Bizzarri, Smyth, Lisa Koll, Mel Lawrence and Nicole Bush, who are showing steady improvement and are perhaps on the cusp of national team berths.

And that brings up another aspect of the American system that has contributed to the recent rise -- foreign athletes. Imported runners competing for American schools aren't coming in and walking away with NCAA titles anymore. On the contrary, many foreign collegiate runners wind up improving in the rejuvenated U.S. system against American-bred kids and then rise through their country's ranks, making national teams as mid-tier runners. True, few have the talent of Henry Rono or Bernard Lagat, but at the same time, neither are second-tier runners brought over merely as hired mercenaries to score points at conference and national meets. Ultimately, it's become less about nationalism and more about 18- to 22-year olds developing into better runners.

Former Texas Tech star and native Kenyan Sally Kipyego was among the world leaders in the mile and 5,000m during this year’s indoor season. Washington star Kendra Schaaf is the reigning Canadian national cross country champion and represented her country at this spring’s world championships. Ex-Providence standout Martin Fagan has become an elite-level half marathoner.

Former Florida State standout Hannah England has become one of the UK's top young middle-distance runners, while former teammate Susan Kuijken should become one of the Netherland's top 1500m runners now that she's graduated.

And consider New Zealand's Nick Willis, silver medalist at 1500m in Beijing. After a standout career at the University of Michigan, he's kept Ann Arbor his primary training base, presumably because the system (and Warhurst's coaching) worked so well.

So what's next? The current surge of distance running at the collegiate level should continue indefinitely so long as the sport remains vibrant as a whole in the U.S. It might take a few years to have NCAA athletes as superlative as Rupp or Barringer, but don't be surprised if it happens sooner than later.
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