NCAA Mid-Distance & Distance: Best of the Rest

Now for the non-Hasay portion of an exciting national meet for the 800 meters and up. Let's start with the athlete on the left, who prior to this year was a little-known runner from a school that was not exactly considered a middle-distance powerhouse. That school, BYU, remarkably left these championships with as many mid-distance titles (3) as everyone else combined.

Miles Batty Double Champion

Miles Batty came into this year's indoor season with a ho-hum 1500m PR of 3:44 and zero NCAA Track and Field nationals appearances. His was a fairly nondescript resume for someone who hoped to hit the NCAA provisional marks, let alone make noise at the national meet. Batty had had an extremely solid 2010 cross country season, however, with top finishes at the Roy Griak invitational (3'rd) and Pre-Nationals (5'th). His season culminated with a superb 15'th place finish at Nationals.

Jordan Hasay's Outstanding Weekend

High school phenoms on the women's side do not have a particularly glorious history in the NCAA ranks. One of those obligatory letsrun posts that emerged every time someone speculated how good Jordan would be in college (when she was running great times in high school), or later how her chances were for a title (based on some of the marks that she ran in college) was that Foot Locker Girls champions simply did not replicate their success at the NCAA level. I won't profess to be a physiology expert here, but obviously there could be something going on with girls' maturity and changes to their bodies. Whatever it is, there was a fair amount of cynicism that Jordan could not take the next step in her running and become a college star.

Another rub on Jordan, which had followed her since her high school days was that she did not have finishing speed and was better-suited to time trials than to races. Although she ran some fantastic times in high school, she did have a few losses in the late stages of races that led to some speculation that she could be beaten once she faced athletes of a similar caliber.

Lessons from the BCS?

As people who read this blog or have talked to me about it well know, I'm all for livening up track and field with some new ideas. So, when NCAA coaches start hashing out ways to improve nationals and make it replicate the best aspects of the conference meets that precede it, I'm all ears. Arkansas' coach Chris Bucknam's proposal, however, is just a terrible, misguided idea. Texas A&M coach Pat Henry's 8 team meet proposal is even worse.

First of all, attempting to make a sport more "fan-friendly" and popular by replicating the BCS is about as logical as trying to dry off with a fire hose. Fans universally hate the BCS as evidenced by the piece of artwork I've displayed here and the wide popularity of books like "Death to the BCS". Everyone hates a system that may exclude the best based on arbitrary, elitist arrangements. Universally, there is a belief that the best athletes on merit should be a part of the championship meet.

"Five" Guys

After a few indoor races and some action down-under, there is no longer any question to what is now the most competitive and deep event in the world. While watching Bernard Lagat capture what was dubbed the dream 5000 at the Melbourne Track Classic, a few things struck me.

First of all, I didn't even think calling it a "dream" event was fanciful or inappropriate. In the race were 4 sub 13 minute athletes including medalists (Bernard Lagat, Craig Mottram), a near-medalist (Matt Tegenkamp- narrowly fourth by hundredths in Osaka), and a sub 27 minute 10K runner who was one of the most consistent 5K runners on the planet the year before (Chris Solinsky). It was a stacked field, and certainly as the race finished a few could dream without too much delusion of finishing on the podium at the World Championships some five months later in Daegu, South Korea.