1 10:04.15 B Newton North Wins

[300kicks]

Splits to follow

[AsthenicAthlete]

Nice!! Can't wait to see what kind of splits they put up.

[stizz]

Wooooo!!!!!

[300kicks]

1 10:04.15 B Newton North
Dave Polgar (3:06.4), Dave Slifer (49.8), Jed Carpenter (1:57.4), Chris Barnicle (4:10.6)

[stizz]

nice

[AzN at LARGE]

wow, that's fast

[polyxc]

Early pick for Mass cross country champ next Fall...

David Polgar!

[antoine walker]

Early pick for Mass cross country champ next Fall...

David Polgar!

Mark Amirault

[xcrunna]

yea baby, polgar at 3:06, that's the shocker there, but good performances for everyone, hope they still can walk after state relays

[WingedFoote]

Three-oh-freaking-six!

That's nuts. I love David "Samson" Polgar. It's the hair...

[polyxc]

Mark Amirault
Not a bad pick either...

But let's be in the moment!

[zackxc]

yea baby, polgar at 3:06, that's the shocker there, but good performances for everyone, hope they still can walk after state relays

do you mean they are actually going to run tommorrow?

[Dalau]

Early pick for Mass cross country champ next Fall...

David Polgar!
sorry, he's been picked by many already.



posted 04-25-2005,
I don't know if this has been posted yet, but Polgar has run a 1:55r 800m, so if you put that together with his 4:25 mile, it's good for a 3:06 1200m.
nice, nice! my calculator program works.

[xcrunna]

do you mean they are actually going to run tommorrow?
Unless they change their minds (which would be acceptable with that type of performance) they were planning to run, and most likely double.

[polyxc]

I still believe that Newton North should have been at the cross country Nike Team Nationals, except for the New York - New Jersey bias, and some unfortunate absences at big meets. Talent wise, my opinion is they were the second best in the Northeast. They looked great Manhattan.

[polyxc]

sorry, he's been picked by many already.

Yes, but what a good time for laggards to jump on the bandwagon.

[ONtheRISE]

I still believe that Newton North should have been at the cross country Nike Team Nationals, except for the New York - New Jersey bias, and some unfortunate absences at big meets. Talent wise, my opinion is they were the second best in the Northeast. They looked great Manhattan.


New York/New Jersey bias? Are You kidding me? Fayettville finished 2nd at NTN and CBA finished a respectable 11th... I looked very briefly, but using the meet you mentioned, Manhattan, if I saw correctly, Newton North's 5th man didnt even break 14... CBA's 5th runner was at 13:37... Over 23 seconds, which may not seem like a lot, but once you get back that far in time, many, many runners can finish in a very short time... I dont even think its extremely close to be honest... I am from New York, so I dont so much even care about Jersey, but I dont see this bias you speak of.. I checked, and yes NN has a better 5 man average by 4 seconds than CBA(with Barnicle's 12:17), but CBA wins a dual meet 26- 30 I believe.. Newton North's fifth man kills them more so than Barnicle helping them at a meet like manhattan and he certainly would have killed them at NTN.. If anything you should be complaining about Cedar Cliff, who finished dead last for getting an invitation, and not any New York/New Jersey...

p.s. I did this at about 2:30 in the morning so if any of my stats are slightly off, lets not bug out please :)

[xcrunna]

Newton North's 5'th man was not at Manhattan

[polyxc]

Newton North's 5'th man was not at Manhattan
and newton North never even made the top 10 after Manhattan. There is no question there was a New York New Jersey bias.

[1609.344]

polgar manages around 1:58 and 4:30 in the relays

barnicle ~4:22 or so and 309?

slifer and carpeter run, not quite sure of their splits however

[Mrr82]

Polgar split 306 huh? Pretty good time....I could see him going 155 for the 800 and 415 for the mile this year.

[ONtheRISE]

Well if you wanted them to be ranked in the northeast, then maybe there was some kind of bias, but as far as NTN when did they ever show they could beat either CBA or FM other than coming close to CBA at Manhattan... So like I asked before, why arent you complaing about Cedar Cliff instead?

[polyxc]

You have a point about CBA and Cedar Cliff.

The heart of my complaint is that many New England teams were not given hte credit the deserved. Newton North's was left below many teams they beat at Manhattan, without their 5th man. Bishop Hendricken won the Manchester Invitational and got no credit.

[rysheridan]

What your saying is just speculation, whose to say that NN's 5th man wouldn't have had a crap race? The only race they ran during XC where the best of the best in the NE were was Manhattan, and unfortunately their 5th man couldn't run but stuff like that happens. It happened to Bayshore, a team that should have been garunteed a spot. They run great all year, have one girl thats sick or something at the NY Fed meet run worse than normal and their invite to NTN is given to someone else. You have to show up big when it counts and if your entire team isn't there during one of the most important meets regarding the NTN invitations in the NE then thats just bad luck.

Who did Bishop Hendrickson beat at Manchester?

[polyxc]

Who did Bishop Hendrickson beat at Manchester?
I appreciate your interest.

Bishop Hendricken beat Londonderry, Manhester Central NH, Burnt Hills NY, East Lyme CT, and Nashua North.

Londonderry and Burnt Hills wound up ranked in the top 10 NTN Northeast.

One problem with the Northeast Region is the guys doing the ranking may say, who have the New England team beaten, any NY/NJ teams? Except for the occasional brave team like Burnt Hills squad, no NY teams venture to New England to run in their meets. How could a New England team beat them? And the New England teams that venture down to Vanny are runnng on a course they have less familarity with than the locals.

Guilford beat ranked Chaminade at the St. Anthony's Invitational and did not get a ranking.

Newton North at Manhattan if you dropped them in to the same race, finished ahead of ranked Saratoga, Morris Hills, Cherokee, and Shen and didn't get ranked above any of them.

On October 16, there was only one New England team in the top 10 of the Northeast NTN rankings.

New York and New Jersey have some fine cross country, but so does New England.

[rysheridan]

I understand what you mean, the NE list was dominated by NY and NJ teams. The thing is, it's not the people doing these rankings responsibility to go out and scour the nation for these teams. If you want to get on the list then go then head down to Vanny, run Manhattan against the best teams. VCP is the standard for the NE, no matter where your from. Hopefully next year the rankings go smoother?

[ForNH]

It kind of sucks for any New England Team hoping that they might have a chance at the Nike Team Nationals. Before the rankings didn't mean anything, but it seems like the best team in the nation could come out of NH and if they're lucky, they'll get ranked. Never in the top three though. There's got to be some politics in it. And thats probably hurting the competition of the rankings and the morals of some New England teams.

It's definetly not far that New England teams would be expected to travel outside New England every chance they get to get in competition with NY or NJ. It's not cost efficient, and sometimes, the best competition can be found here (Manchester Invitational.)

[Wizardx]

1 10:04.15 B Newton North

Beast.

[Weezy]

Beast.

Who thinks they sub 10:00 at NON?

[Wizardx]

Who thinks they sub 10:00 at NON?

This one I will not rule out. The 400 leg was only a 50, it was one of Carpenter's few 800's that he's ever run, Polgar's split is re-doable, and Barnicle can drop a second or two in the 1600 (Is the DMR before or after the 2 Mile?).

[rysheridan]

2 mile is friday, DMR is sat

[Wizardx]

2 mile is friday, DMR is sat

Consider sub-10 alot tougher.

[polyxc]

I understand what you mean, the NE list was dominated by NY and NJ teams. The thing is, it's not the people doing these rankings responsibility to go out and scour the nation for these teams. If you want to get on the list then go then head down to Vanny, run Manhattan against the best teams. VCP is the standard for the NE, no matter where your from. Hopefully next year the rankings go smoother?
My opinion is that it is the responsibility of the guys doing the rankings to look at what is happening in New England, especially the big Invitationals.

They should at least check out Invites like the Manchester, Brown, Wickham, Thetford Hills, Maine Festival of Champions, Wyndham, and McIntyre.

By the way, I sent several emails trying to find out who was on the ranking committee, and never received an answer. Even John Dye skirted the issue. At least the make-up of the committee should be known. I wonder if there is anyone from New England on the committee.

The question you asked about who the New England teams have beat could also be asked about the New Jersey teams. Many of them only run at Holmdel, where out of state teams aren't allowed to run. What New York or New Jersey teams you have beaten shouldn't be the only criteria for ranking. What teams had Cherokee beat when they were ranked #5? What teams did Morris Hills beat except New Jersey teams all year?

I concur with your hope that it will go smoother next year.

[GeorgieTheK]

What teams had Cherokee beat when they were ranked #5? What teams did Morris Hills beat except New Jersey teams all year?



Morris Hill ran @ VCP, and averaged 13:29.

Cherokee won their race @ Great American, without 2 of their top 7, and had one of the top 10 5-man averages.

I will agree that there is a bit of a NY-NJ bias - but mostly because that's where the top team traditionally have been. It becomes an easy benchmark to compare teams - Morris Hills looks better when they run close to CBA.

In any case, I think NN deserves a lot more credit in XC than they got. However, what hurt them was 2 fold:

1. Winning their class meet by only 4 points.
2. Chris Barnicle - since he usually ran so much faster than anybody else at a meet, it was tempting to overstate him impact on the teams 5 man average. Like someone said before, every time he wins, he scores only a point, no matter how fast he runs.

As for Bishop Hendrickson - they traded victories with Londonderry - and lost to Chaminade @ VCP. That killed them right there.

[rysheridan]

What New York or New Jersey teams you have beaten shouldn't be the only criteria for ranking.

The region is made up of NY, NJ and NE. The best way to decide who are the better teams is by head to head competition. The biggest venue for this competition is at Manhattan, where NY, NJ, and NE teams all compete. Again the people making this lists (who should NOT be anonymous) aren't responsible for a team that won't travel down to VCP. If you don't want to head down to the biggest meet in the NE, then you have to deal with being left out of NE rankings.

As for NN, Barnicle did not run at Brown which was another big meet.

[CrazyRunner89]

As for Bishop Hendrickson - they traded victories with Londonderry - and lost to Chaminade @ VCP. That killed them right there.

Hendricken was ranked at 9 or 10 right after their victory at Manchester. After that Londonderry won a meet in Disney World and kicked us out of the top 10. They beat us at Brown anyway so it doesn't really matter. Towards the end of the year 4 of our top 7 were hurt or sick, so we didn't really deserve to get ranked. Hopefully next year they straighten things out a little bit.

[polyxc]

.... If you don't want to head down to the biggest meet in the NE, then you have to deal with being left out of NE rankings...
My opinion is if you shouldn't have to run at VCP to get ranked. People doing the voting should be knowledgeable to evaluae a performance somewhere else. We just will have to disagree on that.

Maybe if you want to go to NTN you need to go.

By the end of the year Londonderry, New Milford, and Newton North did make the list, so maybe the voters changed their viewpoint a bit.

It will be fun to see how next year unfolds.

Even losing Ahern and Olson, Londonderry NH will be strong. Nashua North and Coe Brown NH also. Brockton MA will be strong. Methuen, Chelmsford, Methuen, and St. John's Shrewsbury and NN also in Mass. Bishop Hendricken again in Rhode Island. Norwich Free Academy, Guilford, Ledyard, and Amity in CT. Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth, and York ME return almost there whole teams. Ellsworth and Lisbon return most. Maine as a whole should be much stronger next year. 15 of there top 20 harriers return.