Digits: Distance Depth
By: Michael Weidenbruch
The weekend before NCAA Regional Championships begin is one of the most quiet weekends of the competitive season in terms of performances. With no big meets to write about, we got a little creative. With Regionals coming up this weekend at The University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida and California State University, Sacramento in Sacramento, California, everyone is in full championship season mode.
Come NCAAs, the individual races will surely be thrilling but what may be more difficult to predict is the team champion. Part of this difficulty lies in a few athletes on a given team’s ability to perform on NCAAs weekend. It is rather common for teams to win championships off the backs of a handful of superstar athletes competing over multiple events, overwhelmingly those in the sprints/field events categories. While victories in the distance events certainly help with point totals, teams are seldom in the mix for the title from their distance squads’ efforts alone.
The University of Florida is the top ranked D1 men’s track and field program in the NCAA heading into regionals, but they only have four athletes entered in events 800m and higher (two in the 800, two in the 1500) and it is unlikely that they will all qualify for NCAAs in Eugene. This made me think, what if there was a distance only national championship to crown the best team from 800 to 10000? You may be thinking that this already exists with cross country, but that only covers the high end of that spectrum, and a winning cross country team can be successful with seven 10,000m specialists and no middle distance.
What I’ll be doing is looking at the 2018 season bests for 800m, 1500m, 3000m SC, 5000m, and 10000m of the top 11 distance schools, as determined by the top five NCAA cross country teams from 2017, and six others that I feel deserve to be in this conversation. I will then compile a decathlon style score using the IAAF scoring tables (These can be found at https://www.iaaf.org/news/iaaf-news/scoring-tables-2017 but need to be downloaded. There is a score calculator available at http://tfcalc.herokuapp.com/calculator that is much easier to use).
These scores range from 0-1400 and are used to assign a value to a performance, which is useful in comparing the caliber of performances across different events. The calculator rounds down to the nearest point. The team with the highest score will win.
In the situation that one individual has the season best for more than one event on their team, I will take their better time as determined by the IAAF score and use the second athlete’s time for the other event. At this hypothetical championship, athletes are limited to competing in only their best event.
The top five from the 2017 NCAA cross country championships are: Northern Arizona, Portland, BYU, Stanford, and Arkansas
My top six other schools are: Oregon, Virginia Tech, Colorado, Ole Miss, Syracuse, and Georgetown.
I’ll throw in Florida as well to see how they would do as the top ranked overall program for the 2018 outdoor season.
Northern Arizona University
800m: Ryan Lanley, 1:50.18 - 1021
1500m: Luis Grijalva, 3:41.21 - 1090
3000m SC: Kyle Havriliak, 9:11.66 - 946
5000m: Andy Trouard, 13:21.07 - 1134
10000m: Tyler Day, 28:04.44 - 1125
Total Points: 5316
University of Portland
800m: Kris Braunberger, 1:59.06 - 784
1500m: Trent Mazelli, 3:43.57 - 1059
3000m SC: Simon Grannetia, 8:40.07 - 1078
5000m: Emmanuel Roudolff-Levisse, 13:58.01 - 1006
10000m: Noah Schutte, 28:34.51 - 1079
Total Points: 5006
Brigham Young University
800m: Patrick Parker, 1:50.87 - 1001
1500m: Abraham Alvarado, 3:41.17 - 1091
3000m SC: Matt Owens, 8:39.41 - 1081
5000m: Clayton Young, 13:37.60 - 1076
10000m: Connor McMillan, 28:09.55 - 1117
Total Points: 5336
Stanford University
800m: Hari Sathyamurthy, 1:49.93 - 1028
1500m: Sean McGorty, 3:40.57 - 1099
3000m SC: Steven Fahy, 8:48.79 - 1041
5000m: Grant Fisher, 13:36.77 - 1079
10000m: Sam Wharton, 29:11.33 - 1025
Total Points: 5272
University of Arkansas
800m: Kieran Taylor, 1:50.65 - 1007
1500m: Jack Bruce, 3:39.86 - 1108
3000m SC: Kyle Hosting, 8:53.73 - 1020
5000m: Gilbert Boit, 13:50.36 - 1032
10000m: Austen Dalquist, 29:08.60 - 1029
Total Points: 5196
University of Oregon
800m: James West, 1:49.67 - 1035
1500m: Sam Prakel, 3:36.84 - 1149
3000m SC: Jackson Mestler, 8:55.77 - 1012
5000m: Cooper Teare, 13:46.46 - 1045
10000m: Tanner Anderson, 29:07.39 - 1030
Total Points: 5271
Virginia Tech
800m: Vincent Ciattei, 1:48.29 - 1075
1500m: Diego Zarate, 3:43.38 - 1062
3000m SC: Fitsum Seyoum, 8:49.26 - 1039
5000m: Peter Seufer, 13:53.35 - 1022
10000m: Jack Joyce, 30:33.18 - 908
Total Points: 5106
University of Colorado
800m: Justice Ramos, 1:51.67 - 979
1500m: Eduardo Herrera, 3:43.92 - 1054
3000m SC: Adam Peterman, 8:54.86 - 1015
5000m: Zach Perrin, 13:37.06 - 1078
10000m: Ryan Forsyth, 29:40.63 - 982
Total Points: 5108
Ole Miss
800m: Waleed Suliman, 1:47.29 - 1105
1500m: Robert Domanic, 3:36.33 - 1156
3000m SC: Sean Tobin, 8:53.09 - 1023
5000m: Mark Robertson, 14:23.30 - 923
10000m: Robinson Snider, 31:16.59 - 849
Total Points: 5056
Syracuse University
800m: Nathan Henderson, 1:56.18 - 857
1500m: Justyn Knight, 3:36.07 - 1160
3000m SC: Aidan Tooker, 8:45.79 - 1054
5000m: Philo Germano, 13:50.48 - 1032
10000m: Colin Bennie, 28:37.04 - 1075
Total Points: 5178
Georgetown University
800m: Rey Rivera, 1:48.04 - 1083
1500m: Amos Bartelsmeyer, 3:43.56 - 1059
3000m SC: Nicholas Wareham, 9:09.07 - 957
5000m: Michael Crozier, 14:07.87 - 974
10000m: Jonathan Green, 28:36.44 - 1076
Total Points: 5149
University of Florida
800m: Kyren Hollis, 1:48.20 - 1078
1500m: Jack Guyton, 3:43.57 - 1059
3000m SC: Bryce Statham, 9:23.04 - 901
5000m: Magnus Pettersen, 14:46.46 - 851
10000m: No recorded performances - 0
Total Points: 3889
Final Results:
1. BYU: 5336
2. NAU: 5316
3. Stanford: 5272
4. Oregon: 5271
5. Arkansas: 5196
6. Syracuse: 5178
7. Georgetown: 5149
8. Colorado: 5108
9. Virginia Tech: 5106
10. Ole Miss: 5056
11. Portland: 5006
12. Florida: 3889
So there you have it, the NCAA championship if only distance events were contested. The top four are no surprise, except I would have expected Syracuse to be in there. Portland’s second to last finish was also a surprise, but they surely would have finished higher if they were running guys in the 800. I’m certain they have guys who could run well under 1:59, so they suffer a bit there. Syracuse and Arkansas would have each done a lot better if the same athlete could score for two events, as Justyn Knight and Jack Bruce both have 5000m times that are scored only slightly lower than their 1500s. However, I wanted this scoring system to showcase depth over anything else and scoring the same athlete multiple times would take away from that.
As for Florida, they performed much better than I expected. Their 800m and 1500m times hold up against the more distance oriented schools, but they fall off slightly in the steeple and 5000m. Their big loss here comes from not having had anyone race the 10,000 this season, but they would have needed to score 1117 points (28:09.31, which would be good for #2 in the entire NCAA) just to beat 11th place Portland.
If you think I left out any teams that would have done well in this format, feel free to tweet @w0nderbuck and @TheStrideReport to let me know who you would’ve included and I’ll reply to you with a score for that team.