Track and Field Blogs - Eric Stermer

I know it is wierd to see that my latest post was about looking forward and now i have one about looking back. But, in all seriousness why do we have history class? So that we may learn from our past to prepare for the future. So I decided to compare my most recent past experience at NCAA's from when the guys ran durring my freshmen year in 2006 at NCAA's. Reason being both courses were sloppy and tough, and many good runners ran poor and many ok runners got lucky, where team scores were really high and the winning team blew everyone out of the water. that is basically what happened to our national meet this year but maybe not as bad.

I saw that though Seamus Nally ran top 10 for our team that year, Andy Cloke who was running his last NCAA cross country meet and was one of the best on the team got 80 somethin in the placings, and Seth our current top runner, who was then still a top runner place almost 100th or around there. the team got 4th place that year.

I think that the only reason why we are so upset as compared to that year is because this year we expected atleast second and contend for the win and we didn't even podium, while that year the team placed the highest ever at a national meet with that finish and they were ranked low most of the year. They were just happy enough to have place that high. So even though their performance was maybe as worse as ours was this year, they were content and moved forward. I say though we did not meet our expectation, we should not let it make us think we are not still better! On the track that very year the guys sent 4 in the 10k and 3 in the 5k and had an indoor national champ in the 5k! it is not over yet! they even moved forward and sent a steepler 2 1500m runners and 3 10k runners the following year. So to say that though this performance is not up to par will give a poor showing on the track, people will be wrong. We just need to know that we are still national caliber athletes!