Nike Team Nationals
Saturday, December 4, 2004 @ Portland Meadows, Oregon

Photo courtesy of John Dixon, NevadaTrackStats
So much for California not getting its first NTN berths until after the state meet!
South Tahoe, located just miles within the California border, actually competes
within the Nevada State Association and won the state title over Reno, then earned
a club team berth to Nike Team Nationals  on Sunday! During the high school season,
the girls took second (combined scoring) at Stanford and second overall at Clovis!

Coach Dan Wilvers' giddy email to Southwest Region editors Mike Elder,
Adam Kedge and the NTN Committee on accepting their NTN invitation!

Dear Mike Elder, Adam Kedge, and the Southwest selection committee,

I wanted to thank you for our recent selection to the Nike Team Nationals, but on a more thoughtful note wish to express my utter surprise at your decision, not that I think we are undeserving, but rather, we were not the politically expedient pick.

South Tahoe Girls XC are living a dream season, neither the coaches nor the girls had even the remotest idea we would be sitting where we are today. I am a first year coach, albeit an experienced coach, this is my first season ever coaching XC. I also have limited experience with girls. Never, even after a summer program that began in June, training daily at 6,500', did we envision the progress we'd make.

Which brings me to my point. After taking down several nationally ranked teams at Stanford and Clovis, my girls began to read inquires on Dyestat about some regional rankings. For God's sake we didn't even know about Nike Team Nationals let alone think we could run there!

So they asked me if we had a legitimate shot of being invited. I simply shook my head with a smile and said, "Not likely." "How come?" they replied. "Because girls, if I may be permitted to give you a few facts
in life, we are the unknowns, we are the new kids on the block, we're the Utah Utes in the 2004 BCS, (they didn't get that one) and when you have three teams ahead of you and one directly behind you that all have
national rankings, a lot of tumblers would need to fall into place and besides that the biggest card of all is stacked against us. The Footlocker National Champion resides on one of the teams in front of us. Nobody sends the Footlocker champion packing for you girls, because life is way too political at this level ladies."

And then you call and make me look stupid. Thank you, it never felt so great to be so ill informed in my life, and furthermore the integrity of that call, though I'm sure, greatly debated, still held sway for the little lost girls of the Sierra Nevada mountains, who don't even compete in the state where their school resides!

We have found a home with some very unpolitical individuals, who didn't restore my faith, but actually created it anew, in the ideal of fairness and justice on a youth sport playing field. You are to be commended, and we are humbly honored to represent the Southwest region of NTN and the great state of Nevada.

Thank you,

Dan Wilvers
South Tahoe Nevada X/C CLUB