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The Lines Are Drawn
With the addition of individuals to the new NXN, athletes and their coaches will have to decide where the best experiences and opportunities lie. What do those coaches and athletes who are impacted most have to say about it?
By SteveU
PAGE 3
7. Knoxville West's Marty Sonnenfeldt (Matt Sonnenfeldt)
8. Regis Jesuit CO's Bob Nicolls (Bobby)
9. Conclusion
- (continued on) PAGE 4 - PAGE 1 - PAGE 2
(other pages include comments from Albuquerque Academy NM Coach Adam Kedge, Neuqua Valley IL Coach Paul Vandersteen, Holy Trinity FL Coach Doug Butler, FL Champ Ashley Brasovan, Mission Prep CA Coach Armando Siqueiros, Gill St. Bernard NJ Coach Ryan Grote, and Neuqua Valley's NTN Champ Chris Derrick)
7. Knoxville West's Marty Sonnenfeldt (Matt Sonnenfeldt)
While many have given up on the idea that Nike and Foot Locker should have found a way to work together on a unified meet, others still have strong feelings about that and the history that the Foot Locker series has built. Marty Sonnenfeldt is the Youth Athletics Director of the Knoxville Track Club in TN, and his son Matt looks to be a top contender to make the Foot Locker Finals out of the South next fall.
 | Matt Sonnenfeldt at
Great American 07
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“Foot Locker has been the standard and the tradition for more than 25 years,” he says. “Being a Foot Locker finalist meant you had reached the mountaintop of HS cross country. I certainly don’t mind that there is a team nationals – that’s fine for those strong teams to go at it in for a national title, albeit in a beauty contest format. Personally, I think the grown-ups at Nike and Foot Locker need to pull their collective heads out of their asses and work together. Why does Nike seem to be hell-bent on killing Foot Locker? Both formats have merit -- and can thrive and function separately. Someone is either getting greedy, or both parties cannot see the forest for the trees. I go back quite a ways with Nike – Geoff Hollister came to Knoxville in 1976 to pitch Nike shoes to UT – I remember it well – and also the company Nike was back then. How time and money has clouded their views!”
Sonnenfeldt feels that despite the fact that NXN has a regional qualifying format now, it still isn’t as open as a Foot Locker regional, hence the “beauty contest” comments. He points out that there still is a committee selecting the teams to run in the championship race at an NXN regional, while anyone can run the seeded race at a Foot Locker region, even if wisdom dictates they should be in one of the other races.
He says there is no doubt what his son will shoot for next fall. “Mathew has run Foot Locker South since he was ten years old -- and has dreamed about being a Foot Locker finalist since -- there is little that a flight to Portland, sweats and shoes will do to change his mind … Foot Locker holds more prestige and attracts better competition, even if it is oriented towards the individual.” He adds that how the Nike meet’s opening to individual will impact Foot Locker “depends on how badly Foot Locker wants to go head-to-head.”
Finally, Sonnenfeldt proposes a “real team nationals,” with the state meet team winners of each classification of each state being invited to each region. “You place an added incentive to becoming a state champ,” he says, “an additional reward for winning your state meet. This way, all that go to the regional have had to lay it on the line – same day, same course – to get a chance to compete. You increase participation, you increase excitement for the sport at a statewide level, and you remove the ridiculous ambiguity that currently exists. This way, Nike could spend its time and money making the Team Nationals the best it could be, and let individuals have it out at Foot Locker.”
A caveat to that idea, however, is the regard state associations would have for the structure of a team or club making it to a post-season event based on their state meet finish. The history of NTN/NXN involves battles with numerous state associations on making sure there are no such direct connections. NTN/NXN has always been a “club” meet, with athletes who want to participate from any given school having to form a “club” and make sure their participation doesn’t breach any guidelines of their state.
8. Regis Jesuit CO's Bob Nicolls (Bobby)
 | | Bobby Nicolls at FL 07 |
Most reactions to the new world order of prep national XC, though, are similar to that of Bob Nicolls. Nicolls’ son Bobby, a Regis Jesuit CO jr, was 18th at Foot Locker Finals last fall and will be the top returnee in 2008. “From my perspective, it will indeed be a hard choice given he has run at Foot Locker this past year,” he says. “FL treated the kids great and there is a storied tradition at that meet. The history is also hard to beat.
“On the other hand, Nike has now come up with a rational and better approach that mirrors the NCAA and most state HS meets,” he adds. "It is certainly the wave of the future. It is unfortunate that Nike and FL could not have worked out some arrangement. It is curious as Nike products are sold in FL stores, and thus are business partners. Bobby will have a hard decision to make next fall, but it does look like he could run in both events. Four quality races in a month or five weeks might be a little much, however.”
9. Conclusion
It will indeed be fascinating next fall as athletes try and decide between the two meets, or running both, and scramble to find out what their peers are doing. Many who have come up in the sport with the awareness of Foot Locker as the race for individuals will continue to be drawn in that direction. But as more classes come up to the prep level, and become aware of the stature of both meets from the get-go, then there will be another subtle shift. The meet that continues to be the most attractive, in any number of ways, and the most competitive will get the lion’s share of the best athletes. How each meet will adapt each year to meet this challenge remains to be seen.
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