From: "David Morris Honea" <[email protected]>

Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 14:31:23 -0500

Subject: t-and-f: Footlocker jinx at NCAA's?



Thinking about the NCAA meet, and yesterday's Footlocker regionals, led me to

realize something: Footlocker champions don't win NCAA titles. Of the winners

in the first 18 Kinney/Foot Locker national championships, only Bob Kennedy has

gone on to win an NCAA cross country title. Not a single woman has done it.



This year Goucher was supposed to add to the list, but Keflizighi, who was

second to Goucher at the '93 Footlocker meet, won instead. There are four

former Footlocker girls' winners currently competing in college, three of whom

are freshemen. 1994 champ Stamps was fourth on Monday, and '96 champ Gordon was

around 40th. '95 winner Mortensen is periodically awesome but much more often

hurt as a UCLA soph, and '93 winner Davis showed some promise early in the

season at Penn State but for the most part is not at the level she reached as a

freshman in high school.



It's actually not surprising that few boys winners have gone on to win in

college; men mature  later and thus much of the best talent isn't fully

revealed at the age of 17. More importantly, foreign runners have played a much

more prominent role in the men's race; the last US citizen winner other than

Kennedy was Joe Falcon in 1987 (although as noted, Keflizighi did go to high

school in the US). Several high school champs like Giusto, Fry, Reina, Davis,

and Goucher have done big things in college and later, but none won an NCAA

cross title.



The women's race is stranger, because there is less foreign competition and

oftentimes the high school winner was already at a level to be competitive for

an NCAA title; but many were never a factor at all on the college scene. Chris

Curtin was never heard from at Stanford; Cathy Schiro (O'Brien) made the

Olympics in the marathon at age 19, but she had already quit school at Oregon

by then; Erin Keogh won two Kinney titles but was never healthy in college and

quit running after two years; Kira Jorgensen disappeared at UCLA; Celeste

Susnis didn't have much impact at Tennessee; Melody Fairchild was unheard of

for two years and then only average for two more before becoming a force as a

fifth-year senior at Oregon; Liz Mueller was victim of a psycho coach - she

skipped the FootLocker race as a senior after winning as a junior, then

dominated some great runners like Amy Rudolph as a freshman at Central

Connecticut (?) before again skipping the championship races, and she hasn't

been heard from since; Amanda White was never as good at Stanford as she was in

high school; and then we get to the four athletes currently competing. Davis

appears to be in the mold of White (peaked in high school) and Mortensen like

Keogh (an incredible talent who couldn't stay healthy). Gordon looks to have

real potential, but not NCAA cross country title level. That leaves Stamps, who

may well be that good, but as tough as she was this year, the top two were

clearly better than her at the national meet, and both return next year. There

are also a couple of other people at Stamps' level who missed this season with

injuries but who should return next season. It's hard to predict at this point

when the women's Footlocker jinx at NCAA's will be broken.



-- 

david honea			Electrical & Computer Engineering

[email protected]		North Carolina State Univ. '92, '94, ?