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2008 NXN Finals
Dec. 6 - Portland Meadows, Portland OR

REGIONS:  Northeast - New York - Southeast - South - Midwest -
Heartland - Southwest - Northwest - California

44 teams and 90 individuals compete for national titles:
2 teams and five individuals per gender from the regions and 4 at large teams.


Appetite for Destruction

With the pool of top talent expanded this year, and potentially good weather, the course records could go down ... even be destroyed.  Look for Jakub Zivec and Stephanie Morgan to lead the charge


If they’re going to play any background theme music during Saturday’s Fifth Annual Nike Cross Nationals Championships, they should consider Guns N Roses’ Appetite for Destruction.

Because if the weather holds out, some course records could get destroyed.

When is the last time we talked about running at Portland Meadows in December and mentioned anything about course records?  How about “never?”  Running here each year has been a survival challenge, a war of attrition, with victory going to the strongest sloggers through rain, cold and muck.  But Portland has been enjoying almost two weeks of little rain and it’s expected to continue through Saturday.  Runners will have to wait and see if meet organizers hose the course down and introduce some water to the course for tradition’s sake.

Of course the other big reason for the chance of course records is the level of competition.  With qualifying for the meet now opened to individuals – the top 5 girls and 5 boys from each of the nine regions, a total of 90 runners – in addition to the talent that already existed from the top teams, each of the championship fields Saturday will be stronger and deeper than ever.

It should be noted that you’d be hard-pressed to say there’s any one runner in the boys field better than last year’s winner – Chris Derrick – it’s undoubtedly much deeper.  The girls field, it can be argued, is better both at the very top and depth-wise.

While the quality of talent at and near the top isn’t Foot Locker Finals quality, there’s no question NXN has significantly improved the quality of its entrants with the change this year.

The records?  Championship race records are 15:40 by Chris Derrick IL (2007) and 18:06 by Ramsey Kavan SD (2004).  Overall event records are held by Kenyans
Justine Cheruiyot, Kenya 15:24.6 and Valentine Koech, Kenya 17:59.5, both last year, the latter being the girls course record.  The boys course record is 15:18 by Tim Freriks at the Pre-Nats earlier this fall.

So who are the candidates to win the first-ever NXN with individual qualifiers – and is it possible that first place in each race could still go to someone competing with a team?

Boys Race:  Jakub’s Ladder

 
 Jakub Zivec winning NXN HL - Photo by John Dye
If there’s one athlete who’s really set fire to the scene in the post-season thus far, whose flame has burned ever so brightly (but will burn also ever so briefly), it’s our temporary gift from the Czech Republic, Jakub Zivec.  The Grand Rapids MN star has benefited greatly from the new deal at NXN – and it has surely benefited from him, as well.  If not for the NXN (and Foot Locker) crowns Zivec is in relentless pursuit of, he would have been relegated by Minnesota state rules to a campaign that would have consisted of nothing more than a few JV races.

No one, even before NXN went to region meets last year, has pulled off the NXN-Foot Locker double in the five years of NXN existence.  Ramsey Kavan of South Dakota came closest, running 1st at the inaugural NXN in 2004 and 2nd at Foot Locker.  Last year, of course, Derrick famously went 1-2-1-2 in his four NXN/Foot Locker regional and championship races.  Zivec has won both region meets, the NXN Heartland and Foot Locker Midwest, in convincing fashion … but the hard part starts Saturday.  Zivec’s biggest advantages in trying to pull this off are that he’s not fatigued from a heavy season of varsity races and that the quality of boys runners nationally isn’t quite as high as last year’s amazing class.

But that’s not to say that Zivec won’t be hard-pressed to win.  He will get brutal, brutal, competition from Reed Connor TX and Elias Gedyon CA, both ranked in the top six runners in the country (this weeks’ about-to-be-released rankings).  The winner could also come from others who finished first (or close to first) in the region meets, like Joe Rosa, Garrett Rowe CA, Brian Atkinson FL, Joash Osoro ND, Zach Ornelas TX, Steve Sulkin IL, Dart Schwaderer CO, Jonathan Nelson UT, Alex Hatz NY, CJ Brown TX, Tyler Valdes CA, and others.

You have to look at Connor and Gedyon first, both of whom are regional winners who are leading teams.  Connor paces The Woodlands XC TX, the South region winner which has a good chance to place very high as a team, with a shot to contend for the win if things go their way.  Early in the year, the senior was considered certainly one of the better runners in Texas, and maybe in the top 15 or so in the country, but his late-season surge has him up there near the very top.  At both the state and NXN region meets, Connor hammered course records set by none other than now-graduated TX stud Colby Lowe.  Unlike Lowe, Connor eschewed the Foot Locker meets to gain valuable rest.  He placed 24th here last year, coming off injury, so he knows the course.  If conditions are good Saturday, it will help him.  Expect him to make a very strong bid for the win.

Gedyon’s scenario is entirely different.  Winning the D2 meet in California last weekend put him in position to have an opportunity to run here.  When his Loyola team got an at-large bid, that cemented it (though he would have reportedly competed here anyway as an individual).  There is no one like Elias in the country and it’s not unreasonable to compare him to Alan Webb in terms of his versatility.  This guy hit 1:51.90 in the 800 as a freshman last year. 

While some age-group phenoms – and Gedyon has been one – plateau at the high school level, he has shown no signs of doing anything but improving.  He has gotten stronger and his endurance has obviously gotten better.  At the year’s start, no one expected he’d be under 14:50 at Mt. SAC, or be the fastest at the state meet.  He was 35th here last year.

One another level, Gedyon has emerged as the best of a phenomenal sophomore group of national class runners – most of which will be in Portland.  Joe Rosa NJ and Craig Lutz TX both started the year on fire, winning everything in site for their West Windsor-Plainsboro North NJ and Marcus TX teams, respectively.  Rosa found Tyler Udland a little too much at his state group and MOC meets, but still ran well and then got the win at the NXN NE regional last weekend.  Lutz suffered his first losses at his state meet and NXN South, taking thirds at both – though no shame with the likes of Connor, Ornelas and Brown in those fields.  He qualified as an individual, while Rosa leads the NXN NE champs.  While it would be stunning for either to win, they both should place high.

Two of the other more noteworthy contenders are Steve Sulkin IL and CJ Brown TX.  They took 4th and 5th at least year’s NXN, battling to the wire, and have found their way back here in different ways.  Brown, who is here now as an individual after playing Robin to Colby Lowe’s Batman at Southlake Carroll TX last year, looked like he would struggle to make a national meet much of this fall.  But he finally got healthy before state and has been on a tear, running like his old self in taking 2nd at NXN South and 3rd at Foot Locker South.  He originally said he might just stick to one national meet if he qualified for both, but he’s signed up to be in both Portland and San Diego.

Sulkin looked to lead his York IL team all fall, though injuries had him slipping behind teammate Jordan Herbert mid-season.  But he’s come back for 2nd in his state meet and for the win at NXN Midwest.  He, too, went for a Foot Locker qualifier and barely made it in 10th.  We’ll see if he’s back to a top-5 or better contender this weekend.

Of the others who placed high in qualifying, those who have the best chance to battle for at least a top five spot:
  • Garrett Rowe CA – a surprising 2nd to Gedyon at D2 state last weekend, two seconds back
  • Zach Ornelas TX – 2008 NON steeple champ was right behind Lutz and Connor all year, beating Lutz for 2nd at state, then 4th at NXN South.  If recovered from illness, could be right there
  • Joash Osoro ND – a strong second to Zivec at the Heartland meet, his only loss this year.  Decided not to go for Foot Locker double.
  • Bryan Atkinson FL – NXN SE champ after winning Florida 4A title
  • Alex Hatz NY – Leader of Manlius XC NY team, winning NXN NY meet after winning state AA race.
  • Andew Colley VA – Leader of qualifying Jamestown VA team; VA 3A champ has to bounce back after rough NXN SE race (7th).
  • Dart Schwaderer CO and Jonathan Nelson UT – A strong 1-2 finish, less than a second apart, at NXN SW.
  • Tyler Valdes CA – Won the CA D1 race in leading Dana Hills to a bid here.  27th last year.

Girls: Morgans, Texans, Winslows, etc.

It’s a little harder to draw a storyline from the girls field, but suffice it to say that the Morgan who is attempting to defend her title will be challenged by her namesake from Ohio (Stephanie Morgan), a pair of talented Texans (Chelsey Sveinsson and Sarah Andrews), a pair of Winslows (Amanda Winslow GA and Danielle Winslow NY), and the leaders of the US#1 and #2 teams in Courtney Chapman and Kaylin Mahoney.  And that’s not the end of it.

 
 
But it’s somewhere to begin, especially starting with last year’s champ.  There wasn’t really a bigger surprise here last year than Mountain Brook AL then-junior Madeline Morgan taking the title over Katie Flood IA and the rest of the field.  Now a senior, her team didn’t make it from NXN SE last weekend and she expressed reservations if she’d come on her own.  But here she is.  While she had ups and downs this fall, related to health issues, she’s coming off a strong race in her runner-up performance in Cary last weekend.  It’s hard to call her the favorite, but you can never count out a defending champ.

You could put your money on the other Morgan, though.  Stephanie Morgan of Barnesville OH has won everything this fall except Great American, and she looked VERY strong in winning NXN Midwest.  She has been a leader, of sorts, in defending NXN as option for elite individuals, by virtue of comments supporting the event, and she has a great chance to win.  And Stephanie knows what it’s like to win the big ones – on the track at least.  In the mile, she won 2007 NON and 2008 Penn Relays.

From Texas are two titanesses, who battled each other for the win at NXN South.  Sveinsson won that battle and is a very good candidate for at least the top three here.  She is another individual going for the Foot Locker double; her 3rd at Foot Locker South last weekend earned her second trip to San Diego, though it was her first loss of the year.  Andrews is taking the NXN path and leading her SE#1 The Woodlands team into the fray, where they are a top five or so contender.  Andrews only loss was to Sveinnson as she crafted a campaign that included huge wins at Woodbridge CA and Nike South TX.

The duo that shares the Winslow last name are actually two very different runners from different parts of the country.  Like Andrews, Amanda Winslow is the leader of one of the nation’s best teams in US#5 Collins Hill GA.  She took the NXN SE race by a 9-second margin over Madeline Morgan.  Her only losses were 5th at Great American and 2nd to Virginia’s Megan Marsico at Maymont Invite VA.  Danielle Winslow of Queensbury won the NXN NY race, then found her teammates would join her when they got an at-large bid – much like Gedyon’s situation.  She has been among the best in the very competitive New York scene all year, with last weekend definitely being a high point.

Courtney Chapman and Kaylin Mahoney will certainly be focused more on team than individual goals – trying to lead their respective US#1 and #2 Fayetteville-Manlius (Manlius XC) and Saugus (XC) CA teams to victory – but it can surely be said that each has a shot at crossing the line first, or at least top three.  Chapman has been the firm leader for Fay-Man all year, winning the state AA title and losing only in a fine runner-up performance at Eastern States, and in taking 3rd last weekend at NXN NY, where she was said to be overcoming an illness.  If healthy, she should certainly move up from 8th last year.

Mahoney was 7th as a freshman last fall here and has certainly gotten stronger and matured.  She may be a step away from being able to take that really big victory against a national-class field.  With the deeper field this year, she will need to be at her best to move up a lot from 2007.

Of the others who placed high in qualifying, those who have the best chance to battle for at least a top five spot:
  • Ashlie Decker IA – Iowa 4A champ won NXN Heartland, making it as an individual, and then qualified 6th for Foot Locker Finals at FL MW last weekend.  15th last year.
  • Laura Tremblay CO – Stunning sprint victory at NXN SW over Jessica Tonn AZ (who is not running NXN Championships) qualified her as individual.
  • Sam Roecker NY – Finished 2nd behind Winslow at NXN NY, then like her, learned her teammates would join her as an at-large.  Was 3rd last year; it will be hard to move up, but if she runs really well again could do it.
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