Showing posts with label next level. Show all posts
Showing posts with label next level. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

That's a wrap folks

I know this is a long overdue post.  I really am trying to do a better job of posting.  Our season came to a wrap a few weeks back at Regionals.  All in all I was pleased with the season and how we performed at the end.  It is always important to run well at the end of the season.  While I think we could have milked out a little bit more, we did a solid job.  We have come a long way, in a very short time.  I am proud to say that the future looks bright.  We have learned a lot of lessons and will be better for it in the future.
The men's cross team ended with a 17th place finish at the Great Lake Region Championships hosted by Rose-Hulman at the famed Lavern Gibson Championship Course.

We finished 17th of 36 teams with 487 points.   A significant stat from the weekend is we moved up from 32nd in 2014 to 17th this year.  That is a solid jump.  But we can not be satisfied with 17th in the region.  We need to make another major jump next year and start putting ourselves in the conversation to qualify for nationals.


Once again Sophomore Brian Brennan (Akron/Walsh Jesuit) led the men's squad as he finished 15th of 242 runners in a time of 25:47.1.  Brennan missed qualifying for the national meet by just two runners. This was a bit of a tough pill to swallow for both of us.  He ran tough and laid it on the line, but tactically we need to clean a few things up for next year.
In addition, fifth year senior Greg Blevins (Mentor) finished 70th in a time of 26:49.6.  Sophomore Evan Milovich (Westlake) was 113th in a time of 27.26.8. Sophomore Brady Jeffers (South Amherst/Firelands) crossed the line in 130th place in a time of 27.44.0.   Freshman Creighton Jensen (Sheffield Lake/Brookside) finished 160th in a time of 28:08.9.   Freshman Todd Cushing (Plymouth, Mass. / Plymouth North) was 170th in a time of 28:26.4 and sophomore Dylan Tanner (Mentor) placed 206th in a time of 29.29.6.

On the ladies side, Kelly Brennan (Akron/Walsh Jesuit) was our lone representative.  She placed 24th of 243 runners in a time of 22.49.8.  She made some serious gains this cross country season.  Track season should be a very exciting time for her.


For now that’s a wrap.  We have taken our down time and are starting to build back up for cross country.  The kids all leave for the Holidays Thursday or Friday.  So it is going to get a lot quieter around here very soon.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

The next wave of running media???

I am going to preface this with I think flotrack and runnerspace are doing invaluable things for our sport and we have come a long way from mensracing and fast-women, run-insight, letsrun or heck even chasing tradition. Would love to see someone take it to the next level. An online TVesque network. What do most guys do first thing in the morning, yep that’s right turn on sports center. It would be great to be able to turn on a running network with live shows or tape delayed morning shows
in the morning while I get ready to go to work and hear the latest updates on the running world. For example yesterday, there would have been a ton of things to talk about with all of the races that happened this past weekend. Giving the run down on all of those, who ran well, who didn’t, who didn’t run at all. Maybe talk about the regional polls. Today it would have been interesting to hear about people opinions on the national polls. I feel like with twitter, blogs etc that all the athletes do there would be plenty of stories as the week goes on. Plus it doesn't need to be limited to NCAA, could be road racing, High School, shoot they can talk about the BCS bowls and Super Bowl for weeks on end. With conference meets coming up that would be plenty to talk about. I feel like Run Junkies/runners space live is on the right track but its only scratching the surface of what could happen. You could sell or use the adds that are between videos as commercials during the show, you could sell a subscription, ie. chasing tradition.....

Something I feel that flotrack has gotten away from is the longer sit down interviews with coaches and athletes in between the meets. This is kind of what the site originally started with, Don’t get me wrong I love the interviews after the races, but would love to see more of these types of interviews come back.

BREAKING NEWS!!! I felt flotrack did a great job with the Alan Webb/Salazar break when it first happened but never really followed up on the story, where is he now, how is training going? Now Goucher and Yoder Begley have left as well. This is the point and time when you have to ask, what would ESPN do?

Conference mix-ups affect Cross Country and Track & Field too, find out what’s going on report about it and how it will change things up in our sport.

You may say, this is all fine and good Joe but there are only so many people working at FloTrack and they already spend a ton of time, how can they do more? They are located in a city with a major university. Maybe they could hire on interns to help with video audio and a lot of the behind the scenes work that would go on.

So these are my ideas, this is where I would love to see the next great breakthrough come from whether it be flotrack, runnerspace or a new motivated group of creative track/cross/running enthusiast. Thoughts???