From: "David Morris Honea" <dmhonea@eos.ncsu.edu>
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
dmhonea@eos.ncsu.edu		North Carolina State Univ. '92, '94, ?