Measuring Success

The Tale of the States by Herb Wills

for DyeStat Florida

On 3 October 2015 the Winter Park girls will be in Cary, North Carolina, competing in the Great American Cross Country Festival for the second year in a row. In 2014 Holy Trinity and Creekside joined Winter Park in Cary. This year Pre-State is the same morning as Great American, and the fans at Apalachee Regional Park in Tallahassee will be disappointed by the absence of one of the best teams in Florida. But it is an opportunity to see just how good Florida is.

Of course, there’s not really an accepted method for comparing the quality of running among states. If you want to see which of two runners is faster, you set them on a starting line, fire a pistol, then see who crosses the finish line first. If you want to know which of two cross country teams is better, set them on a starting line, fire a starting pistol, and see which team has the lower score when all the runners have crossed the finish line. No one reasonable is going to argue with those methods. But how do you tell whether or not Nebraska is a better running state than Iowa? What does that even mean?

You can, however, compare Florida’s best against runners and teams in other states. Marc Bloom’s “Harrier Magazine” attempted such interstate comparisons in cross country back in the 1970s, picking the nation’s top 50 runners from 1974-1977 and the top teams from 1976 to 1977. In 2009 there was a “Cross Country Legacy” project to produce national rankings of team for years during which Bloom’s “Harrier” rankings didn’t exist. Largo High was picked as the 1983 national champions in boys’ cross country. Now, Largo was indeed a great program and deserving of all the kudos their runners earned over the years. I know that without hearing that they were retroactively named national champions a quarter century after the fact. Still, if the “Cross Country Legacy” folks are right, there was a period when Florida’s best matched up against the nation’s best.

Late in the greatest years of Brent Haley’s teams at Largo, the Kinney National Cross Country Championships arose, providing post-season interstate competition for high school athletes. After the founding years, the meet became the Footlocker Nationals, its current name. More recently, Nike Cross-Country Nationals was started to highlight team competition at the national level.

Florida athletes have done well at Footlocker over the years. Basil Magee, Brian Jaeger, Jimmy Clark, Teddy Mitchell, Luiz Prestes, Ryan Pickering, and Matt Mizereck have each finished in the top ten in the boys’ race at Footlocker Nationals. Sunshine State athletes Jenny Barringer and Ashley Brasovan had top ten finishes in the the girls’ race at Footlocker Nationals; Brasovan was the national champion in 2007.

Still, twelve top-ten appearances by nine athletes is a weak case to argue that Florida is a cross country powerhouse. California, for instance, has produced 16 Footlocker National champions. Yes, California is a bigger state than Florida, but it doesn’t have 16 times the population. Florida’s Footlocker Nationals record is also eclipsed by that of some smaller states.

The Florida story at Nike Cross Nationals has been less storied. Winter Park sent a boys’ squad to the first NXN meet in 2004. Competing as Park Pride, the team finished 20th out of 21 teams, led by the 16:48.3 37th-place finish of Caleb Vogt. Armando DelValle was 14th in 15:34.3 in 2009, leading the Columbus High boys to 22nd place. In 2011 Belen Jesuit's boys were 20th at NXN behind top performer Eliot Clemente, 20th in 15:43.58.

Last year, Leon senior Sukhi Khosla was the top Florida finisher in the NXN boys race, 35th in 15:59. Winter Park frosh Rafaella Gibbons was Florida's first ever finisher in an NXN girls' race; she was 27th in 18:17. Neither Khosla nor Gibbons were able to lead their team out of the Southeast Region to the national meet, though. It’s humbling to consider how many great Florida teams have gone to NXN-SE, but failed to make the cut for Nationals.

When it comes to distance running, then, Florida may not be the East Africa of the Americas. I’m still proud of what Sunshine State runners have accomplished against their out-of-state rivals. It’s also encouraging to see Florida runners being tested. Winter Park’s Gibbons hasn’t been beaten in an in-state cross country race since the start of the 2014 season, but she has found out-of-state athlete to chase. Interstate competition encourages Florida’s best to get better, and that’s a good thing.

Northwest Florida Correspondent Herb Wills

Herb Wills' running career goes back to the 1971 boys' age-group mile at the Florida Relays. Since losing that race he has won the 1976 Florida High School class 4A cross-country championship, 1979 AAU USA junior titles in cross-country and the 10,000 meters, and the 1989 TAC USA 30K national championship. As a distance runner at Florida State University from 1978 to 1982, he was NCAA All-American three times in track and once in cross country, and won a silver medal in the marathon at the 1981 World University Games. Graduating Florida State with a degree in mathematics, in the following years Wills ran in the USA Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and placed tenth in the Boston Marathon in 1989. After more than a few years of duty as a hurdle setter and lane judge at track meets, Wills discovered that the public address announcer not only got to sit down at meets but was also sheltered from the rain. Since that revelation you can hear him with a microphone in his hand at several track and cross-country events in the Tallahassee area. Writing is another activity you can do while sitting down, and Wills has written about running for Racing South magazine and Tallahassee's local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat.

You can read more running related tidbits in his blog at http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/

Herb Wills NorthWest Florida Reports 2015 ARTICLES / 2014 ARTICLES