Any news on the Aggie XC team? How is Coach Dan Waters handling those Aggies?

www.aggieathletics.com

Where do they do interval training and tempo runs? Just curious?

Who is Dan Walters?

He's the coach. Used to coach xc at TCU.

pretty solid team, looks they returned all but the top 2 from last year. Get back a redshirted senior. The #3 guy from 2 years back who redshirted last year left/got cut.

Expect the mens to make it to nationals and the ladies....well don't expect much!

Good news for the women is that they should improve, as their #1 last year (and she was the #1 by a lot) is now their #3. Very young team on the womens' side.

Really? Who did they bring in better than munoz...noticed some solid recruits but she has been to NCAA last two seasons, would not have thought they would be in that league right away

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He's the coach. Used to coach xc at TCU.

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O.k. Then who is Dan Waters?

Ok, well, I don't know for a fact that they're better than her. I do know that at the Waco Open, the scoring roster finished 7th, 8th, 13th, 15th, and 17th.

Munoz ran a 14:53, and finished 12th running the meet unattached.
Cetina ran a 14:35, Rogers 14:38.

Of course, this could just mean that Munoz had an off race, and it was only a 4000m course, so maybe Munoz overtakes the freshmen in a longer course (Big 12's are a 6k), but still, that's a promising sign that it might not be Munoz on an island by herself anymore. At the very least, they'll be able to push each other in training.

Why have there been no results posted on Aggie Athletics for the A&M Invitational? Am I missing something?

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Why have there been no results posted on Aggie Athletics for the A&M Invitational? Am I missing something?

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Yes; the meet was cancelled due to rain therefore no results to be had.

What gigem said. It had rained all week, and they tried rerouting the course and everything, and then it poured again the night of, and they didn't want to trash the IM fields.

What I want to know is how this is going to affect the Captains patches when we get them in 2013.

What's a captain patch? Why didn't they reroute around the fields on the streets ala road race?

Oooh I think that's a big no-no in collegiate XC, road races.

A captain's patch is what you get if you attend at least 1 home game/match/meet of every A&M sport (excluding football).

I don't know why they moved this race from the golf course to the Polo fields. The A&M golf course was actually one of the better race layouts in the state. The Polo fields seem like a pretty mind numbingly boring run.

Interesting bout munoz and the freshman lets hope she gets support.

Golf course would have been amazing for an invite, great footing and pretty good spectating. Nothing really wrong with it being on the polo fields you can still see much of the race!

Well, after how concerned they were about tearing up the polo fields, I bet you can imagine how worried they'd be about tearing up the golf course. They'd probably only consider running it there if it was bone dry, which for the past few years it hasn't even been close to. Also, now that it's expanded to such a big event with all of the highschool teams too, maybe there's not a good enough staging area by the golf course that's not too close to the busy street, and maybe the golf course isn't a wide enough course anymore.

Just speculating. I don't know the real reason, but I feel like there's a lot of good reasons why they moved it, not just for the heck of it.

That race was always one of the biggest high school events of the year. There was no issues with staging areas. There was even talk of getting the state championship moved there although the politics of getting it out of Austin were too difficult. The course is in horrific shape right now anyway. Significantly worse than anytime I ever saw it when I lived in CS, so I doubt that is the reason.

The venue for the race was changed when the coaches changed. I have just never heard a reason why. It was a far superior venue.

When I was a junior in high school we ran on the golf course here for the invitational. It had been raining the day and night before so the course was pretty wet and muddy and we tore up the golf course pretty good. I don't see them wanting that to happen again.

How many xc runners are on full scholarship vs walkons?
Where do you guys see A&M in the big 12 champioships?
I think Dan Waters will lead them to a 1st place finish for the guys and a top 5 for women.

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The course is in horrific shape right now anyway.

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As bad as it may be, it would be a hell of a lot worse if there were 600 kids running all over it. The poor quality now is probably due to the drought.

Maybe it coincided with the 12th man team Rewards? How was golf as far as the spectators go?

I don't think too many, if any, XC runners are on full scholarship as there just aren't that many to go around. The problem is even further complicated by the fact that the NCAA pretty much sees XC as an extension of Track & Field rather than its own sport so scholarships are even more limited because they are related to the Track scholarships.

As far as how we'll be this season it's kind of hard to tell since neither team has run its full squad in a meet yet this year but the guys should definitely be competitive. Oklahoma State though is ranked #2 right now and will be extremely tough to beat. Colorado also has a very good team. Us, Iowa State and Missouri should be the next group. The girls I'm not really sure as we have a lot of freshmen running so it will depend on their development. I'm looking forward to the Wisconsin meet on October 3rd to see how we do as I assume we'll run our full squads by then.

As for golf attendance this past week I went up to watch tee-off Friday morning and was the only unaffiliated spectator at Hole 10. I'm not sure how many more showed up throughout the day but I know the round ended prematurely because of rain. Saturday morning they finished the first round but I was at work so didn't make it out and Sunday it was canceled so there weren't too many opportunities for people to go watch at only 1 round was played.

THat's what they get for giving golf it's own board.

runontexas, your enthusiasm for the team is great, but expectations are a little unreasonable. Even a few years ago when the Aggies underperformed at nationals and finished 19th, they only finished 3rd at Big 12s behind Colorado and Oklahoma State. Both of those teams are still very strong, have multiple top 4 finishes at the NCAA meet, and should continue to be strong until their respective coaches leave. It's hard to overcome history like that when you're recruiting. Add to that their coaches are the track head coaches as well, which means they can dole out much more scholarhip money to attract distance runners.

I'm not trying to set the bar low, I'm just trying to put the Big 12 Cross Country scene in context, so that a top 3/4/5 finish at conference would be appreciated as much as it should be.

Yeah i forgot about ok state. They have the german fernandez (greatest high school runner ever), Colby lowe (greatest Texas high school runner ever), and their vets Ryan vail, John kosgei (both all-Americans I think) and a couple others.

Colorado is always nationally ranked but I don't think they have anyone particular that comes to mind...with that said ok state is a lock, A&M can get second with Dan waters at the healm.

[This message has been edited by runontexas (edited 9/19/2009 10:49a).]

Errr...the USTFACCCA disagrees, since the Colorado men are ranked 6th in the preseason poll. Just because they don't have any runners from Texas/German Fernandez doesn't mean they don't have any outstanding runners.

For Example, Jordan Kyle was 12th at NCAA's last year. Colorado won the previous 12 Big 12 championships before last year.

A&M isn't ranked in the top 40. In fact, Iowa State at #25 is expected to be significantly better than us.

Why are you drinkin' the Dan Waters Koolaid? I mean, sure he's a good coach, and sure we'll be in the top half of the conference, but some of the expectations that you're throwing out are WHACK!

Dan waters is a great coach that's all I'm saying. He did awesome @tcu and georgia....and now is making things happen in college station. Bottom line when all is said and done a statue will be built in honor of Dan waters just like sul Ross and E King Gill. He will be revered like rc slocum, Billy gillespie, and Jackie Sherrill.
We should feel honored that he is a Texas A&M representative. He'll take the xc team to the promise land, maybe not this year but definitely someday soon.

Woah. I take it back, you're not drinking the kool-aid, I think you ARE Dan Waters. Not cool man, not cool. I bet you edit your own wikipedia page too, don't you?

This guy is definitely Dan. I miss Hartman.

How are the Aggies doing? I haven't seen any real updates on aggieathletics.com?? What's up, with such a great coach you would think there would be more coverage!

There hasn't been much to report. No meets since the one at Baylor. This weekend though the team goes to Wisconsin so should be some news Saturday.

runontexas, I would think that as Dan Waters, you would know that there hadn't been any meets. What are they supposed to report on?

"Today, the Aggie Men's XC team had a leisurely 5 mile run around campus after yesterday's grueling 10 mile trek through the hills of Bryan."

This is just about the worst troll ever. I don't even understand what you're trying to accomplish. Do you work for the 12th man rewards team trying to drum up publicity...for our...0 home meets this year?

How'd the Fightin Texas Aggie XC teams do? The coaching should have put them each in great position to PR. Who were the lead runners?

The men finished 7th while the women finished 10th. I believe the men were second from the South Central Region as Arkansas finished fouth. The guys were paced by Joe Sauvageau (24:45.1) and Mitch Bible (24:46.8). The women were paced by Christina Munoz (17:47.7) followed by three freshmen. The overall winners of the meet were Syracuse for the men and Duke for the women (they beat Syracuse by 2 points).

For all of the team results and times of the Aggie participants you can go to http://www.aggieathletics.com/sports/c-xctrack/recaps/100309aaa.html.

[This message has been edited by gigem08aggie (edited 10/4/2009 11:08a).]