2003 NCAA CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIPS
Something to Prove

By Parker Morse

Stanford's top seven runners run near the front approaching the 1k mark. (All Photos: Alison Wade/New York Road Runners)

The puzzle before the men's NCAA Cross Country Championship race was, what would be the best strategy for Stanford to follow? With at least four legitimate individual contenders, they might each set out for a win. On the other hand, defending their 2002 title would be easier if they worked together for the team as they had so often in the season. Asked point-blank how they would approach the race on Sunday, first-season head coach Andy Gerard ducked the question. When Colorado guru Mark Wetmore suggested that his advice to individual contender Dathan Ritzenhein would be to "score as few points as possible for the team," Gerard joked that he would give the same instructions to "my whole top seven."

In truth, this would be the last race for some of the most illustrious recruiting classes in recent years. Stanford brought six seniors to the starting line: Ian Dobson, Seth Hejny, Louis Luchini, Grant Robison, Don Sage and Adam Tenforde. At the 1998 Foot Locker Cross Country Championships, Luchini, Tenforde and Dobson were second, third and seventh, respectively. In 1999, Sage and Dobson were second and third. Though Luchini set an American Junior Record at 10,000m and Sage won the 2002 NCAA 1,500m title, Stanford was often criticized for failing to develop all the talent they recruited. That criticism looks a little hollow when the three-year cross country record of the team is considered. Their tooth-grindingly close one-point loss to Colorado at the 2001 NCAA Cross Country Championships set their determination. In 2002, they simply dominated the field, with a 47-107 victory over Wisconsin. At the beginning of this season, Louis Luchini was asked to compare the 2003 team with the 2002 champions. He looked a little puzzled before answering, "It's the same team."

True enough. Excepting the substitution of Hejny for Peter Meindl — trading one seventh runner for another, as it would turn out — the same Stanford team started in Iowa that started in Indiana. Wisconsin, second in 2002, underwent heavier revision, losing Matt Tegenkamp to injury and Isaiah Festa and Adam Wallace to graduation from their scoring five. Replacing them with Chris Solinsky, Tim Nelson and Josh Spiker, the 2003 Badgers had the potential to be as strong or stronger than the 2002 edition.

Still, the key difference between 2002 and 2003 would be the race for the individual title. Alistair Cragg of Arkansas, second last year, pointed this out before the race. "Last year there was a lot of talk about four or five guys, and everyone else let us go. That was fine, it made it easier for us to get away. This year, there are maybe twenty guys who think they can get top five."

Stanford, as it turned out, didn't need to decide between individual glory and team pack-running, because a significant number of those twenty guys were running for the Cardinal. When the pack passed the first kilometer, all seven of Stanford's varsity were visible at the head of the pack, and through halfway all seven were within ten seconds. Ryan Hall set the pace with Ian Dobson right off his shoulder. At halfway the pack was included between seventeen and twenty runners, and six of Stanford's seven were in it. At five miles, the pack was stringing out, but ten athletes (including five Cardinal) were within ten seconds of the lead, and Stanford's six-runner pack was only spread over twelve seconds. The team race was over, and the individual race was just getting started.

Approaching three miles, Stanford still has a strong presence up front.

If you had to pick a poster child for the image of Stanford as a program where talent went to hide, it would be Ryan Hall. A 4:01 high school miler, in 2000 and 2001 Hall used to be the third name mentioned after Alan Webb and Ritzenhein as one of the "big three" of high school running. Since going to Stanford, though, Hall hadn't made much of an impact at the national level, running two cross country seasons (with one All-American certificate in '02) and one track season. Sixth for Stanford's champion team in '02, now he was the only underclassman on the team. On the one hand, it wasn't too surprising that might be assigned to be pace fodder, sacrificing himself at the front, doing the pace work to preserve the punch of NCAA-champion milers like Sage and Robison. On the other hand, as a miler himself, Hall admitted afterward, "This race is about 8,500 meters too long for me."

Too long or not, when the pack dissolved behind him, Hall was side by side with his old rival Ritzenhein. Gavin Thompson of Eastern Michigan was stride for stride with Robison behind them. Then came Dobson and Luchini. Hall started pushing, and when he made the final turn about 800m from the finish, he had a lead of about ten meters on Ritzenhein.

Normally, Ritzenhein and Hall arriving in the homestretch together would be a victory for Hall. Ritzenhein, always a distance hog, would normally have left his competition behind by now. "The longer the better," he said before the race. Afterward, he explained, "I kind of ran away with things, back in high school... this was different." This year Ritzenhein was coming back from a series of injuries which kept him from putting together a full season since the '02 Indoor meet. With little summer base, he piled on in the fall, and surprised everyone by running away with his race at Pre Nationals. Still, Ritzenhein made his name by working harder and longer than anyone else, and this year he didn't have that head-start behind him. "This is a whole new level," he said. "I'm racing the big boys now, and you can't get away with just doing more than everyone else." He was picked as a favorite, but cautiously. Undefeated through the year, still there wasn't enough evidence to show that the "old" Ritzenhein, the one who ran third at the 2001 World Junior cross country meet and then came back to finish 24th in the 2002 Senior race, was back.

He's back.

Ritzenhein drew even with Hall, ran with him for a while, then pulled away in the last hundred meters for the win in 29:14.1, 1.3 seconds up on Hall. "I was trying to be patient. In retrospect I wish I had been a little more patient and had put all my energy into one big surge, because I feel like I spread it out a little too much," said Hall afterward.

"We were both pouring everything we've got out, there," said Ritzenhein.

Thompson (29:17.4) held off Robison (29:19.2), and then the fun really began. Dobson (29:24.7) and Luchini (29:28.2) finished fifth and sixth. Then Tenforde (29:44.9) and Sage (29:45.8) arrived in 12th and 13th; since Thompson and Westly Keating (7th) were non-scoring individuals, Stanford's scoring places were 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10, or 24 points. Seth Hejny was 33rd. Had Stanford been allowed an eighth runner, he still might have been All-American. Maybe even a ninth. As an indication of Stanford's dominance, the second-place team, Wisconsin, managed to get only one runner (Simon Bairu in 9th) inside Stanford's scoring five. Wisconsin scored 174 points; Stanford's 150-point winning margin was a new NCAA record. The old record, 127 points, was set in 1999 when Arkansas scored 58; Wisconsin was second there, too.

Dathan Ritzenhein pulls away from Ryan Hall to win the individual title.

"We had all the contenders in there," said Stanford coach Andy Gerard afterward. "Nobody really broke away early. That was one thing we were really scared of, that somebody was going to go. I think the weather actually helped us in that regard. Everybody's been lobbing comments at us that California guys can't run in the snow and the cold, but my guys are excited by it." Running in the cold wasn't the only thing Stanford's team had something to prove about; they wanted to drive home the point, once again, that they could win.

Solinsky, unsurprisingly, was the first freshman in 15th. Colorado had the second-best one-two finish when Bill Nelson came in sixteenth. 2002 runner-up Alistair Cragg, who went on to a 3000/5000 indoor double and 5000/10,000 outdoor "double" for Arkansas, finished eighth. While disappointed in his place, Cragg was pleased to be doing that well after hernia surgery in late September. "I was doing track work just a week after I started running again," he said. "The other guys were running miles, and I was doing 1200s." The lack of extensive training showed when Cragg reached for his top-end speed. He told hogwired.com, "With one kilometer left I had the chance to pull ahead, and I battled through the middle, but it just didn't happen."

Unlike the women's race, the top finishers in the men's race were overwhelmingly seniors. Excepting Hall, Stanford will be a completely new-look team next year. Colorado's team was almost exclusively freshmen and sophomores; Wisconsin was heavily underclassmen as well, and should get Matt Tegenkamp back next year.

Still, next year's matchup will almost certainly be the Ritzenhein/Hall rematch. Both leave Waterloo with raised confidence; with different athletes in the lead pack and another season of preparation, the race will almost certainly develop differently.