Colorado University Athletics
Woelk: For CU Cross Country, Excellence Is Baseline Standard
November 22, 2019 | Cross Country, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — Saturday morning, the Colorado Buffaloes' men's and women's cross country teams will toe the starting line at the NCAA Championships in Terre Haute, Ind., where they will both be in contention for top 10 finishes.
In other breaking news, the sun will rise in the east.
To be honest, it is only news when Mark Wetmore's Buffaloes — men and women — are not at the NCAA Championships and not in contention for a top-10 finish. The men are making their 28th consecutive NCAA Championships appearance, the longest such streak in the nation; the women are making their 11th in a row and 27th in the last 28 years.
But the Buffaloes are not there to simply compete. They are there to win, which they have done with outstanding frequency under Wetmore's direction.
This is Wetmore's 25th year at Colorado. In his tenure, the Buffs have won eight national titles (five men, three women) and five individual national titles. That makes CU's head coach the only coach in NCAA history to win men's and women's team and individual championships at the same school.
Along with the eight national titles, Wetmore's teams have finished in the top three — podium finishes — an additional 13 times.
But perhaps most impressive is the top 10 consistency of Wetmore's programs.Â
In his 24 years at the helm, the CU men and women have finished in the top 10 in the nation 41 times out of 48 opportunities. That means Colorado's program has been a top 10 group 85 percent of the time for a quarter century under Wetmore's guidance.
Of course, that kind of success also breeds a level of expectation that has reached almost outlandish proportions.Â
The Buffs men and women are expected to be top 10 teams at the very least. While roughly 350 colleges and universities across the nation annually compete in Division I cross country, the expectation is that Colorado will be among the best.
Every year.
Understand that even one top 10 national finish at many schools — in any sport at any level — is cause for celebration. But at Colorado, a top 10 finish is the baseline standard; a top-three finish is the expectation.
Figure this: just last year our friends to the north in Fort Collins rightly celebrated a second-straight ninth-place finish from the Colorado State men's team at the NCAAs. It was the first time in CSU history that any team in any sport finished ninth or better in the nation in consecutive seasons. Definitely reason for celebration.
But to put that in perspective, CU's men have finished in the top eight in the nation 24 out of the last 26 seasons, a stretch that included 15 consecutive years of no finish lower than seventh and three national titles.
Of course, every year is different and this season is no exception. While CU's men enter Saturday's competition ranked second in the nation and have their eyes realistically set on a top-three finish, the women are ranked "just" 10th. After winning last year's national championship — and Dani Jones claiming the individual title as well — the CU women are in a bit of a rebuilding mode (consider the dichotomy between "rebuilding" and "ranked 10th in the nation").
(We also offer a side note here: Colorado's cross country teams are regularly among the tops in the athletic department in the classroom, annually finishing with well above a 3.0 grade-point average in some of the toughest academic disciplines CU offers.)
Saturday's races will be held on a course with which Wetmore and his coaching staff are quite familiar. Of CU's eight national titles, five have come in Terre Haute, with another four podium finishes. The weather — wintery with a chance of precipitation — will not be good for fans, but should be ideal for Buffaloes who pride themselves in training in all kinds of conditions.
Still, as Wetmore noted, the variables that come with a national cross country competition are innumerable.
"They (the athletes) can eat wrong, they can warm up wrong, they can go out too fast, they can go out too slow, but it's different every year," Wetmore said earlier this week. "It's easy to make a mistake, so we'll have to evaluate the conditions, evaluate our personnel, how ready they are, and make a race day decision on what our strategy will be. But again, there's a lot of things that can go wrong and it's really a race where a lot of teams do relatively poorly, because of the pressure, the expectation, the length of the season, and difficult conditions that they hadn't anticipated."
Far more often than not, the Buffs are not one of those teams. Wetmore and his runners are quite familiar with the possible pitfalls. They are seldom blindsided by the unforeseen.
Still, it would be unwise to predict where the Buffs will finish Saturday. As Wetmore bluntly stated, CU has "bombed" once or twice in Terre Haute ("bombed," of course, being a relative term). The variables will be in place.
But no matter what happens, it's safe to assume the Buffs will represent Colorado well. And if you're wondering what the future holds, here's what Wetmore had to say earlier this week when asked if he could have foreseen what would unfold when he accepted the CU job in 1995.
"I don't think I looked far into the future," he said. "I was too excited about the present. I knew that Boulder and CU were the perfect place to have great middle and long-distance runners and great cross country teams. I was very into the moment and the honor of being selected and the exciting potential. Looking back now, am I surprised that I didn't get fired along the way somewhere, or that I kept my mouth shut? A little bit, yes. Three or four athletic directors have endured me and I'd like to make it another 25 or 30 years."
That is very good news for CU, Boulder and the running community in general. Wetmore has built a program that delivers an unbelievable return on investment by making top 10 national finishes the baseline standard.
That is indeed worth celebrating.
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
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