November 21, 2023
A Trip to the Nationals
Two gentlemen of Gainesville, Ricky Quintana and Bruce Kritzler attended the NCAA meet last Saturday in Charlottesville, VA and also the day after the NCAA they hit the Nike South Region boys and girls,”top” 30 invited teams from the Southeast both at Cary, NC. Top 2 teams qualified for Nike Nationals in Portland. Bruce adeptly explains what it was like to be at that NCAA meet with 5000 paying customers who never had to show their ticket to get in.
Here is Bruce's account:
Completed a weekend trifecta of Florida state hs, NCAA, and Nike South region cross country races over the "long" weekend with Ricky Quintana. Ricky was covering the 3 meets for various media outlets, and I was designated driver (although Ricky drove 50% of the time). Friday was the hardest with a 4am start from Gainesville, 11 hr trek to Lynchburg, VA, another 4 hr night. Saturday morning drive to Charlottesville Fashion Square Mall. The mall is where 5,000 spectators were to load on around 30 buses to be transported to Panorama Farm XC course, beginning at 6:45am. We were among the first to arrive there, and Ricky had about a 30 minutes wait to secure media credentials. I had purchased a ticket ahead of time, but was surprised that I was never asked to show it on the shuttle or at the meet. Others expressed the same surprise. Rode the shuttle the 8 mi to the course, traversing a one lane wooden bridge about ¼ mi from the destination. Another ¼ mi walk to the course, and 3 hr wait before the first race at 10:20. Noticed a ¼ mi line of patrons waiting to spend their $ on ncaa merchandise, and a short line for others to purchase hot chocolate and Doritos (the only available refreshment.
Walked around the majority of the 2k loop scouting out the best location to watch. Picked a midway point where I could watch both sides of the loop with a short jog. Of course 1000 other people picked the same spot! But there were some big round hay bales I was able to climb on, and got a better view. Probably you all saw more of the race at home via television. One curious moment was about 5min before the gun, when about 30 young coaches came jogging by the ¼ mi mark heading out on the course to get a split time. Also noticed that the OK St men's team also did an extended warmup "stride" out to the same spot.
The Course. It's a farm, not a manicured golf course. Uneven footing, lots of big hills, many side hills and turns. A true cross country course, not a race track. Weather was perfect, sunny, some wind, 50-60 degrees.
The Races. Women went off first, and I expected Parker Valby to be in the lead, but couldn't see her when they went by 400m. Found out later she said she got "boxed in for 1k. But once she took the lead she quickly got a gap which I timed at 18sec at around 2k and 23sec by 4k. I knew that was over 100m, and didn't expect anyone to catch her. Lead got down to 10 sec at end, but never in doubt. NC St pulled off a 1pt victory over N AZ for their 3rd straight title. Florida's two Alabama transfers ran fantastic (9, 39), but the New Mexico transfers (both All America last yr) were 79, dnf. So the team finished 5th.
Men's race. OK St had bright orange singlets which stood out, especially when there were 5 of them in the lead pack of 25-30. The pack lost a couple each km till Samuel (Eritrean at NM) and Graham Blanks (Athens, GA'n at Harvard). Blanks, undefeated this fall, went with 1k remaining, and gradually pulled away from the 27:20 10k guy. OK St maintained their positions to finish with one of the lowest totals ever. N AZ also ran great (79 pts) but met a juggernaut. Third place was BYU with over 200pts.
There was a ½ mi long line of spectators waiting for the shuttle buses. So a small group of us (Chris Wilson, UF/Ark and Reuben Reina, Ark family) decided to walk the mile to the main road and get an Uber. It was a nice walk, and the Uber guy waited for us.
Drove on down to Raleigh that afternoon, arriving about 6pm. Ricky went to the hotel lobby to write his article (ncaa Women team/idividual for TFN). I laid down on the couch and watched the Gators get beat by MO, sleeping 12hrs. Made it out to Cary for the two championship races of 30 preselected teams from as far are KY, W Va, and Del. This was a dusty, well worn course, mostly dirt, with rather large gravel thrown in for drainage. Was amazed how well the kids performed on this surface. Miami Belen Jesuit had 31 pts at the first timing chip split, and held on to win easily, with just a day off after the Florida state meet. They've been racing like this every week since August around the country. NC St coaches Laurie Henes and Rollie Geiger were both on site the day after winning at UVA.
Hit the road for 7 more hrs back to Gainesville, and sleep.
Bruce
I watched the interviews with the two winners of the NCAA meet and was truly impressed with both of them giving frank answers to the regular questions that come from post race interviewers. Graham Blanks was more loquacious and introspective than any runner I've ever heard in an interview after a big race. And he has a great sense of humor and conveys it so well.
Nov. 29, 2023
This came in today from Ricky Quintana, one of the two 'Road Dogs' of this article.
Sharing time. I recently traveled to Charlottesville, VA for the NCAA XC Champs. I reached out to TF News and Dyestat to see if they needed help as I have written for them before. TF News asked me to cover both mens and women's initially but then just the women. Thank goodness! I did some video interviews with the athletes and after lunch trekked to Cary, NC with Bruce Kritzler. Once i arrived, i stayed up until about 11pm writing the individual article. Then woke up the next morning and wrote the team article. It was exhilarating and exhausting trying to write something profound that others might enjoy and gain a better perspective of what had happened. I try not to read my articles because TF News editors EDIT. Kind of makes me wonder why they hire me sometimes 
but these two articles were not edited as much other than adding some statistics and the like. UF's Parker Valby made the Dec cover of track and field news. So my articles will be kind of the feature articles. It's rather surreal to me at times that they give me this much liberty with my writing and have confidence in it. It's a magazine that I read as a kid and is the Bible of the Sport. Here are the links to the articles. I hope you enjoy them. Kelly(my wife) says she likes my writing because I make it interesting to the non runner as well. I think she is biased though 
https://trackandfieldnews.com/with-an-ace-veteran-absent-nc-state-dug-deep/ https://trackandfieldnews.com/ncaa-womens-xc-2023-valby-supreme-wolfpack-3-peats/
Red Stick, Loosiana, 'bout 2001
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