They have triathlon in Montana? Who knew?

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

It's hard enough to find anyone who wants to go to Billings under their own free will, now they are setting standards to get in...

I understand the thought process I would wager there’s more wiggle room w athlete and coach post visits etc. It’s sorta an easy eliminator filter of the nobodies emailing the program wanting money.

But I’d be curious how many JE athletes can meet that standard and go the DII route.

But when you apply those standards you better be careful that you can actually fill those standards or else it’s fairly useless step.

ETA: it’s also a nice standard to have but I’m also guessing it’s not firm either way for or against the athlete. IE- why “potential” is part of the equation.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Good thing it's not at my local "MSU" (Michigan State University).

They have a lot of problems right now

As a NEW coach recruiting NEW athletes to a NEW program in a not so well known area or school, why would you even post that information? If you lose even one kid because of some "standards" you did a dis-service to your program.

Maybe I am different but in the recruiting process I want to speak with as many of those prospective student athletes as possible, even if they are "nobodies". In a new program you need athletes and you need experience developing athletes. In the end the University wants you to attract female student athletes to the school.

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Dave Latourette
http://www.TTENation.com

Like I said I think this is more a smoke screen than anything concrete. This likely would have been better kept “in house” than actual standard posted for new recruits At this point in the process.


ETA: The moment you start putting standards you just better be able to live up to said standards especially when your talking giving scholarships and college athletes getting money and not getting money.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Did a bike race last weekend, I could have done the whole race at 23mph on like 150-180 watts as I spent most of it in the back of the pack. How about a watts/kg mark or proven race results?

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

Hello Lazy EP and All,

When I was working for Northwest Airlines many pilots voiced their dream of settling in Billings ..... or somwhere in Big Sky Country.

In the end ...... not so many did settle in Montana ..... as when you live somewhere else you put down roots.

We have yearly retired pilot conventions (different city each year) and the one at Billings (some years ago) had best attendance of any ... people like to go to Billings.

I was told there is/was an underground tunnel from the courthouse to the brothel.

Billings being the largest city in Montana (about 110,000) is still pretty small.



I liked idea that you could tell somewhat where people were from (county) by license plate number .... Billings with 3.

Used to be great ice cream store in Billings terminal.

Current events wise ..... looks like there are many ways to qualify for a college sports scholarship.

Whatever criteria are used nowadays to get accepted to a college athletic team ...... I expect that performance soon levels the field.

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Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

I’d like to think that State is on the other side of that. Getting rid of that POS Engler was a good sign.

I wish we had D1 women’s tri!

That being said, we had age group world champ Todd Buckingham, which was pretty cool.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

Well there’s a big difference between “recruiting standard” and “potential scholarship”, no? The standard to get “recruited” isn’t particularly high, although I’m unclear about how you can have a sprint course standard since —at least the sprint course I do—all all different lengths.

The standards given in the original post are benchmarks for potential scholarship level athletes. There are much more generous benchmarks for prospective walk-ons; 7:00 for the 500 free and 22:30 for the 5k XC. Also, the headline is "General Recruiting Guidelines," not "Hard-and-Fast Recruiting Standards." The fine print at the bottom says the following (bold emphasis by me).

"Given that course conditions and distances among many of the above disciplines can be highly variable, reaching a combination of one or any of the above standards do not automatically qualify (or disqualify) a PSA from earning a roster spot or scholarship on the MSUB Triathlon team. Every prospective student-athlete will be individually evaluated for both walk-on and scholarship opportunities on a case-by-case basis. This includes evaluating other factors such as academics, mentality, commitment, triathlon experience and accomplishments, and potential in combining all the multi-sport disciplines. The above standards are simply a general guideline of the baseline abilities needed to be competitive in triathlon at the NCAA level."

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Money talks.........Even though Billings is not a lot of peoples favorite place in Montana, if the school is handing out money they will come. Just ask the wonderful school University of Texas El Paso. They seemed to attract a few pretty fast running African students a few years ago. Try being a XC skier on scholarship at Bozeman MSU. They have some pretty Nordic sounding names on that team.
I have no idea how much money they are spreading around, but you could do worse than going to school there. I wish them success and congrats for helping some kids with their college expenses.

They could start a Crew team and raise money to fund their tri teams...

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

This is true but also the discrepancies are rarely more than a minute so a 16ish minute tri run compared to a 20 is pretty easy to decipher potential. Particularly when they are providing stand alone times.

ITU sprint course standard

For potential scholarship, these standards seem reasonable...If a girl has been racing USAT's junior elite circuit and are on the top half, they should be close to or better than these times. But if they are age groupers and doing odd local tris here and there, then these are quite high standards, IMO.

With the NCAA programs, there are now about 30 schools, and 17 in DI/DII level; so they need more athletes than what's currently in the USAT junior elite circuit (top 75 makes the nationals each year, and about 1/4 graduating each year). I don't know where they are going to get them yet: I see a some of the D1 schools going international (USD took most of the top Canadian juniors for the upcoming 2019 fall). But we need more from other sports, e.g. swimming and XC.

You have to start somewhere with standards but I think its always safe to start on the slowside and work your way down. My guess is half of the top 15 girls at last years National Championship have never ran sub 19:00 and anyone under a :56 in the 100 free has the potential to be in the top 5 out of the water in the D1/D2 wave. An athlete that meets both of these standards would probably win the D2 title now that Queen's top two girls are graduating.

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http://www.trihub.org

Also, USD went international, domestic, swimming, and XC/track. They're bringing in 8 athletes this coming fall 3 Canadians, 3 US athletes from the Jr. Elite Circuit, 1 swimmer, and 1 runner. I believe Daemen, Drury, and ETSU have the next largest recruiting classes at 4 each.

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http://www.trihub.org

18:25 is not that high a standard, the top 12 girls in HS in WI all went under that this past fall.
My daughter, 15(sophomore) can meet the 5:10 1500 and she will not qualify for state unless she gets a whole lot faster(best bet is a repeat in the 4x800)

every div1 girl at state in 100 and 500 beat those times for swimming as well
the times are not out of reality except to the old slow men that do tri and post here :)

Both Montana State University (Bozeman) and University of Montana (Missoula) have a tri club. Ben Hoffman, Linsey Corbin, and more recenlty, Erika Ackerlund have a history with the UM tri club, while Haley Chura lives in Bozeman. But there are few races, but even the biggest race, the grizzly tri, has seen the number of athletes decline over the years, once their were about 800 athletes racing.

They have 800 people in Montana? Who knew?

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/