Nike Vs Footlocker Cross Country Championships

By Bryan Green

Watching the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) online this past weekend, I couldn't help but think the writing was on the wall for the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships.  Despite it being the de facto individual national championships for 30 years, its location in beautiful San Diego, and its resonance in the minds of most athletes, the Nike meet is sure to take the upperhand in the near future.


The big differentiating factor, as you all probably know, is Nike's emphasis on crowning a team champion alongside the individual champion.  Rather than four regional races and ten individuals each, Nike holds eight regionals and takes the top two teams from each region to Portland for the championship race (plus a few others from California).  Since 2008, the top five individuals on non-qualifying teams are also invited to compete.  What started out as Nike creating a team championship to complement Foot Locker's individual championship is now a head-to-head competition to get the best athletes to their races.

And that's exactly why Nike's going to win this battle.  When push comes to shove, every top athlete with a chance to race with their team will choose to do so.  At its heart, cross country is a team sport.  In fact, outside of perhaps ekiden races (which are almost exclusively run in Japan), cross country is the only truly team-oriented sport in all of distance running, and maybe endurance sports as a whole.  

For 25 years, it was fine that we only had an individual championship.  Foot Locker (formerly Kinney) answered one of the two big questions in high school cross country, and gave the sport the one "national championship" in all of high school sports (to this day, there is no national championship in any other sport).  But in a team sport, an individual championship is like the welterweight title in boxing.  It's valid, it's relevant, it's something we all enjoy seeing decided, but it's not the...(cue Michael Buffer)..."heavyweight champion of the world!"  It just isn't.  The big title is the team title, and it's fine if Foot Locker was never in a position to answer that question.  But the fact that Nike is, and that they are providing a competing belt--the WBC to Foot Locker's WBA, if you will--for the individual title, has got Foot Locker in a pinch. I don't expect Foot Locker to go away any time soon, and part of me hopes they get creative and put up a fight with Nike, but they'll be hard pressed to do so without a team element.  I feel like they need to have all the top individuals to stay relevant, not half, not most, all of them.  I don't know how they can do this...maybe delay their races by a week?  They'll need to do something, especially with Nike pulling out all the stops to make NXN the premier high school cross country championship in the country.

First off, Nike is bringing in five times as many athletes (over 400, to Foot Locker's 80).  They bring all the top Nike sponsored athletes to the event, including Paula Radcliffe, Bernard Lagat, Alan Webb, Galen Rupp, Dathan Ritzenhein and Kara Goucher.  Heck, I probably missed two or three...or ten.  They make some hilarious videos, have a big dinner, and they have a big dance after the race.  Do you know how much fun I would have had at that dance with my high school teammates?  No runner is going to pass this up.


It only helps that the meet was streamed online and the races were covered so well.  They had Toni Reavis, Rich Gonzales and Dathan Ritzenhein doing commentary, they had updated team scores at each 1k split, and they had solid knowledge of pretty much every athlete that showed up on screen.  There were multiple cameras along the course, a fun and muddy (if not natural) course, and exciting battles up front.  It was a great meet.

On the girls side, the team competition was more of a shellacking, with Manlius dominating.  Their victory marked the fourth in a row and they proved once again they are clearly the top team in the country.  On the individual front, sophomore Katie Flood of Des Moines, Iowa, took the title with a big finish in the last 100 meters, pulling away from another sophomore, Kathleen Stevens of Blacksburg, Virginia.  (Race video here)


The boys battle was even better, with pre-race favorite Joe Rosa dictating the race from the gun.  The junior had broken a number of prestigious course records throughout the year, and there were expectations for a big win.  He ran well, but couldn't shake the top group of runners, and eventually succumbed to champion Craig Lutz of Highland Village, Texas (junior) and Elias Gedyon of Pasadena, California (also a junior).  All three will likely return next year, in what could prove to be an epic battle.  In fact, if the results are accurate, the top 48 finishers in the boys race were all underclassmen, so there will be some strong teams returning!  (Race video here)


Looking Ahead to Foot Locker

With NXN out of the way, the spotlight is shining solely on Foot Locker this weekend.  NXN champion Craig Lutz will be back in action, as he won the South Regional by nine seconds to qualify for nationals.  Having vanquished the runner most considered to be the best in the country (Joe Rosa) we will now get to see him go against multisport phenom Lukas Verzbicas.  Verzbicas, you'll remember, was the athlete who set a national freshman record for both 3200m and 5000m last year.  He won his regional by a solid seven seconds.  The other regional champions, Brian Shrader of Arizona and Brad Miles of Pennsylvania, will be looking to play the underdog against the two favorites.

The best action, however, is on the girls side, where arguably the top four runners in the country will all come in as their respective regional champions.  Aisling Cuffe dominated the Northeast to the tune of 46 seconds, and based on that performance alone has got to be the favorite heading into San Diego.  But she'll be going against a few superstars in the making.  Megan Goethals is the top returner, having finished 3rd in 2008.  She won the Midwest by 18 seconds over 2008 Foot Locker Finalist Emily Sisson and this year's NXN champion, Katie Flood, who was 24 seconds back.  

Chelsey Sveinsson of Dallas, Texas, was 4th at Foot Locker last year and won her regional by 16 seconds.  She's run 10:12 for 3200m and broke Jordan Hasay's sophomore record at the distance.  She has already shown flashes of being the next great female distance runner, but it remains to be seen what she can do against this level of competition.  Finally, out of the West we have Molly Grabill, winner of her regional by just four seconds.  That gap might be misleading, however, as two weeks ago she ran the sixth fastest time ever on the Woodward Park course, 17:06, almost as fast as Jordan Hasay ran there.

I don't follow high school cross country as closely as I used to, but it appears that the top boys have been split down the middle between NXN and Foot Locker.  With Lutz running at Foot Locker, though, he can rightly lay claim to the "undisputed national championship" of high school cross country with a win.  And I suppose anyone who beats him can make that argument, since Lutz beat the rest of the best at NXN.  On the girls side, however, we'll be crowning the national champion at Foot Locker this year, as all the best runners in the country are converging on San Diego for what promises to be the best display of talent since...well, since last year.  

I would usually end this with my predictions, but quite frankly, I have no idea what to expect at these races.  I suppose I'd pick Verzbicas and Cuffe, but not with much confidence.  Cuffe has been unreal, Goethals is outstanding, Sveinsson probably wins a kick and Grabill is as good as most of the champions have ever been.  I was a little disappointed after last year's Foot Locker, where we had three returning champions, and I kind of expect to be again simply because it's that rare when we get a great battle to the finish in a girls race.  But here's to hoping we see the best on their best days, and that the championship belt gets won in the final kick.