Motivated Buffs Look To Disprove Rankings
September 29, 2016 | Cross Country, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — John Dressel and his Colorado cross country teammates know what the rankings say.
Their goal this year is to prove those rankings wrong.
Understand that when it comes to national rankings and the Buffs cross country program, the perspective is somewhat different than that of most. Most programs would be glad to see their name in the top 10. They would consider it a major accomplishment, a reason for celebration.
But Colorado is not most programs. Thus, when the weekly coaches' poll has had the CU men's team ranked fifth for most of this season, the Buffs haven't been doing backflips.
Rather, they've been a little miffed. Perturbed. Maybe even peeved.
But most of all, they've been motivated. While the rankings are understandable — the Buffs lost four seniors from a team that finished second at the NCAA Championships a year ago — the current Buffs believe they are better than that. Thus, they'll spend the rest of the fall doing their very best to prove that you should never sleep on Colorado.
"Our workouts are going great," Dressel said Tuesday. "What's fun is we know how good we are. We know what we're capable of and coach (Mark Wetmore) knows what we're capable of, but other people don't know that. It's going to be fun when we go out there and talk with our legs."
Saturday, the Buffs will have a chance to speak up when they host the annual Rocky Mountain Shootout at Buffalo Ranch on CU's South Campus. In terms of CU's schedule, it's a relatively low-key event, but it still gives Colorado's runners a chance to get some racing in before the meat of the schedule arrives: NCAA Pre-Nationals, Pac-12 Championships, NCAA Regionals and the NCAA Championships (to be held this year in Terre Haute, Ind.).
Dressel  finished fifth in the Shootout a year ago as a freshman, but ran unattached. He didn't compete as a scoring member of the team until Pre-Nationals, where he finished 46th as CU's fifth-best runner in the race.
But from that point on, Dressel's performance improved steadily. Two weeks later he was the second Buff across the line and sixth overall at the Pac-12 Championships, helping the CU men to their fifth consecutive conference title. Then came a top-20 finish at the NCAA Regionals, followed by a 26th-place effort — the third Buff across the line — at the NCAA Championships, good enough for first-team All-American status.
"What he did was a little ahead of what I expected — maybe a lot ahead of what I expected," Wetmore said. "The nationals is an animal that no high school kid has ever experienced. You can run Foot Locker (national meet for high schoolers), but there are just 40 runners in the race. You can run the Nike Cross Country Nationals, but 75 percent of the runners are out the back and out of sight in the first 30 seconds.
"The NCAA nationals is 255 people within three seconds of each other for almost a half an hour. It's a race, but it's no race they've ever seen before. It's a very rare freshman that keeps their composure — and he did."
But Dressel, a multiple state champion at Mount Spokane High School in Mead, Wash., said he wasn't particularly surprised by his first collegiate season.
"I wanted to come in and make an impact," Dressel said. "The Pac-12s was really a breakthrough race for me. It might have been a little unexpected with how well I did, but the main focus was just to help the team out as much as possible and score for us."
Now, Dressel will be expected to produce such results again, along with senior Ben Saarel (a three-time All-American), along with juniors Zach Perrin and Adam Peterman and a host of youngsters.
Dressel's standout freshman season has thrust him into a relatively rare role — a team leader as just a sophomore. It's a role he says he's comfortable carrying.
"I want to be the guy the freshmen and anybody else can look up to and say, 'OK, this is what John's doing. I want to do some similar stuff because he's doing well,'" Dressel said. "I want to be that role model. I'm not one of the upperclassmen, but I think it's fair to say I can have a voice because I experienced it last year."
Wetmore is always hesitant to attach expectations to any runner early in his or her career. Asked about Dressel's long-term potential, the veteran CU coach shrugged his shoulders and said, "He's good. Will he keep getting better by leaps and bounds? That's up to him and me and Heather (Burroughs, assistant coach)."
But, Wetmore also said he "absolutely" believes Dressel has the ability to be a top-10 finisher someday at the NCAA Championships.
Dressel, though, said his individual goals are secondary to what he wants the Buffs to accomplish as a team.
"I do have individual goals, but the main focus this season is the team," he said. "The goal for us is to just stay hungry and keep focused. We want to defend our conference title, and the optimal goal is always to be racing our best when it counts, at the end of the season. Mentally, we know what we're capable of achieving, and we'll be right there when we need to be."
SHOOTOUT SCHEDULE: Saturday's Rocky Mountain Shootout will be contested on CU's Buffalo Ranch course on the South Campus, just off U.S. Highway 36 and Table Mesa Drive.
The men's 8K race will begin at 9 a.m. with the women's 5.8K race scheduled to start at 9:45 a.m. Admission is free.
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
