Of Two Minds

Newton North-Wellesley-Walpole today at Elm Bank Park -- it should be a great meet, especially the face-off between the two girls teams, 5-0 Herget-leading Wellesley and 5-0 Carey-leading Newton North.

So how important are dual meets, anyway? If you had seen North Coach Peter Martin yesterday at practice you would certainly conclude that league showdowns like NN-Wellesley are very important to him and to his team. He was at his multi-tasking best, calling over one group after another in rapid succession and giving his instructions with brisk military efficiency. When I was foolish enough to suggest that there was no need to be nervous, he looked at me sternly and said in his best professorial voice, "Actually, I'm very calm."

Later, as we started thinking about the next several weeks, we wondered aloud about the trade-off between preparing the team for a big invitational meet (The Bay State Invite at Northfield) vs. preparing the for an important dual meet vs. Weymouth. Since the Bay State Invite is on Saturday 10/14, and the Weymouth meet is on Tuesday 10/17, choices must be made.

So how important are dual meets anyway? Well, dual meets are more intimate both in the sense of highlighting one-on-one battles between runners from two teams, and also in helping to bring together a WHOLE team. When you ride on a bus with your entire team, race together, and ride back to school together, it generates a different feeling then when the top seven go off to compete in an invitational meet. Both situations are part of the season, but they have different satisfactions.

As far as statewide recognition goes, dual meets have little impact. For example, the results of dual meets are rarely taken into consideration for rankings. I have been amused to see this working itself out on DyeStat, where a popular thread ranks the top Massachusetts girls teams. On August 30th, the Newton North girls were ranked 6th in the state. After winning their first two dual meets, they were ranked 7th. After convincingly dispatching a strong Natick team, North was dropped to 12th. After another win in which they took the top six places, they were dropped again to 14th! Of course, the reason for this has nothing to do with North's performances in dual meets during that time, but that all attention was on other teams who were proving themselves at invitational meets (Clipper Relays, Manchester Invite, Boston Invite).

Especially in the Bay State League with it's 8-meet schedule, it's difficult to balance the desire to compete within the league and compete against the rest of the state. This is less of a problem in other leagues, like the Dual-County league, where Newton South has only four league meets (plus a league championship). One consequnce of having so many league meets is the devaluation of individual meets against weaker opponents. A team's top runners might be held out of meets where they are not needed, or told to run easily instead of racing. I'm not at all sure this is a good thing. Wouldn't it be better to have fewer meets, but make them more important?

I'm sure all of our collegiate athletes are having to adjust to a schedule in which they run fewer meets, but each meet has a number of teams. It's a different balance that allows more time for training, less time for experimenting in race situations. Actually, one argument in favor of dual meets at the high school level is that it better serves the needs of the JV runners who won't be able to participate in the big end-of-the-year meets. I don't know. I think one meet a week should be enough for anyone.

So how important are dual meets. I find it difficult to answer the question in general. All I know is that the meet this afternoon is very important, and should be tremendous fun.