Thursday, November 18, 2010

Yes/No: The 2010 Grand Finale!

This is the most important week of the year in college cross country. NCAA Division I and III will end their seasons with National Meets while Division II holds their Regional Meets with Nationals following the week after. It is also the final week in the Yes/No contest. It would be difficult to choose a single Yes/No question, so we are going with three -- one for each Division!

The University of Minnesota qualified its men's and women's teams to Nationals this year. The Gophers will compete at Indiana State on Monday. On the Division II side, area squads will be heading back to Nebraska for the Regional Meet on Saturday. Wayne State is hosting with the first race slated for 11:00 A.M. Finally, the Division III schools in Minnesota raced the Regional Meet last weekend at Wartburg and a handful of teams and individuals will return to Waverly, Iowa for the National Meet.

With all this cross country action we have an abundance of possible Yes/No questions. Here are the three we came up with...

Y/N: Will the Gopher cross country teams (men and/or women) finish in the top twenty in the overall team standings?

Y/N: Will the UMD women finish among the top four teams at the Central Regional Meet and auto-qualify for the National Meet?

Y/N: Will more than six combined men and women from the MIAC finish in the top thirty-five and be named All Americans at the Division III National Meet on Saturday?

Both Gopher squads finished third at the Regional Meet and received at-large bids to the National Meet. The Gopher women finished tenth at the meet last year and are currently ranked twenty-second. The men finished twenty-fourth in 2009 and are now ranked twenty-third in the nation.

The UMD women's cross country team were upset in a closely fought NSIC battle by both Augustana and the University of Mary. This week, they will likely fight it out with those two teams for the remaining automatic qualifying slots behind perennial powers Western State and Adams State. UMD is currently ranked fifth in the Central Region.

The MIAC athletes routinely prove that it is one of the toughest conferences in the nation at the Division III National Meet. Last year, the MIAC finished with eight individual All-Americans and there are a number of top runners coming back this year.

Returning MIAC All-Americans include Simone Childs-Walker (eleventh in 2009) and Ben Sathre (twenty-sixth last year). Dustin Franta just missed the threshold by finishing thirty-seventh. Other top runners include the top two women at MIAC - Maren Westby and Emma Lee, both from St. Olaf, and two runners from St. Thomas - Taylor Berg and Allie Metzler. On the men's side, MIAC champ Devin Monson should certainly finish much higher than his 102nd place finish last year and Griak champ Tom Sederquist will compete as well.

To play our game, simply type "yes" or "no" into the subject line of an e-mail and send it to us at DtBFantasy [AT] gmail [DOT] com before 11:00 A.M. CST, Saturday, November 20th. Please put your answers in the subject line of the e-mail and make sure your full name appears somewhere in the e-mail. We will continue to offer a bonus for participants making their debut in Yes/No - a correct answer will be worth two points for any first-time players.

My answers: D1 - Yes, D2 - Yes, D3 - No

The fantasy contest question from last week was: Will more than two University of Minnesota Gopher individuals (men and/or women) finish in the top ten of their respective races at the Midwest Regional Meet at Bradley University on Saturday? The answer was no. Stephanie Price won the Regional race and Ben Blankenship finished seventh. Mike Torchia was the next highest Gopher finisher in twelfth place.

The Yes/No contest is entering the final weekend and it looks to be a two-horse-race. Lori Anne Peterson enters the final contest with a one-point lead over Gregg Robertson, twenty-eight to twenty-seven. The last contest will offer three questions and so Toby Hatlevig, with twenty-five points, still has a mathematical shot at tying for first place.

For all the results, please visit DtB Fantasy Corner.

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