Things you, too, may have wondered about and not have known.
I'll begin this scattered little piece by sharing some information that came my way from John Sullivan, a gentleman I met last weekend at Nike Cross Nationals.
John Sullivan is a former 4:10 high school miler and his son a former Foot Locker finalist. As you'll soon come to realize, he's also a certified track and field/cross country nut. On top of it all, he's nice guy. I enjoyed getting to meet him. Among other things, we shared a 40-minute run in the pre-dawn darkness of suburban Portland.
Anyhow, the following is some of the information he shared with me. I culled out the information of particular interest to Colorado cross country fans.
1. Among schools with the most Foot Locker Finals girls appearances, Boulder now ranks fifth (in a tie) with seven appearances.
2. Smoky Hill ranks third on the same list with nine appearances.
3. In combined boys and girls appearances at Foot Locker Nationals, Smoky Hill ranks in a tie for sixth at 10 appearances.
4. Smoky Hill also tops the list in consecutive years of appearances with six.
5. In appearances by one family, the Torres family (Jorge and Eduardo) leads the pack with seven, but the Kaltenbach family is in a tie for second with six. The Torres brothers, of course, were not from Colorado but did later establish a Colorado connection.
6. Colorado ranks 12th on the list of boys Foot Locker All-Americans with 16. Colorado ranks seventh on the list of girls Foot Locker All-Americans with 22.
7. Smoky Hill is tied with Saratoga Springs at the top for (girls) Foot Locker All-Americans from one school with six. Boulder is tied for third with five.
8. Colorado ranks third in the count of girls individual champions by state with three.
9. The Midwest region is at the top of the list for both boys and girls team champions. This year's Midwest boys team score of 22 was one point of the record for best-ever region team score.
10. 2010 is the first time ever the top four boys finishers were non-seniors. Even if we count Verzbicas as a senior (long story), there has never before been a year when even three of the top four were not seniors.
Okay, now for the question we're all dying to know--Why do people from New York have a fascination with bizarre spellings of the name Ashlyn? Not to seem disrespectful or anything, but Aislynn Ryan was tough enough to decipher. Now Aisling Cuffe?! I was relatively certain there was no tongue on earth where "Aisling" decoded as "Ashlyn" until I did a little internet research. It seems we owe this little twist of the fates of spelling to the Irish (though the Irish apparently didn't historically use aisling as a name). The now-associated pronunciation is apparently something of an American fancy. In any case, little wonder that some folks around Lake Placid have taken to insisting on spelling everything phonetically. Apparently, free-form spelling is the hip thing in New York 
.
And, now, for a more debatable topic...
Going into December, consensus of opinion gave NXN the nod for attracting the better field of boys individuals and Foot Locker the nod for girls individuals.
While this is something like comparing the size of an elephant to a hippopotamus (both are largish beasts, thank you), I think the results bear out the consensus opinion on the boys. Lukas Verzbicas was pushed a lot longer and harder at NXN than at FLN. If you pull out the other common entries, namely Tony Smoragiewicz, James Martin, Jack Driggs, Chris Walden, and Zach Wills, you see a trend toward higher finishes at FLN than NXN. Zach Wills seems to be the most notable exception here, but at some point you have to allow for fatigue (from both racing and travel) to appear at FLN. It appears that the travel and racing caught up with Wills. And, if so, that would certainly be understandable. Even a teenage body comes to a point of breaking down.
I'm not as comfortable agreeing with the consensus opinion for the girls.
Certainly, there was no Aisling Cuffe at NXN. Rachel Johnson was second at FLN and first at NXN. Allison Woodward was 14th at NXN and 6th at FLN. Kayla Beattie had a matched set of 12ths for the two races. Reaching a little, Julia Foster defeated Erin Hooker by a relatively small margin at NXN-SW. Foster finished 34th at FLN, while Hooker finished 17th at NXN.
Especially once you consider that those who went to both NXN and FLN were likely at somewhat of a fatigue disadvantage by the time they arrived in San Diego, none of the above information builds anything resembling a strong case that FLN had the stronger girls field. From my vantage point, I'd estimate the fields as probably pretty close to even at the top end--Aisling Cuffe excepted. If there's an edge to be claimed after Cuffe, it probably belongs to NXN.
Dissenting opinions?
And, finally, as I watched the scroller of the count of viewers of the FLN race, I almost immediately found myself asking, "I wonder what the same count would have looked like for the NXN races?" That's an interesting question that I don't know the answer to. In any case, the few thousands of people tuned on their computers were treated to a wonderful spectacle of racing. It would have been fun to have been there in person, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to watch the race live.