Mick Byrne previews the Wisconsin adidas Invitational
September 28, 2009 | Men's Cross Country
Wisconsin men's cross country coach Mick Byrne met with the media Monday afternoon to discuss the inaugural Wisconsin adidas Invitational meet on Oct. 3.
Watch the video of Byrne's press conference.
Click here for information on the sportid=195&storyid=18958"> --> Wisconsin adidas Invitational .
MICK BYRNE: 'I'm just going to echo what Coach (Jim) Stintzi said earlier, we're really excited about getting out there this Saturday and hosting what we believe is a great meet with some great teams coming in. We're excited about competing at home. Here in Madison, I think the public out there are waiting for a big college meet like this. I think they're excited about it. We're getting a lot of inquiries about the meet. We also have a high school meet going on. There are six high school races and, obviously, they're going to bring a lot of people out to (University) Ridge and to the course.
I think that in general, the people of Wisconsin, people in Madison are really looking forward to this. As Jim said, we haven't had a home cross country meet in a long, long time. So you know, that is exciting, and I think all these teams coming in are excited about competing here at Wisconsin, competing against the University of Wisconsin. So it should be a good meet. It's a great meet for the first week in October. I don 't think that we would want it to grow, right now, for the first couple years to any bigger. We're real happy with the teams that have committed to coming, and it 's kind of the level of meet that we want for the first weekend in October.
In terms of the men's team, any time you lose four of seven from a championship team that placed fourth at the national championships 12 months ago, obviously the team is going to take on a new personality. And we're kind of excited about that, to see the young kids. We believe we had a great recruiting year. Not quite sure how we 're going to handle our four freshmen, our four top freshmen, but they are going to run, whether they run in the UW uniform or not on Saturday we'll decide in the next coming days.'
QUESTION #1: Why does it make a difference if this course has got a fairway feel to it and what is the difference for athletes who will run on this for the first time'
BYRNE: 'I think it's important. I felt last year when we went to Terre Haute, (Ind.) we didn't go to the pre-nationals, so I don't know what the course looked like mid-October, but I have been, in my previous job, been to pre-nationals several times. I felt when we went to the national meet last year the grass was cut too short, too many ridges on the course and it just didn't quite have the feel or a bounce to it that I believe a cross country course should have. I mean, obviously, growing up in Europe, it's a different style of cross country course, but we seem to be, as Jim alluded to, the fact that we run a lot of our cross country races on golf courses with fairway-type courses. So I think that this is as close as you're going to get to what teams expect when they come to a championship course.'
QUESTION #2: How many of the teams competing are coming because of the course, they've heard about it, they're intrigued by what was, how many are coming because that was a selling point'
BYRNE: 'I think that definitely has a lot to do with the teams that have committed to come, but I also think that it's, they're excited about coming to race against the University of Wisconsin. The course, we've talked a lot about it being similar to the national championship course. You know, the national championships have been held in Terre Haute for many years, and I think it just gives schools an opportunity to run on a different course, give their kids a different experience, rather than going back to Terre Haute year-in-and-year-out twice a year.
So it's a combination. I think they're excited about, we've pumped up a lot about the publicity about the number of people that are going to be out there on that course. We're expecting a huge crowd, and they're excited about that.'
QUESTION #3: One of the neatest parts about Saturday is going to be the alumni race. Can you kind of talk about some of the guys who are going to be here and what spectators are going to be able to see'
BYRNE: 'Yeah. Certainly Chris Solinsky, Matt Tegencamp, Simon Bairu and Stu Eagon. A lot of those guys are coming back into town. I 'm not sure whether they're coming for, well, they are obviously coming to run. I'm not sure about racing, but they're here to run the race, run the alumni race. Solinsky is getting married. His bachelor party is Friday night, so it will be interesting to see how fast those guys run.
But yeah, I mean, they've heard about the course. They've been part of the buildup to this meet, and they're really excited about it. They want to come back home. They insisted on us having the alumni race and, quite frankly, we're excited to do that for them. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I think a lot of people will come out just to see those guys on Saturday.'
QUESTION #4: Mick, when you talk about large crowds, could you define that' What do you think is a large crowd for an event out there'
BYRNE: 'Todd Nelson will get nervous if I put a number on it, but we don't know. We have 20 shuttle buses lined up that are going to be rotating every 10, 15 minutes from Verona High School. We 've had event management staff working on this meet. It's actually been incredible for me, coming from a small institution, to see the number of people getting involved in this project, meeting after meeting, week-in-and-week-out for the last six months.
We're prepared for a large crowd. I don't want to put a number on it because those guys are going to get real nervous, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that we won't have 5-, 6-, 7-, 8,000 people out there. We 've got something like 20 high schools coming. All the parents are going to show up to see their kids compete.
Can we handle 10-, 15,000' I don't know if it's going to quite get to that stage yet, but there's a possibility. We know that there 's a huge interest in this meet locally, in the state, and in the surrounding states.'
QUESTION #5: Do you have any idea what bugs need to be worked out of this'
BYRNE: 'We just came from a meeting, actually, this morning, our final meeting before Saturday's event. To be quite honest with you, we are a little bit nervous, a little bit apprehensive about it, but we think we've worked everything through. There's always going to be situations. We can't control the weather. We can't control the number of people that show up. We can't control where spectators park. We know that the police department is going to be ticketing along (County Road) PD out there. We know that people are going to sneak into the meet.
It's cross country, and we're, quite honestly, I'm looking forward to that aspect of it, because there are some things that you can't control. The more people that show up out there, it's going to be a real fun event, and we're excited about it. We'll wing it as best we can, and we 'll do the best job that we can. Again, event management is on top of its game. For spectators, it's a great spectator course. You can run all over that course. You can see the race in many, many vantage points, and it's going to be fun to see, because that's what cross country needs in this country.
We need to have spectators, just like Terre Haute, running all over the place, screaming their heads off, ringing the cowbell, screaming, kids painted from head-to-toe in their school colors and stuff. I think you're going to see some of that, and that 's exciting.'
