NCAA DI Championships: It’s Showtime For Dressel, Fisher

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Colorado’s John Dressel and Stanford’s Grant Fisher are two freshmen that could impact their team’s spot on the podium this afternoon at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships.

Both emerged from high school as coveted 5-star recruits and signed with Pac-12 programs that have storied histories and multiple championships to their name.

That’s just about where the similarities end.

Rock-star hype didn’t surround Dressel when he signed with the top-ranked Buffaloes, at least any that coach Mark Wetmore could remember.

“Honestly, I wasn’t aware of any expectations on John,” Wetmore said Friday afternoon during the pre-championship press conference. “John was an excellent high school runner, but I don’t remember feeling any big expectations.”

Fisher, on the other hand, joined the Cardinal to much fanfare. In many people’s eyes, Fisher was one of the greatest high school cross country runner in history and those same folks expected that success to immediately transfer to the next level.

If Fisher signed with any other team – sans Colorado or rival Oregon, a team that also landed two 5-stars of its own (Tanner Anderson and Matthew Maton) – he’d be expected to be a star. That’s not the case with Stanford.

“The one thing he didn’t get to do the past two years in high school was run any race where he wasn’t the guy,” said Chris Miltenberg, who watched his third-ranked Cardinal men round into shape late in the season. “What we talked about from the beginning was, ‘Enjoy this. You get a chance to come in now, be our fourth or fifth guy, learn from Sean McGorty and the Rosas (Jim and Joe), and make it being about a great team.’ That’s the thing he hasn’t been able to do in a while.”

Fisher’s only worn the Stanford singlet once this season in NCAA competition and that was at the Pac-12 Championships where he finished 11th.

Dressel, on the other hand, has been with the Buffaloes since the beginning. He made his debut at the Pre-National Invitational (46th place), then took sixth at Pac-12s and was 19th last weekend at the Mountain Region Championships.

“We weren’t sure we’d need him or use him,” Wetmore said of Dressel. “He just evolved well enough in practice that we decided to.”

So Dressel already has a 10K under his belt, while Fisher’s first will be today. That was a calculated decision by Miltenberg to not race Fisher last Friday in rain-soaked Seatte, Washington.

“At his age, I think he can run a really good 10K; I just don’t think he can run two of them really well in eight days,” Miltenberg said. “We got really lucky last week, because it was really muddy in Seattle. Had he run there, it would be tough for him to bounce back. I think he can run right with our third and fourth guys tomorrow. What exactly that means, I hope he’s in the hunt to be in that top-40 range. I think he’s young, but he’s had a lot of big-time experience already.”

The lights don’t get much brighter than today, nor does the stage get any bigger.

It’s showtime, folks.