Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

[JRM]

I assume results will be posted following the meet.

http://www.physical-education.pomona.ed ... tres.shtml

[utopian]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

The light blue color of the Pomona track seems unusual. Is it?

I bet some birds come in think that it's a pond.

[az2004]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

just like the boise state football field??

[Obidiah]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

The 1500 was won in about 3:41 about an hour ago.

[gh]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

>The light blue color of the Pomona track seems unusual. Is it?

I bet some
>birds come in think that it's a pond.>>

When we went to BYU for the '82 nationals on their new light-blue track, locals told us (and I believed them) that when they first put it in, they had some serious seagull carnage with rough landings.

[JRM]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

Re: track color. Here's an aerial view of the Claremont Colleges (from the google maps thread):

http://tinyurl.com/6nd5g

The traditional red/orange track is on the campus of Claremont McKenna College.

[utopian]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

Right above the baseball diamond is where the track used to be in the 1950s. The CMC track (then called Claremont Mens College) was the new track then.

Because of the new campuses: Pitzer, Harvey Mudd, a school of divinity, and the expansion of Pomona and CMC, the area is much more crowded than it used to be. Many eastern schools are much more open.

These are all top-rated schools. Although Pomona is one of the most highly rated small colleges in the nation, it is actually harder to get into CMC because it offers a combined business/government program.

If you go check out the steet names: Yale, Harvard, etc. Pomona is afflicted with Ivy-envy, as in Ivy-league schools.

[JRM]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

>Because of the new campuses: Pitzer, Harvey Mudd, a school of
>divinity, and the expansion of Pomona and CMC, the area is much more crowded
>than it used to be. Many eastern schools are much more open.


But Claremont's multi-campus/independent but affiliated college system emphasizing different learning strategies is echoed on the east coast (although the colleges are physically separated by greater distances). Claremont took the extra step to put them all on the same "supercampus", which I found was/is a wonderful and prosperous academic environment.

You forgot Scripps College, by the way (second oldest of the CCs).

Also, it's worth noting that their model has been copied elsewhere. Loyola Marymount University (formerly Loyola University and Marymount College) originally tried to adopt it before a total merger between the two schools was settled on.

>If you go check out the steet names: Yale, Harvard, etc. Pomona is afflicted with Ivy-envy, >as in Ivy-league schools.

I wouldn't call that "Ivy Envy", since as you point out Pomona is one of the top-10 ranked colleges in the nation. Also, the city names the streets, not the college.

[utopian]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

>>Because of the new campuses: Pitzer, Harvey Mudd, a school of
>divinity, and
>the expansion of Pomona and CMC, the area is much more crowded
>than it used
>to be.

You forgot Scripps College, by the way
>(second oldest of the CCs).

But I don't believe that it has expanded or at least not much. It was regarded in the 1950s as a finishing school--preparation for the right marriage. Of course, that was true for a lot of the 1950s. The women at Pomona were academically equal to the men, then they got married. Nonetheless, that generation was still young enough to benefit from the women's movement and many did very well in business, academic and NGO careers.

Claremont took the extra step to
>put them all on the same "supercampus", which I found was/is a wonderful and
>prosperous academic environment.

In my day, we had nothing to do with any of the other schools. You could take courses there, but almost no one did. There simply wasn't the time, nor the attitude. Students today are much more open and friendly (whatever other criticisms society may have of them).

>If you go check out the steet
>names: Yale, Harvard, etc. Pomona is afflicted with Ivy-envy, >as in Ivy-league
>schools.

>the city names the
>streets, not the college.

I'm not sure about the streets. I believe that the collegiate names are only on the campus. In any case, until recently, the school so dominated the town that naming the streets would have been a joint venture.

I wouldn't call that "Ivy Envy", since as you point out Pomona is
>one of the top-10 ranked colleges in the nation

It was aspiring to be recognized as equal to the ivys. The goal was not Williams or Amherst, but Princetown or Harvard. Of course, the college system comes from Oxford and Cambridge. When the first national ratings came out, the adminstration collectively creamed in their pants. Pomona was in the top five!!! Then there was the attempt to have a tradition of "planting the ivy." No one came.

This was the administration, of course. The students were cool.

BTW, Kris Kristofferson attended Pomona, where he played football and helped initiate Rugby. They had a very good Rugby team, giving both UCLA and USC some good competition.

And Robin Williams later attended CMC, when it was Claremont Mens College.

Kristofferson ran track in high school--I knew that I could finally make a relevant connection. And I believe that Williams did too, in H.S.

[Obidiah]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

Just as a note, if one looks in the Pomona-Pitzer record lists for the 10k and steeple, they might notice someone named Sieg Lindstrom

[gh]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

<<BTW, Kris Kristofferson attended Pomona, where he played football and
>helped initiate Rugby. They had a very good Rugby team, giving both UCLA and
>USC some good competition.>>

No idea if it's true, but I once heard KK as the answer to a trivia question: who was quarterbacking the opposing team when USC racked up its biggest margin of victory ever? Something like 66-0. Any truth to that?

[JRM]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

>No idea if it's true, but I once heard KK as the answer to a trivia question: ...Any
>truth to that?

Not sure about KK. In terms of stars (or relations) to have graced the hallowed halls of Claremont, Stephen Speilberg's daughter is currently enrolled at Pomona College. Aileen Quinn (the girl who played Annie in the 1980s movie/musical) went to Pitzer for one year, Eric Douglas (son of Kirk; brother of Michael) went to CMC (committed suicide last year), and interesting to me because of my work... the granddaughter of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer graduated from CMC last year (father of the atomic bomb, for those who aren't familiar with the name).

Current rumor also has it that a teen pop sensation (Hillary Duff?) will be commencing her undergraduate studies at either Pomona or CMC next year.

The Gilmore Girls (show on WB in the US -- who knows what channel in Canada... Global?) is filmed at Pomona as well.

Edward James Olmos speaks at Pomona College frequently as well -- although I don't think he went there. I was fond of his work from Miami Vice and Blade Runner, and now that he's playing Commander Adama in the Battlestar Galactica series on SciFi (my childhood favorite show), I have a renewed appreciation!

[26mi235]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

I went to grad school at Claremont Graduate School (later Claremont Graduate University) and started running with the Pomona (-Pitzer) cross country/track team. A couple of years later a Seig L. showed up. He was a pretty good runner (along with a number of others there at the time), but was a bit injury prone, unfortunately.

Also in residence for a year (taking a leave from Smith) was one Gwen Hardesty -- later Gwen Coogan, not a bad distance runner. I ran in to her almost two decades later when her kids and mine went to the same school in Madison. She was on a math post-doc for a Ken Ono. We also had Rod DeHaven's kids and Tim Hacker's at the same school at the same time, so we possibly had the fastest set of distance running parents of any elementary school this side of Kenya.

At the time that I was at the Claremont Colleges, Pomona was harder to get into than CMC. CMC got more selective when they dropped the Men's school and admitted women, but they still were behind Pomona and I would be surprised if that is not still the case. The most difficult school to get into is Harvey Mudd (SATs average somewhere over 1450); at the undergraduate level it is really on par with CalTech and MIT. It has, by far, the highest proportion of graduates that go on to get PhDs (by a factor of two over MIT and CalTech, which were tied for second).

There is a poster to the board that was, until recently, at Harvey Mudd (IIRC), and has moved to Loyola Marymount. He was cited in a thread today or yesterday on the effects of wind on sprint times (I am blanking on his posting name right now), which is unfortunate because he has a really interesting web site). My guess was right, it is the major contributor to this thread, JRM; his site is

http://myweb.lmu.edu/jmureika/track/

[Jon]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

Back to the results of pamona pitzer...

Jamie Nieto opened his outdoor season with a solid 2.27m.

It was a good meet for the Canucks too. Tyler Christopher ran a PB of 20.49 to win the 200m, while Dylan Armstrong added almost a foot to his lifetime best in the SP with a 19.83m throw.

Nicole Teter was also competing, but had a very easy race, won in 2:04.54.

[utopian]

Re: Pomona-Pitzer Invitational page

The class of 1956 at Pomona was exceptional. There was a Rhodes Scholar (two years later KK got one too and no he was not quarterbacking anything--Pomona would have to have had an ER unit on the ground had they gone up against USC--for he played end), Ved Mehta (a blind Indian who worked for his whole life at the New Yorker magazine and has written many books on his life in India and the U.S.), the actor Richard Chamberlain (even better on the stage than in the mini-series for which he is famous and who ran track as a freshman; I believe the 440), James Strombotne (a well-known west coast artist and high hurdler at Pomona), and Robert Towne (who wrote and directed the 1982 track movie Personal Best and co-wrote and directed Without Limits, one of two movies about Prefontaine).

The next year's class had 3 javelin throwers over 200 feet--one of them from CMC. Two were giants (for that period) at over 260 lbs and drafted way down on the list for the NFL. Neither picked up on it. The NFL didn't know that both had been victims of polio.