So...where's Katie Flood?

UPDATE (February 9th)--The post on the University of Washington track team's Twitter site says, "2009 NTN Individual champ Katie Flood signs with the Dawgs!"

With this, and the subsequent post stating that Libby Miller of California's Simi Valley HS, who finished 14th in the 2009 Foot Locker championship race has also signed a national letter of intent, the Huskies are poised to have the best cross country/distance running recruiting class in recent memory in NCAA Division I!

UPDATE (February 7th)--According to a post on dyestat.com, Katie Flood will officially sign her national letter of intent to attend the University of Washington on Monday. In that post, Flood's high school teammate Ashlie Decker, will sign with the University of Minnesota.

In response to the series of posts we've put up on the University of Washington's recruiting class (as of 5 pm, Saturday afternoon, the school hasn't made an official announcement, though they've Tweeted the names of their recruits), one of the five readers of this blog asked about Katie Flood.

Using the power of Google, we did some research on Flood (left/photo courtesy RunnerSpace.com), the winner of the Nike Cross Nationals back in December, and found that she made a verbal commitment to the University of Washington, according to television station KCRG-TV9 in Iowa back in January...here's the link.

Flood, who currently attends Dowling Catholic in West Des Moines, Iowa, also won the Nike Cross Heartland regional meet, and finished eighth in the Foot Locker national championships in San Diego, one week after winning the Nike Cross Nationals.

On the track, she's run 2:11.16 for 800, 4:33.92 for 1500, and 9:42.17 for 3000. She's won six Iowa 4A titles on the track, and won the Iowa state 4A cross country title last fall.

Until the University of Washington officially receives her National Letter of Intent, they naturally can't comment or tweet about her per NCAA regulations. Besides, verbal commitments don't mean a hill of beans, as UCLA found out when javelin thrower Sam Crouser reneged on his verbal commitment and signed with the University of Oregon.

Back in December, there was a thread on both letsrun.com and dyestat.com stating that Flood was intending to attend the UW. Of course, I paid little heed to the letsrun posters, given the propensity for folks to hide behind anonymous screen names and post nonsense like Nike being a puppet company run by the Chinese and USC and UCLA being the only schools to produce Olympic and World Championship medalists for the USA--but I digress.

IFF (if and only if--from high school math) Flood's verbal to attend Washington comes into fruition, the Dawgs potentially have one of the best recruiting classes for cross country and track distance running by any NCAA D-1 schools in a long time (I don't claim to be an expert on recruiting, but some of my five readers think that it's one of the best classes).

Washington's signed Megan Goethals, the Foot Locker champ from Michigan; Megan Morgan from California, the 17th place finisher at Foot Locker; another Californian, Chloe Curtis from Redondo Union HS; and, Mackenzie Carter from Fayetteville-Manlius HS in New York.

Add them to returning runners Kendra Schaaf, Mel Lawrence, Christine Babcock, Lauren Saylor (who didn't run in the '09 NCAA, but ran on the '08 national championship squad), Kayla Evans, Lindsay Flanagan, and Kailey Campbell, and you potentially have a team that may be better than the '08 NCAA champs.

So, what's the bottom line? Wait until Washington officially tweets or issues a press release to find out for certain if Katie Flood will "Go Purple. Be Gold" as their marketing motto for the current school year states.