Season 2 Episode 4: Mike Buslepp, Romeo XC

The Blue Water Running Podcast

On the Michigan high school running stage, there was no bigger star in 2024 than Romeo’s girls' team.
Coming off of a 2023 state title, the Bulldogs entered 2024 with big goals and high expectations. They won the Jackson Invitational, the Portage Invitational, and the Holly-Duane Raffin Festival of Races with their top five runners in the top ten places; these are all some of the most competitive invitationals in the state. They won the MAC RED Championships, the Macomb County Championships, and their regional with a perfect score of 15, taking first through seventh place in all these meets. They won the D1 state meet by 82 points, with their top six all earning all-state honors, taking 6th, 11th, 17th, 20th, 22nd, and 30th, with their seventh runner in 38th. The team then competed at Nike Cross Nationals, taking sixth overall in the country. Romeo had three athletes in the 17s most of the season and had an average team spread of around 30 seconds between their top five: if you spread it out over their top seven varsity runners, it was still less than a minute. They would have beaten quite a few when matched up against local boys’ teams.
Romeo has a long history of producing one of the best programs in D1 for both boys and girls, with continuous streaks of league, county, and regional championships over many years. Their boys’ team also dominated local competition for quite some time and produced many of the state’s top runners.
On this episode, we will chat with head coach Mike Buslepp, or “Bus” as he’s affectionately known to his athletes, and pick the brain of the man at the helm of the cross country powerhouse that is Romeo.

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