Coach Gibbard- Michigan State

The man was a saint. The Bill Bowerman of the mid-west.

Unfortunately he was constantly burdened with whiney & untalented runners that prevented him from acheiving the glory he deserved.

Did any of the guys from Harrison High School in Farmington Hills every do anything for Gibbard?

I heard a story that one of the Harrison guys (Foley, Anderson?) was running number 1 man for Gibbard at Michigan State and then got kicked off the team.

Gibbard's training philosophy was to run hard every day. No recovery days other than the day before the race. Aerobic running every day. This was probably a throw back to his own training days when he ran around a 4:10 mile in HS/College back in the 40's. Some runners such as Herb Lindsay seemed to handle the workload and still run decent times. Many others broke down or did not run to their potential.

I heard Anderson's kid was a pretty good runner down in North Carolina.

Gibbard was a saint and a role model to all.

I only wish I was good enough to have my severe lack of talent ruined by him like my peers.

And Anderson's talented son is indeed going to MSU to follow in his father's footsteps. Do they let freshmen into Rick's?

I can confirm at least one runner transferred from Oregon to run for Gibb during the golden age.

And Loy Norrix was the pipeline to MSU not Harrison.

JGibbard wrote:

Gibbard's training philosophy was to run hard every day. No recovery days other than the day before the race. Aerobic running every day. This was probably a throw back to his own training days when he ran around a 4:10 mile in HS/College back in the 40's. Some runners such as Herb Lindsay seemed to handle the workload and still run decent times. Many others broke down or did not run to their potential.

Every Monday was mile repeats and every Wednesday was 880s. It wasn't all aerobic.

Anderson thought he was Humphrey Bogart at Rick's Place.

How was Michigan State men's cross very good in the Big Ten (and very competitively nationally) prior to the mid 70's and then really dropped after that? Was it coaching? recruiting?

Guy was nice but what a con man. Early 70's my college team went to MSU for CC meet. He and our coach were good friends and he informed us that the course had been changed a bit, I'l show you around, he jumps in a golf cart and drives away slowly with our coach. We follow (not the wisest move of the day)

About ten minute into the tour of the new coarse my team is at race pace trying to keep up, Gibbard is having a ball draggin us around at a fast clip. It ended when he drove the cart down a hill at top speed turns left and our coach is off the seat holding on for dear life to Gibbard and the arm rest as his torso goes flying through the air.

We walk jog back to the starting area and the MSU guys are rolling. They remarked that Gibbard must really like our coach.... he left the coach the week before in the dirt after the same turn. Needless to say we were a little tired by the time the race started

Stan Mavis says wrote:

JGibbard wrote:

Gibbard's training philosophy was to run hard every day. No recovery days other than the day before the race. Aerobic running every day. This was probably a throw back to his own training days when he ran around a 4:10 mile in HS/College back in the 40's. Some runners such as Herb Lindsay seemed to handle the workload and still run decent times. Many others broke down or did not run to their potential.

Every Monday was mile repeats and every Wednesday was 880s. It wasn't all aerobic.

Sorry, I meant all Anaerobic. I also should mention that Stan Mavis ran some pretty good times too.

I think my time would have been better spent trying to set arcane records on treadmills.

Treadmill?

Hey, when I'm all washed up, I want to set a few treadmill records with my friends.

I coached the MSU women during part of Gibbard's tenure and it's easy to say the male athletes there were far superior to those indolent spankmasters everpresent at Wake Forest in the mid-90s or so.

I always admired Coach Gibbard's willingness to kick guys off the team who were complete cancers to the program. No sense having that rifraf around.

I'll bet Bill Wehrwein & Marshall Dill have a few good stories.

I wish our coach had kicked some of the losers off our team at Wake. Those youngster were p*ssies, and now they spend a lot of time gabbing on message boards these days.

Or so I've heard.

Stu! How you been?

Are you taking about those twins? Can't remember their names, but you know, the gay ones?

Just noticed the subject. I had the good fortune of running for him during his last 2 years. Basically all the other stories are true BUT if you were tough enough to put up with him you had a shot and basically that was his philosophy. He figured if you couldn't handle him you couldn't handle the Big Ten. He hated guys that backed down from him. His words kept me from transferring after my freshman year and the last thing he did on the way out the door was make sure I got money the next year.

All that said I do have great stories about those two years.