Why does Cal suck so much?

A Bear wrote:

UC Berkeley seems to get great recruits every single year yet they never seem to do anything with them. A 24th finish at prenats this year plus 2 years of last place finishes at conference in xc. What is going on over there? Are there any other programs in the NCAA who squander more talent than they do?

doesn't take a Cal education to figure out it's the coaching

Current roster pre nats vs high school.

Walden 19th at prenats, 14:07 4:08 and 8:51 in hs

Estifanos 94th at prenats 9:07 in hs

Joyce: 132nd at prenats 9:02 4:10 in hs

Tu (true frosh) 157th at prenats 9:13 in hs

Malone-White 239th at prenats 4:12 in hs

Lawson 50th at bronco invite 14:03 8:58 in hs

Hamilton 138th at bronco 1:51 4:10 in hs

Later (hurt) 14:13 8:50 in hs

Looks a lot like Colorado on the right, but not on the left.

Colorado roster prenats, track times, high school.

Theroux: 2nd at prenats, 1:51, 3:45, 13:57, 7:54 3k, 8:49 3kst, 9:13 in hs

Saarel 4th at prenats 3:41, 7:52, 13:48 8:45, 4:02 in hs

Moussa 8th at prenats 3:43, 13:56, 30:38 8:49, 14:05 in hs

Hurysz: 9th at prenats 3:40, 7:50, 13:55 8:49, 4:06 in hs

Murphy 12th at prenats 3:47, 13:48, 29:36, 9:14 in hs

Winter 14th at prenats 3:44, 13:55 4:07, 9:09 in hs

I thought this was going to be a college football thread.

To be fair, the Colorado high school times are about 5 secs/mile faster than the Cal ones. But if you add 25 seconds to the prenats times Colorado still does extremely well.

Not a huge fan of Cal's coaching either.

not the greatest place to train.

You can not totally blame the coaches.

http://www.flotrack.org/video/727445-Cal-Onesie-Relay-2013

whirledpeas wrote:

not the greatest place to train.

Absolutely not true from a weather/trails/route perspective.

whirledpeas wrote:

not the greatest place to train.

Close to: Tilden, Sibley, Redwood parks. (all connect via trails and have options from moderate rolling hills to very steep)

Lafayette bike path (flat, 6+ miles with 1/4 mile marks)

Berkeley Marina (flat, big loops with mile marks)

Have: dirt track, regular all weather track, alter-G treadmills.

The only thing they don't have is altitude. They have similar recruiting classes to Syracuse, Wisco, etc, who are also sea level, yet soundly lose to them. Think 5-7 in front of Cal's 1 or 2.

I guess the other thing they are missing is long term aerobic development-oriented coaching.

My observation as a coach who has been an observer of Cal over the years:

The culture is very different. This can do a lot as far as guiding the choices, outside of practice, of the individuals on a roster. Complete genetic freaks aside, it is very difficult to live like a top DI distance runner if most of the people around you aren't absolutely committed to doing the same thing.

What does building a culture take? A lot of freaking hours.

Sticking with the "hours" equation, consider this. Building a culture quickly where there was none before might take 2 years. The hours that go into this are the head coach's, but also the assistant coach's, and importantly, the first athletes to buy in. In this way, the hours can pile up exponentially. One coach trying to turn the tide will take longer than 2. Once the tide has turned, it has it's own momentum. The athletes are making it happen themselves. Further, maintaining culture, both while building and once established, requires a constant state of look out for the latest, unpredictable force of distraction that will inevitably spring up on any decent college team.

To get concrete with Cal vs. Boulder. Boulder is first of all a distance focused program, with 3 full-time coaches on staff looking over distance and distance operations/recruiting. I would say all three of these coaches are putting in many hours, with quite a lot of experience backing those hours. They have also had more years to put in those hours, and at this point, are without a doubt in culture maintenance mode.

Cal is a program with technically three full time coaches dealing with distance. However--and again I'm not really connected to the Cal program, but there are certain things that you can pick up-- their associate head coach seems to carry a very large workload. This is great, and she seems to do well by and large. She has certainly had some good development with certain individuals, and she has recruited decently well. But it makes me wonder how many hours toward the culture the head coach devotes. And who has control over the means to build culture (i.e. rules, discipline, final say in recruiting and recruiting strategies--I know none of these particulars, but this could be an issue).

I would also wager the funding for the distance programs at both schools are quite different. Short of how they divide up scholarship allocation, this is publicly available, but I'll leave looking it up for someone else.

My 2 cents.

Head coach has had 30 or so years to develop a "culture."

Most of their success a few years back was when Magdalena Lewey Boulet was in charge of the training.

While they may not spend the same kind of scholarship money in the distances that Colorado does, you have to keep in mind that the talent pool in California is absolutely massive with plenty of kids just dying to get into Cal, the best public university in the country. I don't think that is that much of a factor.

cal sucks because tony sandoval is an incompetant f**king d*ckhead. i run for another pac 12 school but i have friends at cal who all say the same thing- terrible coaching, iffy 'team unity', and training that just consists of hammering the sh*t out of hard intervals year round instead of focusing on aerobic development and mileage.

that said, a handful of individuals can occasionally become very successful and improve a lot- but you'd better believe it's because they're smart about their training, not the coaches. for example, my buddy thomas joyce ran 422 as a hs junior, 410 as a hs senior, 350 as a freshman, and 341 as a soph last year, making ncaa finals in the 1500.

We are more or less in agreement.

Magda, and now Shayla, were and are doing at least decent jobs. The situation was not set up such that retention of Magda was prioritized is my guess. Time will tell whether the same is true with Shayla.

As great as the situation is at Cal--and believe me, I agree with you that it is phenomenal despite whatever scholarship limitations there are--as far as answering the question of why isn't Cal better than they are, the first glance has to go to the position with the most control over how things are going to go: the director. Even if he's not on the phone every night, or hands on with all the kids, he's setting up the conditions those that are have to do their jobs in.

If current staff are left to do their jobs, the way they see fit, for several years more, I expect that things will get a lot better. But remember, a lot of times when a program makes a quick turnaround, it follows a new director coming in and saying, "This is the new expectation; this is the new standard; this is how we are going to recruit; if anyone steps out of line with my vision, they can have a release; etc." This might not be possible in the current situation. I have no idea.

pac 12 swagger wrote:

that said, a handful of individuals can occasionally become very successful and improve a lot- but you'd better believe it's because they're smart about their training, not the coaches. for example, my buddy thomas joyce ran 422 as a hs junior, 410 as a hs senior, 350 as a freshman, and 341 as a soph last year, making ncaa finals in the 1500.

As has been noted (not in this thread), athletes at Cal can occasionally do well at the 1500. This is because it is a mid distance race, not as dependent on aerobic development.

Note Thomas was 133rd at pre-nats. He ran 15:20 at state in XC and 9:03 in high school, and as you pointed out, is probably a late bloomer, running 4:22 then 4:10. If he had been trained like a 5k/10k runner we might be seeing some exceptional distance track times, the same 1500 time and infinitely better cross country performances.

also building a culture shouldn't be too hard when you're getting several sub 9 guys every year. obviously they trained in high school and want to do well.

After this dismal finish, I am reigniting my campaign to raise awareness to get Tony Sandoval fired from the Cal coaching staff by the end of the year.

Tony 2014 wrote:

After this dismal finish, I am reigniting my campaign to raise awareness to get Tony Sandoval fired from the Cal coaching staff by the end of the year.

This is one of the funniest things I have ever read.