UC Berkeley cross-country coach Tony Sandoval...

Go Ducks has a great point... This guy sucks! He is going to f*** up these guys!

Get back to BT, R.

I bet you are a great coach who should have the job. Oh wait, you are most likely a local HS kid with lots of acne or some college dork that can't get a date because you are an ugly dork.

Okay, really my point is who cares about UC Berkley XC and who cares what you think. Calling someone out on the computer by name and then hiding behind the name "Go Ducks" is lame.

Tony Sandoval has coached many great runners and I believe knows his stuff. That being said i would like someone who has been coached recently (last 5-7 years)by Sandoval to chime in.I have heard rumors, lets run rumors, so take it with a grain of salt, that he is not much of a recruiter or an every day hands on coach. Lazy if you will.

He has a great class comeing in with California State's best runner in Matusak, along with Gibray last years state two mile champ and another North Coast Section stud freshman.He also has Kevien Davis a 9:00 minute steepler along with Gibrays older brother who ran a low 14:00 at Stanford.I say give him four years with these recruite's and hope he continues to get some Cali studs. With a world class education at Berkeley there is no reason not to get good student athelete's.

GO BEARS!!!!!

Cal Sucks!!! A bunch of Fags!!!!

That's not me. I don't know much about the guy at all. My guess is the thread starter has nothing to do with the ducks either.

how good would your cross country team be the past 10+ years if you had little to no scholarship money? He has consistantly produced some very good individuals who came with less credentials (running) than many other runners who have represented "distance schools" and ran poorly.

You don't always know what has or is going on at that instution.

Cal Poly has been to NCAAs many times with the team recently and they were 10th last year

they have 1.5 scholarships in mens distance

so dont use the sandoval doesnt have scholarships excuse, thats weak!

So if you're saying that a coach has a better recruiting class than he did four years ago, wouldn't it pretty much follow that he would get better results just based on the beginning talent level he has to work with?

One could wait four years to judge a coach, but why would that necessarily tell us more than the previous four years, or the four before that? A coach of many years at the same institution has many "four year" data points that could be viewed.

The key, I would think, would be to assess rating of improvement or demise over the past four years, say, and then compare that with your assessment four years from now.

This man has the worst coach record of anybody in america in XC and he still has a job after 25 years. Just look at the pac 10 XC results year after year! PATHETIC!

Can anyone name 5 stud runners to come out of Cal's program a have any future success later down the road? I can't even remember anyone who did anything at Cal worth talking about.

Hell, if I ran for Cal I wouldn't even tell anyone. There is no tradition here what-so-ever...

Personal opinion... Tony should get replaced and quick before he destroys this talent that is coming in!

Tony is the shits. Period. The results speak for themselves, but I've also seen him in action up close. He recuited several athletes of mine (not casual recruits, these were home visits etc.) when I was coaching HS and I was stunned by his lousy recruiting tactics and lack of knowledge of those he was pursuing. Even my athletes who went to Cal (now talking other events, no d.r.'s of mine went), he managed to take a love of track and field and run them off.

"My opinion is that his time at Cal has been long over extended"

Your opinion is the correct one. One can only live off of Richie Boulet for so long.

Since the arrival of Hutchinson, recruiting at Cal has gone way up.Either Hutchinson lit a fire under Tony or he was given more$$$$ to get some kids.He has coached the like's of Richie Boulet and Bolota Asmeron, but has had more succes with women. I can't think of a footlocker or blue chipper that has gone to Cal, so we can't really say he didn't develope them.As I said earlier I don't think it's a case where he doesnt know his stuff.That's why I say give him four years with these guys, he has never had such a good class. I agree though it is time to get Cal out of the cellar. Hutchinson will expect results, thats why the Cal AD hired him.

je

Do you mean Chris Huffins? Who's Hutchinson?

Why would a current coach expect results any more than a former did or did not? I could think that maybe the old coach knew he had job security, but I'm sure the current coach knows he has job security as well.

If you are going to take a small sample, and hand pick them at that, I don't see that you will get an acurate portrayal of a good or bad a coach. Either take a random sample, or look at more than the outliers.

When all (or at least more) of the athletes that went to a particular program are taken into consideration, only then will the true ability of a coach be assessible.

What I would say is why is now the time to get Cal out of the cellar. Could Cal have gotten out of the cellar years ago? And even if they get out of the cellar within the next four years will it necessarily be due to the coach?

Yes Chris Huffins, who is Hutchinson?

I think Huffins expects results, he's young energetic. The old coach who had been there for a billion years,maybe 8lapper can recall his name, was old and burned out.At one time he was the man at Cal.

All I'm saying is that I don't think its a matter of Tony not knowing the differance between a tempo run and a long run. I think he has not gotten the talent in the past so runners the like's of Boulet and Asmeron who stumbled along to Cal he was able to develope.He didn't srew them up.

Maybe he has not been able to get the talent due to dollars,maybe he hasn't done a good job recruiting, maybe he is lazy and doesn't keep an eye on his runners, I don't know you don't know. That's why it would be nice to hear from some runners that have had hands on experience with Tony.

If he does get them out of the cellar and recruiting and things are looking up why get rid of a coach. Now if that doesn't happen I can assure you Huffins will pull the rug.Any way I hope things turn around. It seems that Stanford is not getting the talent they once where under Vin and rumor is that the academic standards at Stanford have tightened.I only see Oregon moving up and the Pac 10 getting more competative.

je

I was a walk on at Cal in 1995. I don't think Sandoval is necessarily a bad coach in terms of developing a good athlete. (Besides some of the Cal alums mentioned, he coached Magdalena Lewy, who was 5th in marathon trials last year.) But he was crap for building a program. Maybe it was laziness, I don't really know. But he rarely had time for anyone who was not his top 2 or 3 women. He was really rigid with certain things, like if you weren't running at least x miles/week, then you were not allowed to run the higher quality stuff, regardless of what your training program had been like in the past. Once you got your mileage up to his standards, he started up with fast stuff pretty intensely. I was looking at focusing on the 3k/5k and I remember doing many pretty hard 200s in February. I dropped out of the program with injuries, and a general feeling that I was wasting my time. I was definitely slow by D1 standards, but I was also not the slowest on the team. I remember following the XC team the next couple of years and, I actually would have been top 7 for at least one of those seasons. It seems like Sandoval should have been able to do quite a bit more with what he had over the years at a major school like Cal, but I don't know what his money situation is.

I think Huffins is a piece of shit too...

Berkeley has all the tools to put together a great Cross Country and Track team but they are not installing the right coaches. Huffins is a joak, therefore Berkeley is a joak.

The concerts are great there but not the coaches.

And why did they get rid of Joy Upshaw? she was perhaps the best thing thy had going for them...

Your spelling is also a joak.

Anywho, I heard from some of their runners that they don't even focus so much on cross as they do with track.