DIII Runner Not Going to Nationals Because of Clerical Mistake by His Coach

There are clerical mistakes at every meet. They should

always be corrected immediately...except where that clerical mistake could impact the fairness factor to the other hundreds of athletes AND team scoring.

Let's face it....this was YOUR coaches mistake. The NCAA NEVER made the mistake and now you ask them to correct a

mistake that they didn't make. AND they get blasted for it!

Your coach should be the one facing the music here and be held accountable. Not fired...but seriously sanctioned. How can you not be completely focused and intent with an event like the National Championships. He clicked the wrong thing?...how hard is it to click with a mouse if you are paying any attention at all to what you are doing.

WELL, OK....I think it would be best if they did let you run. However, in fairness,...shouldn't they ask EVERY team coach in the meet if they approve because that would impact team scoring. I'll guarantee that if you scored, it would impact someone negatively but help some other team positively. So at least one team would protest your entry.

Also, this could open up the door for other schools (and there are coaches out there that have bonus money on the line for high place finishes at NCAA) to say "oh wait, I saw the entry list and my guy would be more likely to score in the other event that I scratched him from. Please, NCAA....I just clicked the wrong thing...wah."

The NCAA can't afford to open up that bag. The whole meet could become chaos instead of keeping it to just your one situation alone.

My opinion in the end..it would be nice if they let you run as an "exhibition" runner that can't score...but I'm not keen on them just raising up their hands and saying OK to letting you run without a penalty because of your coach not paying attention enough to click the right thing before hitting the submit button.

Hoovis 2 wrote:

Yeah, nice...way to rip on the kid while he's down. You're a bloody ass...and one who is too stupid to realize that the kid is graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in Mech E...so, somehow, I think he'll be "alright" EVEN IF HE CAN"T WRITE COMPLETE SENTENCES.

Hoovis

Can'tBe wrote:

Can't be true. No one can be a senior in college and be unable to write complete sentences.

More to the point, there actually were no incomplete sentences in the original post. So, in addition to being a d i c k, Can'tBe is just plain wrong.

sorry dude--does have a point...the mistake has not been made by the ncaa...BUT, they are the only ones that can correct it. The mistake was NOT Nick's....but he is the one suffering from it.

I agree completely with Sorry Dude. While yes this does suck, there is nothing that can be done about it now. The NCAA is not a great bunch of guys in most peoples' opinions, and yes they have screwed up in the past, but not here.

And whoever said "go to the meet and try to get in", are you serious??? It's NCAA National Championships, this isn't some dual meet on the weekend between Oskash and LaCrosse where you can pay someone $10 and you'll run as many races as you want.

Also, put yourself in the other kids shoes who would get kicked out because of you, that would suck a whole lot more than not even getting in to the meet in the first place. Personally, I think your complaint is kind of like looking at the results from last years meet and saying "well I would have won that race because I've run a faster time earlier in the year so you should let me in this year." Doesnt work like that, rules are rules, you have no one to be pissed at but your coach.

"There are clerical mistakes at every meet." Just ask Gatlin.

These things can be fixed by people who have balls and stand up for doing the right thing.

I mean no matter what there's no way the NCAA bends on this issue. It's set up to be an organization that follows strict rules to maximize their own profits, and they always have and always will follow a policy of rigid inflexibility when it comes to dealing with athletes. And they'll justify it by using the same stupid slippery slope argument. Such as if we let this runner into the race on a clerical error then we will have to do the same thing for every runner in every race from now on, therefore we can't do. When we all know that's bullshit. It's the same thing if an assistant coach buys one of his athletes lunch one day because he knows the kid can't afford it. To the NCAA, it's equivalent to a booster giving a kid a car. It's all black and white - there's no gray.

Really the only objective of the NCAA is to fool the common person into thinking athletes in major sports (basketball and football) are really students first. The well being of actual student athletes rarely gets in the way of their thinking.

It was the coach's error. The coach should have been reprimanded formally, a fine should have been assessed against the school before the athlete would be allowed to run, and then the athlete should have been included in the meet.

It seems to me that the coach was accepting responsibility. It was an inadvertent and honest mistake - the correct course of action is described above.

One step even lower than this case, is the case in which an athlete was rejected from the NCAA championships because the coach entered the athlete with an imperial mark and not the metric conversion.

I don't understand which championship you are going to (DI, DII, DIII). Sorry, but here are links to the appropriate people, I guess:

DI:

http://www.ncaa.org/cgi-bin/staffmailform2.pl?id=mbockelman@ncaa.org&name=Mark+Bockelman

DII:

http://www.ncaa.org/cgi-bin/staffmailform2.pl?id=jmcwilliams@ncaa.org&name=Jacqueline+McWilliams

DIII:

http://www.ncaa.org/cgi-bin/staffmailform2.pl?id=ksteckmesser@ncaa.org&name=Kristin+Steckmesser

steve ludwig, an 800m runner from d2 uw-parkside had something unfortunate happen that was also out of his control, and the ncaa didn't care about him either. they punish the athletes for mistakes by the schools.

after writing an email on his behalf to a woman named jacquie carpenter, an ncaa official, the response i got was, "this happens to many other athletes every year."

how is that even an appropriate response? they don't even want to be bothered. they don't care about the athletes. they make money, and that's all that matters.

This reminds me of the public school/private school and in state/out of state bullshit that has been going on with high school track and cross country (dyestat had a few good articles if you don't know what I'm talking about). Just another example of old farts in straw hats getting in the way of what is really the best for the athletes. Don't let this shift the topic though...NCAA 10k is tomorrow, I believe, so we should keep the focus on Nick'ssituation.

Oh, and a followup, you can see that the links above have the names of the people and their e-mail addresses...the addresses follow the standard firstinitiallastname@ method, so if you want to go straight to the top, you could try mbrand@ncaa.org

anotherrunner, I know it wasn't a bush-league meet...I was there last year. It would be quite easy to go to the head of officials and make a case, at least for the sake of making one, or going to the coaches meeting and warning others not to make the same mistake in the future. It was his coach's fault, plain and simple, and the NCAA is making him pay for it.

This happened to some long and triple jumpers from where I went to school (Elizabethtown College) a couple of years ago because a coach after the meet complained about the sand not being level with the front of the pit in the long and triple jump. The NCAA clearly has a disregard for individual circumstances when things like this happen, like they're almost afraid to buck the trend once in fear of a flood of "OH NO! I did this wrong, get my athlete into said meet!!!!!!" What is it, maybe 500 bucks at the most, to get Nick in???

Sean Dawg wrote:

Should of run faster in the 5K or gotten a better coach.

Anyone siding with the NCAA on this one is just as bad as those bureaucratic jerks. The guy deserves to go the NCAA meet and his coach is not a bad coach just because he made a small error that ANY person can make. We are all human (except for the NCAA, they seem more like a machine). How difficulut would it be to let 1 more person in the field?

I think the legal route is the only way to go. But you should act fast. Is the race in Emporia, KS. If so let me know asap. muchos24@hotmail.com

Also, this could open up the door for other schools (and there are coaches out there that have bonus money on the line for high place finishes at NCAA) to say "oh wait, I saw the entry list and my guy would be more likely to score in the other event that I scratched him from. Please, NCAA....I just clicked the wrong thing...wah."

An interesting scenario, but CLEARLY NOT THE ONE PRESENTED HERE. This entrant is NOT GOING AT ALL because of the mistake of his coach. This is not a switch.

And seriously the crap about the coach having no excuse for clicking the wrong event, and should be reprimanded and the runner should have no recourse. Give me a break. Are you nuts are just really bitter?

You are saying this is clearly unfair, but NCAA is always unfair about these things and we should all just get used to it.

I agree with everyone saying "go to the meet and try to get in, or protest, or do something." After working four years for this, what's a couple more days, what's one more long ride? Besides, in this situation, if I didn't get in after all this, I'd want to say, "I got screwed over, but I tried everything I could have," not "I got screwed over, but what if...?"

I ran at CMU for three years; Coach Donatelli is by far the best coach (in any sport, really) that I have worked with. People make mistakes, it happens. But what I can definitely tell you is that Coach Donatelli is an incredibly dedicated and thorough person, which makes this situation all the more sad. Nick has done some amazing things at CMU, and it's a shame that his career has to end like this. Having gone to Nationals and been All-American last year both as an open athlete and with our 4x4 relay, I can speak to the feeling of accomplishment that reaching the ultimate level of competition evokes, especially at the D3 level where so much of our energy is focused on academics and our time off the track.

Please, instead of making comments about how Coach made a mistake, or how Nick doesn't deserve based on his ability to speak the Queen's English, try to help the situation if you can.

[quote]?????????????????? wrote:

[quote][B

And seriously the crap about the coach having no excuse for clicking the wrong event, and should be reprimanded and the runner should have no recourse. Give me a break. Are you nuts are just really bitter?

quote]

As a college coach, I am always paranoid that I am going to do something like this coach did and so far I have been lucky. It would be easy to accidentally click on the wrong button, but I always make sure I double and triple check everything like this, especially if it is a regional or national meet. I definitely feel sorry for both the coach and the athlete and I am sure the coach feels horrible.