Ann Arbor Pioneer might name track for girls coach - ignore boys coach success

i was only 9 yrs old in 1986 - to be honest i'd never heard that story before.

Maybe Joseph Stalin Field would be more appropriate for the local ideology, and something all the local factions could agree on.

Just trying to find a helpful solution.

Pi Hi grad wrote:

i was only 9 yrs old in 1986 - to be honest i'd never heard that story before.

Blame the '86 mess on Dustin Mann who knew full well he didn't live in the AAP district. He's not the only parent of a female runner that's competed for AAP that didn't live in the district.

However, this name-calling is going in the wrong direction. Those who took out the petition to name the AAP track after Bryan did so without his knowledge. Could those who took out the petition be so blind to the fallout sure to come if the track where named after only one man? Apparently, yes. Okay, next move? Sleeman supporters need to make their case for their man NOW...although I suspect plenty of reaction has already reached the principles in the decision-making process.

For the record; DS coached a dozen years before BW started in '80 (not '79 as the paper reported).

Really, both of these guys are douchebags. I don't think either of them is worthy of the honor.

The swim coach, Denny Hill, is a great guy and a great coach. The track guys are tyrants, I don't give a cr*p how many championshiops they have won.

As a former runner at pioneer, i have no knowledge of cheating by either coach. I do know that both have dedicated their lives to the school and have impacted many lives. They should both be honored, but to honor one without the other would be unfair.

Sleeman had an enormous influence on my life, I owe a lot to him. and yeah, they both can be huge assholes at times, but it's because they're both passionate about what they do. And they're just old.

Westfield and Sleeman are friends, although sometimes they have hilarious arguments, and I'm sure they would both be happy to share the honor.

As for some of the other comments, Ann Arbor is a great place to live and run regardless of your political persuasion.

PiHi parent wrote:

Really, both of these guys are douchebags. I don't think either of them is worthy of the honor.

The swim coach, Denny Hill, is a great guy and a great coach. The track guys are tyrants, I don't give a cr*p how many championshiops they have won.

Denny hill - you mean the guy who couldn't get any so he bagged one of his ex-swimmers?

sleefield is right on the mark. Sleeman's guys will have to go through the same work that Hill and Westfield's people went through. So I guess we'll find out how badly they want to do it.

Coach Westfield is a coaching legend.....period. Who is this other guy? It is news when Pioneer does not win the girls state title. Name the track after Westfield

one of my coaches went to this school in the 90's, and some guy on the brooks hansons squad went to this school. I think he was an all american at Michigan.

Here's something less controversial. Rob Lillie, a long time coach at Tappan Middle School, is retiring this year. He coached track, among other sports. He's a great guy in my book.

They want to name the gym for Coach Lillie. They need 100 people to request this. To do so, send an email to Liz Margolis at the school board:

margolis@aaps.k12.mi.us

they should name the tappan gym after Iggy Pop!!! He went there. No, seriously, Rob lillie is a great guy and dedicated man.

I'm pretty sure Jim Harbaugh went to Tappan. And I would assume that brother John (Raven's head coach) went there as well. There's been quite a few noteworthy people that went through that school.

PiHi parent wrote:

Rob Lillie, a long time coach at Tappan Middle School, is retiring this year. He coached track, among other sports. He's a great guy in my book.

They want to name the gym for Coach Lillie.

Agreed, Rob is a great guy who's done a terrific job for many years. I'm sure enough will respond to get the gym named for him. His mother was a long-time secretary to the AD at Pi Hi years ago.

I attended Tappan for 6 weeks after moving from San Diego in the day. Last day of school in woodshop, some idiot glued a clamp shut. The instructor found out before the class ended and we couldn't leave (it was our last class too!) until the culprit fessed up. He finally did.

TrackFan19 wrote:

Coach Westfield is a coaching legend.....period. Who is this other guy? It is news when Pioneer does not win the girls state title. Name the track after Westfield

Uh - the "other guy" has won six team state championships and has been named national coach of the year.

When I ran there 91-95 - we won two XC state championships (in '93 we were ranked third in the nation). We also won the 4X800 in '94 with the third fastest time in the nation. We were second at track states in '94 to a cass tech team that ran within .1 sec of the national 4X200m high school record.

At least six of us from that team got scholarships to D1 teams. I ran a sub 30 min 10k in college. After winning six individual state titles at Pioneer, Todd Snyder ran for Michigan, where most notably he was 10th at NCAA's for Michigan in XC his senior year. Don McLaughlin was a Big 10 champ in the mile, with a PR of 4:02, and was a part of several Penn Relay and National champ DMR's at Michigan. Todd also is currently running for Hanson's. He ran the olympic trials for the marathon in 2008 and went sub-2:20 this year at Boston.

We were one of his better teams, but we haven't been the only group of Sleeman's runners to have such success - not to mention many doctors/lawyers/phd's etc who trace their success to having Sleeman instill in them the meaning of hard work and dedication.

As to the poster questioning our motivation to "work as hard as the girls" - we've got enough supporters to change the name of the damn school to Sleeman high, but shouldn't we question and maybe change a process that is creating so much antagonism?

IMHO, if multiple educators have excelled within the same auditorium/gym/field/track then the process should foster an environment where different factions communicate and honor people in an inclusive way - rather than force us to argue over who was the "better" coach and more deserving of an exclusive honor - like the naming of a shared venue.

Westfield is a great coach, but let's be honest, girls sports were in no way as competitive as boys sports for most of his tenure. Using the number of state championships as some kind of measuring stick between a boys team and a girls team is completely ridiculous.

You know, it actually makes more sense to name the XC course for Sleeman and the track for Westfield. The only possible problem is that the XC course may not exist officially. In the eyes of the school district, this may be just some scrubby woods with trails, where they run XC sometimes.

But, heck, this would be a very nice tribute to Don and all of us who performed maintenance there. It's a nifty course and an asset to the community, runner or not.

Ben wrote:

"Westfield is a great coach, but let's be honest, girls sports were in no way as competitive as boys sports for most of his tenure."

Whoa - gotta disagree with you there, Ben. I remember the "early days" and they didn't seem all that cushy to me. Take a look at:

http://www.mhsaa.com/sports/gtr/yearlyindv.html

The list is organized by school class/division (very poorly, I might add). Takes a bit of hunting to find the Division I/Class A results.

I'm not sure of your point. The times have improved at most distances - maybe less than you might think, but they've still improved. Anyways, the best way to analyze whether the girls state meet has become more competitive would be to compare the median times and standard deviations - not a simple comparison of the winning times. Then you could do the same for the boys and see if there were any differences in the % changes through the years.

I think we can agree that attitudes regarding females in sports have completely changed in the last 30 years. To Westfield's credit - he pushed his girls as hard as he would have pushed boys. But, there weren't many girls coaches in the state who had that same attitude until more recently.

My mom has always told me how much she wished that girls sports had existed when she was a kid. So, don't mistake me for some hard headed neanderthal - but, i think we should acknowledge that these attitudes, as wrong as they were, did have an effect on the relative competitiveness of boys and girls sports - and in some ways they still do.

I agree, Ben, that a statistical analysis would be the best indicator. And no, I certainly do not consider you some hard-headed neanderthal. I was reacting to your "were in no way as competitive" comment, which - given that I remember when both Westfield and Sleeman began coaching - struck me as too much of a generalization. (And perhaps not accurate.)

If I had the time and could get my hands on the data, that would actually be a fun research exercise.

You are right Laurel - it probably was too much of a generalization - but, no worse of a generalization than some people seem to be making that more state championships = better coach.