Brodey Hasty will be back!

Dumb question:

Why doesnt he just go to Brentwood Academy? They would probably be happy (Im guessing to be fair) to accommodate his coaching "situation" and he'd be free of the menacing, overbearing rules that the unwashed masses have to follow in public schools.

Hasty ran great at NXR winning in sub 14:40. His team was far off from qualifying tho

Bob Washington wrote:

Hasty ran great at NXR winning in sub 14:40. His team was far off from qualifying tho

They weren't too far off, according to Milesplit they were in 6th and 28 points or so out of 4th and a possible wild card. Would have been very interesting to see if NXN would have passed over the #3 team to invite the #4 team if that #4 was Brodey's Brentwood.

Horshoes and hand grenades. Almost doesn't count. Looks like Hasty moves on and the team goes home.

Seems like a lot of drama and articles on milesplit about a marginal team with a #1 runner? Am I missing something?

This was always about a coach, not about kids.

Really nice race by Hasty. And his team did well considering the lack of competitive races leading up to NXR SE for them and it appears that several of the kids are under classmen and never even raced a high school XC meet. Kudos to them and their coach.

You guys are right. It is all about a coach who cheated a program. Not the kids. Everyone loses when this kind of crap happens.

Looking forward to watching some great racing!

Great coach .

I'm resurrecting this just because I want to be clear about not only the rules say (in Tennessee, in that school district, and elsewhere), but what people think is ethical and right.

I'm a private coach who also coaches XC and track at the school where I teach. None of my running clients are (or ever have been) students at the school where I teach and coach. I think of that as the bright line -- my kids at the school are my kids at the school, and they deserve the best I can give them because they're my students and my student-athletes.

I'll say this: early on it was hard to figure out how to balance the time commitments, and initially there was a definite pull toward the private clients when time needed to be prioritized. (This would be mostly at home, making training plans, going over practices and old performances, communicating with athletes, etc.) The urge is to meet the needs of the paying customer first. But then, I decided that my student-athletes are paying, too -- my salary as a teacher and my stipend as a school coach. Maybe not as much. But eventually I had to make a decision for my own sanity as to who would get first priority for my time, and I decided it had to be my school team and those kids. I suppose it's because most of the kids at my school could never afford a private coach and thus were reliant on me, alone, to do the best job I could for them. There are enough private coaches out there that a kid (and parents) who can afford one can go and find someone else if they need to. I lost a few clients, but I'm up front about it now: my school gets first priority, and I'll do the best I can for paying clients after that. I have a good rapport with some of my private athletes, and that arrangement is fine with them; some parents want to pay for your sole attention, and I've had to part ways with them amicably. I also charge less than I did.

I want to say that, and this might seem defensive, but there are good reasons why being a private coach is the best fit for some coaches. First off, paid coaching positions at high schools and colleges are tough to come by, even if you just need a little stipend to pay for your time and travel. High school coaches in lots of sports, track/XC among them, really enjoy what they do, for good reason! It's fun and rewarding and is a constant (interesting) challenge. Anyway, you could be a very qualified track/XC coach and not be able to find a paid coaching job. Even volunteer jobs are not _that_ easy to come by -- HS and college XC/track coaches don't need an infinite number of volunteer coaches on the staff.

Private coaches, if they keep their numbers limited, can give the kind of individual attention to an athlete they can't get from their high school coaches, especially if their high schools have large teams and their coaches are good about spreading the love around the team and trying to develop everyone, and not just focusing on the stars.

Years ago I was an assistant coach at a high school that had a girl who was an all-American and heavily recruited. She had been coached since she was 10 by the same club coach, who was a totally legit sprint genius. She came to all our team's practices, and even was one of the captains of the team, but she always had her own set of workouts from her coach, with whom I talked every once in awhile. I figured I didn't know half what he knew about sprinting, that I could learn something from overseeing her workouts and even stealing a little bit for my other sprinters, and so I would just oversee her workouts and make sure she was healthy and resting properly, and it worked out great for everyone. It seems like that might have been something that might have worked at Brentwood, without the private coach having to actually join the coaching staff, which was the step that raises all the ethical questions.

A question arose early in this thread about whether it was ethical for Coach Avery to "solicit" clients from Brentwood HS. Certainly not, I think that's clear. But I also think he might not have had to do any solicitation himself. Once you develop a reputation as a coach in the area, all you really need is the word of mouth of parents and athletes. Still, I think it's smart to keep a firewall between whatever your side hustle is, and what you're doing for kids at school.

I don't actually expect anyone to respond to this, I think I just needed to think aloud.

So you coach high school kids and also privately coach high school kids on other teams? Is that not a conflict of interest? I don't see it any differently than a football coach working with athletes on a rival team, which would never fly.

I should have been clear: the few high school kids I coach privately don't compete in the same athletic division as my school, or in the same county. I haven't had to face that conflict yet, but I agree it's worth thinking about.

Kids I coach at school and kids I coach privately _have_ competed against each other at Saturday meets and other invitationals. In those cases my private clients have been there under the guidance of their high school coaches, and I've just talked afterward with them about how they did. Of course, I'm not a robot, and I cheer them on in the races along with my kids, as well as other kids I've never coached but have known since they were little. I like to cheer, in general.

For the most part, those other high school coaches run excellent programs and I'm not interested in interfering. I charge month by month, and so often during seasons I'm not charging my kids at all, since they're getting coached elsewhere. It's the off-season when they want some guidance, especially late spring, summer, and winter.

On a couple of occasions, my kids on the school team have gotten to know some of my private athletes because they've attended (separately) the same summer distance camp. In some of those cases they've struck up friendships, and so some of my school athletes go say hello to my private athletes at their tents and so forth. I guess I'm saying I think it's not a zero sum -- that one of the great things about distance and middle-distance racing (the world of sprinting, I found, is a little different) is that there can be a sense of collegiality among runners, and I've never felt conflicted over wishing the best at meets both for my own school kids and the kids I coach privately.

Again, I think the conflict creeps in when you consider how you prioritize your time and resources, and whether you're going to favor the paying customer over your student-athlete.

Yep- great coach if you want to finish second at NXN. You gotta believe the lack of racing experience this fall hurt Hasty. Should have run with his team and trained with private coach after practice or the season. All hype, no finish.

Yes. Still a great coach.

The posters that feel a need to trash athletes, coaches and programs rather than have mature, thoughtful and educated conversations make themselves look bad and hurt the sport.

It also makes a joke of this forum.

Rise up.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense; go run seven miles with the school team and then do the private coach's seven miles after the school practice. Hmmm, let's see, should I train with my private coach and get second in the nation, or should I train with the school coach with no legit experience or success, leading the team to not qualify for state for the first time in years? Someone who says Hasty has no finish is certainly writing from jealousy and bitterness, in my opinion, ignoring the mountain of evidence disproving that dumb statement.

Yeah- the coaches system works for everyone. That's why Brentwood is number one in the country every year. Oh, but wait. They aren't. It only works for a few. The rest of the runners pay a bunch of money, travel all over, pay coaches hotel and airfare, then don't do that well. So the private coach works for a select few, the rest are "checks", meaning they pay the bills for the private coach while only the top 2 or 3 kids truly get to an elite level. Great system. For the coach....,but time will tell. I wonder how this private coach's team will do in xc 2018?

Reminder about what happened in the Affolder-Hasty thread. Looks good so far, but please remember we are discussing high schoolers and keep the conversation just that; a respectful conversation.

Any doxxing, excessive criticism/scrutinization of minors, unacceptable/unlawful conduct, etc. will result in post deletion, and possible thread deletion/bans.