44 Colorado alums including 12 NCAA champs come out publicly in support of Mark Wetmore and Heather Burroughs

Honestly, no judgment of the decision either way. It’s just interesting to consider those that have and those that haven’t gone public if I’m to believe Adam Goucher’s intent in reaching out to alumni. I wouldn’t expect him or anyone else involved in this Social Media campaign to mention any anti response. Like I said, I’d expect any and all who had measurably successful careers as Buffs to get behind this and I’m curious about those who have chosen not to. Truly, though, you raise a great point and I didn’t mean to imply speculation. You’re right, it’s an entirely appropriate response to not comment publicly about or in response to things you have no direct knowledge of.

I posted this at the end of the Runner's World article, but it was kinda late, so I'm not sure it made it in. But I haven't changed my mind on anything I wrote, so here it is:

’m a former CU walk-on (pre-Wetmore), sometime donor to the program and full disclosure, am also friends with Coach Wetmore. Over the years, I’ve seen him interact with his athletes at dozens of practices and competitions. Being a student of the discipline of distance running, I’ve taken full advantage of my access to one of the greatest coaches in NCAA history and we’ve had voluminous discussions on training and racing and the challenges of his job as a college coach. Those experiences allow me to have a unique familiarity with the “overall culture” of the program that the author of this article doesn’t seem to have and I’ve having problems believing some of the claims being floated in the piece.
For sure, it’s not the kind of track team for runners who just want to be able to put “Track Team” on their resume after graduation. It’s an intense program for people who are serious about running at an elite level but I’ve never known Wetmore to be abusive to his athletes in pursuit of that goal. Only a foolish coach would push his athletes into destructive behavior and Mark is no fool. “Win at all costs” is not something I’ve ever seen him subscribe to.
He and I have discussed body composition issues as one of the challenges of coaching at the college level. It was an issue in my day and it remains so today. Wetmore understands the sensitivity of the problem and the implications of getting this wrong. I have confidence that he has handled it as well as anybody.
I can’t comment with any specificity on the charges leveled by the individual in question, but on a practical level, it doesn’t make sense that Coach Wetmore or staff would be spending much time on micromanaging body composition on walk-ons who likely will never race on the varsity.
Body composition issues, particularly as they relate to female athletes are important and should be discussed, but to paraphrase Abe Lincoln, “You can’t please all of the people all of the time”. Literally hundreds of athletes have cycled through the CU program since 2017, if somebody finds 3 athletes from that time who have a complaint, that’s a pretty good track record.

Hey Dave,

What do you have direct knowledge of regarding the case? Not what you assume to be true based on feelings. You don’t seem to know that it’s 14 former athletes from a short time span who gave testimony, not 3 over a long timespan as you indicated. It’s also about HIPAA violations, not micromanaging body composition as you indicated. And apparently you weren’t in-house for any of this since you must have graduated over 30 years ago. The investigation’s outcome could have significant consequences, it could result in little to nothing. There are a lot of alumni from Wetmore’s time who don’t know with any certainty what has happened or what will happen, and certainly you don’t know better than them.

She was a walk on not so impressive times. Find it hard to believe this reputable coach spent his energy harassing a 2:18 half miler instead of concentrating on his top runners

This is the same kind of garbage journalism by Runner's World as the Bob Timmons article that appeared several years ago. A former disgruntled runner helped the magazine do a hit piece on a man who couldn't defend himself due to his diminished mental capabilities. Garbage.

Would I say that to a runner? In the year 2023? Certainly not.

That being said. If a coach says something that is pretty much a fact, and some athlete takes it the wrong way and gets an eating disorder, should they be fired? I say no.

If a law professor tells students, only 2% of the class is getting an A+ and some of them do drugs so they can study more, should the law professor be fired?

I don't get the double standard we hold so often for coaches. We don't hold professors accountable for all of the actions of their students. Or bosses for their employees. But coaches are somehow held accountable for all of their athletes actions, well if they are a non-revenue coach.

Does Wetmore get credit for the fact that his guys don't party, don't get arrested, etc? Google "CU football player arrested.' Then google "CU track athletes arrested."

I asked Chris Lear - author of RWTB - 'Why didn't you write about the parties?' He said, "Becuase there were none. The guys and gals were all in on being great." Does any of that give him brownie points to fall back on? Meanwhile the football guys get arrested left and right and don't get fired.

If the linemen for the football team all show up waying 200 pounds in the fall, you can bet your ass that coach Prime and the entire coaching staff will be telling them gain wait - a ton of wait. Journalists will be writing articles about it. No one will bat an eye. "They need to be 300+."

The Cornell sports med guy used to talk to the track coaches about that all the time. Football gets away with telling young men to do things that are much more likeliy to kill them by age 40 - put on a ton of wait - and no one complains. For some reason with running if a girl loses too much wait the coach might lose his job even though nutritionists are supposed be monitoring the hell out of it?

Do not misunderstand me. I'm not saying eating disorders are something to be cavalier about. It disgusts me to see super thin track girls. But Wetmore isn't the coach of a running club - he's the coach of a D1 powerhouse.

I haven't read Fleshmans book and look forward to it but one person's comment hit me:

1 1,000% percent think we need to learn about those that drop out and think we are. The reality is many teen girls need to be ready to try to simply plateau for a while while their body changes and hope they come out on the other side better than ever. Tryig to starve yourself to hold off puberty's changes is never going to work and will be backfire.

That being said, there is a second unsaid part about related to the quote that I don't think the poster thought about. I wish this wasn't the case but the reality is at the D1 level it's a zero sum game. There only 5 scoring spots per xc team and only so many xc teams. So if one person drops out, guess what someone else will take their place. So whether it's because someone's not fast enough, is injured, has an eating disorder or simply quit, the reality is many people are going to be left behind.

Now I never coached that way. I was most proud of NEVER giving up on a recruit. I had a kid that SUCKED for 2.5 years, break school records as a senior but Wetmore's not coaching in the Ivy League. He's coaching a D1 power.

Does this automatically mean Wetmore shouldn't be fire? No it doesn't. I have no idea what the investigation is really about. But I think the argument that some on here are making of, "This woman had a horrible expeirence therefore he should be fired" is wrong.

At the same time, I also think the argument of "Eating disorders are a part of running" is also wrong. The reality is she had an awful experience and they should try to learn from it.

Why can't the President compromise? That's what's been lose in the year 2023. It's all or nothing If i was him, I'd issue some sort of statement like, "Coach Wetmore is one of Colorado's most successful coaches. The outpouring of tributes he's recently received from alums saying how he greatly impacted their lives is heartwarming. That being said, no one is perfect and we want him to be even more impactful in the years to come. Based on recent complaints, we'll be doing x, y and z."

This is a very long post.

1. I think you mean: "weight" not "way" maybe before going into an in depth post about bodies of any type you make sure you know the grammar.

2. The comparison you make to football is false: there is a lot of conversation and study into the many problematic practices surrounding football, and the impacts those practices have on who now plays. I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to argue or get at here, but the world is definitely talking about the exact practices you allude to. It's a Google search away.

For walk-ons, do they have standards to meet? (Serious question. It wasn't on their XC website.) UC is a tough program. This runner must be good enough to at least make it at UC. I'm assuming she is not varsity either.

There's a good writeup here too on BuffZone:

buffzone.com

Former CU Buffs cross country standouts coming to defense of coach Mark Wetmore

Pat Rooney

A Colorado cross country program that built a renowned national reputation behind an ethos of character, dedication and success was blitzed by troubling allegations on the eve of the NCAA champions…

Open link

Below is a good directly-phrased summary:

Intile spent two years in CU’s program, 2017 and 2018, at a time when the women’s cross country program was dominant. The 2018 women’s squad won the team national championship behind an individual title from Dani Jones. Scholl finished 15th and the Buffs were so loaded they had a future Olympian in the steeplechase, Val Constein, as their sixth finisher.
Intile transferred to Oregon State and, according to Scholl, “no one heard from her for two years.” Yet on the very day the Oregon news broke in the fall of 2021, Scholl said she received a message from Intile inquiring about her experience at CU.
“This is not making a (body shaming) conversation open to talk about,” Scholl said. “There have been articles that have done that. And people have come forward and have had positive conversations. It’s been great. This wasn’t creating a positive conversation of change. It was just creating a conversation of a vendetta of some sort.”

C'mon. It sounds to me like wetmore's practices and philosophy of monitoring athletes body weights and body composition and his intense desire to push his Runners to be their absolute best.... is not much different than Salazar's methods and attitude.

The only difference is Salazar could be a jerk and a bit creepy at times.

Some of the CU athletes complaints against Wetmore are very similar to Kara's complaints against Salazar. "Body shaming," "pushing Runners to be too thin", " toxic, " "focusing on Weight and Body Parts" etc etc.

What was Karen's, sorry, KARA's, big complaint against AlSal? That he recommended she take more of her thyroid medication that she was *already* taking and that was prescribed by the doctor that *she introduced* to Salazar... so she could be thinner? This is hardly different than what Wetmore and staff are accused of.

But AlSal could be a jerk and creepy [ though at one point Kara seem to really really like him and respect him] and obviously he did some things to piss her off and so...... suddenly the very similar to Wetmore practices that Al used became " toxic, body shaming, and eating disorder-inducing".

[It's sort of like when everyone turned on Lance. He was no more of a drug user and pusher than countless other cyclists but he was the biggest jerk and the most successful so....a lot of folks turned on him and wanted to take him down. If he was nicer he might have had more people sticking up for him like Wetmore does. Yes Not Perfect Analogy but you get the point]

There are quite a few Runners that would still say Salazar treated them right and was a great coach for them [ probably mostly privately. Because partly due to Kara no one is allowed to say anything nice about him without being attacked]. That doesn't mean he treated everyone right.

If Kara wanted to be consistent and a leader in female sports she would believe the Accuser and stand up for her. Really. She might say she did not experience/perceive that behavior from Wetmore, but that female accusers must be believed when they claim/perceive toxic male behavior and destructive body shaming, just as she wanted to be believed and sympathized with when she brought down Salazar.

GS,
Your math skills appear to be at least adequate, but I’d suggest your reading comprehension needs some work. Yes, I was at CU over 30 years ago, I dropped out of CU and the program in ’88. Thanks for upgrading my resume by telling everybody that I graduated. May I use you as a reference?

I made it clear that I had originally posted after the RW article and my post addressed some inaccuracies and unfair characterizations in that article that I thought needed to be corrected. I also went out of my way to say that I had no direct knowledge of the complainant and said that my comments were based on my extensive contact with the program and personally with Wetmore over a period of years.

I will concede that the article, flawed as it is, does lay out the facts of the case—charges, people involved, next steps, etc. This article currently forms the base of my knowledge about the case and judging by the posts here, the same is true for you and a lot of other people. I would prefer to see objective info from a much more diversified pool of sources, but for the moment, I’m playing the game with the cards I got.

If you live long enough, you get to see history repeat itself. Shortly after I left CU, my coach, the late Jerry Quiller, was pilloried in local media because a female team member accused him being insensitive in a serious matter not related to weight issues. The tropes trotted out that time about the program then were almost the same as the ones dragged out in the RW article—“Win at all costs”, “Sink or swim”. One article I saw would have you believe that Bobby Knight was coaching the CU track team. The writer quoted a few disgruntled CU athletes, whom I knew. They were uniformly immature jerks who never performed up to their potential. For anybody who knew Coach Q, that caricature was laughable and the media quickly found other targets.

It’s different this time, societal norms have shifted and anybody with an axe to grind now has an audience of billions. Institutions like CU, which were famously averse to bad PR in the last century, are now consumed with it, sometimes to their detriment and the detriment of many others. As I understand it, the Ath Dept has an office that actively monitors social media for positive affirmation and I doubt they’re unique in that regard.

You profess to be willing to let the inquiry take its course, I wish I could be as sanguine. When I was a walk-on at CU, I caused a high-profile controversy that unexpectedly became a vital part of my college education. One of the biggest take-aways from that experience was that CU will do what’s best for CU. That’s not to suggest that CU is a singularly evil organization, it’s just the nature of the beast. In this case, good PR and good social media presence will likely factor in their final decision.

I don’t know much about the inquiry, if somebody with real information would care to enlighten me, it would be appreciated. I assume it’s a board of AD staff, lawyers, etc. It appears that they have already interviewed witnesses, perhaps all complaining witnesses, we’re not sure. They will likely interview Wetmore and staff, but it’s not a court of law, there aren’t any defense witnesses, cross-examination, penalty of perjury, etc. The article and CU’s statement mention inquiry results being shared with the public, but I didn’t see anything mentioned about transparency in the decision-making process and I doubt we will. I think it’s entirely possible that the deciders decide something like, “ We’re getting too many down arrows on the Let’s Run MB, let’s fire them”.

If the article presented the facts well enough, it veered away from objectivity when trying to describe the program’s culture and in doing so, made some unfounded and destructive assumptions. As I watched this article being parroted verbatim by other outlets without additional context or other opinions, it appeared that Wetmore, Borroughs & staff were on the precipice of being tried and convicted by the court of public opinion. So I provided a counter-narrative where the “culture” of the program is concerned.

The writer seemed to have formed her opinion of the CU team culture entirely from critics of the program. Has she ever attended any meets and watched Wetmore & Burroughs coach? Was she sitting next to Wetmore when he gave pre-race instructions to Jenny Barringer (Simpson) before her first steeple at Mt SAC? Was she trackside with Wetmore while he coached Shayla Kipp through her first Mt SAC? How many times has she visited Boulder and rode with Wetmore and the team out east of town for the Sunday long run? Did she spend any time with Mark and Heather and got to know them as people away from the track? Obviously, the writer had physical limitations in writing a magazine article, but that’s no excuse for making assumptions based on sketchy information.

To address arguments raised in your reply lest you continue to operate under the misconception that they were unassailable:
As to number of complaining athletes versus time frame, I must make a correction. I said that there were 3 former athletes complaining and relative to the number of athletes cycling through the program since ’17, that was a favorable comment for Wetmore. I was wrong, the article mentions 4 athletes complaining. The 4th was a male runner whom I was not familiar with, but the article said he was there through ’20. If you’re saying I used a too-broad time frame, I would point to this as proving that my original statistical analysis remains valid. If you’re still inclined to pursue the silliness of a numbers game, I would finally point to 44 former athletes for the program against less than 20 against.

The complaint is abusive conduct in pursuit of body composition issues, not a HIPAA violation. The article mentions one possible HIPAA violation and that might be part of the complaint, but if violating HIPPAA law is driving this, wouldn’t that compel legal action?

At the end of the day, none of us was in the room when the alleged events took place, so it comes down to who get’s the benefit of the doubt? People whom I’ve come to know, admire and respect or somebody I never heard of? We have the opportunity to make that choice. Absent convincing evidence otherwise, I’ve made mine.

Thanks for your attention.

Sure, whatever gets you through the night. Apologies for being charitable in reading between the lines. 🫶