I'm Dartmouth College's next head cross country coach, is who I am. I know everybody up there. As soon as Ben fails (and I'm not slandering him. I'm just honest. He sucks), I'm going to swoop in like a marvel superhero and save that team and turn the entire program and culture around. The athletes will take to me like a fish takes to water and I'll have them running ridiculous PRs that they never even thought possible. As I walk onto the track with my dark green hat on my head and my clipboard in my hand, you'll hear the sound of Van Halen's Dance the Night Away playing somewhere in the background.
The athletes will be running all of the best trails around and they'll be having so much fun that those frowns I see on their faces all the time are going to flip right upside down and turn to smiles. Slowly but surely, the success of our program will have a positive effect on campus and the students will chase all the miserable wokeness away. The loser commie professors will resign and the best professors will apply. Dartmouth will be a happy place for the first time in its history.
It's time to take back our schools!
Lots of comedy my guy. I think you may have played us. Especially since Dartmouth consistently tops or is near the top of lists of colleges with the happiest students
Due to the massive amount of booze they ingest -- unless is has changed significantly sincee my undergrad days
Lots of armchair quarterbacking by either a troll, someone with a chip on their shoulder who thinks all Ivy League kids are “woke” and “rich” or someone misinformed. Likely a combo of all three.
The program just got a new Director two months ago, just weeks after True was announced. There is no way either of those guys could have turned things around in a few months when you had a team that was probably not getting any direction for the last six months to a year while the old coach was fired and the old Director had no focus on distance. Unlikely the kids came in with a proper base to do this much this Fall and you expect freshman to make immediate impact? Are you expecting that from other teams?
The old coaching was to run them into the ground. I don’t believe that has anything to do with the new regimen - not sure why you are applying old methods to the new team.
Woke and rich? Maybe. Douchey, preppie, myopic, perfectionist, entitled bxtches? Fer sure.
2nd to last at Heps and only 14th at Northeast Regionals.
Their national championship freshman only ran 25:06.
This is not a good start.
After some simple research, it appears Dartmouth only got 16th at regionals last year. So 14th this year is an improvement. At this rate they'll qualify for the NCAA championships in six years, maybe even 5 if they can get some koala points.
I'm Dartmouth College's next head cross country coach, is who I am. I know everybody up there. As soon as Ben fails (and I'm not slandering him. I'm just honest. He sucks), I'm going to swoop in like a marvel superhero and save that team and turn the entire program and culture around. The athletes will take to me like a fish takes to water and I'll have them running ridiculous PRs that they never even thought possible. As I walk onto the track with my dark green hat on my head and my clipboard in my hand, you'll hear the sound of Van Halen's Dance the Night Away playing somewhere in the background.
The athletes will be running all of the best trails around and they'll be having so much fun that those frowns I see on their faces all the time are going to flip right upside down and turn to smiles. Slowly but surely, the success of our program will have a positive effect on campus and the students will chase all the miserable wokeness away. The loser commie professors will resign and the best professors will apply. Dartmouth will be a happy place for the first time in its history.
It's time to take back our schools!
As a Dartmouth grad and a psychiatrist… dude, are you ok?
The audacity you must have to pathologize someone you disagree with is astounding. This lady is the product of these woke Ivy League schools.
I am not saying Ben True is at fault, but it is inaccurate to say he had bad recruits.
Kemper - HIGH SCHOOL STEEPLECHASE CHAMPION - #3 STEEPLECHASE IN HISTORY - 5:43, 1:49, 4:10
Foley - 1:50, 3:50, 49, and 8:35
Beck - 9:05
Grieve - 49, 1:51, 4:13
Jiang - 3:55, 8:36
Ben True is interim cross country coach, they hired another distance coach to be Director. It is unclear which coach was writing the workouts for the team.
Kemper - solid Foley - mid-d guy Beck - 9:05 was 266th in the nation last year per milesplit Grieve - mid-d guy Jiang - 8:36 = 9:14 3200m, 540th in the nation last year per milesplit
Not sure this is going to build a healthy XC program. What was True supposed to do with this?
The ivies (unfortunately) dont follow the 5 year eligibility rules. You get four years to compete in four seasons. Unless you apply for a medical hardship waiver bc you are hurt. So he may get a 5th year but I don’t believe he can just choose to sit out if he’s fine. (One would hope he’d also want to run his senior season under Ben if he was healthy and able, I know I would if I was still there)
True, but also not true. Yes, the Ivys have a rule that student-athletes can only compete during 4 years of enrollment, unless a medical redshirt is granted. How they get around the rule is to have student-athletes not enrolled during one of their first 4 years. I coached in the EISA (skiing) against the Ivys 2001-2012. Dartmouth had a number of skiers that I believe took at least a term off between freshman and senior years, skied World Cup, then came back and still raced 4 seasons. I've been trying to find NCAA Championships results for skiing for those years and not succeeding.
I don’t really see how you could have expected more from Dartmouth this year. They came in 6th at Heps last year and this was with James Lawrence who took 14th at the Midwest regional this year after escaping the plague that was the Dobson McNulty coaching era, Velikonja who (8:04 13:58) and Will Daley (8:00 13:57). These were low sticks all their low sticks and they placed better at regionals this year than last year (admittedly still not a great team placement but and improvement nonetheless). Ben is super knowledgeable and will be a great recruiter. A culture of success takes awhile to build, especially looking at havoc Dobson and McNulty wrought on the program. Most importantly, the guys seem to be healthy and improving, and hopefully they are enjoying the sport and that’s a major improvement compared to the last 3 years.
2nd to last at Heps and only 14th at Northeast Regionals.
Their national championship freshman only ran 25:06.
This is not a good start.
Give him at least 2 years. Also I think he is the perfect hire and a good young hire. I think if they do this right they wont need a new distance coach for a long time.
You've got to give a new college coach at least 3-4 years to build a program with his/her own recruits before you can decide how good they are at running a college program.
If by "top senior" you mean Velikonja, another thread on Dartmouth mentioned that he may be saving XC eligibility for a 5th year.
Velikonja has been running with Ben True outside of practice for 2 years and was THE BIGGEST ADVOCATE for Ben True to be hired. There is a ZERO percent chance Velikonja did all that just to elect to skip his senior year under True. He is injured, and several other key members of both the men's and women's teams sustained big injuries this year. Despite McNulty being gone, their injury problems have persisted.
"Velikonja said he developed a more personal relationship with True during his sophomore summer in 2023. Despite True no longer officially working with the College, the two went on long runs together “pretty regularly,” Velikonja said.
Ben True ’08, a professional distance runner who holds the American record in the 5km road race, is currently the track and field team’s only active coach.
I don’t think it’s axe grinding. It’s concern. Mediocre to poor showing at heps and regionals, their top senior was hurt and didn’t run all XC season….just not a great first impression for Ben in his debut season. Regardless of what he was given to work with recruiting wise. The expectation would have been for him to keep his key returning athletes healthy and to see them continue to develop under his tutelage. He did not deliver. We’ll give him an indoor and an outdoor season to work out the kinks…but as the previous poster stated…not a good start.
So for a coach that got hired right before the season started and had none of his own recruits, what were your expectations? Make nationals for the first time since 2016 (provided my quick Google search was correct).
Do you think they should fire him immediately?
If they show no improvement in the coming years everyone would share your concerns, but do you really think they should have shown decent improvement this year?
Who do you think they should have hired instead that would have given them an acceptable rate of improvement?
If you have a grudge or complaint against the administration or athletic department for hiring a coach so near to the start of the season that's completely valid. But no reasonable person would think a new coach would turn around a program literally immediately under these circumstances.
The team is not at it's strongest, but they still have a lot of very gifted runners. Nobody is expecting an immediate turnaround, but averaging 24:50 at Paul Short is embarrassing.
They averaged marginally faster at Princeton's course which is the flattest course in the country. They only had 2 runners under 32:00 at regionals.
If you have a 3:48 runner who ran 14:44 in XC in high school, and can't get him to break 24:30 on a pancake flat course, then he's injured for regionals, that's a poor coaching job. Sorry but it's true.
Velikonja has been running with Ben True outside of practice for 2 years and was THE BIGGEST ADVOCATE for Ben True to be hired. There is a ZERO percent chance Velikonja did all that just to elect to skip his senior year under True. He is injured, and several other key members of both the men's and women's teams sustained big injuries this year. Despite McNulty being gone, their injury problems have persisted.
"Velikonja said he developed a more personal relationship with True during his sophomore summer in 2023. Despite True no longer officially working with the College, the two went on long runs together “pretty regularly,” Velikonja said.
looking at his TFFRS, he did not put up a result for either indoor or outdoor track in 2022, which was his freshmen year. It would make sense that he would consider sitting out a XC season to have a full 5th year. And if his relationship with Ben is as solid as this article suggests, then perhaps Ben would be understanding of the situation given that this is clearly a rebuilding year for Dartmouth. But given you claim there is “ZERO” chance of this being possible, perhaps you know something the rest of us don’t.
2nd to last at Heps and only 14th at Northeast Regionals.
Their national championship freshman only ran 25:06.
This is not a good start.
Give him at least 2 years. Also I think he is the perfect hire and a good young hire. I think if they do this right they wont need a new distance coach for a long time.
Alex Gibby was hired at Harvard on August 9, 2017, and that season Harvard finished dead last at XC Heps. Look where they are now.
Ben was hired this year on August 5, a nearly identical timeline. He'll need a lot more support from the Dartmouth admin to even come close to matching what Gibby has done, but my point is that rescuing a situation like this takes time, even for the best coaches.
I am not saying Ben True is at fault, but it is inaccurate to say he had bad recruits.
Kemper - HIGH SCHOOL STEEPLECHASE CHAMPION - #3 STEEPLECHASE IN HISTORY - 5:43, 1:49, 4:10
Foley - 1:50, 3:50, 49, and 8:35
Beck - 9:05
Grieve - 49, 1:51, 4:13
Jiang - 3:55, 8:36
Ben True is interim cross country coach, they hired another distance coach to be Director. It is unclear which coach was writing the workouts for the team.
Proving my point, these kids are mediocre also-rans. Almost every D1 school has a roster comprised of recruits like this. And a good program could develop these kids, but Dartmouth runs their recruits into the ground every year. They're lucky if they get half of their roster healthy enough to run Indoors.
Do you know how True is training these guys? He should be smart enough to know his current runners have no chance of becoming competitive D-1 runners. If I was him, I would give them moderate workouts and focus on recruiting for next year.
Give them some time. They are coming off of several years of abysmal coaching and a TON of staff turnover. Many of their best athletes transferred too. No coach can fix that in two months. Wait a year or two, and see how the team, especially new recruits, develop. It's too early to make any judgements.
Give them some time. They are coming off of several years of abysmal coaching and a TON of staff turnover. Many of their best athletes transferred too. No coach can fix that in two months. Wait a year or two, and see how the team, especially new recruits, develop. It's too early to make any judgements.
Ben True also privately coached Birhanu Harriman in high school, and his legendary rise speaks for itself.
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