Klim coaching at Akron

I've been accused of many things, but being 16x has never been one of them.

Nobody in Ohio (AFAIK) knows or has anything against Coach Klim. What we are trying to tell you is that it's one thing to be in the Patriot League where nobody gets scholarships and recruit a big team. It's quite another to be at Akron where 5 Pole Vaulters are on scholarship yet the distance runners get little to none. Two very good people have already been "run" out of there in the persons of Fred Kieser and Rick Williamson. What makes rankles folks a bit it when people insinuate that now that Coach Klim is coming in that the men's distance program will all of a sudden take off. I'm sure the guys at Akron will all bust their asses, but having no money in the group is an insurmountable obstacle.

The person who puts that obstacle there should be ashamed of himself and that is Dennis Mitchell. Again, he is the moron who pops off about how we should keep men's programs from being cut-blah, blah, blah and then he leaves the men's cc prgram vulnerable there by not investing in it. That is a bunch of hypocritical bullshit and should not be tolerated, but until a bunch of Akron alums or whomever stand up and voice an opinion to the AD, it will continue to go unchecked.

A typical Bucknell track athlete......more proud of a place to do keg stands than having a good track team.

Yes..... wrote:

I've been accused of many things, but being 16x has never been one of them.

Hmmmmmm. Did someone in this thread accuse you of being 16x? I don't think so.

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detective wrote:

I don't but the consistently meanspirited and sarcastic tone of Yes... sort of reminds of a former female BG middle-distance runner now in her 40's who used to get on here a lot under a different name

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That is 16x dude

Apparently Klim has already got people fired up and thats what he does best. Are you fired up? Get fired up!

The biggest obstacle for Akron will be the change in coaching philosophy. The past coach and new coach's methods are as different as black and white. It will be interesting to see what happens this year, I know I will be watching.

Yeah and those guys are the ones you would want to be a coach at the d1 level. People who love distance running and know it inside and out because it has been a big part of their lives. I know I would want a a true distance coach as opposed to someone who oversaw some distance stuff and ran a whopping 3:04. I seriously cant believe this dumb ass move to bring this guy in, sorry its a shame.

It will be kinda messed up for the kids, I am sure they were pleased with the things Williamson did things and now they have some distance novice. I mean its really hard to put your trust in someone like that, who doesnt have a backround as a true distance(successful) runner.

Yes..... is an ...ass. How can anyone believe this bullshit? Who are those 5 men's pole vaulters? And how much scholarship money is invested there? My sources tell me that the top 5 cross country guys from the conference meet are/were on scholarship (plus others who weren't in the top 5). Get your facts straight before you go popping off.

It is possible to break a full scholarship into several smaller scholarships. I am not sure if this is the case but with everything that has been said about Mitchell, I wouldn't be surprised to have 4 - 5 kids under 1 scholarship.

WAR - you would be wrong in assuming that the top 5 cross country guys were on scholarship. The top two came in on scholarship but the next four were walkons. I can promise you that the over the last three years there has been more money invested in the pole vault than in the entire men's distance team. fair? maybe not but that is how mitchell runs the show.

You can promise all you want, but you can't prove anything. Taking your promise at face value, what does it say about Mitchell if he gave money to walk-on guys already on the team? Is that the sign of someone who doesn't care? And what does it say when (according to my sources) seven of nine runners on the conference team are receiving money? Is it Mitchell's fault that a big money guy can't even be in the team's top 7?Finally, even if more was invested in the pole vault, there was a MUCH greater return on that investment. That seems perfectly fair to me. I hope you're not an investor.

Anti-War wrote:

WAR - you would be wrong in assuming that the top 5 cross country guys were on scholarship. The top two came in on scholarship but the next four were walkons. I can promise you that the over the last three years there has been more money invested in the pole vault than in the entire men's distance team. fair? maybe not but that is how mitchell runs the show.

Again,

If you invest 3 - 4 full scholarships into 5 pole vaulters and 1 - 2 into 7 runners, you don't have a level field to base results off of. Now that might not be the case of how the scholarships were distributed but it could be. Anyone know?

war, you make some good points. so i must respond. let us take a look back at the 2004 MAC track meet when 4 of the 5 events that mitchell was directly coaching scored a total of 2 points. those events were the long jump, triple jump, high jump, and the POLE VAULT. those events included some big time scholarship money. can you talk about the return on investment there??? as for the scholarship money that these walk-on distance runners earned once they were there, i can not begin to guess the amounts. just seems to me that some of these young men must be doing something right if they are now getting scholarship money. one final question. what other cross country team in the conference is operating with 2 scholarship runners and 9 walkons? maybe all of the are but i would love to know.

Thanks for the polite tone! I think Mitchell coaches vertical jumps and multis. He might have inherited horizontal jumps that year -- I don't know, but I doubt he made the investment for himself (which seems to be one of the over-riding criticisms directed at him). The pole vaulter no-heighted and I think the high jumper was recovering from surgery. I think you would agree that the numerous MAC titles and AA certificates those two won justify the investment, despite one bad season. Incidentally, the pole vaulter was little more than a walk on (financially speaking) his freshman year.I can't speak for any other conference cross country teams' scholarship distributions. I'm confident Akron in the recent past has always significantly exceeded 2 scholarship runners.

Anti-War wrote:

war, you make some good points. so i must respond. let us take a look back at the 2004 MAC track meet when 4 of the 5 events that mitchell was directly coaching scored a total of 2 points. those events were the long jump, triple jump, high jump, and the POLE VAULT. those events included some big time scholarship money. can you talk about the return on investment there??? as for the scholarship money that these walk-on distance runners earned once they were there, i can not begin to guess the amounts. just seems to me that some of these young men must be doing something right if they are now getting scholarship money. one final question. what other cross country team in the conference is operating with 2 scholarship runners and 9 walkons? maybe all of the are but i would love to know.

Observer, what makes you think that Klim doesn't love distance running, or that distance running hasn't been an integral part of his life? Are you suggesting that one has to have been an elite distance runner to be a good D1 distance coach? Frankly, as far as the (very generalized) comments you're making about the role of distance running AND distance runners in Klim's life and coaching experience, you don't know what you're talking about. If you want a 'true distance coach,' what exactly constitutes a 'true distance coach'? There are plenty of running nerds who live and breathe the sport but run like molasses and/or have the people skills and motivational abilities of rock. But there are plenty of slow runners who make great coaches. There are also plenty of elite runners who make horrible coaches. Can you specify, or are you just advocating a doctrine of loose, generalized distance runner elitism?

Here are the facts...take em or leave em...the ability to recruit can only get you so far. Klim may be a very talented recruiter. However, this in no way guarentees results. Case in point, 4 years ago when Akron had 3-4 athletes come in on decent money. All of which were Ohio Highschool stand outs in their own right. All fully capable of performing well at the next level. So the result your wondering, noone ran faster than 4:30 in the mile and very few if any points were contributed by this group. WHY? who knows. But heres the kicker, next year rolls around and so does a coaching change. With this coaching change comes a steady improvement and a few points. The next year is when things get interesting. Everyone greatly improves and points are scored in almost every distance event. Not to mention multiple school records broken. The third year arrives and everyone still continues to improve and a respectable amount of points are scored. That brings us to the present. That coach leaves and instead of bringing in someone who shares similar training philosophy's to continue the success, a coach who has minimal distance experience and a stategy similar to the first coach who had zero success is brought in instead. Some thing isnt right here! Does anyone else see it? THE END

I might be an ass, but at least I'm not an idiot. You can only enter three athletes per event. Pole Vault is one event, but in the distances there are, um, let's see, 5 events during an outdoor championships meet. Assuming you can do that math, you can see why it doesn't make sense to dump all that money into ONE event.

PS

Your sources don't know shit and neither does dumbshit Dennis. Don't like my tone? Piss off-how you like me now punk.

Hardly wrote:

...The third year arrives and everyone still continues to improve and a respectable amount of points are scored.

Everyone?

0 is considered respectable?