Are there any D1 Programs Worse than this?

Sugarcane,

Who are you, that Knower guy with a new handle? I'm right huh?

Ok in there defense before people start railing anymore on them, those are all XC times you have for the 5K (and some of them on really hard 5K courses such as Van courtland....and I have heard the federation course is long)....Also those are their HS times.....thats a big difference. The difference between people running in HS and in College is huge execpt if you overtrained in HS (Webb, Ritz (who still improved just based on the fact he got to actually have guys around him in a race)). So lets not bash GW.....remember they have no indoor or outdoor track teams....(I would imagine during the winter and spring they train with a washington running team (I believe there is an adidas team there)......So people chill out let these guys at least try running.....and who cares if they are DI (there program probably has no money anyway)......And for all those people who are mad there DIII program might be able to beat them (maybe you should have choosen a DI program so stop complaining)

Azari,

Instead of defending your team on message boards, why don't you try defending them on the course? Where are A-10's this year anyway, I'd like to watch this myself; maybe we can even do a GW pay per view. Just let me know what time the event starts. I'll show up an hour after that and watch them filter in.

Are you really trying to defend your school's decision to hire someone without experience? In all fairness to you, you were cheated. You only get to run once, yet they didn't provide you with the tools to achieve everything possible. Good coaches are essential to achieving success, just ask Wejo or Rojo with all their props to JK. And before you retort "how do you know GW doesn't have a good coach", all I have to say is "2 freshman recruits, one of whom can't break 18, the other one is a mid packer on an average high school team".

The coach is selling something that all but 2 folks aren't buying. Is the remaining universe missing something, or are those two folks missing something.

Bite me. My best time from high school was a 5:47 1600. The first time I tried it since getting to college was 4:34. This is without any training--if I can do that, these kids probably have a lot of untapped potential also--as I said earlier, maybe not, but MAYBE their coaches wanted to let them just enjoy being teenagers and didn't grind them down with 70 mile weeks all year round. Not everyone peaks in high school you know. You're saying 18 minutes is a "mid packer" on an "average" high school team? Last I checked, most high schools don't have about 7 guys under 18 minutes. I'm sure you went to school in the toughest district of the toughest state where 14:30 wouldn't get you All-State honors, but I guess everyone's standards just aren't up to yours. And hiring someone without experience--if this is really the coach's first job, well then guess what--the greatest coaches in the world were "inexperienced" at one point or another. I'm sure Jack Daniels didn't take Salazar as his first trainee--you start somewhere and then progress.

To SugarCane: I agree with you that the GW Program isn't all that but the way you're criticizing the status of our sport is all wrong. You need not make what appears to be personal attacks on the individual runners when in fact you know nothing about their training or abilities.

To Kartelite: 70 miles a week? No one ran 70 miles a week on my HS team....in fact, it ranged from 30-45 miles a week. 2 guys under 16, 3 more in the low 16-mid 16 range. Same guys went 15:11 on track; 9:12 for 2; 4:12 for 1 and so forth. Your argument is misguided. You need not run 70 (or even 50) miles a week to run what I consider to be mediocre times in HS (9:30-9:50 and 16:10-17:00); nor do you have to have a ton of talent.

As for whether GW is performing better now than in the past, only time will tell; we need to wait the season out to see how well they perform. In fact, I believe that a coach needs more than 1-2 years to prove his or her stuff....A coach needs to have a chance to recruit his or her athletes and then develop those athletes over the course of 4 years. Based on this view, I would say that we should just sit back and watch GW's xc coach over the next 2 years and then pass judgment.

David

Your statement regarding 18 minutes 5ks displays a woeful ignorance of comepetitive running. Not talking road races here, shorty. Not talking Galloway and walk breaks. Talking competitive running.

I agree with your a priori assumption that everyone is at some point inexperienced (the so called "blank slate" theory). I'll even concede (although I don't agree with) the point that coaches didn't even need to achieve great success as athletes. However, shouldn't the coaching experience be gained at an assistant level and, after years of displaying aptitude at that position, then graduate to a higher level of coaching responsibility? As a parent, I would be incensed if I was paying 35k a year and the AD only offered my son the coaching staff which the AD has offered. I would be absolutely incensed.

That's a fraud. You know, I know it. Its a fraud pure and simple. The results, the team assembled, etc. is simply objective proof of that fraud. You seem logical. However, having the ability to reason and using it are two different matters entirely.

OK,

Obviously teacher and Sugar Cane are the same person.

Secondly, being a member of an intercollegiate sports program is not a right but a priveledge. You don't need to be a part of it if you do not want to and, just because you are paying $35k, does not entitle you to anything. It does not entitle you to good coaching or facilities. It entitles you to an education and, it does not even have to be a good education. The AD does not care how much you are paying because very little of that $35k goes towards running the athletic department.

NCAA Division I athletics has NOTHING to do with performance. You are not a member of NCAA Division I based on performance at all. You can have an NCAA Division I school that is not good at anything. Austin Peay lost something like 50 straight football games at one time. So did Columbia.

NCAA Division I does not mean there is a minimum level of performance that needs to be accomplished in order to validate your Division I status.

If you are such a great coach, and you were turned down for the GW job, why are you not a head coach at some other NCAA Division I school? You obviously believe that you are the savior of track and field and cross country, at least to GWU. You must have a page worth of accomplishments and coaching jobs to back up your assumption that you deserve that job over the current coach.

Six days, man.

First, save your idle threats for someone who cares.

Second, am not sugarcane. Wejo can confirm that for you in six minutes, not six days (man).

Third, football and x-c aren't comparable, so don't try. If you insist on trying, please note that Columbia never had but two freshman on its rosters.

Fourth, intercollegiate sports are not privileges, rather they are rights (do a little research on Title IX, if extracurricular events were privileges, Title IX wouldn't have legal footing).

Fifth, 35k does entitle you to coaching and facilities, as a larger part of your tuition is earmarked to non-academic aspects of an education than your limited knowledge would lead you to believe. GW may unload the program at some point, and there is nothing you can do about that, but so long as the program is offered, I have a right as a parent to respectable coaches and facilities.

Sixth, you are obviously a student as you don't fully comprehend that paying someone money to attend their school does entitle you to certain things. Paying for tuition entitles you to far more than you can imagine. Once you write that first 35,000 check, you'll agree with me. Until then, you are a punk

What have "good" D1 programs done in this country other than ruin distance running as we used to know it? Most coaches are too concerned with short term gains and their won-lost record that they fail to take into account the long-term development of any athletes that they coach. What we end up with is a bunch of over-raced, burnt-out college graduates who quickly quit running after graduation.

Teacher: your handle would seem to be a misnomer.

So now it's not just that DI is somehow a noble bastion of performance (WhatEver, by the way, was entirely correct), but running is to be considered separately from football. So it's the NCAA definitions that are all wrong, and are at the root of your (not GW's) problems.

A student's tuition entitles that student to attend the sports contests put on by the school, in whatever student section arrangements are stated by the school. Whatever part of the tuition goes to intercollegiate athletics is to allow the student to have teams to watch and stadia in which to watch them. The student often still has to buy a ticket to see the games. The student is not entitled to coaching and facilities. If that were so, every sport would be required to take walkons, which is not the case, often BECAUSE of Title IX.

Extracurricular events ARE priveleges. No one can file on the basis of Title IX to require a school to have a certain sport. However, once the school has established that it will provide the privelege of intercollegiate sports, Title IX says that the school cannot discriminate by sex as to who gets that privelege.

You fools bore me. You stated that "Title IX has NOTHING to do with the right of an individual at a school to participate in intercollegiate athletics. It has to do with making sure that the women athletes that are priviledged enough to be apart of the program have the same resources that their male counterparts doeeed that "

Read the relevant case law, and then come back here. The thrust of the Title IX proponents was that there was an equal right to compete in extracurricual activities (which were themselves rights). What is interesting is that the seminal issue in determining whether or not schools had to comply was whether or not extracurricular activities were rights or privileges. The courts have always held in the Title IX arena that extracurricular activities are far more than privileges.

Anyway, time to move on (tell our mutual acquainntance I said hello).

To criticize a program is one thing, to criticize

runners by name is unclassy to say the least.

Theres plenty of bandwidth wasted by so called faster runners tearing apart slower ones but very litle of the opposite. With so many runners, a great many who post here, having made pretty incredible improvements over time why should we think that 18 minutes is the pinnacle of their career? Theres anough aspects of this sport that do justify harsh criticism (doping etc.,) this aspect is NOT one of them.

Yep... I'm with you there, ScottB. I am tired of seeing this inconsequential thread (I guess most are, but this one is especially) near the top of the list (knowing that I am putting it there yet again.).

GW hands Baylor's xc team its most embarrassing defeat since Baylor was whipped by a high school team last week. Assistant Coach, also a sophomore athlete on the women's team and the designated team spokesman for both teams, had this to say about the mens' team's performance, "I wasn't sure that our team could live up the challenge presented by Baylor. When we last raced Robinson High School, we couldn't even break their top 5. But Baylor proved to be less formidable than we had ever imagined."

Baylor head coach had this to say, "this shows you the importance of having a strong 6th man. We figured that our number one runner and their number one runner would do their own thing and out class the entire field--and they sure enough did that, both averaged 5:55 over the tough Texas terrain--with the GW man barely nipping our number 1 at the finish, with a 5 mile time of 29:35. I should've seen it coming; that was a sign of things to come. Losing because our 6th man couldn't even beat someone averaging 8 minutes a mile is pathetic!"

GW head coach added that they are looking forward to racing more college competition in the future because "as I noticed with my own training, racing against 9 years olds really doesn't prepare you for the big leagues. We'll have to focus more on racing college age teams, such as Baylor to become more successful." She further added, "I have already scheduled a lecture by Galloway who is going to teach how walking can improve our times. Galloway is a great man."

We also took the liberty to interview "Avg. Runner" who said that he thought that we and the college world put to much emphasis on trying to win and that we should all just have fun.

And people in the sport of cross country wonder why the sports world no longer considers competitive running to be a real sport.

Sugarcane,

You continual crying does nothing for your lame argument that you should be coaching at GW. It must really suck to have no one like you. I do feel sorry for you. Really! I do!

Personally I could care less what is and is not considered a real sport by the "sports world." BTW, this personal vendetta you have has moved from being a somewhat interesting debate to being downright creepy.

I like strawberry ice cream...

there that statement is as relevant to the sport of running as any on this thread.

Sugarcane, I want to hire you as my personal coach. I don't think I am PSYCHO enough yet to handle the challenges of Baylor, or whatever your rant was about.

of course its obvious that someone has some bad feelings regardng the George Washington program for which 99.9 percent of us don't give a shit about. And that probably includes some alums as well. But a good point is made regarding the total lack of interest the Athletic Program has at a D1 institution towards many cross country programs. I would have to say that if the hs pr.s of that lineup are true than that is a bad indication of the state of the sport and hopefully it is not a trend.

But also there are hundreds of running programs that do try to be respectable.I suspect it boils down to either an absence of any scholarship money and if that is the case that is a funding choice that AD has the right to have. At least the sport is still sponsored. The runners there are lucky that it isn't dropped like many others(although it looks as if that is heading that way.) As far as being overly critical of the coach, she may be totally inept and incompetent or she may be eager to learn. But she'll never do much without athletes of at least average talent and if she's not getting the scholarships then publicly attacking her over and over sure isn't going to help her in recrutiting.

Face it, if a school doesn't have a healthy athletic department financially a cross country program just isn't going to be tolerated as much as the other team sports (especially the female ones). Its sad to us but 99 percent of the rest of the public could care less. I coach at a D2 school and maybe its ny defensive nature but I have a feeling that other sports such as soccer, volleyball, baseball, and even golf and tennis get way more concern by the AD then the cross country program. He see's the track program mainly as a means of attracting student athletes that we'll give a little bit of money to raise the number of students.

Hey...who gives a shit?

I read this lameass come on here time and time again bitching about George Washington's cross country program. So they have a bunch of walk-on guys. Just because the school is an NCAA Division I school does not mean, automatically, that they are going to be good. It is a private school with little or no scholarship money. They have to butt heads with the Ivy's and Georgetown academically. Who really gives a shit.

You come on here, all the time, and bash the lady that is the head coach. Did you turn you down for a blwjob or something? Did she reject your sexual advances and now you want to get back at her? You are a real man, coming onto this website, annonymously, and bashing her and the kids in the program. I'll bet you get all the chicks! You must have pussy lined-up out the door Mr. Man.

It would be one thing if it were a high profile program or, shit, a high profile school. Then you can at least talk about the decision making process of the administration. But, it is George Washington. And, believe it or not, most people on this board could not even tell you where the f*** the school is.

Let it go, Loser. Your hands probably get enough work jerking off all day. Give them a rest and stop trying to show everyone how big your balls are by coming on here, annonymously, and bashing some chick and a nobody program at a nobody school.

Dude, if I knew you personally, I would guess you are the guy I elbow each day on my way to class.