Now Confirmed. Stong Steps Down At UW.

NW Running Walker wrote:

Hey "worker bee", you are just making a lot of excuses in my book. Look, is it an anomaly (sp?), or a "problem" when this many coaches leave in a 7 year period?:

Coaching Changes In 7 Years Since Metcalf Took Over

Men's XC: David Bazzi -> Jimmy Bean -> Justin Drake

Women's XC: Kelly Strong

Throws: Chad McKinney -> Bud Rasmussen -> Reedus Thurmond

Sprints: Dion Miller -> LaMonte Vaughn -> Raul Sheen

Jumps: Pat Licari

In addition to the turnover, some of it has been quite controversial. For instance, the departure of David Bazzi and LaMonte Vaughn in particular were under weird circumstances.

If anything I made one excuse on Strong's behalf. Yes, there have been a lot of changes for UW recently, but if you pull Vaughn and Bazzi out of the list (per "weird circumstances") the situation definitely loses its supposed soap opera potential.

I'm not Metcalf's biggest fan and I don't have a clue how the coaching chemistry has been. But for the program's sake I'd like to see people stop stirring up and pushing the rumors and speculation about what's going on.

So anyone know the exact reason she left?

Assistant coaching positions have a high turnover rate.

You can easily find examples of programs that have a hard time keeping assistants for more than 1-2 years. Some even make UW's turnover pale in comparison.

Sometimes it is the head coach's fault, but sometimes it is for other reasons (better opportunities, higher pay, more control elsewhere, etc).

Ah, yes, but why was Colorado's recruiting so strong in the late 90s? Jason Drake. Where is Jason Drake? Washington.

I'm a female, Drake recruited me, and I loved him. Minor schoolgirl crush, actually.

Kelly is great, but Washington isn't screwed.

I saw Kelly Strong at the 2010 Pac-10 meet in Berkeley. Anyone know where/what she's doing now?

A) Kelly Mac will be at Cal Poly SLO in the fall

B) There was drama

Well, here it is, though SLO never bothered to put out a press release:

http://www.gopoly.com/index.php?p=staff_members

Mark Conover has a great assistant!

Not bad. Kelly Mac goes from one great program at UW to another great program at CP SLO. UW alum Brad Walker won Gold at 2007 Osaka WC and Silver at 2005 Helsinki WC. CPSLO alum Stephanie Brown Trafton won Gold at 2004 Beijing.