Injured runner not allowed to return to team for State qualifiers, wins FL West

webby wrote:

http://www.pdpreps.com/2010/11/featured/top-runner-non-factor-this-season/

Both coach and runner seem to respect each other's decisions. Seems like another LRC manufactured controversy here.

You'll note I included that in the OP. No LRC manufactured controversy here, other than the collective idiocy of LRC forum participants.

There was poor communication between Nacouzi and Sell. Sell thought she was clear with Nacouzi on what was expected to be able to remain on the team through injury. Nacouzi either misunderstood her obligations or disregarded them. Regardless, both have made the correct decisions - Sell not letting Nacouzi take a varsity spot form someone who earned it and Nacouzi continuing to work hard on her own and win FL West.

I might add that Nacouzi has demonstrated exceptional maturity in her comments to the press, unlike her mother.

A note on Sell, in addition to being a well respected member of the local running community, she is a great coach regardless of what any of you who don't know her think from this incident. We have several exceptional coaches in Sonoma County and she was selected to succeed Sara Hall's HS coach in heading the program.

Figuring wrote:

swofford11, if you and Clueless have to go so far as comparing Julie to Iverson, then you are both clueless.

The coach couldn't produce a winner. Julie did it on her own. I'm glad they have a second-rate them. I'm sure you could coach them, too. And I'm sure you'll need all sorts of rules, pledges, and oaths to get them to come to your 1950s practices and attitude.

Run, Julie, run.

Thought I would post this again just for you since you seem to not really understand grown up things or what responsibility is. It looks like the coach did produce a winner last year and the start of this year. You will have to try and find some other argument against why it would be okay for a high school girl to abandon her team and not realize that going to practice is important.

"Practicing with the team wasn’t an issue a year ago when Nacouzi took the league and North Coast Section titles, the latter in record-setting time. After finishing second at the state meet, Nacouzi made the field for the Foot Locker National Championship race".

it's powermonger, you idiot, not power mongrel!

And the coach almost destroyed her runner's dreams because of some arbitrary team rule. you cannot treat everyone on a team equally (and I have never seen a coach that did, e.g. pay attention to the lesser runners), and this was the best runner in the west. You cannot ignore that she will go down as probably (I'm just assuming here) the best runner in school history and you sit her down for what?

Mr Mountain wrote:

Over that summer, the state athletic association ruled that athletes could no longer compete separate from their school (unattached) and if they wanted to run any of these indoor meets, they must be a part of a sanctioned indoor team and have a coach present. This was not going to happen at my small school so the end result was that I was denied opportunities to compete. I feel that state athletic associations and schools should be PROMOTING opportunities, not DENYING them.

Sadly, some people are more interested in forcing people to rigidly conform than they are about helping people achieve the most they can.

So please explain how this state athletic association ruling has anything to do with an athlete not going to her teams practices. Do you honestly think this is an "inane rule" as you put it. I am honestly trying to think of any organized team with a reputable coach that would allow an athlete to miss over half of the practices and still let them be part of the team. It just doesn't work well when you allow the top athletes special treatment. Running is both a team and individual sport. Julie didn't follow the team rules and couldn't run in the team races, but she was allowed to run Footlocker, an individual race. In the end, this was probably more important to Julie as it doesn't sound like her team was all that important to her.

Agreed......

If you want to be a part of te team follow the team rules...

If you don't want to follow the team rules don't be a part of the team in question. No harm done.

If she felt she could be better by training on her own then don't be part of the team and then there would be no issue.

How can anyone get onto the coach in question for enforcing the agreed upon rules that the athletes knew about.

You are missing the point. The STATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATIONS make everyone join the school team or you are NOT ALLOWED to compete. I don't believe she cares or wants to be part of any team. She just wants to run for herself but she is shut out of the regional or state meets.

I am glad that footlocker allows EVERYONE the opportunity to compete whether they want to be part of a team or not.

who is clueless now wrote:

Clueless? wrote:

Lot of clueless people on this thread.

Please, enlighten us on how this is not a violation of her right to compete.

It has nothing to do with gender.

Mr Mountain wrote:

You are missing the point. The STATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATIONS make everyone join the school team or you are NOT ALLOWED to compete. I don't believe she cares or wants to be part of any team. She just wants to run for herself but she is shut out of the regional or state meets.

I am glad that footlocker allows EVERYONE the opportunity to compete whether they want to be part of a team or not.

I don't understand why you think she should be allowed to compete in THE STATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEETS just because she wants to. Every organization has their own rules and regulations and there are reasons for those rules. I don't always agree with the rules, but I am not part of the decision making process and there may be reasons for some of these rules that we have no idea about. Runners have many opportunities to compete, but to compete at the state meet, you need to be part of a team. Why is that a problem for you? Should there also be no age limits on who can compete, or no amateurism rules to compete, or should an athlete even need to be in high school to compete? Why should you get to decide what the rules are? You shouldn't. Is it fair that only the top three at the Olympic trials get to compete at the Olympics? I don't know, but that is what our governing body for track & field says. Are you this way about all rules such as traffic laws, child abuse laws, etc. We live in a civilized society where there are rules and regulations and while you may not agree with all of them, we are a better society because of it. Just chill out and accept the fact that not everything will always be the way YOU want it to be, but in the end it usually works out pretty well for all concerned.

jjjjjj wrote:

it's powermonger, you idiot, not power mongrel!

And the coach almost destroyed her runner's dreams because of some arbitrary team rule. you cannot treat everyone on a team equally (and I have never seen a coach that did, e.g. pay attention to the lesser runners), and this was the best runner in the west. You cannot ignore that she will go down as probably (I'm just assuming here) the best runner in school history and you sit her down for what?

Actually, I would say that well over 90% of the coaches do treat everyone equally, at least when it comes to enforcing team rules. The successful coaches are the ones that don't bend the rules, just to favor their top runner. That would create team dissension very quickly. For the most part, the top athletes are the ones that follow the team rules anyway and that is what makes them special. It is called leadership. Unfortunately not ALL top athletes have that leadership quality and they are often the ones that feel like they are being treated unfairly, which is the case in this situation.

When you are injured and can not train, it is like pouring salt in a wound to ask a runner to go to practice anyway and watch all of the team mates run. I think the Coach should have cut her some slack and allowed her to return to practice when she could actually run. End of story.

Too many of these HS Coaches are on a power trip .

broken arrow wrote:

When you are injured and can not train, it is like pouring salt in a wound to ask a runner to go to practice anyway and watch all of the team mates run. I think the Coach should have cut her some slack and allowed her to return to practice when she could actually run. End of story.

Too many of these HS Coaches are on a power trip .

Did you read the story? No. Then please don't comment.

To help you out since you obviously didn't read it, I will give one of the quotes from the story:

“I enjoy running at a different time or cross training more. I forgot running with the team was very important,” she said. “I guess it’s a letdown. It’s not the best outcome that I would want.”

So yes even when she was healthy and running, she wasn't showing up for practice, or in another part of the article, it said she was often late to practices. What a great example to her teammates, which if you read in the comments section of the article, there is a letter from one of her teammates and yes, her actions definitely were having a negative impact on the team.

However, even if she was injured the entire time she was missing practices, it is still important for the runner to be at the start of the practice, when most coaches have a short meeting. After the meeting the athlete can go and do her cross training if that is what she is doing. It just sounds like this girl just wanted to do her own thing and that is fine, but why should she get the same priviliges of being part of the team as everyone who is showing up everyday. The answer is, she shouldn't.

I am completely baffled why some people are still trying to side with the athlete that didn't follow team rules, instead of applauding the coach who stuck to her beliefs and didn't cave to a talented runner with no sense of team. It would have been much easier to let the talented runner compete and the team would have done better, but at what expense for life lessons, which is really what high school coaching should be about. How would it have looked to let a talented runner that skipped many practices compete over another runner that followed the team rules. The lesson would have been, "hey, it doesn't matter how hard you work or whether you play by the rules or not, as long as you have talent". I would be real disappointed if any of my kids coaches did that on one of their teams.

I've dealt with a girl like this before and I completely agree with the coach and school. I have no problem with a "star" athlete wanting to do their own thing, but if that is the case than they can go an run on their own at open meets. There is no place on a team for a person like this because they just ruin the team atmosphere. Showing up to practice is not a difficult thing. What's next? Will she expect races to start at a different time because she doesn't like to run at the scheduled race time? I mean come on. You're an American high school girl runner. You're not some superstar Olympian from Kenya.

Well said. The coach is an idiot.

Clueless? wrote:

and didn't cave to a talented runner with no sense of team. .

Thanks for proving the point I have been making.

Another psycho coach, but thankfully this what makes Footlocker great, you don't need this ignorant highschool coaches to show your talent and move on to college.

Clueless? wrote:

I am completely baffled why some people are still trying to side with the athlete that didn't follow team rules, instead of applauding the coach who stuck to her beliefs and didn't cave to a talented runner with no sense of team. It would have been much easier to let the talented runner compete and the team would have done better, but at what expense for life lessons, which is really what high school coaching should be about.

This America, jerkwad, the most important life lesson is that authority figures often don't know jack and need to be resisted, and that most of the real success and progress in this country has come from that.

So she didn't follow the rules and was kicked off the team. Makes sense. She didn't really consider them important anyway.

But she's really fast and should be allowed to compete on the national individual level, so she ran (and won) FL West.

Also makes sense.

I don't see a problem here.

"Come track season, however, Nacouzi was injured and when healthy didn’t practice or race most of the season. Sell said she allowed Nacouzi to run at the league finals, where she finished second, but not at the NCS meet because she missed two months of practice."

The coach keeps getting the girl injured, shredded knee already in highschool, and only runs her at the league meet for the coaches benefit because she wants petty revenge for the girl getting healthy by avoiding her coaching. Great coach.

States need to allow students to run at the district/regional/state meets without being part of their school's team.

tea mate wrote:

Teammate (assuming valid, but who knows) did respond to the article in comments section:

Doesn't read like a highschool student to me, 99.9% odds the coach wrote that pretending to be one of her own runners.