Another former UC Davis athlete here, definitely agree with most of the points said.
I know that supposedly the relationship between makusha and the xc coaches got better, but not by much last year. I tried transferring after my freshman year due to the reasons already cited, but its unfortunate that a d1 program doesn't remotely live up to the levels. Men's track was considered being cut this past year, but either way i don't think there will be much more effort put into the program as a whole.
Curious to see who the new coach will be, maybe they'll start to turn it around now that we're in the mountain west, have some hopes tbh. Either way its embarrassing to be running slower times than many highschools and always last in conference as a "d1" team.
Then why didn't you end up transferring?
These situations, along with the Portland States, Chicago States & Cleveland States etc are becoming more and more common as these mid majors attempt to keep up with the real DI's in basketball and football. Which obviously isn't going to happen. So most of these smaller DI's will eventually collapse or go DII or DIII. If they're not AT LEAST P4 already, they will not be DI within the next five years or so...if that even still exits.
I did try, iirc last year was when the NCAA vs House (correct me if I'm wrong) got passed and all the teams I had been talking to had ended up cutting most of their roster. Unlucky for me because it seemed pretty likely I would be running at that school today if the roster cuts didn't happen. I tried reaching out again this year to transfer again but nothing from them so far, even though apparently the coach was interested.
Sorry to hear that. Davis is a great small college town with a history of quality runners going back decades. It's shameful that Makusha couldn't make it work. I do know that he was approached by a couple of well qualified world class distance coaches and simple ghosted them. Not sure what his issue was, aside from being incompetent.
I think Makusha has been awful, but a couple of world class coaches approached him? For the $40K, or whatever they were paying? Really?
That's interesting, first time I've heard of that. I know we had a Japanese coach who had his own athletes but also helped out with our 400m/400h and all the athletes really liked him. He was supposed to get paid but kept getting strung along, which is a shame since I think the program would've gotten better with his continued help.
It's pretty in line with most things, Makusha wanted to do everything which is admirable but the "my way or the highway" approach ended up hurting most of our team and almost everyone had some sort of injury or stagnated on the sprints side except for a few. I definitely think if he was more open minded as well as having a few other coaches we wouldn't have another lackluster season like this year.
Ernie Clark NAU ,is leading candidate. He understands distance and is a hell of a sprint hurdles coach. He will continue sprint tradition and upgrade distance.
There were a few coaches at west regionals who applied and heard ZERO back as of last weekend. A couple that I am shocked didn't even get a sniff. Guys we have no clue what these AD's want, let's be honest with ourselves
Anybody have info on American University and the sprints job they posted way bac in early April? I was expecting that to be filled and some coaching dominoes to start falling
Another former UC Davis athlete here, definitely agree with most of the points said.
I know that supposedly the relationship between makusha and the xc coaches got better, but not by much last year. I tried transferring after my freshman year due to the reasons already cited, but its unfortunate that a d1 program doesn't remotely live up to the levels. Men's track was considered being cut this past year, but either way i don't think there will be much more effort put into the program as a whole.
Curious to see who the new coach will be, maybe they'll start to turn it around now that we're in the mountain west, have some hopes tbh. Either way its embarrassing to be running slower times than many highschools and always last in conference as a "d1" team.
Sorry to hear that. Davis is a great small college town with a history of quality runners going back decades. It's shameful that Makusha couldn't make it work. I do know that he was approached by a couple of well qualified world class distance coaches and simple ghosted them. Not sure what his issue was, aside from being incompetent.
I checked the UC Davis record book (from 2020 back). Zero men in the 1500, 3000 steeple, 5000, or 10k have PRs that would land them in the Top 50 of D1 this year. Zero superstars from decades ago.
For the distance women, there were two steeplers whose PRs would put them at #22 and #26 on the D1 Top 50 this year.
UC Davis was D2 until 2004.
The coach was not renewed, but also he was not the distance coach, right? He didn't select and hire the head xc/distance coach, right? Davis is only now reorganizing under a director, right? With the mens program nearly being axed last year, but instead dropping to 4 scholarships (according to two anonymous lrc posters here), maybe drop your glory days expectations on one event area. Underfunded teams don't have the luxury of scholarshipping a balanced team, they have to pick an event area to focus on. Much of the team will be walk ons.
This is a job opening at an underfunded D1 in a state whose public university athletics are sliding, not booming. Also, Davis is very hard to get into. So take it or leave it.
Sorry to hear that. Davis is a great small college town with a history of quality runners going back decades. It's shameful that Makusha couldn't make it work. I do know that he was approached by a couple of well qualified world class distance coaches and simple ghosted them. Not sure what his issue was, aside from being incompetent.
I checked the UC Davis record book (from 2020 back). Zero men in the 1500, 3000 steeple, 5000, or 10k have PRs that would land them in the Top 50 of D1 this year. Zero superstars from decades ago.
For the distance women, there were two steeplers whose PRs would put them at #22 and #26 on the D1 Top 50 this year.
UC Davis was D2 until 2004.
The coach was not renewed, but also he was not the distance coach, right? He didn't select and hire the head xc/distance coach, right? Davis is only now reorganizing under a director, right? With the mens program nearly being axed last year, but instead dropping to 4 scholarships (according to two anonymous lrc posters here), maybe drop your glory days expectations on one event area. Underfunded teams don't have the luxury of scholarshipping a balanced team, they have to pick an event area to focus on. Much of the team will be walk ons.
This is a job opening at an underfunded D1 in a state whose public university athletics are sliding, not booming. Also, Davis is very hard to get into. So take it or leave it.
I think the reputation of Davis for track is in such a poor spot right now. I can only speak more on the sprints side, but many of the athletes would tell highschoolers on a visit to pick a different program if they wanted to run because of what has been happening.
Like you said, I can confirm that basically 3/4ths of the team are walkons and most get a spot because of how small the team is already. I doubt one event group will ever be "great" and at most in the midfield for the foreseeable future, the AD wants to pour money into football and basketball and could care less about track.