Just not the truth - there were other reasons not under his control - Coach Lockhart is an excellent dedicated distance coach plain and simple and great person too !
He was a great coach. Cal is impossible to be good. Even Tony and Shayla had struggles. whoever is next will be up against the same - hard to recruit out of state without $ and hard to compete against the east africans with priviliiaged cali kids
The guy is a terrible coach and, from what I’ve seen, not a good person either. Recruiting at Cal isn’t easy, but let’s not pretend that’s the reason for the results. Plenty of coaches have done more with less. At some point, the lack of progress falls on the coach, not the circumstances.
Bobby is a knowledgable guy. Solid coach. A bit old school. Was the program underperforming? Hard to say.
Very few people who post here have any idea how complicated it is coaching at the D1 level. It's very hard to develop people when money and numbers, especially numbers, are limited. Not to mention Cal is a hard school to get into academically. Sports aren't really a focus there and XC/track are pretty far down the list .
Could they have done better. Maybe. But without resources the next hire will have still have their work cut out for them.
Like I said above, maybe they should just promote the assistant. She honestly was doing a good job on the women's side... though there are more women's scholarships available than there are men's so there's that.
Rumor has it that Cal will be reaching out to a local coach to fill the position. What does "local" mean?
He was a great coach. Cal is impossible to be good. Even Tony and Shayla had struggles. whoever is next will be up against the same - hard to recruit out of state without $ and hard to compete against the east africans with priviliiaged cali kids
losing to cal poly, davis, and ucla shows there are additional steps before worrying about competing against east africans
He was a great coach. Cal is impossible to be good. Even Tony and Shayla had struggles. whoever is next will be up against the same - hard to recruit out of state without $ and hard to compete against the east africans with priviliiaged cali kids
losing to cal poly, davis, and ucla shows there are additional steps before worrying about competing against east africans
Add Chico State, UC Santa Cruz & Cal Poly Pomona to that list. Remember when CAL was signing NXN champs, national high school record holders and many of the best kids in California?
Maybe a reality check for younger coaches wanting to get into the profession. This is not really related to a job opening unless you want a part-time position with a lot of limits, but here is an example of what's wrong with the profession at the college level if a school doesn't see the value in quality people and the quality students that xc brings to the table.
D2 MSUD from the RMAC / South-Central Region just basically gutted their xc program.
Last year prior to the season they made them cut their xc roster to just 10 men and 10 women and a couple of weeks ago they changed their xc coach position to part-time moving forward. So their xc / distance coach Amanda Rego is moving on. She had a great career as a runner and has done a good job as a coach at MSUD the past five seasons while coaching in a brutal distance conference. Not to mention she took over a program that was in a tough position due to the firing of the previous coach mid-season.
Despite both teams having roster limits last season they finished well in the deep SC region (men 7th and women 9th with their top runner being in the hospital for most of two weeks going into regionals). The men were ranked 23rd nationally after regionals, but were not selected as an at-large team due to a glitch in the tie-breaking system against a team from another region. Both teams also had individual national qualifiers in recent years.
Someone like Coach Rego will certainly be fine elsewhere, but our sport doesn't need to get rid of good coaches who are good people that positively impact student-athlete's lives. Hopefully things will work out for the kids left on the team there or they will be given opportunities elsewhere that may value what they can contribute to a team and a school.
Maybe a reality check for younger coaches wanting to get into the profession. This is not really related to a job opening unless you want a part-time position with a lot of limits, but here is an example of what's wrong with the profession at the college level if a school doesn't see the value in quality people and the quality students that xc brings to the table.
D2 MSUD from the RMAC / South-Central Region just basically gutted their xc program.
Last year prior to the season they made them cut their xc roster to just 10 men and 10 women and a couple of weeks ago they changed their xc coach position to part-time moving forward. So their xc / distance coach Amanda Rego is moving on. She had a great career as a runner and has done a good job as a coach at MSUD the past five seasons while coaching in a brutal distance conference. Not to mention she took over a program that was in a tough position due to the firing of the previous coach mid-season.
Despite both teams having roster limits last season they finished well in the deep SC region (men 7th and women 9th with their top runner being in the hospital for most of two weeks going into regionals). The men were ranked 23rd nationally after regionals, but were not selected as an at-large team due to a glitch in the tie-breaking system against a team from another region. Both teams also had individual national qualifiers in recent years.
Someone like Coach Rego will certainly be fine elsewhere, but our sport doesn't need to get rid of good coaches who are good people that positively impact student-athlete's lives. Hopefully things will work out for the kids left on the team there or they will be given opportunities elsewhere that may value what they can contribute to a team and a school.
Alright then. But you'd better get used to seeing this, and stop expecting that schools are going to uphold your ideals about how the sport and profession should be in the face of changing times in higher ed.
Will he keep his current staff? Who will Coach Bennett hire if he releases the current coaches?
The entire staff needs to go. The distance guy is horrific, Bennett is a sprints guy which means getting rid of the sprints guy now, and with Scott gone they have no field coaches on staff currently
Actually their head track & field coach (technically head coach on paper of the programs combined) made the decision to create the xc roster limit and cut the xc / distance coaching position to part-time in order to put the financial resources into other events and the school just signed off on it.
Anyone in the business knows that if you work at a non-D1 school who cares about enrollment then when it comes to the Athletic Dept the sport of xc is the cheapest and you can have about as big of roster as you want, not to mention high retention rates and academic success generally come with it. So that isn't the issue.
This is more of a story about how xc and track & field staffs and opportunities are impacted by the dynamics and structure of the staff when the six seasons of men's and women's xc, indoor and outdoor track are combined to manage resources.
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