VANDERBILT former athlete exposes mentally harmful coaching in new article

DanM wrote:

"Look, my paycheck and job security is determined by the performance of a bunch of young women. If I let everyone take a race or practice off when they were feeling depressed, I would lose my job. I can't let every little mental health problem get in the way of the end goal . Maybe you just aren’t cut out for this.”

Truer words were never spoken.

Yeah? Only good things happening from ignoring or minimizing mental health problems, right?

Terrible coach.

asd wrote:

"Going in, I thought everyone would be friends." No. That is not how life works.

No, but a good team culture breeds better results. I was friends with 95% of my team in both high school and college. Both environments were influenced greatly by the coach

asd wrote:

The parents ultimately failed this girl, though. She had issues dating back to 5th grade as many have pointed out. They allowed her to start and continue to participate in a pressure cooker environment while she was suffering big time mentally. Often parents dont want to face reality when it comes to their children and that creates such issues as these.

Maybe you can expand on this more, but your statement sounds ignorant towards mental health issues.

Are you saying her parents should have removed her from sports at the time she started showing signs of depression and anxiety? In 99% of cases, removing an activity that is healthy for the body and mind - particularly if you’re elite at it - would be ridiculous. Further, for a parent to hold a student back from a scholarship at an elite university would be ludicrous. If she that 1%? Maybe. Would she have avoided relapses if the coach and team environment was healthy? Probably.

Wow, skimming her article really opened eyes to the reality that others had crippling anxiety like I did in college. I called it "nerves." But the nerves were so strong that I was out of breath and exhausted before I began most races. I didnt have the deep depression she had and I eventually got back to my PR times, but never reached my potential. Looking back Ive always said I should have transferred to a D2 school and paid my way via student loans. Having heard her story I feel a bit less bad about choosing to stay on.

To the people making it sound like she should have pushed through and been tough -- that's actually what she was doing and was having poor results. Not only because of her mental health issues but also because she and her coach were not a good fit (IMHO)--she kept getting injured and didn't have her/his support. I stayed on at my school because I believed I would heal and be back to my former self. But fighting mental health and unsupportive coaching is a hard battle to win. I was fortunate enough that 1 of the 5 distance coaches (in 4 years in college) I had was able to balance my training and kept me mostly healthy for 2 years.

Please if you are battling anxiety and depression--get help. It is a long term investment in yourself.

I ran for Vanderbilt back in the day. Coaches were absolutely terrible (self absorbed and careless)....that is until Coach Steve Keith came along. Amazing man. Made training fun and his training was smart. I actually felt cared about...It was stroke of luck they finally let go a very abusive head coach who knew nothing about distant running and hired him.

Why does this young lady hate other women? This just shows that she has issue with strong female leaders.

It really makes me sad how callous many of the posters are to the girl in the article, and to athletes dealing with depression in general. As a current college runner six months into injury number 4 in 18 months, it's haaard to stay afloat sometimes. I've been going to a therapist for a while who thinks I'm depressed, and running has contributed to how I feel to a pretty significant degree. I've had times where i'd be working out a lot sooner than I thought was good coming back from injury, and my only running i've done has been off of the back of workouts for that 18 months, because being injured I can't accumulate training and when I start running again my fitness is always behind where the rest of the team is. And that really wears on me, and it's tough when you don't feel you are getting the support you would like from your coaches. It's hard to keep doing something you love if you are so far below your potential or even just a basic level of competitiveness, and there isn't anything I can do about it with my injury cycle. College athletes aren't automatons, and to expect them to set aside all their baggage when they show up to practice is unreasonable and self-serving to push your own narrative of "how things should be." Nobody wants to be in these situations, but the least coaches can do is provide you support and understanding as you try and figure it out.

The athlete and her parents might have been better off if they had contemplated the fact her mile PR was 15 seconds off (nearly half an indoor track) what it takes to score most years in the SEC.

This young athlete was not ready for the SEC and a lot of these people throwing out accusations about "one size fits all" training plans forget that Power 5 college coaches are charged with getting athletes well under 4:50 in the mile. If you can do that with 2 out of 8 MD girls on a team you are successful.

There is no excuse for a coach being a jerk, but you should not accept the testimony of an athlete who did not have success as fact--you would need input from coaches and successful athletes to get a more complete picture,

A lesson to HS athletes--consider the level of competition you are committing to. If this Pennsylvania HS standout had gone to a Patriot League school this may have been a completely different story.

Good Coaches are suppose to be good at developing decent runners, that's their job. You won't get all runners who are coming in as state champions. Anyone can take raw talent and average training and then try to claim their race results as a product of their superior coaching.

I believe 100% what this athlete has shared and the Coaches, all of them involved, know 100% how they treated her and they've surely read the article.

Physically and mentally burning out and destroying athletes is inexcusable. Apparently rest between hard workouts and listening to their athletes was not in the Coaches playbook.

If this athlete had run a 4:45, then I believe she would have been listened to more, but...that was not the case. Thru simple searching you can see that she wasn't the only one injured on that team.

Sad all the way around and glad she didn't end up like poor Maddy did:(

She's not a "girl" and hasn't been for many years. She's an adult woman who has lived outside of her parents' home since her freshman year of college. Young women and men at the same age were going off to serve in harm's way (and die or be maimed) in Afghanistan at that time. Can we quit making elaborate excuses for people when all that really happened is their parents failed them?

As for you, it's obvious you're not going pro in running so yes, continue to enjoy it but lower your expectations and invest your energies wisely elsewhere that will pay off better in career and life.

As a coach I don't "believe 100%" the word of an athlete who struggled to perform. I am not calling the runner soft or weak, but it is important to remember that in an inherently competitive environment many people will fail and that is rarely exclusively the fault of a coach and is often multifaceted.

Looking at Vanderbilts roster I believe they are performing about as expected. They are top half of the conference in XC. They are simply not going to compete with Ole Miss and Arkansas without better recruits (this may be the coaches fault). Georgia (Drop sisters) and Auburn (Joyce Kimile) are outscoring them on the track but not in XC (so in this sense Vanderbilt is doing a better job than these institutions in developing team depth). Vanderbilt has some current success stories (Jensen, their current best distance runner, has improved a lot from HS).

You may know more about Smeltzer (since she recruited you) but I think it is important to note the SEC is highly competitive and while she is not winning titles, Vanderbilt is far from the bottom.

I think people are jumping to blame the coach and jumping to defend this girl too quickly. The girl admits she has mental health issues. So people defending her she isn't trying to say she did things perfectly, to the contrary she is saying she didn't. Also running is unfortunately a game of numbers. Not everyone jives with the coaching style of a given coach... why do you think Pro's switch coaches? maybe because they thought a change in coaching style would help. To those defending the coach... It's not a Coaches job to make the athlete good.. that is the Athletes responsibility.. I a Coaches job is to encourage and motivate the athlete and build trust and understand your athletes (build a good relationship with them). Giving workouts, easy runs, long runs etc is easy to know and is almost the same across the bored in university's it's the former combined with the talent of the athlete that makes good programs. For some Athletes that may mean being tough on them for others it may mean connecting them with counseling. Many Coaches either play favorites or only coach one coaching style for all athletes. Both fail some athletes but doesn't guarantee your team will be a failure... but at the same time long term probably won't be good for the program. Many Coaches (and humans) aren't good at motivating different types of people (I saw this in college and see it all the time in low level management in corporate America). This is where it isn't necessarily the coaches fault. the Coach is also a human that has issues adapting to motivating 100% of her team... but so are 99.9% of coaches in college probably... there has never really been a president that had 100% approval rating in the US... and that doesn't mean the the president was trying to kill someone.

I bet her parents main priority was bragging that their daughter was a "scholarship" athlete at a Power 5 Division 1 school.

My reaction to the author of the article qnd her way of thinking:

And then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, oh my god I am going to cry...

Get a grip!

"a Coaches job is to encourage and motivate the athlete and build trust and understand your athletes (build a good relationship with them)."

Yes, exactly. And in this case, the Vanderbilt coach did not and made no attempts to build trust and understanding with the athlete.

"For some Athletes that may mean being tough on them for others it may mean connecting them with counseling."

Yes, exactly. Any person in charge of other people needs to recognize that everyone has different strengths, skills, and needs. What it takes for one person to reach their potential is different than what it takes another person. "Equal" treatment is not necessarily "fair."

"Many Coaches either play favorites or only coach one coaching style for all athletes. Both fail some athletes but doesn't guarantee your team will be a failure... but at the same time long term probably won't be good for the program. Many Coaches (and humans) aren't good at motivating different types of people"

Is it too much to ask for a coach who can adequately coach more than 1 athlete? Is it so hard to hire someone who has basic empathy and is able to do the job they were hired for?

Is it too much to ask for a coach who can adequately coach more than 1 athlete? Is it so hard to hire someone who has basic empathy and is able to do the job they were hired for?

Apparently yes seems very few programs have a coach who can adapt to so many different leadership technics. Others often just try to recruit the type of athlete they can coach... or at least those are the athletes that stay in the program.

again as I said... I have met very few managers who could do that in a work setting where they are making over 120k how you expect someone making under 100k to be any better?

Everyone here defending these coaches' behavior and criticizing the athlete are the same people who defended Salazar and criticized Cain. These are unfit coaches, plain and simple. Look no further than Malmo's response, an individual who understands the sport and its demands far better than anyone else here can claim to

Also building a relationship with an athlete means there has to be 2 ways of communication. It seems like there was one way of communication (coach->Athlete) for a long long time and when communication happened the other way the coach didn't know what to do because the relationship was one way. Now while they are both adults and should know how to get along with others despite differences you would expect the coach to have owned that skill and taken the initiative to fix the one way form of communication. But didn't and If I have learned anything from college and work is you can't expect people above you to be smart or have your best interest in mind. In fact the best management I have seen for most the teams I have been on professionally were when we were trying to find a manager but had none.. I don't think that's best for coaching or even management just pointing out the people we think are qualified to lead and mentor tend to not really care about others and do more harm than good way too often

blackhorse wrote:

Everyone here defending these coaches' behavior and criticizing the athlete are the same people who defended Salazar and criticized Cain. These are unfit coaches, plain and simple. Look no further than Malmo's response, an individual who understands the sport and its demands far better than anyone else here can claim to

Malmo said nothing about this particular coach or athlete. No one here has any idea if these coaches are unfit, unless one of you has been on their team. Let me put it into perspective for you. I read a story from someone claiming to have personal experience of you molesting a child. Should you now be branded a child molestor, or should we wait for all the information to come out before we make that call? I mean, someone said that you molested children on the internet. It must be true, right?

As a female athlete through a competitive program in high school to a division 1 power house I have to say she sounds whiny, entitled (her meal plan wasn't large enough), and childish. All I kept thinking while scimming... was she must be an only child. She has no sense of others and probably would be miserable no matter what. You can't please everyone and she's the type of athlete you don't want on your team as a coach or teammate. Was my college experience great? NO, were my coaches and teammates great? NO, but nobody is perfect and sure we can all spin this around on ourselves. The things she's complaining about are trivial. Move on!