Wesleyan ladies exercise the nuclear option on coach

hobby running for fat people wrote:

Weight-to strength ratio wrote:

The problem isn't that they are "too heavy" for athletics, it's the fact that they are not strong enough in relation to their bodyweight. I always frame these things as a question of strength and force-production, altogether avoiding the pitfalls of weight discussions.

Almost all Westerners are too big (i.e. fat) to be top distance runners. Look at the guy who was leading Bekele in the recent half marathon in Paris. He looked like a linebacker compared to Kenenisa (and Kenenisa is big for an African).

And he still runs faster than you.

jecht wrote:

Question--Yuki competed for 12 seasons? I thought even with redshirting the most you can compete is 5 years?

My name is Yuki Christina Hebner ‘17 and I competed for Wesleyan’s cross country and track teams for 12 seasons.

Four seasons X-C, four seasons indoors, four seasons outdoors.

railin gupp wrote:

Knows Uncle Phil when he sees Uncle Phil wrote:

This place would be a lot better if all the right wing incel brigade just ST FU once in a while.

Quoted for big big truth.

Thank you. Sometimes I see comments on here that make me wonder how someone could possibly misconstrue a message SO MUCH. Either they have a very low reading comprehension or they want to blame everything on "weak women" going after men. You all are missing the point. The issue wasn't him being a tough coach and them not being able to handle it. It was a longtime trend of him giving terrible, uninformed nutritional and dieting advice that caused physical harm. This wasn't a group of current athletes complaining, it was a group of alumnae spanning years back. You don't put this kind of effort into getting revenge on a coach who was a little mean.

Really?

"My coach, like many others across athletics, disproportionately relied on his understanding of male physiologywhile training women and recklessly compromised our health in the process"

Note: We define “female” as inclusive of all female-identifying people, regardless of their gender expression or sex assigned at birth

Coaches really have no need to talk to their athletes about their weight. You practice well and perform well, you get to go to travel and postseason meets. You don't, you stay home. Talking about weight messes people up, mostly women. Many men have unhealthy eating habits, a few don't eat enough, but it is the women that take it the hardest because all their lives they are or think they are judged by their appearances, that that is the sum total of their worth in life. So, leave them alone about their weight.

Wesleyan's not exactly the NOP, and its women runners probably weren't as thin as Salazar wanted his NOP women elites to aim for. Remember, typical collegians, including college runners at a lowkey liberal arts college with no particular emphasis on athletics, are more influenced by general cultural trends (overweight) than by elite runner trends (very low BMI).

If I were coach, I might have been tempted to call a team huddle and say, "Ladies, you know, if you're interested in running a little faster and winning a few more meets, you might consider losing 5 lbs. Talk to each other. Think about out it."

Then I would have walked away, and let the women runners decide. There's no pressure in this job; I won't get fired if my athletes don't qualify for Nationals.

Losing 5 lbs doesn't equate with eating disorder or missed periods. It equates with skipping dessert and maybe a few mid-day snacks or lattes.

It would also likely make the runners faster and less injury prone. I don't know why they reported so many injuries, but in general very little is known about causes of injury.

I'm guessing an average height/weight of the Wesleyan women runners might have been 5' 6" and

130-135 lbs. This makes them thin but nowhere near elite women runners or Salazar's targets. The U.S. women who recently ran in the Marathon Trials weighed, on average, about 15 to 20 pounds less than this.

It's also a weight where a 5 to 10 lb weight loss would have been unlikely to cause problems.

The major point of this article seems sound -- matters of diet should be left to nutritionists, and if a coach feels like a female competitor's weight is slowing her down, he/she should: (a) say nothing about weight or food; and (b) put the fastest runners in the races, and if weight gain causes some of them not to make the race day lineup, so be it.

If you lose races and meets, and the end of the day, so what.

Wesleyan is a great school and its goal is to produce graduates that will be smart and healthy contributors to society in the fields of endeavor that typically graduate from there. It is not an Olympian factory, and it makes no sense for that school to churn out doctors, lawyers, professors, and investment bankers with eating disorders. Besides, it's not ethical.

Perhaps this has been said already, but talking about weight is far from the only downside to Coach Crooke. For sure he deserves to be scrutinized about the weight issue, but I have never heard anything positive about him from the men and women who run for the Wes team. When there is this much noise, it can't be put down to a matter of a few "entitled rich kids". There are many coaches who have longstanding associations with teams throughout the country, who seem not to raise the hackles of so many people in their institutions. Nobody is perfect, but some are far from perfect and make their own bed. One of my former hs athletes put it well; "coach Crooke never seems to appreciate anything any of us do. It is like he is a robot who has not realized he is coaching humans." I feel sorry for the guy, frankly. Maybe he has autism? I don't know. I genuinely feel sorry for him, but he probably should not coach until he gets some better training.

I heard the coaches put a scale in the women’s locker room at Wesleyan and after a while the team members told the coaches to take it out and it was taken out. They are a d3 school with high academic standards. Don’t think the weight pressure is good for anyone. Also team members got no nutritional counseling just told to lose weight. I ran at a d1 school in the 1980s and the only scale around was in the trainers office. Men’s team was not asked about weight by coaches and men’s team had way fewer injuries than women’s team. Women were pressured to stay lean and a large percentage of their team got stress fractures and other injuries likely from poor nutrition. Hard to imagine there has not been any significant changes in coaching over 30 years with the increase in disordered eating in our society today.

Here's some naive crap

Bonkers wrote:

ggkjfdfgbbhjjfserghj wrote:

So, how to handle it? The fact is, carrying more weight makes you slower.

If gal, or guy, is getting heavier and slowing down, do you just say nothing and drop them next year? Or do you say something and get branded as a horrible person for opening a can of worms?

Of course, encouraging the loss of weight from the athletes long term baseline is not the thing to do.

You focus on training towards fitness, not training towards weight. If you do the proper training you will fall into your correct racing weight quite naturally. Focusing on cutting weight as a path to fitness is putting the cart before the horse. In addition to endangering the athlete's health, it's just bad training methodology.

All this is true, if you don't have an eating disorder. No coach is going to make that eating disorder go away. It has roots earlier than high school, , and is going to manifest no matter who is the coach.That doesn't mean coaches can't have the wrong priorities. It also doesn't mean that one coach won't unintentionally recruit a lot more girls with the eating disorder or the imminent eating disorder from just being unlucky.

Jpss wrote:

Bonkers wrote:

You focus on training towards fitness, not training towards weight. If you do the proper training you will fall into your correct racing weight quite naturally. Focusing on cutting weight as a path to fitness is putting the cart before the horse. In addition to endangering the athlete's health, it's just bad training methodology.

All this is true, if you don't have an eating disorder. No coach is going to make that eating disorder go away. It has roots earlier than high school, , and is going to manifest no matter who is the coach.That doesn't mean coaches can't have the wrong priorities. It also doesn't mean that one coach won't unintentionally recruit a lot more girls with the eating disorder or the imminent eating disorder from just being unlucky.

I don't understand why the coaching staff can't just get properly trained and present accurate information without skirting around eating disorders. Address that people generally run faster when they're a little lighter but also recognize that there's a healthy way to approach this (aka eating balanced meals with the goal of proper nutrition instead of just eating less with the goal of losing weight). Talk about how runners need enough fuel to have a sustainable career and that getting lighter will have diminishing returns. Address the possibility of eating disorders (that may have manifested before or after college athletics) and refer runners to help if they need it. Encourage healthy mindsets. There's clearly a right way to do this as other successful women's teams exist where EDs don't manifest left and right.

To those asking why men's teams don't seem to have this issue, please look up the Female Athlete Triad. If a woman has Amenorrhea, she will likely experience bone density issues, which lead to stress fractures and many other problems. This issue is obviously not present with men because they cannot lose their periods. Their hormones function differently. This does not mean that men do not get eating disorders and don't need to worry about proper nutrition, the impact is just a little different. Male eating disorders being underreported is a whole other problem as well.

greatest coach in the galaxy wrote:

I don't have a Username wrote:

We had to log our body weight in our training log which he would look over during weekly individual meetings, but I don't think this was for him to be able to body shame us, but for us to keep track and be mindful about it.

Might be well intentioned, but this is a horrible idea for a collegiate coach. As an assistant I've had a head coach who insists on weighing only his female athletes, not the guys ever, and it's a total cringefest. Literally the weigh-ins are done in public too. The head coach means well, truly, but has no clue about eating disorders and how easily they can come on with stimulus like that. I won't be coaching there anymore after this season. Ticking time bomb I don't want shrapnel from.

I think it actually does have a place, if done privately and to monitor for trends. Female athletes have a much higher rate of eating disorders and being able to track weight can be a warning sign for a coach. Or having the data if an athlete is struggling but they are 10 lbs more than when they were running better (as long as that was a healthy weight). Obviously it is at best a super touchy subject and should have a dietician (not "nutritionist" which anyone can call themselves) involved and probably leading any discussion about changing weight but I think if a coach establishes a culture of tracking weight on an ongoing basis and it is kept private and not overly emphasized it can be done appropriately and can be a tool to keep athletes healthy

Whats crazy is that so many men think that coaches accosting female athletes over weight is "not a big deal" and then admit that they don't get that many questions or scrutiny on their weight from coaches in the same breath.

Weight IS important to performance. It's not the only factor, and its gross and weird that so many male coaches obsess over it.

If you look at those who signed the petition re: calling for change, it's all women and one man at the bottom.

Any Wesleyan alums know if there were issues on the men's side too?

jecht wrote:

If you look at those who signed the petition re: calling for change, it's all women and one man at the bottom.

Any Wesleyan alums know if there were issues on the men's side too?

haha yup

Wesleyan not NOP wrote:

If I were coach, I might have been tempted to call a team huddle and say, "Ladies, you know, if you're interested in running a little faster and winning a few more meets, you might consider losing 5 lbs. Talk to each other. Think about out it."

Please do the world a favor and never even attempt to coach anyone, male or female.

hardset nipples wrote:

Wesleyan not NOP wrote:

If I were coach, I might have been tempted to call a team huddle and say, "Ladies, you know, if you're interested in running a little faster and winning a few more meets, you might consider losing 5 lbs. Talk to each other. Think about out it."

Please do the world a favor and never even attempt to coach anyone, male or female.

JFC, was that supposed to be op's emphatic good cop approach to talking to athletes about weight? I hope we never find out what the bad cop, "facts don't care about your feelings" approach sounds like. I'd say please never coach anyone, but with that attitude I don't think we have to worry about you getting hired anywhere in the first place. Just gross, man.

Knows Uncle Phil when he sees Uncle Phil wrote:

entitled 19 year old wrote:

Why anyone would want to become a college coach is beyond me. After what happened to Metcalf and things like this. You’re at the mercy of idiot 18-22 year olds. If they decide they don’t like you they just make up or embellish some crap to get you fired and publicly shamed.

A group of women express a relevant issue they have.

First reply on LRC? This is a terrible problem for the coaches, which invariably are men.

This place would be a lot better if all the right wing incel brigade just ST FU once in a while.

<sarc>Written with so much tact and not a trace of self-irony.</sarc>