These Dartmouth athletes and their parents are compete weenies and need to grow up and move on. How embarrassing for the athletes to have your parent involved.
Typical Ivy League behavior. I swear to effing God, these kids will be so psychologically screwed as adults given how much they let their parents direct, and comment on, their lives.
Also, has The Dartmouth ever heard of editing for concision?
Clearly if you read the article, the problem is WITH the coaching staff and administration.
I read enough to know I would NEVER send a kid there. Yes the coaches are a problem. There is always someone higher to go to. Going public is just putting a death to the program. It's going to take many years before someone good wants to run for them.
You sound like one of those Penn State JoeBots who would have preferred Sandusky’s victims kept quiet because going public would hurt the football program.
I read enough to know I would NEVER send a kid there. Yes the coaches are a problem. There is always someone higher to go to. Going public is just putting a death to the program. It's going to take many years before someone good wants to run for them.
You sound like one of those Penn State JoeBots who would have preferred Sandusky’s victims kept quiet because going public would hurt the football program.
Yes because sexual assault and bad coaching are the exact same thing (sarcasm). I never once said keep quiet. I said go all the way to the top in administration.
Not really relevant. McNulty coached under Norm, Goetz with Rhonda. Fair to criticize either based on results but not a whole lot of similarity between Norm and Rhonda.
You sound like one of those Penn State JoeBots who would have preferred Sandusky’s victims kept quiet because going public would hurt the football program.
Yes because sexual assault and bad coaching are the exact same thing (sarcasm). I never once said keep quiet. I said go all the way to the top in administration.
I ran for Coach McNulty at Duke and want to provide a different perspective on his character and coaching ability.
I was part of the steeple group, which Coach McNulty had full training control over. None of us felt overtrained; on the contrary, we all had great relationships with Coach McNulty and found that he was really receptive to what we had to say about our training. In high school I had two major injuries; in college I didn't miss a single practice for injury. Of the 7 guys I trained with under McNulty, the only one I remember with a notable injury got hurt by hitting his knee on a barrier during a race. We all ran well under him, including Alex Miley getting 3rd at ACCs in his first steeple season and myself, a sophomore walk-on, going from 9:01 3k flat to a 9:09 3k steeple. I can say confidently that Coach McNulty was beloved by the distance team at Duke, steeple athletes and otherwise.
I think the article misrepresents McNulty's qualifications. Before he arrived at Transylvania, their men's team hadn't even fielded a scoring team at Regionals the two years prior. I'd like to see any of you idiots build a team literally from the ground up. Before Transylvania, he spent 4 years at Duke learning how to run a D1 program and having full training autonomy for the men's steeple athletes. Under Coach McNulty's guidance, USTFCCCA ranked Duke men’s steeplechase 7th in the nation. This was the highest overall performance by any Duke event group (men or women) across all events. Before that, he coached elite athletes with NJ/NY, learning under legendary coach Frank Gagliano. To be fair to the Dartmouth athletes, I honestly understand why they preferred Ben True based on their familiarity with him. But this notion that McNulty wasn't qualified to coach just isn't accurate. He has experience coaching elite athletes and experience running a program, the two things you need to be successful.
Regarding the parent digging into the archives at UK trying to discredit coach McNulty based on a minor resume mistake: this is just Dance Moms: Ivy League Edition and it's honestly embarrassing for y'all.
I can't speak to the experience of the Dartmouth athletes because I wasn't part of that team. But I think it's important to provide another perspective on Coach McNulty's abilities and set the record straight on his qualifications. I hope he gets another shot at coaching.
I ran for Coach McNulty at Duke and want to provide a different perspective on his character and coaching ability.
Thanks for the different perspective. I too find this story of a disgruntled parent digging into his resume strange. It also does sound like the runners were never really willing to buy into the training, although being a speed-work focused xc team in 2023 is kinda crazy.
Mommy, I can't break 35 in the 10k, so it must be the new coaches fault. Fire him mommy!
There are a lot of very strange posts in this thread getting downvoted to oblivion, attacking Dartmouth athletes for their "privilege", and mounting strange irrational defenses of McNulty and Harnden.
It would be very interesting if a Letsrun admin could look at these IPs and see where these posts are coming from. I would not be the least bit surprised to find out that they are coming from the same one or two IP addresses in New Hampshire....
I ran for Coach McNulty at Duke and want to provide a different perspective on his character and coaching ability.
Thank you for the essay but it lacks critical thinking. Answer these questions:
1. Have you seen the training plans he wrote? If you have and you think that's "good" training then i'm not sure you're qualified to assess his skills. Seeing the comments on this board display that he doesn't know how to write training programs. I could be wrong but i'm going to assume he implemented someone else's training at Duke.
2. Why lie on your resume in the first place? Sure, it's a little far that a parent dug but if he were actually qualified and his resume was truthful there would have been no reason to search for answers. Also, saying you ran D1 for four years is not a minor mistake, you don't accidentally forget that you only on the team for one year.
3. Do you think the team broke their bones on purpose? How do you explain a perfectly healthy team collectively breaking uncommon bones?
4. When the Director of XCTF and the administration know that kids are breaking their legs continuously, why did the kids have to stick up for themselves in the first place? His coaching aside, this was a massive oversight by everyone involved.
Does Dartmouth have an XC\T&F alumni association? Has there been unified push back from alumni on this issue? I’m certain there would be at my institution if this level of dysfunction continued for so long.
I hope everyone can recognize the issues at hand, while still easing up on the vitriol towards McNulty. Even if his training was poor, that doesn't mean he as a person is deserving of all this hate.
- former athlete under McNulty
I mean, there was the whole alleged "fabricated his resume" thing, and the whole alleged "failed to modify workouts after literally grinding people's leg-bones into silica" thing, but I'm sure he's pleasant to talk to at parties.
This post was edited 49 seconds after it was posted.
Agreed here. If not Ben True, Tim Cox is an excellent Coach and Human. Makes sense that he'd take time with family with Addison and Aidan Cox (Frosh) at UVA. but he could lead for sure.
Oh wow, My son a HS junior was contacted by McNulty for recruiting in late November this year. McNulty never did call, My son and I were just laughing the other night how he never did get back to him.... I guess this explains a LOT.
1. If his bio on the Dartmouth website correctly stated he was a 1-year athlete at Kentucky, how do we know it wasn't just a simple clerical error / mistake by the author in the Welcome To Dartmouth article about him being a 4-year athlete? Like has anyone actually seen the resume McNulty sent and that he "lied about his qualifications?" Or is this just based on the error in the Welcome article?
2. There's a bit of a double standard where the Dartmouth guys say he should have never been hired in the first place because he comes from DIII ("that was a slap in the face") yet the guys loved their previous coach Wood, who came from DIII. So, clearly it's possible that a DIII coach can be a great coach. So let's just judge the coaching itself, not discredit it based on from where they came.
3. McNulty wrote the steeple workouts himself at Duke, and had success, but the general weekly structure still followed the rest of the team (i.e. he didn't have full power to make them do 3+ workouts a week), so it's still possible he was good at Duke and bad at Dartmouth, where he had full reign.
4. The issues don't stem from the "Duke coaching tree," McNulty was an assistant on the men's side and Goetz on the women's. They never interacted, administered different training, went to different races, etc. (Plus, for what it's worth, Goetz was under fire for the human/management side of coaching, not the Xs and Os of training).
5. With all this said, it's still obvious that Ben True made more sense as the hire.
I completely disagree. Dartmouth is an AMAZING school that will always attract talent and Hanover is an ideal location for a distance runner to train. With new leadership the program can rebound in no time at all!