UNC cut's "All-American" 800 Runner...

Tarheel4Life

Again..

When do you look at the coaching staff?

5 years of bad performances? 10? never?

Maybe you should take a step back and remove the personal relationship you have with the school and coaches and ask yourself if you are happy with what the UNC men's team has done as a whole? If you are a reasonable person who wants to win I think you would realize that the UNC men's program has not been successful where other programs have been at chapel hill.

Please anwser this.

As an Alumni, are you happy with their results?

Were you happy after you heard the news about ACCs?

Fair enough, the performance of the men's team has been only short of atrocious in the past few years. Even at the conference level it is/was quite the miracle to get no-field teammates into the finals. I agree that i have a somewhat emotional tie to this and that clouds my judgement but i tend to defend the coaching staff b/c 1) they listen 2) they tailored/accomodated 3) they give the oppurtunity. It's difficult to side with the kids that I know refused to grow up and take responsibility for their own actions. You can't be (only slight offense intended) or act like a frat star if you want to be an elite athlete. It made my ears bleed to hear these same people blame others. It is a difficult time for the program, there is no doubt but measures are being taken. B/W Clay and Cody the middle distance program has had 2 of the best recruits in the country in the past few years. Whit can recruit but he hardly has great numbers to intice w/. As far as sprinters go, which really is what Carolina should be known for, Reggie is doing well and they just brought in Gold Medalist and multiple NCAA d2 champ coach antonio pettigrew. My point is steps are being taken. I would love more than anything to see things change around. I just think that it will take time and something needs to be done about these poisonous attitudes which manifest in one and spread to others -->even to those who don't have the tendency to be of that nature nor were they of that nature when recruited (again in defense of the coaching). I know I stand in the face of opposition but I would be happy to agree to disagree.

I'm all for not blaming the coaches/program when athletes aren't "sacking up" but the sheer numbers (if they are true) suggest something else. When you have that many runners who aren't giving their all at some point you need to ask if they aren't giving because there is something severely deficient in the coaching.

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Tarheel4life said..."No disrespect when I say this but pretty much all of these people just never had it. Sure there are problems with the team and coaching, name a place where there isn't. What I'm saying is that so many of these people show up at Carolina, look at it, and get caught up in all of it b/c it is an unbelievable place. For some reason they think that just b/c they are there that in some mystical way they will just start performing. Well when it inevitably does not happen, they all do the same thing. They blame the program, coaches, school, etc. "

As a UNC student, it is shameful the amount of runners who quit the team in light of coaching related incidents. Are all of them innocent? Absolutely not. However, there are multitudes of the list compiled on page one that were unjustly cut or dismissed from the team. Some were moderately good runners at best, but some were sub 1:51 800m and had plenty of potential left. Clay Ragan was not academically inelgible at any time, so why give ANY study hall hours just because he is not a dean's list student? Their decision will definitely prove to be a costly one as they move towards ACC Championships.

Nobody will learn. wrote:

As a UNC student, it is shameful the amount of runners who quit the team in light of coaching related incidents. Are all of them innocent? Absolutely not. However, there are multitudes of the list compiled on page one that were unjustly cut or dismissed from the team. Some were moderately good runners at best, but some were sub 1:51 800m and had plenty of potential left. Clay Ragan was not academically inelgible at any time, so why give ANY study hall hours just because he is not a dean's list student? Their decision will definitely prove to be a costly one as they move towards ACC Championships.

If you don't know Clay's academic situation, then stop posting about this. Obviously you have no idea what was going on. In order to be academically ineligible he would have had to have failed enough classes the previous semester or accumulated a GPA below the acceptable 2.0 during the previous semester. However, it was issues from the current semester that were the final deciding factor in his dismissal. If he isn't making the grades and is struggling in the classroom currently, emphasis needs to be put on making sure that he passes his classes. Its student-athlete, not athlete-student. There are reasons why the NCAA and individual teams have certain academic standards to uphold in order to be eligible to compete. You're in college first and foremost to get an education.

They caught him "ridin dirty"

he chose to give craddock a rusty trombone at high noon in the pit...oops

Sounds like Clay picked the wrong end of the deal when playing would you rather!!

Mrr82 wrote:

Maybe you should add to that list

Shalane Flanagan-Went Pro because she became damn good at UNC (not that she wasnt before.)

Uh, I think that was pretty much inevitable given her talent. An Olympian at what, 21? 3k indoor AR after two years of injuries.

Who's to say she wouldn't have run even faster in college under, say Centrowitz?

FOR THE ALL THE SKINNY KIDS WHO STOOD THERE ON THE LINE AND SAID "I THINK I CAN WIN":

BRING BACK CLAY!!

so if Laura Cummings was cut then why did she race last weekend at Duke for UNC????

UNC's mens cross country team should be top 3 in the ACC and top 25 in the nation every year. The university should attract intelligent, hard-working athletes that want a great athletic and academic experience. Anything else is unacceptable.

hmmmmm..... wrote:

so if Laura Cummings was cut then why did she race last weekend at Duke for UNC????

She wasn't allowed to go to the Wake Forest Invitational with the rest of the team...

4runner wrote:

She wasn't allowed to go to the Wake Forest Invitational with the rest of the team...

But was she excluded from the traveling party because of her low gpa or because she isn't running times that would be competitive in larger meet?

hmmmmm wrote:

But was she excluded from the traveling party because of her low gpa or because she isn't running times that would be competitive in larger meet?

I suspect that, in truth, she did go to Wake but not Duke to run...

I miss flava flav... players club is not the same without you

I ran at UNC for 3 seasons and I was by most standards i was successful. On all accounts, I believe you are full of it. I as well as many others worked hard, but the fruits of our labor usually came in performances that usually hovered around our high school marks and at times lower. My recruiting class was one of the best UNC had i nthe past few years with Daniel Harris, Rob Bates, Curtis Fraser, Richard Allen, Sheldon Rivens, Rob Robertson, Andrew Craycraft, Ryan Thierrien and a few others. Out of that list, I believe only two guys PR'd, and the only ones to finish their tenure at UNC on the track team were the ones who transferred in(3). Richard Allen transferred to ASU were he won a silver medal at NCAAs.

If you ran in the past few years i would love to know you identity. I'm sure for those of us who ran at UNC, the avergable googler, and the others browing hte forums would gain a lot of insight on your opinions by knowing who you are.

BTW. I'm on that list as quiting, but I would say terminated probably fits the bill a little better.

I believe the official word was clay was dismissed largely due to a "negative" meeting with Kym Orr (The track teams academic advisor)

you know