Florida has their new distance coach

Handling a female distance runner as heralded as Tuohy required a lot of skill. If it was easy there would not be so much talk of the high school phenom "curse". Not rushing her. Safeguarding her health. Thinking long term. Not putting undue pressure on her. Handling expectations.

this is flat out wrong. it 100% depends on the athlete. someone like Sarah Baxter or Claudia Lane were never going to do anything in college. Not even your beloved Henes could have saved them.

Someone as talented as Tuohy could be NCAA champ with really bad coaching. We can stop pretending Henes is some miracle genius coach. The best thing she ever did was recruit Chmiel who then got Tuohy to commit.

Tyynismaa falls in the same category as Tuohy since she was FASTER than Tuohy in middle school but was held back by a medical condition in high school.

💩🚽

Tyynismaa falls in the same category as Tuohy since she was FASTER than Tuohy in middle school but was held back by a medical condition in high school.

I can only guess this claim comes from Tyynismaa's 10:32.94 3200 in 2015 as a 7th grader. Tuohy's only 3200 as a 7th grader was only 10:49.36 BUT she ran 9:48.44 in the 3000 which I think would convert to sub 10:30. She also ran 4:36 several times for 1500 and 4:59 for the mile while Tyynismaa did not break 5:00 for 1600. Tuohy did not run XC as a 7th grader so nothing to compare there. Tuohy then dropped her 1500 time as an 8th grader to 4:24.

So they were both fast for 7th graders but I am not sure Tyynismaa was faster.

Getting back to the subject of Will Palmer I believe he was successful in his stint at Georgetown before going to Alabama. the below is from the his bio on the FL site.
Prior to his time at Alabama, Palmer spent time at Georgetown (2016-18), Western Kentucky (2015-16), Iowa State (2013-15), and two years as the operations director for the track & field and cross country teams at Oklahoma (2011-13).
While at Georgetown, Palmer coached runners received 43 All-Big East honors. Hoya runners also earned All-American honors in the men's mile, women's mile, men's 1,500 meters, men's 10,000 meters, the distance medley relay, and men's cross country between 2017 and 2018."

I could not agree more with how Henes has handled Tuohymania!

Even though Tuohy is the most heralded, every year has a #1 and they are all fast.

Riggs - Stanford, Cook - OSU, Thorvaldson - Ark, Hutchins - BYU interesting to see how they all develop.

I usually go 'top 5' each year when looking at 'the curse'.

As Tuohy eventually moves on, there will be a team presumably led by Rauber/Starliper.

You do realize Palmer didn't work with the men at Georgetown and was Julie Culley's assistant with the women. He did not coach any of those All-Americans at Georgetown.

Maybe you need to email Mike Holloway!

Where does this halo for Tyynismaa come from? No matter how fast she was in 8th grade (10:32 2 mile, FL top 10-15 equivalent at FL South), it doesn't change that her HS prs remain 2:13 4:56 10:32 and she has now improved dramatically.

When they don't improve, it's poor coaching, when they do improve it's pure talent.

In letsrun world being faster than less than a second in one distance is equal to being faster in all distances even tho tynismaa's high school prs are mostly katelyn's middleschool prs 🙂

Olemomoi, Chelangat and Asekol all came from Juco/other schools and then improved *a lot* at Alabama so the coaching staff surely deserves some credit for that. Chelangat went to Alabama because her brother was there and doing well.

I agree too that the ages of the International runners (in general) are an advantage because they are usually older, sometimes a lot.

Henes has also done a good job developing Chmiel, Tuohy and others. Tuohy came in injured and look where she is now.

Multiple things can be true at once.

high school PR's don't mean anything. Tuohy ran 70 miles per week in high school and Tyynismaa most certainly did not. Tyynismaa was also battling a serious cause of Tourette Syndrome which can be very debilitating.

What we are concerned with is natural ability, which clearly Tyynismaa is nearly identical to Tuohy if not even more talented. Tyynismaa was better at the 5k in middle school than Tuohy. That shows tremendous talent when both weren't heavily trained. Tyynismaa's PR's are also really close to Tuohy's at this moment despite Tyynismaa having a broken ankle last year.

I was aware of the Tourette syndrome and am a fan of Tyynismaa and Tuohy. What I was unaware of was how fast she was as an 8th grader (and I follow the sport closely). I hope for track Amaris is 100% back as she matches up well with both kt 1500/3k and Valby 3k/5k.

You are the first person on lrc besides coaches and parents to say anything positive about middle school stars and how they will turn out as pros. It's easy to look backward and say who failed, or to see today's stars like Tuohy and Tyynismaaa and say it was obvious all along they would be good.

So how about using your knowledge to forecast the future. How will Perez turn out at Florida? Who will be best among Willis, Whitaker and Gorriaran? How will the Ping sisters develop at OSU? Who among Brown, Masciarelli, Hutchins, Ewert and Thorvaldson will refind their form? Who will be better Riggs or Baloga? How about Bednar at Notre Dame, or David next year at UVA run? and finally who are we missing? Who has gone through a rough patch so underrecruited and will now reappear as a star?

Thanks.

Wait. Another heir apparent? Tyynismaamania! :)

Isn't Tuohy running '70 mpw' in HS over simplified or even a myth? I've read that on here before and looking into it was not able to find any evidence that she was consistently high mileage in HS. There are a bunch of articles and post on letsrun indicating mileage a lot lower than that.

I will just add it is not a double standard, but just a reality. Female distance runners tend to go through a tricky transition period from 18-20. If you are getting established runners who have already navigated through it, who already 22 years old, that takes away a large part of the difficulty. Obviously the coach still gets credit for getting those runners to the line prepared and in good health.

A large percentage of top high school female runners will never make an impact in the NCAA for a few reasons. none of which have anything to do with the coach.

1. Overtraining in high school leads to constant injuries in college

2. They decide to prioritize partying over running

3. Their bodies change as they mature.

It's hard to predict what will happen to who, after a few years clearly Tyynismaa dodged all 3 of those bullets. How much credit should we give the Alabama coach for Tyynisma's development? Some, for sure. But to Tyynismaa was always destined to be extremely fast. It's too soon to call Palmer the equivalent of Wetmore or Diljeet Taylor.

I think the true mark of a great coach is not how well the freak of nature types improve, but what is the development of everyone with normal genetics?

apparently everyone whos not better than tuohy is better than tuohy in haters manual ahhahaa

Tyynismaa is in the transfer portal, can’t wait until coach Ashberry (the best volunteer in the country) takes over!