Klim coaching at Akron

There is a looooooong history of success stories in distance running from MAC coaches. Coaches that have taken average high school athletes and helped them raise their level of achievement. Gosh, don't act like you are the know it all about distance running. Kids from Akron, Kent State, Buffalo, Miami, Toledo, Ball State have been at NCAA's over the past few years. And none of those kids was a high school superstar.

Freaking grow up for goodness sakes.

Other MAC schools with 200m indoor tracks:

Kent, BG, EMU, Ball St?

Guessing that Buffalo, CMU, WMU also have indoor facilities?

There is also a looooooong list of good or great high school runners who never did anything in college or after college....

as fact checker has pointed out ohio state and michigan state did in fact attend indoor meets at akron. now go back to look at how many athletes actually competed for those two teams at those two respective meets. you will find not very many and you will find not their best athletes. but who cares about details?

You guys are getting way too carried away with this. If there is such a big interest in who got the job, and who wants to change the way DM does things, then maybe you should have applied for the job yourselves. Rumor has it that Klim and a former grad assistant were the only two candidates. Whether that's true or not, Klim got it because they thought he would be the best person for the job. Like someone has mentioned before, they've had success whether you like them or not. They'll probably continue to do so if the guys buy into what their coach has to offer. It's not rocket science, give the guy a chance.

I've tried to read all the posts, and there is indeed a lot of venom.

I will try to summarize the facts presented.

1. Mitchell is not well-liked, but has had success, particularly with the women.

2. Mitchell is an ass, but is a decent technical coach.

3. Jones can get the job done with women, but not men.

4. Mitchell HELPED get a state-of-the-art facility in place.

5. UA had to either invest more or cut completely the track program...they went with the former.

6. Mitchell hates distance runners.

7. Mitchell hired Klim.

8. Klim sounds like a nice guy, but there are 1 million more qualified DISTANCE coaches in the US than him, however not too many come as cheaply as this guy.

9. Nobody cares anyway because its Akron (which is ignorant because UA and the MAC are both very competitive)

i'm surprised there wasnt more of demand for the job, since Klim seemed to get it so easily. Pay must really suck.

dig deeper wrote:

as fact checker has pointed out ohio state and michigan state did in fact attend indoor meets at akron. now go back to look at how many athletes actually competed for those two teams at those two respective meets. you will find not very many and you will find not their best athletes. but who cares about details?

Brad Gebauer? Keturah Lofton? I suppose they aren't considered good athletes! Once again you wouldn't want facts to get in the way of a good story.

and you want to tell me that the Big 10 doesn't ruin more athletes than the MAC. why do so many people let the Big 10 slide when quite a few of their teams do not do well. it appears that there is a real strong bias against the MAC, and for the Big 10.

Though a resident of Akron but not an Akron graduate, I have one question.....Why is "Who the new Track coach?" worthy of 110 posts?

Because Mitchell inspires that kind of hatred due to being such a douche bag.

BTW, the Pole Vault sucks

Is there a reason people hate Mitchell besides the fact that he neglects guys distance? Must be a jerk, no one around here seems to think otherwise...

Because Mitchell is an Asshole, NO ALUMNI SUPPORT!!!!!!! It will be that way till his ass is out of Akron!!! Mitchell isn't just an ass to the distance guys, but to all the athletes and assistant coaches. He could be the worst communicator on planet earth. Most of us would agree that we could communicate with Helen Keller better than we could with Dennis Mitchell!!! POLE VAULT!!!!! YEA!!!!

WOW. I think maybe you all failed to read this post by A REAL MAC coach. Probably too long for you dumbasses to get all the way through to the end. And surely you're too stupid to understand what it says. This post comes from a person who said he wasn't friends with Mitchell. Just knew him. Doesn't sound like he really likes him THAT much, but respects him. Why don't you all get the heck over yourselves and stop bashing people on this stupid forum that should have NEVER been this long. GROW UP. If you wanted the assistant coach job, you should have applied yourself. And no, the pay isn't good. But no one on that coaching staff gets paid that well. They just love what they do. Can you imagine that? That's probably why Mitchell has stuck around so long. He loves what he does.

Why didnt akron just keep Williamson around he seemd to be doing a great job with the guys and they really seemed to like him.

Williamson quit. He was great except the guys didn't really respect him anyway. They walked all over him. More of a friend relationship than a coach-athlete relationship. And the real question, did the guys really like his coaching that much, or just the fact that Williamson, himself, despised Mitchell and objected to everything he said. That kind of hurts a coaching staff when one member of the staff can't support the head coach and actually talks about how bad he hates the head coach to his athletes.

So in other words, Williamson was more interested in hanging out with the guys and being buds, than being a true coach? Is that accurate? If so, it doesn't surprise me.

Irritated wrote:

Williamson quit. He was great except the guys didn't really respect him anyway. They walked all over him. More of a friend relationship than a coach-athlete relationship. And the real question, did the guys really like his coaching that much, or just the fact that Williamson, himself, despised Mitchell and objected to everything he said. That kind of hurts a coaching staff when one member of the staff can't support the head coach and actually talks about how bad he hates the head coach to his athletes.

How do you know all this? Did you run for Williamson? Do the other runners on the team share your OPINION. Be SPECIFIC(Hell, give your name if you are so in the know). Otherwise it is just hearsay.

So the season is almost over...whats the verdict on ua cc/klim thus far?