Wales-Dinan out from Harvard at end of month

So we can talk ad nauseam about PWD, Phelan, and other people involved, but my post gets deleted for mentioning the fact that Paul Gompers lead the witch hunt here?

Someone with a daughter on the team shouldn't have been in charge of compiling a "report" or "investigation" for the athletic dept.

PG wrote:

So we can talk ad nauseam about PWD, Phelan, and other people involved, but my post gets deleted for mentioning the fact that Paul Gompers lead the witch hunt here?

Someone with a daughter on the team shouldn't have been in charge of compiling a "report" or "investigation" for the athletic dept.

This was discussed on previous threads and I agree.

Hard to think of a more obvious conflict of interest -- assuming this 'investigation' was supposed to uncover facts.

PG wrote:

...my post gets deleted for mentioning the fact that Paul Gompers lead the witch hunt here?

Perhaps your posts get deleted because you spell the past tense of "to lead" as "lead" instead of "led"? Might be messing up somebody's Ivy vibe...

Gotta keep the hands off wrote:

Yes that is who is behind most of this nonsense

PG wrote:

Someone with a daughter on the team shouldn't have been in charge of compiling a "report" or "investigation" for the athletic dept.

Every person with a daughter on the team should be very interested in this issue.

I see no reason why not wrote:

PG wrote:

Someone with a daughter on the team shouldn't have been in charge of compiling a "report" or "investigation" for the athletic dept.

Every person with a daughter on the team should be very interested in this issue.

Not to mention the fact that the guy is the Harvard school record holder in the 10k, was an All-American in XC and ran a 2:15 marathon as a frosh at Harvard.

He might know a thing or two about running at the Div. 1 level and at an Ivy League school to boot. Much more than two slow guys like PWD and Saretsky.

Gompers ran at Harvard back when it was basically a club. Practice wasn't mandatory. They didn't recruit. They literally just took whomever came out for the team. Gompers thinks making practice mandatory isn't the Harvard way. Well, in that era, Harvard completely sucked in track. Today, Harvard's women are amazing. They are amazing because they don't run the team like a club anymore.

He was the type of athlete who would train at a championship level on his own. He isn't responsible for putting a team on the field. He was a highly disciplined athlete, not a coach. What works for one, doesn't work for all. I will admit, PWD was sort of Gompers opposite. He wanted too much control. Gompers wants it to laissez-faire

Not a PWD apologist, I am just sick of people throwing Gompers name around as though he has credibility because he was fast. He has a conflict of interest with his daughter on the team. He wants her to play by the same set of rules he played by. I understand how that may be frustrating for him, but that doesn't make him right.

bumblefoot wrote:

He wants her to play by the same set of rules he played by. I understand how that may be frustrating for him, but that doesn't make him right.

Treating people fairly is always the right way.

Thank you to PG for helping to expose and get rid of that pervert.

One thing that should have been brought up long ago...the previous coach was not a rec club baby sitter like she keeps getting portrayed by implication here. Priscilla Bailey was a competitive competent coach who would have pushed these athletes as well...without fondling them. She has done very well at San Luis Obispo. Patrick certainly has a different philosophy...but not because Priscilla wasn't competitive. Maybe she understood what Harvard was & wanted...& got out when she realized her ambition had outgrown what Harvard was...but that's not Harvards fault. That's Patrick's. And the strange fixation wth Judy. That's Patrick's fault too.

What am I going to do now?

know better. wrote:

I see no reason why not wrote:

Every person with a daughter on the team should be very interested in this issue.

Not to mention the fact that the guy is the Harvard school record holder in the 10k, was an All-American in XC and ran a 2:15 marathon as a frosh at Harvard.

He might know a thing or two about running at the Div. 1 level and at an Ivy League school to boot. Much more than two slow guys like PWD and Saretsky.

Because everyone who was faster than John McDonnell knows more about running than him, right?

bumblefoot wrote:

Gompers ran at Harvard back when it was basically a club. Practice wasn't mandatory. They didn't recruit. They literally just took whomever came out for the team. Gompers thinks making practice mandatory isn't the Harvard way. Well, in that era, Harvard completely sucked in track. Today, Harvard's women are amazing. They are amazing because they don't run the team like a club anymore.

Not a PWD apologist, I am just sick of people throwing Gompers name around as though he has credibility because he was fast..

You may not be PWD apologist. Nevertheless the underlying mentality put forth here by you and some others that the recent success of the Harvard women demonstrates the program was well managed under PWD is troubling. Machiavellian in fact. PWD had success coaching at Williams and left under a cloud after three years. He had success at Long Beach over two years and former athletes have come on this thread to knock his conduct while there. Now he's leaving Harvard after three years under a cloud despite having success. Short term success with an all or nothing mentality is possible, but in all likelihood it's going to be just that--short term. Meanwhile the potential negatives, physical and emotional, are numerous. PWD hasn't been anywhere long enough to coach anyone from frosh to senior year, so short term success is his main selling point.

I haven't even mentioned the inappropriateness of dating an athlete you're coaching, as he did at Williams. For that reason alone he shouldn't be coaching young women who have just begun their adult lives. Success between the lines may forgive a multitude of sins but that doesn't mean it should.

Great point and deep insight in looking at past foot speed or endurance capability as an indicator of coaching knowledge. Certainly Saretsky would have outrun Lanana, Gags, and Wetmore at any distance. Hell, he probably ran faster over 800m than every Ivy coach and +95% of all Division I coaches. Dude ran 1:51 and 2:26 for 1k - not like he was slow.

Very impressive.

Not impressive: ignoring warnings about PWD before he was hired, retaliating against women who raised concerns about PWD, refusing to allow a physician to address the team on healthy nutrition, miserable men's team results, berating runners in public after a bad race, covering up results of HR consultant investigation, expressing far more concern about PWD well-being than his athletes' well-being.

Good to know he ran fast 30 years ago. He should probably go back to that in old timers events. His "coaching knowledge" seems to have some significant gaps.

Saretsky was more like a1:54 guy. Pretty sure Barry at Dartmouth was faster, Springfield a far superior distance runner. There are hundreds in the NCAA that were faster, don't be a fool.

Another problem with the "Gompers theory": It's laughable to suggest that a single Professor, with a kid on the team, could do that. Even if Gompers was that big a deal (Harvard has plenty of way-more-prominent Profs). I'm a Prof (and former Gompers competitor) at a comparable school. The Athletics Dept runs pretty independently. If a whole commission of academics strongly suggested something happen with the coaches.... maybe it could possibly have some influence. But a single one with personal connection? No way. I'm pretty sure the decision-makers at Harvard are aware that a personal connection could bias one person's opinion.

Yeah, Springfield was a 1987 XC All-American, competed at the Pan Am juniors as a frosh at UVA, and got 7th at US cross one year while serving as an assistant under Martin Smith at Wisconsin.

Guy was solid. He also used to run many workouts with his Brown team up until a few years ago.

This has turned out to be wonderful.

Timeline of the scandal through LetsRun eyes if anyone is interested.

Video is posted months ago showing coach touching athlete during workout

Board goes crazy, video is edited to remove touching

Everyone generally agrees it was kinda creepy

--

Asst coach posts here promoting her own article about how the coach is endangering athletes

No specific details given

Board lights up about how coach is abusive - no details - very few recurring poster names, many seem to be random keystrokes indicating that only one or very few posters are backing up abuse claims under several monikers, board in general against coach

Separate debates go on about what a coach is and is not allowed to say about weight and eating. The side that is vilifying coach agrees that even passive comments about weight can trigger a girl into a downward spiral of eating disorder and no coach should ever say anything about weight

Coach fired

Alex P Keaton's Left Nut wants to know whether coach's comments were passive or if he actually forced girls into unhealthy habits and weights - is informed he is not entitled to such details, that he is an idiot with no work ethic and could never get into an ivy, is generally berated for asking for specifics before joining mob against coach

Slowly more details emerge (about the ongoings, not specifics about what coach did)

Turns out it's not 100% of athletes that think he's abusive, potentially only a small percentage - one of whom has a father on staff at university that led the investigation against coach. Father also ran at university but during a time that it was more of a club setting without strict enforcement of any team regulations

Board can't agree whether issue is about touching or coach being too strict about practice and/or weight

--

Gotta say, still no details about what actually happened that led up to the firing which is quite unsatisfying. Apropos of nothing else -- a kind reminder to raise your daughters to be strong-willed independent women. Don't raise them to believe they are entitled to everything and that any discomfort, no matter how mild or intense, is cause for a full-scale meltdown.

You still don't want to face reality here.

The guy was fired from Williams (fact) for dating an athlete and would not stop when asked to do so.

A former Long Beach athlete has come on here and stated that PWD tried to sleep with an athlete at LB.

Then you have the video, the pictures of athletes sleeping taken by PWD and posted on twitter etc.

what more do you want. Should the injuries to 85% of the team be thrown in?