USATF Permanently Bans Saratoga Springs Coached Art & Lina Kranick (and Art died a month ago)

Kelsey Chmiel was a top 5 national level runner a few years ago for NC St. Reading one of the articles about the blood girl, a few pages back, sounds like they were pretty low mileage. 40 something per week. but intensity nearly everyday. After she left them, she was doing a 10 mile long run, and said her long was only around 9 while with the team.

If THAT is what resulted in a lifetime ban, then they better go back and retroactively ban hundreds if not thousands of coaches from the 80s. Some of the things listed should not have been done but none of them deserve a lifetime ban. Also, this list seems to have been purposely made to look longer than it actually is by repeating numerous accusations.

- "Excessive training/forced to overtrain" - This is common in just about every program, every sport. It has been studied extensively because it is so common, even being broken down into various categories by physiologists - Functional Overreaching, Nonfunctional Overreaching, Overtraining Syndrome. If they ban coaches for overtraining athletes, there won't be many coaches left, and usually only the bad ones.

- "Administering vitamins/Administered Vitamin B12" - No coach should ever give an athlete any kind of pill, powder, injection, etc., and this could have been easily stopped by the administration. However, B12? One, B12 is water-soluble so any excess will be excreted in the urine; there are no potential toxic effects. Two, B12 is in meat. Are we supposed to stop eating meat? The only people who may need supplemental B12 are vegetarians or people who simply do not consume adequate calories (i.e., eating disorder). I've also heard they used to give Vitamin C tablets; Vit C helps the body absorb iron when consumed together. Often, girls that age who are newly menstruating and possibly not eating the best diets are lacking in iron. Vitamin C will help to make sure that the iron that they do ingest gets absorbed properly. None of this will harm an athlete; however, it would have been better if they had called a meeting with the parents and educated them on the benefits of B12 and Vitamin C and allowed them to choose to or not to provide supplements.

- "Regulated food intake before races/Undo influence over athletes' diets" - Oh, no! Did they not allow a runner to eat a burger, French fries, ice cream sandwich and wash it down with a Coke on a meet day? How terrible. Every coach SHOULD regulate what their athletes eat on meet days for the athlete's own good. There is a reason why football teams eat pregame meals together that are prepared for them; they are only provided with foods that will aid and not hamper performance. They are not given the opportunity to eat poorly. The only meal they could have influenced would be lunch during the school day. Athletes are going to eat whatever mom makes for them for breakfast and dinner. Maybe they should look into all of those wrestling coaches that walk through the cafeteria during lunch all season long to make sure that their wrestlers are NOT eating lunch.

- "Weighing athletes before and after practice" - Great idea, especially in the summer. How else are the athletes going to know how much water to consume to adequately rehydrate? This is common practice and even recommended. Studies have shown that most people do not rehydrate as much as they should after exercising. There is a big difference between what was going on at Colorado, where athletes were publicly weighed in front of the team and they were criticized if they gained weight, and weighing athletes before/after training to determine water loss.

- "Yelling at athletes after a poor performance" - Many athletes in the 80s wish this is all that happened. How about doing 5 up/downs for every point you lose by in a football game? Really fun when you get blown out by 28 points. Of course, this was after practice, when you were already exhausted.

- "Raised his voice and/or used profanities toward an athlete from another team" - Profanities are a definite no-go, but there is nothing wrong with addressing another athlete IF IT IS WARRANTED. You can be damn sure my coach would have yelled at another team's athlete if he saw one push one of his athletes, curse at one of his athletes, etc. He would have jumped all over that athlete and then went and found his coach and let him have it, too.

- "Suspended an athlete for a week because she requested a break" - Sounds to me like the runner got exactly what she asked for - a short break. Would she rather have been told, "No, you must come to practice every day this week!" She wanted a break, she got a break. Maybe that is how the coach covertly granted her request without giving the entire team an excuse to whine and ask for a break. If so, great coaching move.

- "Training in dangerous conditions" - Like what? Lightning? It seems every time a met gets delayed due to a lightning strike the runners complain about how stupid it is and want to run. Too cold? In a recent interview with Nicole Blood, she mentions having practice on a day when school was cancelled. It was about 20 degrees and she had a bloody nose that had frozen to her face ... and she said she loved it and felt "like a badass." Linda Kranick was handing out hand warmers and doing other things to keep the athletes warm. It is not like they told them to go run in their bunhuggers and singlets on a freezing day. Run on streets with cars? Many runners, from junior high kids to 80-year-olds, do this daily.

- "Forced to run while injured/poor management of injuries" - Blame the athletic trainer or team physician. No coach can override medical authority and keep their job for even a day. Not at any level of athletics. If the medical team gives the green light to run, then the coach runs them. And at that time, if you were given the OK to train, you were training or you were essentially disobeying the coach and risked being kicked off the team.

Yes. And the FM coach is next. People are not going to sit by and watch these kids get run into the ground any more. Former athletes - the time to speak out is now, bc this stuff is still happening.

I read this book too. It was written with a pro Aris bias and I was still alarmed by all of it. They didn’t foster a healthy environment. They manipulated kids into killing themselves “for the team” and if they didn’t then they were a bad teammate/person. Kids missed out on so much, developed horrible eating habits as a result of the coaches manipulating kids into thinking eating a candy bar would betray their team. It was awful.

a lot of truth in this post. i assume people disagreeing are 30 years and under. The training to tolerance stuff sounds crazy now. but it was basically everyone's mentallity a long time ago.

it's great that those times are gone. and people more clearly understand the benefits of cross training and resting through injury. but it used to be "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger"

And there was no fact checking. if someone heard something stupid like towing a person with a car, and it came from someone successful, people believed it. and the ambitious people would try it. Im sure there were 100s of people in the 80s who were as dumb as the Kranicks to try such nonsense. A lot of people were really dumb a long time ago.

Regardless of his death the victims deserve to hear the conclusion of this investigation. Plenty of past runners came out in the complaint explaining his abuses. I don’t care if there were parents defending him. You can be certain that if their kids were abused they’d be singing a different tune.

Giving out supplements even after being told to stop, not allowing days off with injuries, and tying a runner to his truck so she can learn to run faster is horrific. I have no sympathy that they were finally caught.

I think times have changed, and context matters.

My late father coached teams to prep national records in the 60’s.

He was coached by Igloi and was bright enough to pick up nuance. No matter how abusive he could be, overtraining was not one of his flaws. He could really fine tune athletes with speed work. Igloi’s approach required a coach to be very hands on - well suited to my father’s need for control. To his credit, he could eclipse workouts when they weren’t effective and he could discern when the rare long slow run was needed. And things like tying an athlete to a car? He was bright, like his father, a Fortune 20 CEO and never would have as a practical matter done something like that - it wouldn’t have worked. I am not boasting about his intelligence. My daughter, a high gpa Princeton grad could see his flaws but thought he was extraordinarily intelligent. Always a warning to me about what matters.

He oddly lacked impulse control in his personal lifeand accordingly picked up the javelin - he was a NCAA finalist with virtually no work on technique. Spoke volumes about who he was. When coaching he was a rival of Joe Newton who I came to respect a lot. Had my grandmother not died, my poor mother would have sent us to live in Elmhurst as Joe would have protected us.

I was always surprised at how his high school athletes revered him. Except for one - a Stanford runner who went on to have an incredibly successful finance career - he would not have anything to do with him and his sentiments matched those of my brother and me. I hadn’t talked to my father in years and it was only through his ex athletes that I learned of his death. Their loyalty lasted.

He was forced to leave teaching and coaching due to misconduct with a female student. Today, likely grounds for criminal charges. A very bright but poorly educated guy, he went on to succeed in business. He was a terrifically abusive parent- I left home at age 18 entirely on my own to go to school on athletic scholarship to get away from him. Same for my brother. My high school team was very very good and his influence was significant. He had an incredible temper and his modus operandi with his sons was to frequently beat us. I was a 4:09 high school miler and an excellent student (really better student than athlete). Our house was adorned with signs indicating I was fat, dumb and lazy (and inexplicably, gay). This was so even when he no longer lived there. Couldn’t touch the signs as my mother would receive abuse. Never could have a friend to the house and isolation was the objective. This is not a victim story as I enjoyed my freedom at 18 like crazy, but it does show why coaching high schoolers would have led to a truly negative end.

Intellectually it was easy to accept his input but his emotional control and penchant for abuse was deadly. The incident that ended his teaching career was a blessing because he would have left a trail of misery with young people and would have been called out publicly at some point.

My guess is the Kranicks were compelling leaders despite their flaws. One thing that bothers me however is the instruction not to talk to other athletes. This is not to say there was abuse but abusers value isolation and control and from experience I would recoil at any such instruction. It speaks to an insecurity that does not wear well.

Unless there’s someone I don’t know about, Kelsey Chmeil was the best runner to come out of that program.

This ban is a f@cking joke unless they have actual information on any abuse

Cheri Goddard

You wanna know a story of coaching abuse? Southeast CT coach Norm Higgins. he was legit crazy. Must have passed away by now

Coached Liz Mueller to a Footlocker XC championship. Forced her to forego a full ride to Villanova to instead go to southeastern CT state university so that he could be her full time coach.

Within a couple years Liz had quite running altogether (and I think college). She eventually made a comeback as a professional female boxer

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/06/sports/track-and-field-when-family-and-coaching-collide.html

In 1991, Liz Mueller of Waterford, Conn., was the brightest young female middle-distance runner in the United States. She was the national high school cross-country champion at 5,000 meters and the national Junior Olympic track and field champion in the 800 meters. Few developing runners had shown her precocious combination of speed and stamina.

Today, instead of advancing toward her Olympic dreams, Mueller is a struggling small-college runner embroiled in an intensifying dispute between her parents and her long-time personal coach that threatens her athletic future.

The conflict, which centers on the role that the coach, Norm Higgins, plays in Mueller's life and has left Mueller estranged from her parents, reflects widening national concern over the influence of male authority figures on young female athletes in sports like tennis, gymnastics, figure skating and running.

At its most extreme, according to athletes, coaches, doctors and sports psychologists, the coaching influence in such cases can have serious social and health consequences.

Coaches of young women should recognize how vulnerable the athletes may be, said Dr. Michael Sargent, director of the University of Vermont sports medicine department, who has coached teen-age girls in running. "Coaches must take extra precaution to assure that they don't make the relationship manipulative."

Jan Merrill-Morin, who was Mueller's track and cross-country coach at Waterford High School, agreed. "A female athlete can be extremely influenced by her success, much more so than a male athlete," Merrill-Morin said, referring to the faith young girls with little sports background tend to have in their superiors. "Right away, in seventh and eighth grade when Norm started coaching her, Liz had great success. In her view, the only way to keep being successful is to stick with Norm."

Ironically, Merrill-Morin was Higgins's prize runner in the 1970's. She set numerous American records and made the 1976 Olympic final in the 1,500 meters. However, she was known on the track circuit as unusually withdrawn and sullen.

She has only recently come to terms with a coaching approach she now questions but which she tolerated for 12 years.
"Norm did a lot for me," said Merrill-Morin, 38, who in addition to coaching at Waterford High also coaches women's track and cross-country at the United States Coast Guard Academy in nearby New London. "But you must be totally dedicated and do exactly what is asked of you regardless of family commitments. There can be no interference -- ever. I would think any parents would feel that's kind of kooky." Despite an Edict, A Continuing Role

Tensions between Mueller's parents, Sharon and Frank, and Higgins began in 1990 when their daughter was a high school freshman. "He could not understand where coaching stopped and life began," Liz's father said of Higgins. "He wanted to influence everything. He wanted to be more important than friends, family, school."

At the time, through their attorney, the Muellers forbade Higgins, now 57, from having any contact with their daughter. Despite the edict, said the Muellers, Higgins continued to make his presence felt. "He followed us everywhere, to all the meets," said the father.

In an interview, Higgins, winner of the 1971 New York City Marathon, admitted his continuing role with Mueller through high school, when her official coach was Merrill-Morin.

Frustrated, the Muellers said they discussed the issue with the Waterford police but decided not to pursue further action.

Mueller, who turns 20 on Feb. 28, is a sophomore at Central Connecticut State in New Britain. She is a member of the track and cross-country teams, coached by George Kalecki. She did not run for the school during her freshman year. She said she joined the squad last fall only after Kalecki had agreed to a number of stipulations, in particular that she could continue to train with Higgins during the "off season" as a member of his club, the Age Group Athletic Association. Though Kalecki considered the off season to be summer, Mueller also trains with Higgins on weekends when Central Connecticut does not have a meet. Mueller said she runs about 35 miles a week, modest for an athlete of her caliber.

In an interview, Mueller said she had no reservations about training with Higgins and called the dispute a "personality conflict between my parents and coach." Mueller is no longer on speaking terms with her parents and has left home. When she is not at school and residing in the dorm, she lives with the family of a former teammate, Jessica Kane, now a Waterford senior. The Muellers claimed Higgins helped "orchestrate" their daughter's estrangement from them.

Higgins defended his role. "Have you ever dealt with anyone with a gift?" said Higgins. "Liz is her own person. The only reason I remain coaching her is that I let her do what she wants. She has chosen her own direction."

Undefeated Season Abruptly Cut Short
Mueller is currently in the midst of the indoor track season. On Jan. 21, in a meet at Dartmouth, she won her first collegiate race, an 800 in 2 minutes 19 seconds, 14 seconds slower than her high school outdoor best. A week later, she ran 2:17 in a losing effort. Mueller said she would be concentrating on the 400 meters for the balance of this winter and during the spring outdoor season.

Kalecki said that in one 800 he felt Mueller was "tanking it," allowing defeat, and he scolded her for it. Her response was a shrug.

Last fall, during an undefeated cross-country season in which she beat the reigning National Collegiate Athletic Association 1,500 titleholder, Amy Rudolph of Providence, Mueller was a contender for the N.C.A.A. cross-country title. But, sticking to the pact that Kalecki grudgingly agreed to before the season, Mueller refused to run the N.C.A.A. qualifying race and aborted her season.

Kaleclku told her she was "wasting a golden opportunity."
"She would have won it," Higgins agreed. Yet, he encouraged her not to run. "Hold your line. Don't change your decision," Higgins said he advised Mueller.

"I'm 19 and my parents are not paying for my education anymore," said Mueller in defending her desire to remain with Higgins and go to Central Connecticut.

Mueller, who could have attended almost any college in the country, had turned down a $22,000-a-year athletic scholarship from Providence to attend the school in New Britain, a 45-minute drive from Waterford. She said she would have preferred not to compete at all in a college program and joined the Central Connecticut team to get a scholarship and relieve her parents of the $8,000-a-year expense.

Is Mueller being victimized by an autocratic coach, or is she asserting her independence and entitled to train with any mentor she chooses at a time when she is maturing into young adulthood?
Dr. Brenda Armstrong, chief of clinical services for the Division of Pediatric Cardiology at Duke University Medical Center and a youth track coach for 20 years, contends that female athletes of Mueller's age are crossing an athletic threshold and also making other major transitions in their lives. "They must leave the nest of the age-group coach,"

Armstrong said. "Unless the coach lets go, it's tampering of the worst sort, setting the stage for failure."

At Waterford High, Mueller won 11 state and New England indoor and outdoor track titles. In addition, she won the state cross-country title all four years. In 1991, as a junior, she captured the Foot Locker high school cross-country championship. She was an all-American in track, running the 800 meters in 2 minutes 5.54 seconds. In Waterford, she was honored with Liz Mueller Day.

It was not only her performances but Mueller's bearing that impressed followers of the sport. With a baby face and 95-pound body, she ran with childlike exuberance, at once personifying innocence and aggression. Her speed seemed easy, her potential limitless. At times, she even trained barefoot, stopping to chase frogs. "I catch them," she once said, "but I let them go."

But apparently Higgins, who owns a sporting goods business in the Waterford area, will not let go of Mueller. He has only her best interests at heart, he said, and is her personal coach because he allows her freedom to formulate her own running program.

Kalecki disputes that. "Norm's the guru. He thinks he invented track and field," said Kalecki. "Once when I spoke with him, he had it planned what Liz would run in 1996, in 1998. He's got her life mapped out." An Adherence To the Unorthodox
While Mueller, now 5 feet 4 inches and 110 pounds, insisted she could train and race as she pleased, Merrill-Morin and others familiar with the dependency of some impressionable young athletes said a coach could subtly lead a disciple astray.

There's a mental taboo," said Merrill-Morin. "It's not written but you know what you should and should not do. I maybe went to two movies in 10 years. I was afraid my training would not be good the next day. Norm didn't say, 'Don't,' but I got the message."

Since 1991, when Mueller was at her peak, her running has been marked by zealous adherence to unorthodox ideas. Witness her refusal to run the N.C.A.A. cross-country, and her impending focus on the 400, where, at the moment, she is unable to break 60 seconds.

As a Waterford High senior, Mueller refused to defend her national cross-country title, saying she wanted to hurry into indoor speed training. As it turned out, she did not compete indoors in the winter of 1992 because her parents, amid continuing conflict with their daughter, refused to sign the school's permission form.

With her 5,000-meter endurance and half-mile speed, Mueller's best track events would be the middle distances like the 1,500, mile or 3,000, according to coaches. But she has vehemently rejected the mile or any track event longer than the 800.

"I told her she could be world-class in the 3,000," said Kalecki. "She just shrugged her head no."

Earlier this season, while training with Higgins between the fall and spring semesters, Mueller competed at one track meet in the high jump, long jump and triple jump, events with high injury risk that are hardly the menu of a middle-distance runner. "I like them," was Mueller's explanation.

"That's the kind of approach Norm is known for," said Kalecki, referring to the field events.

Higgins denied any responsibility for Mueller's methods. He said she has the qualities of an "artist" and should be able to choose her own path. Indeed, Mueller loves to paint and draw and is an art education major. She said she had a 3.1 grade point average. Mueller also plays the flute and rides a motorcycle.

Her running has become a complex source of anger and resentment. How will the conflict be resolved? "The issue is just kind of sitting there," said Mueller.

When Mueller's parents attend Central Connecticut's meets to watch Liz run, she barely acknowledges them. "It's been very painful," said her father. "How would you feel if somebody basically took over your daughter's life?"

Trust me. FM coach is NOT running the kids into the ground. The workouts are like any other successful team style and effort. No one from the past ever felt the need to complain. It’s the soft kids and their parents currently that need to step up to the demand or leave. Couldn’t even get a decent team to run well the past few years. Success is earned. And there’s no comparison with the allegations Art was up against.

Actually Mackenzie Carter, FM alum and member of the very first FM national championship in 2006, felt the need to complain.

https://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/is-high-school-running-in-need-of-a-reckoning/

You know what I think is interesting? on these boards, even the brojos at times, revere these programs. We also love to make excuses for them, I think in large part because we are so mystified and inspired by their incredible results.

But if you listen to any professional talk about footlocker or NXN they fret and hand wring over "overtraining". Shalane Flanagan was my running camp counselor when I was in high school, and she had just won NCAA in XC. Even then she emphasized that she didn't do all three sports: XC, indoor and outdoor until she was a senior, and played soccer and swam for most of high school, a stat she was proud of. Most recently Kara and Des on their podcast were worried about kids running 100 mile weeks, and even girls crying after Brooks XC. Kara praised Blair Bartlett, who was a tennis player, and a couple runners she knew who didn't take it too seriously.

I think the whiplash of both these messages tends to sting. On the one hand you have high school programs training their kids like pros, and on the other you have actual pros telling kids to run less than 30 miles per week and play tennis. There's got to be an in between.

my thoughts are that running programs should prioritize kids' health and not have any "run to tolerance" rules in place. Kids shouldn't be going down with major injuries in a non contact sport. It's okay to work hard, it's okay to run all year round, but nothing should go over 50 miles a week at most, but if you are running under 30, you are probably not a very serious runner (also fine). Push kids to believe in themselves and their teammates, without taking away from their outside lives. They can go to football games, and eat candy. They're kids, not your moneymakers.

The thing about FM in particular is that in decades of incredible success at the high school level, they never produced a single collegiate All American, or at least none that I am aware of. Maybe parents smartened up to the fact that their kid probably wouldn't enjoy any long term success if they joined FM and would end up burned out. I'm glad parents aren't sending their kids to run on this needlessly intense program. I wouldn't recommend mine do it.

You seriously need to get a life and stop writing article length comments. I don’t see anywhere where Cullen complained. There was mention of Aris with Thanksgiving dinner guidance tow days before regionals. And he responded to that. You have no idea what you’re talking about. His training is no more intense than any other school. And we all know that most schools don’t have national championships every decade. Recruiting exists only in private schools. You get what you get as a coach in terms of kids who are talented and want to do the work.

Did you read the article that Polevault power linked to ? They were accused of forcing the kids to snort B12 while make sure they not tell their parent about it. Then a higher up at the school told them to cut it out and they are accused of giving out B12 the next year anyway in liquid form.

Read these two links:

Now admittedly those accusations are from 30 years ago but were kind of shocking. That being said, I still stand by what I wrote yesterday - i want nuts and bolts accusations and I want to see what has been alleged in the last 5 years

To the 90-year-old men here who grew up before television, just post a small paragraph from the article and a link. You don’t have to post the whole fvcking thing.

I can see why high school running coach is the best you could do.

you’re the journalist. Go find out JFC

Only USATF could manage to ban someone after they’re dead. That’s not governance, that’s pure bureaucratic insanity. What a damn joke of an organization.