VANDERBILT former athlete exposes mentally harmful coaching in new article

Why? That makes no sense when dozens of Ivy girls get no scholarship. Supply and demand says you are incorrect.

work work wrote:

Why? That makes no sense when dozens of Ivy girls get no scholarship. Supply and demand says you are incorrect.

There are some very bright young adults that go to Vandy and many get great scholastic scholarships AND run, so there's no need to give them lots of money to run. Yes, it's true;)

And I'm shocked that no one corrected a simple typo on my handle...is this still Letsrun?

Thanks to title 9 a girls coach need not get athletes the help they need. If 20 have mental health problems or injuries, and 7 are good to go, the coach can pat herself on the back and call herself a success. The female athletes are viewed as title 9 numbers to make up for football instead of integral parts of the team by bad coaches, male or female and sometimes this mentality can extend to anyone who is not a scorer on the women's team.

Its clear that the vandy coach can't handle d1 level coaching.

That is the opposite. The point was that they give athletic scholarships to slow girls which I don't believe to be true.

"Going in, I thought everyone would be friends." No. That is not how life works.

Also, your coach is being paid to coach you, not take tips from you about how to run practice, workouts, etc. Ad a female who played soccer collegiately, this mindset that a coach or team needs to cater to the weakest link is not how improvement happens. Run intramural track if you want to plan your own workouts. College athletics is not for everyone.

Now I will say that the coach should have/could have been more open and sympathetic toward the mental issues since there was a clear history there with mental illness. A coach should be part of the support system for athletes, especially in this day and age. The parents ultimately failed this girl, though. She had issues dating back to 5th grade as many have pointed out. They allowed her to start and continue to participate in a pressure cooker environment while she was suffering big time mentally. Often parents dont want to face reality when it comes to their children and that creates such issues as these.

The girl has mental health issues. There is virtually NOTHING any coach at Vandy or any where could do to help her-nothing. Her issues weren't even about running, had she not run and just gone to school any where she would still have them.

Mental illness is an illness. No coach can cure it, no program can make it go away.

I wished that more coaches realized that caring for an athlete's health (and yes, that includes mental health) and well-being first and foremost is THE best coaching strategy. Health always has to come first - you can build great training on top of great health, but you can't do anything if the health and confidence isn't there first.

Recent grad here who is realizing more these days how f***ed up the coaching was when I was there. During college I had 6 major injuries, anemia, and some other health problems and it was implied it was my fault, I wasn't working hard enough, etc. I couldn't confront my coach in any way. He was continually dismissive and couldn't take any thing he perceived as criticism. The team had huge turnover - tried gently bringing this to his attention as evidence we weren't doing something right, was completely shut down after a couple sentences. There were several times he threw me in a hard workout or race off of injury, ignored my concerns, and blamed me when I (unsurprisingly) didn't perform well, and also denied his actions after the fact. In reality you cannot say no as long as long as you are the athlete and he is the coach. The only way to have control is to quit the team (not ideal in many situations.)

Besides absolutely terrible college times, I had a couple really dark years where I felt completely alone. One night in the middle of dealing with another injury, difficult academics, and another personal issue, I thought about ending my life. It can be hard for college athletes in this situation to get back on their feet, if they feel like there's no one who can understand, especially when the people in the sport who were supposed to help them completely failed at their jobs.

I agree with the previous poster who advised prospective student-athletes to ask current athletes in private how they feel about their coach, and former athletes who may now feel freer to talk about their experience.

It seems like a lot of these replies are coming from defensive (bad) coaches that don't want to admit their one size fit all training plans and lack of basic empathy actually hurt their athletes.

funny reading the responses wrote:

It seems like a lot of these replies are coming from defensive (bad) coaches that don't want to admit their one size fit all training plans and lack of basic empathy actually hurt their athletes.

Why, specifically, does it seem that way? Is this a fact based statement or do you have a "feeling"?

There are a lot of terrible college coaches out there. I could see this same story coming from many college programs. We had some like this when I was in college and I can tell you first hand of several women that have gone through this type of terrible college coaching in just the last 5 years. Some coaches don’t deal well with athletes that aren’t bringing them glory.

Even if the coaches lack empathy, they can certainly look at it from a functional standpoint.

Mental health could be viewed as similar to injuries - you can't get results off of constant injuries, nor from unresolved emotional problems. If someone is injured, not giving the athletes rest would be seen as abusive. In the same idea, not giving an athlete proper mental rest and help is also abusive.

Coaches have to be flexible in training, ready to adapt to the physical and emotional difficulties that athletes have. If you give everyone a one size fits all program and refuse to budge, you're not coaching, you're just reading from a book.

21st Century wrote:

Even if the coaches lack empathy, they can certainly look at it from a functional standpoint.

Mental health could be viewed as similar to injuries - you can't get results off of constant injuries, nor from unresolved emotional problems. If someone is injured, not giving the athletes rest would be seen as abusive. In the same idea, not giving an athlete proper mental rest and help is also abusive.

Coaches have to be flexible in training, ready to adapt to the physical and emotional difficulties that athletes have. If you give everyone a one size fits all program and refuse to budge, you're not coaching, you're just reading from a book.

If you are speaking in general terms, I wholeheartedly agree. If you are speaking of this specific case, we have no idea what really happened. Until we do, if ever, know what actually transpired, I will not condemn this particular coach on the word of a single troubled athlete.

These posts make me want to thank my college coaches. The moral of the story is that I came into college as a mess, but my mess was so normalized within the family situation that I grew up in that I was completely unaware of it.

One extremely wonderful, gruff coach listened--even though this kid in front of him was spouting off a bunch of stuff he was not trained to deal with--made sure I got the help I needed, and told me to take the time I needed, without accusing me of any essential inadequacy.

Sometimes all it takes is a supportive adult who will listen long enough to remind a kid of their own power to create space in their life. Dude probably saved my life. Moreover, the space he empowered me to take provoked growth I likely would have put off had he decided to use my exit as an opportunity to point out how immature and troubled I was.

It's a hard saying but track was really not the right thing for everyone at every time. It was actually better for this athlete and others as well to quit the team or take off time from it and not to rejoin until and unless everything was right mentally and physically. For many others, the work and discipline required for track and xc can be extremely liberating and uplifting by helping us to recognize how much we can achieve through hard work. We learn as well to take advice and guidance from others who we come to know have more experience than we do. At the same time, it's clearly a huge problem in college xc and track that coaches do not know how to keep their athletes healthy. Hard work is necessary, but so is intelligent work and modulation of pace and workouts, because you will get nowhere if you're injured all the time. That means also that coaches, trainers, and athletes really need to work out injury prevention routines to keep their athletes healthy. I had none of that in college and so was injured almost every week. With those routines, I know now, I would have eventually run as fast as most of our top guys. So, for coaches, injury prevention and workout modulation have to be a key focus to be successful.

"Research has shown that women who act in dominant and more masculine ways generate much stronger feelings of contempt, disgust, revulsion and disdain in others."

https://theconversation.com/the-war-on-women-coaches-116643

Vandy's distance women do not have a lot of strong results for the SEC. There's a 2:03 runner from LSU, who transferred twice and hadn't competed at Vandy. There are some 17-18 minute 5k runners, which is no longer competitive in the NCAA D1 with low to mid 15 being at the top. There are several sub 10 3k runners, with the best at 9:38 but numerous over ten. In general, the coaching doesn't seem to be working.

This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. If the coaches are doing this to one athlete they're more than likely doing it to many of them.

Thank you so much for sharing

verycommon wrote:

Unfortunately a very common and overlooked part of the sport. It's rare these days to find a competent college coach that values the wellbeing of each of their athletes regardless of performance. .

I would never associate with a coach whose first priority wasn't for the mental, emotional, academic and/or professional interests of his athletes.