Last month, Li "retired" from his job at Arizona. Less than a month later, he has a new job.
Last month, Li "retired" from his job at Arizona. Less than a month later, he has a new job.
Coach Li: "Making China Great Again!"
LetsRun.com wrote:
Last month, Li "retired" from his job at Arizona. Less than a month later, he has a new job.
https://twitter.com/CoachLi/status/1338152320173973504https://arizonawildcats.com/news/2020/11/17/dr-james-li-to-retire-after-18-years-with-arizona-track-cross-country.aspx
This is great news. They’ll benefit greatly from his vast experience with marathoners.
He’s also a whiz with Kenyans.
Considering the fact that he can’t coach anyone but imported foreigners maybe this is a smart move for him to go. Guy was hot garbage his entire tenure at AZ with the exception of Lalang, Cheseret and Sambu (and failed to even qualify for NCAAs with Lalang and Sambu on the same team). Lagat also came to the US to be coached by Li at WSU. So he is Kenyan but now is a naturalized US citizen. On the plus side leaving probably helps him avoid the continually growing mountain of lawsuits from athletes at AZ.
I remember in my time at AZ he would go to Kenya annually and dangle a free US college education in front of poor Kenyan villages to get parents of a runner to give up their child. He used to talk to us about it like he was going to a petting zoo or animal shelter to bring us home a new toy. AZ even wrote an article about Li’s adventures poaching wild Kenyans in the hopes of bringing home a prize horse. Completely dehumanizing behavior.
https://arizonawildcats.com/news/2019/11/5/cross-country-beyond-the-block-a-kenyan-connection.asp
He has had at least a dozen Kenyan burnouts in the past decade that you have never heard of. 4 came and left during my time on the team. The article makes it sound like he brings them in and miraculously gets these athletes primed to win, in reality it’s luck of the draw if he gets a good one and just rides the wave. If 1/10 Kenyan imports does well he gets a pat on the back and claims he made it happen.
Lalang came to the US with no prior competitive running experience (see bio on AZs website). Freshman year he went undefeated and won every race by an average margin on 22 seconds, set the course record at Griak in his collegiate debut, followed up with course records at Wisconsin and Pac12 Championships then won NCAAs and missed the course record by 3 seconds. Can Li really say he made him successful??
To expand on my last point (can Li really say he made him successful??): He absolutely cannot take credit for “developing” Lalang as if he nurtured him into a championship caliber athlete. Nobody busts out into a record setting season like that without an insane level talent, Li’s only task was simply not injuring him. Just let him loose and he takes care of the rest. Lawi is still coached by Li and has been irrelevant (and at times invisible) on the professional stage. Had Li been the incredible coach who built Lalang from nothingness into a stud we would have expected success on the professional stage yet here we are. Reinforces my point that Lalang’s talent landed in Li’s lap as opposed to Li being a miracle worker.
The new position also provides clarity about his departure from Arizona, there is no way he “retired” and then less than a month later chooses to come back into coaching at a high level job. School has too much pride to say he was fired.
Dude somebody better send Li to the burn unit. You absolutely thrashed him. I knew he was no good when he still had Lagat running like 80 mpw with the marathon as his main goal.
USAFirst wrote:
To expand on my last point (can Li really say he made him successful??): He absolutely cannot take credit for “developing” Lalang as if he nurtured him into a championship caliber athlete. Nobody busts out into a record setting season like that without an insane level talent, Li’s only task was simply not injuring him. Just let him loose and he takes care of the rest. Lawi is still coached by Li and has been irrelevant (and at times invisible) on the professional stage. Had Li been the incredible coach who built Lalang from nothingness into a stud we would have expected success on the professional stage yet here we are. Reinforces my point that Lalang’s talent landed in Li’s lap as opposed to Li being a miracle worker.
The new position also provides clarity about his departure from Arizona, there is no way he “retired” and then less than a month later chooses to come back into coaching at a high level job. School has too much pride to say he was fired.
Jokes on you dude. He probably doubled his pay with this new job. Sure Arizona probably asked him to leave. And he was probably all like “sounds good!” I’d like to say he probably has a lot less work now too, but even I can’t claim he must have worked hard at UA lol
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Run back to China, man!
USAFirst wrote:
Considering the fact that he can’t coach anyone but imported foreigners maybe this is a smart move for him to go. Guy was hot garbage his entire tenure at AZ with the exception of Lalang, Cheseret and Sambu (and failed to even qualify for NCAAs with Lalang and Sambu on the same team). Lagat also came to the US to be coached by Li at WSU. So he is Kenyan but now is a naturalized US citizen. On the plus side leaving probably helps him avoid the continually growing mountain of lawsuits from athletes at AZ.
I remember in my time at AZ he would go to Kenya annually and dangle a free US college education in front of poor Kenyan villages to get parents of a runner to give up their child. He used to talk to us about it like he was going to a petting zoo or animal shelter to bring us home a new toy. AZ even wrote an article about Li’s adventures poaching wild Kenyans in the hopes of bringing home a prize horse. Completely dehumanizing behavior.
https://arizonawildcats.com/news/2019/11/5/cross-country-beyond-the-block-a-kenyan-connection.aspHe has had at least a dozen Kenyan burnouts in the past decade that you have never heard of. 4 came and left during my time on the team. The article makes it sound like he brings them in and miraculously gets these athletes primed to win, in reality it’s luck of the draw if he gets a good one and just rides the wave. If 1/10 Kenyan imports does well he gets a pat on the back and claims he made it happen.
Lalang came to the US with no prior competitive running experience (see bio on AZs website). Freshman year he went undefeated and won every race by an average margin on 22 seconds, set the course record at Griak in his collegiate debut, followed up with course records at Wisconsin and Pac12 Championships then won NCAAs and missed the course record by 3 seconds. Can Li really say he made him successful??
Tell me how you really feel........
I feel like leaving the country for another coaching job is not a coincidence. Wonder what the heck actually happened at Arizona.
sub sub elite local hobby jogger wrote:
I feel like leaving the country for another coaching job is not a coincidence. Wonder what the heck actually happened at Arizona.
IKR?! It’s almost like he’s native Chinese, fluent in Chinese, doesn’t have a job in this country and got paid a lot more to go coach in China right?!
E-house marathon club posted on Weibo (Chinese Twitter) he was joining on 29th Nov.
Some folks I know who are close to Li have said that while he was at Arizona, he would leave for a week or so to go to China to check up on his parents. I can’t prove/disprove this, but there may be more to his getting this job in Shanghai than what may appear.
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This seems very odd and suspicious. Track and field/cross country programs throughout the country are going through a tough time due to the pandemic, and U of A is no exception. Sprinkle in some disgruntled and potentially abused athletes threatening legal action and you now have a potential "Titanic" like situation. Now the proverbial "Ship" is taking on water and is in danger of sinking and the Co-Captain is jumping overboard yelling "Good Luck, See ya in China".
Looking at Coach Li's Instagram account, it's a non-stop love fest with pics of Lagat, Lalang, Cheseret, and other Kenyans with very little acknowledgment of other U of A athletes or teams. Clearly, Li was not a successful collegiate distance coach and relied heavily on his Kenyan connections to give the "illusion" that his program was elite, in addition to riding the coat-tails of Lagat and other Kenyans to legitimize his perceived success and coaching ability. How in the world did he not produce consistent successful teams EVERY year he coached at U of A? They should have been a Pac-12 conference-NCAA distance powerhouse year in and year out. What homegrown distance athletes did he recruit and coach that went on to ANY kind of success? Conference champions? NCAA champions? U.S. National teams? Olympians? Minus team Kenya, you'll be extremely hard-pressed to name ANY. So now he bolts to China to coach marathoners? What??? I'm sorry, something stinks in the Arizona desert and it's not a dead rattlesnake.
"Go Run One"
Wild Duck Whisperer wrote:
USAFirst wrote:
To expand on my last point (can Li really say he made him successful??): He absolutely cannot take credit for “developing” Lalang as if he nurtured him into a championship caliber athlete. Nobody busts out into a record setting season like that without an insane level talent, Li’s only task was simply not injuring him. Just let him loose and he takes care of the rest. Lawi is still coached by Li and has been irrelevant (and at times invisible) on the professional stage. Had Li been the incredible coach who built Lalang from nothingness into a stud we would have expected success on the professional stage yet here we are. Reinforces my point that Lalang’s talent landed in Li’s lap as opposed to Li being a miracle worker.
The new position also provides clarity about his departure from Arizona, there is no way he “retired” and then less than a month later chooses to come back into coaching at a high level job. School has too much pride to say he was fired.
Jokes on you dude. He probably doubled his pay with this new job. Sure Arizona probably asked him to leave. And he was probably all like “sounds good!” I’d like to say he probably has a lot less work now too, but even I can’t claim he must have worked hard at UA lol
Makes sense. He was never getting another NCAA gig after full details about the U of A come out. Harvey will also retire soon. Arizona will announce a full program overhaul citing a lack of top down control that resulted in creating a bad team culture.
CCP spy going home?
Did everyone conveniently forget that the Arizona women's team finished second to Providence in the 2013 NCAA championships & had two A-As that season?
Nobody was beating Providence that day, but that team may have been Li's best coaching job at Arizona. They won the West regionals that year beating in order Stanford, Oregon, San Francisco & Washington.
Ricky Cabeza wrote:
Did everyone conveniently forget that the Arizona women's team finished second to Providence in the 2013 NCAA championships & had two A-As that season?
Nobody was beating Providence that day, but that team may have been Li's best coaching job at Arizona. They won the West regionals that year beating in order Stanford, Oregon, San Francisco & Washington.
https://www.milesplit.com/meets/148569-ncaa-di-cross-country-championships-2013/results/277748/raw#.X9r15ulKgqw
True, although if you look at who was on that team, they were either international imports or runners crashed and burned after that season, or both. Elvin Kibet, Maria Larsson, Nicci Corbin, Kayla Beattie, Stephanie Bulder, and a few others. I think Kibet was the only one who performed well consistently before and beyond fall 2013. A few others did OK in track, made regionals and such, but never fulfilled their early promise. Once the stars of the top 5 were gone (either transferring schools, or from unexplained illness or personal reasons), the team in 2014 failed to even make it to NCAAs.
I don't mean this as a knock against Li or the Arizona team at all, just putting the 2013 season into context. If you're defining success by who can patch together a great team for one single season, then it's a huge success. If you're defining it by who can develop runners and teams and a program over the course of years, then not so much.
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