Tom “Tinman” Schwartz and Drew Hunter/Tinman Elite have parted ways

This will be a very popular move among most letsrunners.

Alright Rojo, time for you and JK to apply.

...Joan Hunter will pack cookies and milk for each boy on the team. This is going to be an insane next few months and the remaining amount of the adidas/Hunter relationship.

Why not wait until after the Trials to make a change or rebrand?

There is still time to dial in training a bit and work off base built in winter?

Nice to see the confirmation. Sounds like Drew Hunter and the rest of TME parted ways with Tinman from Joan Hunter's quote. Can't say I blame them, they've been with Tinman for several years, and I don't think the results are there. The majority of the team must have been injured at some point under his tenure as well.

Waitforit4 wrote:

Why not wait until after the Trials to make a change or rebrand?

but also...why not do it now while there is still time to put in a solid couple months of training under new direction. the way things were heading there was pretty much zero chance any member would be competitive for a spot on the team.

Waitforit4 wrote:

Why not wait until after the Trials to make a change or rebrand?

When we contacted Tom initially, he asked us to not publish it as he said that's what the Tinman guys wanted to do but this was too big of a story to keep quiet. Threads kept popping up so I said we had to publish something.

data hack wrote:

This will be a very popular move among most letsrunners.

Really? I think Tom is a fantastic coach and as a fellow father feel for him personally. Dismissals like this are the perfect embodiment of some the negative aspects of modern society. There is no job security. You ask a guy with a wife and kids to move states to coach you and don't give him a long-term contract? That rubs me the wrong way. Of course, Tom should have insisted on it before moving but that's pretty cut throat if you ask me.

That being said, I totally get why Drew might wonder if it's the coaching. He isn't as good as we hoped he'd be coming out of HS but after he ran 13:17 in crappy spikes last December, I figured he had a decent shot of breaking 13:00 in super spikes this summer.

But when I first heard of this last week, I said to Jonathan, "Please name one athlete other than Mo Farah who has run way better after switching coaches mid-career."

And the other guys seem to be flourishing. To be honest, most of the guys on that team aren't top pro talent so I haven't paid that close atention to them but it seems like a ton of the guys have been improving a lot.

Jeff Thies -Didn't break 14:00 in college. Now has run 13:32.

Sam Parsons - 344/803/1352 at NC State. 13:22/7:43/3:37 under Tinman.

Reed Fisher - 28:48 to 28:12 and 61 :37 in the half.

That's big time improvement.

I would have preferred to have seen Drew depart the group and Tom keep the rest of the group. That would have been the perfect outcome in my mind. I know one thing - Tom 100% should get to keep his own damn name. I think it's wrong for them to continue to use his name.

rojo wrote:

Quick article here:

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2021/04/tom-tinman-schwartz-is-no-longer-coaching-drew-hunter-and-the-tinman-elite/

PS. We know some threads were started on this in the last few days. We deleted them while we worked on getting comments from the parties involved.

Not for nothing but I think this is the best move for both parties.

I think for Tinman himself, he clearly works better and has better success with younger athletes, particularly talented ones, in much smaller numbers. I had a feeling that the added strain of coaching scores of athletes with different situations was wearing on him a little -- see the fizzling out of the Tinman Track Club as an example.

For the athletes I think it's clear that all of them have potential to at least be competitive on the national level (international in some cases). I don't think Tinman's training gets the job done for taking that next leap past college or club-level training.

Anyway wishing both parties the best.

Not sure how Drew and the rest of TME feel about this, but I think this will be a good thing for the group's performances. We'll finally see if it was really Tinman's coaching that was holding Drew back after all.

One of the very few times I agree on all points with Rojo.

Kind of a dick move for all of them to leave together in a cue type maneuver, stealing the Tinman name. Let’s hope Tom has a good lawyer to refer to.

So was Tinman not getting the job done for the TME guys? I admit that he probably doesn’t have the chops to turn a top talent into a world stage medal threat, but Drew Hunter is the only guy in TME that has shown the level of talent for that. For the other guys with moderate talent, Tom has seem to have done as good of a job as they can hope.

Also, TME guys, since I know you are reading this, you better make sure you take reasonable care of the guy who you made move states with his whole family just for you to cut him loose a year later.

Same. I don't know what to make of the other guys, it's certainly possible that they're far better now than they would've been without Tinman's coaching. I have no feelings one way or another for Tinman, but it's tough seeing this happen to him like this. It's clear there was no big picture plan in making this move, they dumped him out of frustration and had nobody obviously better tabbed to take over. He gave them a lot, and they certainly added a lot to it, but they need to do the right thing and scrub Tinman from their accounts and gear pronto. I hope getting back to focusing on the upside of truly developmental runners (i.e. high schoolers) gets him to a happier place. I certainly don't wish Boulder on him.

His training program solid, but probably more so for developing runners or those needing to maintain, like working stiff sub-elites or masters. Maybe for elite (getting from national class to world class and finalist/medalist ready), it's just not enough.

Maybe he was spread too thin, with TME, high school runners all over the country, and his PhD program. And it was 2 years ago that he moved from Idaho. He can always go back if Colorado is too rough of a place.

As far as the name, no need to keep it unless they got a copyright--which would be sort of lol--and time to rebrand.

they should go by Tinmom wrote:

As far as the name, no need to keep it unless they got a copyright--which would be sort of lol--and time to rebrand.

I think you mean "trademark," and it would be lolz if he DIDN'T have a trademark on the name Tinman.

they should go by Tinmom wrote:

His training program solid, but probably more so for developing runners or those needing to maintain, like working stiff sub-elites or masters. Maybe for elite (getting from national class to world class and finalist/medalist ready), it's just not enough.

Maybe he was spread too thin, with TME, high school runners all over the country, and his PhD program. And it was 2 years ago that he moved from Idaho. He can always go back if Colorado is too rough of a place.

As far as the name, no need to keep it unless they got a copyright--which would be sort of lol--and time to rebrand.

I know his program is solid, I hired him my senior year of high school several years ago and saw huge improvements in XC. I just hope Tom lands on his feet because he is a great guy that cares about his athletes.

I see TME as being in this awkward position of needing Drew Hunter because he’s the star, but Drew is the only one with potential world class ability, and so would do best to join a top group like Bowerman TC or OTC Elite, but the others seemed to do really well under Tinman and so a move to a new coach seems much more questionable for them. Basically no one is really winning here.

Rojo is spot on here. THe rest of the team is not above Tinman's coaching. It seems to be working. Drew has not improved much since high school. He needs a change of scenery to see if there is more in him. He probably also needs better training partners.

Zante wrote:

I don't think Tinman's training gets the job done for taking that next leap past college or club-level training.

That's not the way the coaching works. If you understand the human body, you can coach period. You are training bodies. The elite body is just a faster version of the body. If that wasn't true, then no one could coach a pro woman (about the level of a good HS boy) and pro man.

Zante wrote:

Anyway wishing both parties the best.

Yes.

The relationship was clearly broken. Good luck to both.