Great Oak program under Doug Soles shredded by Runners World

DougieFresh wrote:

GOAlum wrote:

I ran for Soles. I am the person I am today because of him. He ran an amazing program. I know the girls in the article well and ran with them. Desi Stinger didn't get to run State or NXN as a junior or senior and behind the scenes she hated Soles for that. Always said she would get back at him, I guess we now know how.

It was a great run with an amazing coach. When I talk to GO athletes now, they all say the same thing. They miss Soles. No surprise the new school he is at loves him. Best coach I ever had!

Good for you for being thankful for someone else's effort and speaking up for your coach. If Soles is being "shredded" by RW today, he probably feels pretty bad about things. Some good coaches may appear really confident bordering on arrogant on the outside, but not quite feel the same way on the inside. Sometimes they just feel really comfortable in the HS coaching situation, but not at all feel comfortable in the limelight (or even speaking to large groups of adults!) and they often do not want to have to "defend themselves". So, when things like this happen, it can be a real downer to the good coaches. They wonder if it is "worth it" because the complaining voices that are in the distinct minority can often be much louder. Plus, good coaches simply feel real bad when things didn't work out for an individual athlete (even if said athlete seems to be out to get them, so-to-speak). So, I am hoping that somehow Soles is able to read your post sometime soon.

Han Solo wrote:

GOAlum wrote:

I ran for Soles. I am the person I am today because of him. He ran an amazing program. I know the girls in the article well and ran with them. Desi Stinger didn't get to run State or NXN as a junior or senior and behind the scenes she hated Soles for that. Always said she would get back at him, I guess we now know how.

Nobody on our team was running 19 miles on a Monday, we usually did hill sprints. Milesplit did a video on it. Loved those days, they were lots of fun and Soles always made us laugh. Freshman had regulated miles, usually like 30 or something like that. They didn't do any hills until the end of the season from what I remember. They certainly weren't doing 19 miles in one day. Use your brains people. We had a huge team full of happy kids. We dominated almost every meet we went to. It was a great run with an amazing coach. When I talk to GO athletes now, they all say the same thing. They miss Soles. No surprise the new school he is at loves him. Best coach I ever had! You should have seen the horrible soccer coaches I had over the years. Now there is an article!

I’m trying to understand your post. You ran with Desi, so you were there sometime around 2013-2016. So 6 years later you’re still talking to kids from your old high school that you never ran with? Odd.

You mention your bad soccer coaches. So did you run cross country or play soccer?

Han Solo wrote:

GOAlum wrote:

I ran for Soles. I am the person I am today because of him. He ran an amazing program. I know the girls in the article well and ran with them. Desi Stinger didn't get to run State or NXN as a junior or senior and behind the scenes she hated Soles for that. Always said she would get back at him, I guess we now know how.

Nobody on our team was running 19 miles on a Monday, we usually did hill sprints. Milesplit did a video on it. Loved those days, they were lots of fun and Soles always made us laugh. Freshman had regulated miles, usually like 30 or something like that. They didn't do any hills until the end of the season from what I remember. They certainly weren't doing 19 miles in one day. Use your brains people. We had a huge team full of happy kids. We dominated almost every meet we went to. It was a great run with an amazing coach. When I talk to GO athletes now, they all say the same thing. They miss Soles. No surprise the new school he is at loves him. Best coach I ever had! You should have seen the horrible soccer coaches I had over the years. Now there is an article!

I’m trying to understand your post. You ran with Desi, so you were there sometime around 2013-2016. So 6 years later you’re still talking to kids from your old high school that you never ran with? Odd.

You mention your bad soccer coaches. So did you run cross country or play soccer?

GOAlum wrote:

I ran for Soles. I am the person I am today because of him. He ran an amazing program. I know the girls in the article well and ran with them. Desi Stinger didn't get to run State or NXN as a junior or senior and behind the scenes she hated Soles for that. Always said she would get back at him, I guess we now know how.

Nobody on our team was running 19 miles on a Monday, we usually did hill sprints. Milesplit did a video on it. Loved those days, they were lots of fun and Soles always made us laugh. Freshman had regulated miles, usually like 30 or something like that. They didn't do any hills until the end of the season from what I remember. They certainly weren't doing 19 miles in one day. Use your brains people. We had a huge team full of happy kids. We dominated almost every meet we went to. It was a great run with an amazing coach. When I talk to GO athletes now, they all say the same thing. They miss Soles. No surprise the new school he is at loves him. Best coach I ever had! You should have seen the horrible soccer coaches I had over the years. Now there is an article!

GOAlum wrote:

I ran for Soles. I am the person I am today because of him. He ran an amazing program. I know the girls in the article well and ran with them. Desi Stinger didn't get to run State or NXN as a junior or senior and behind the scenes she hated Soles for that. Always said she would get back at him, I guess we now know how.

Nobody on our team was running 19 miles on a Monday, we usually did hill sprints. Milesplit did a video on it. Loved those days, they were lots of fun and Soles always made us laugh. Freshman had regulated miles, usually like 30 or something like that. They didn't do any hills until the end of the season from what I remember. They certainly weren't doing 19 miles in one day. Use your brains people. We had a huge team full of happy kids. We dominated almost every meet we went to. It was a great run with an amazing coach. When I talk to GO athletes now, they all say the same thing. They miss Soles. No surprise the new school he is at loves him. Best coach I ever had! You should have seen the horrible soccer coaches I had over the years. Now there is an article!

Peach Pit wrote:

GOAlum wrote:

I ran for Soles. I am the person I am today because of him. He ran an amazing program. I know the girls in the article well and ran with them. Desi Stinger didn't get to run State or NXN as a junior or senior and behind the scenes she hated Soles for that. Always said she would get back at him, I guess we now know how.

Nobody on our team was running 19 miles on a Monday, we usually did hill sprints. Milesplit did a video on it. Loved those days, they were lots of fun and Soles always made us laugh. Freshman had regulated miles, usually like 30 or something like that. They didn't do any hills until the end of the season from what I remember. They certainly weren't doing 19 miles in one day. Use your brains people. We had a huge team full of happy kids. We dominated almost every meet we went to. It was a great run with an amazing coach. When I talk to GO athletes now, they all say the same thing. They miss Soles. No surprise the new school he is at loves him. Best coach I ever had! You should have seen the horrible soccer coaches I had over the years. Now there is an article!

I like this post, but I don't think it should factor into anyone's conclusions unless it's verified that they actually ran for Soles. An anonymous post isn't credible evidence an article by an established publication. Although, if RunnersWorld or Stinger didn't verify/lied about stuff like freshman girls doing 19 miles on Mondays, I'm ready to write off the entire article and call for the author to be fired. With that said, I'd hope that RW/their authors/editors have enough journalistic integrity to make sure the scathing article they're writing is pretty much bulletproof, so I think it's a huge mistake to ignore the claims made in the article because of an anonymous messageboard poster. The article says they interviewed "Researchers, parents of athletes, a dozen running coaches, and nearly two dozen young women who participated in top high school running programs in the United States", so I'm erring of the side of them making a good faith effort to tell the truth.

I'm gonna make another post that's critical of the article, but since that post got a lot of upvotes I wanted to say this separately.