Sean McNulty Named Head Coach of Dartmouth Men’s Cross Country

you are lying. The 1:51 guy ran 1:55 in high school. 1:55 to 1:51 is normal development, maybe even sub par development when you consider super shoes make a 1 second difference. He could only get that 1:51 athlete to 15:37 in the 5k.

the head coach wanted to hire someone clueless enough to not know she is crazy. mcnulty is that guy.

Dartmouth's top freshman male is in the transfer portal. In the comments section of his file it says he is specifically transferring because of the coaching change.

McNulty is already dropping the ball.

Wonder where he'd go. I'm friends with someone on their team who has enjoyed it, but he's also a senior.

Also, considering that he went to Dartmouth, he likely cares a lot about academics. I'm not sure about the rules regarding in-conference transfers, but I wonder if he'd aim for a similarly good academic school

I saw on twitter earlier this week that this might be Dartmouth's last year of hosting Indoor Heps Championships... granted, it was a tweet from a Harvard coach and not someone within the Ivy League office. I can't find anything that lists future championship schedule/host locations.

I have heard that Steve Dolan is no longer interested in having Penn host Outdoor Heps, especially since they usually host Penn Relays within 2 weeks prior to Heps. Maybe hosting changes are in order?

I wouldn't be so quick to blame McNulty. Poor guy is inheriting a mess created by higher ups.

Yes. The coaches or maybe it was the ADs have made the idiotic decision that heps should only be held on a bank track. This is so so so so stupid for the following reasons.

1) There is a flat track conversion for NCAAs.

2) Hardly anyone from the meet is going to qualify for NCAAs so it's not worth worrying about.

3) TRADITION is what the Ivy League is about. I thought it was great for their to be a 4 school rotation indoors and 4 school rotation outdoors. So an athlete would see all 8 Ivy League schools during their career.

4) Cornell - which was the historical home for indoor Heps for like 40 straight years - isn't hoting any more as a result as well. Indoor Heps used to be a social event in Ithaca with a black tie dinner the night before the meet.

All of that is gone why? Like I literally don't get why anyone would be worried about qualifying for NCAAs at Heps unless they have a godawful program and are trying to save their job by having an NCAA qualifier.

Yeah that’s a good point. It’d be cool to race at the 7 other schools and experience what each track feels like

Cornell TF/XC responded to the Harvard coach tweet saying they were hosting in 2025... so will 2025 be the last time Cornell hosts Indoor Heps?

Problem is that the schools had been slowly fading out hosting for over 20 years.

The "current" indoor hosts are Harvard, Columbia (via Armory), Dartmouth, and Cornell.

The "current" outdoor hosts are Penn, Princeton, and Yale.

I know Columbia hosted outdoors in 2005, but I don't think they've hosted outdoors since.

I know Brown hosted outdoors in 2004, but I don't think they hosted outdoors since (part of it was construction but I think it was for the football turf, but regardless, I don't think they've hosted a conference meet since 2004).

He's replacing a coach that was really bad. One would expect the team to be thrilled to have a a better coach. The only problem is that McNulty is in well over his head and had no clue how to coach top D1 athletes at an elite Ivy academic institution.

Hearing from my friends on the team, they are not impressed with the new guy. Between losing their #1 freshman and a weak recruiting class, it's looking like Dartmouth will not be a contender for a very long time.

Blake, the kid from Jamaica? He’s by far their best frosh on the track, but he already competed once indoors. Not sure why he’d burn eligibility if he plans to transfer.

Gotta be more to the story than the coaching change. Dartmouth wasn’t good enough before the change for that alone to drive someone to transfer given the type of runner who goes to Dartmouth (or any other Ivy).

As an athlete who competed against McNulty's past team, I would just say to give him a chance. I can't speak for his training philosophy, I never ran under him. I would say though he's held some pretty impressive apprenticeships under guys like Gags. What I can attest to is the way he turned around Transylvania from a bottom feeder in a relatively weak conference, into a contender. I have no doubt had he stuck around a year or two more they could have won, which would have been quite the turnaround. Absolutely agree D1 is different than D3 sure, but what he does have is people skills, which can be quite rare amongst numbers, science obsessed distance coaches. That translates across all levels. It seemed like his athletes at Transylvania loved competing under him and would run through a brick wall to achieve their goals and help the team, again all with no scholarships or "big time fame" on the line. The current athletes on that team are primarily mid distance, so I think their XC results may not be the best indicator of his impact. Looking to track, however, his men's 800 runners occupied 5/8 positions in last year's outdoor conference final, and it's not as if all of 5 of those runners were sub-2 coming out of HS. This must speak on some level to either his coaching or motivational skills. I don't know if he'll pan out perfectly at Dartmouth. I don't have a crystal ball, or know enough about their specific situation. But in my mind, he's as qualified as any other D3 coach in the country to move up to the D1 level.

Really? He got 30th out of 34 at his NCAA Regional. In your opinion, he's as qualified for the Dartmouth job as any D3 coach that actually qualified for NCAA's or that even placed in the top 10 at NCAAs? Are you his mom or his wife?

The kid in the transfer portal wasn’t really dartmouths top freshman in any literal sense. He also apparently didn’t even try mcnultys training at all and quit the team because he was scared it was going to be too rigorous and has some tiger-parent dad who told him to quit

The tiger parents alone should deter someone from coaching at an IL school. Ten years ago they were a sporadic annoyance. Today they are a full-on catastrophic plague.

What fully functioning adult sees it fit or appropriate to call an adult coach about their 19 or 20-year-old son or daughter and begin to complain about their training as you might to a 2nd grade arithmetic teacher?

Has the ruling class lost all understanding of basic human development? Did they ever have an understanding in the first place?

Seems like his DMR team ran alright, splits of 2:57/1:53/3:58 for their mids/distance people at BU last night.

Coaching threads are the worse. So many jealous people. This one is over the top. So many coaches are mad McNulty got hired. I get it - it's not every day that a guy who was 30th in his DIII region gets a D1 job. Get over it and let the guy have a few years. Glad to see Dartmouth put up a nice DMR result tonight.

But at the same time, can people not disparage the previous coach? There is simply zero statistical justification to say the previous coach Justin Wood was "really bad." I was impressed by his results. They too had a great DMR result last year at Heps.

All of the following can be true.

Justin Wood is a good coach. Sean McNulty didn't have great results at his previous stop but also may be a good coach. Just calm down.

barely any coaches post here. It's frustrated athletes and alumni that are complaining and it's justified.

you had Ben Thomas and Ben True as candidates, and this guy gets the job? I understand Thomas and True probably turned it down, but surely there were other applicants a little less qualified than Thomas but far more qualified than McNulty.

There is a lot of talent on the Dartmouth team and they have a ton of potential and a storied past. But all of the coaching hires are ruining it.