Is U of Maryland the worst big conference track team ever?

I think they are way underfunded because my daughter is a sub 5 miler and they offered her no money.

I have heard some stories about their distance program (girls) and it is wild how unserious it is. At my D1 college the running club was more serious/dedicated.

The story I heard is they only have mandatory practice a few times a week. Maybe 3 workouts. Everything thing else is on your own. The team culture is just people who want the fancy gear so they can say they are athletes.

Nah....Northwestern when they had a program were horrible.

Kameron Jones 1:49 at Maryland, runs 1:45 as a grad student at Clemson

Caleb Dean 14.1 110mH at Maryland, transfers to Texas Tech, gets 2nd at Nationals in 60mH, 13.4 in the 110mH

There's probably even more unused talent on that roster.

Well...we know they are the worst in that conference. Would they be better if they were a MAC team? probably? But I dont know, seems difficult for a prominent (good) school in the big 10 to not be able to recruit a few people. Having said that, BIG 10 is tough competition. Someone has to be last.

The Big Ten is by far the worst power 5 conference. I'd argue it's also worse than the AAC, thanks to some star power in that conference. And it's historically been terrible.

I'm sure they have one of those idiot directors who don't scholarship distance runners unless they can score immediately.

I will add.

Obviously the funding isn't entirely there. And I don't know the whole situation.

BUT, if you look at the results on both the womans and mens side they have 2-3 performers running D1 times and the rest are running high school times. Woman running 5s/18s, men running 4:20s/15:30s

When you coach at a large D1 state school in the Big Ten you can get enough decent athletes who want to be at that school that you don't need scholarships. But they should be running better than high schoolers.

Makes me believe there is a huge problem with the coaching staff.

Also interesting to me their top womans 1500 runner has raced 8 1500s this spring (since march 17th), (also including 3 800s). Almost every weekend traveling all over the east coast. That is insane to me. From both a student and athlete developmental standpoint. Again an indication the coaching staff isn't very competent.

Valmon has had prior success as an athlete and a coach and should be able to create a strong culture.

UoMD track has always been terrible, esp back in the 70s/80s. A friend who ran there for a year (before transferring) said workout days were - you would go to the office, sign out a stopwatch, and return it after your workout. The coaching staff was only interested in a few athletes, and everyone else was on their own.

Other sports - basketball, lacrosse - were the focus of the department, so all other sports were viewed as a waste of money.

And the school itself is like going to college in a bus terminal.

The University of Utah is certainly in the running. Over a 50-year period in the WAC and MWC, their men’s team never finished higher than 5th at the conference championships, and finished last more times than any other team in the meets. Neither conference was anything close to a powerhouse. These Utah teams were more likely to score fewer than 10 points than they were to score more than that amount during this period. The best move the school ever did for the team was to mercy kill the program in the early 2000s.

Don't forget Boston College !

Valmon is in his 19th season at Maryland, if he was going to create a good culture he would have done it already. If I understand correctly the athletes hate Valmon and Siebert keeps the team together.

One thing I do not understand is lacrosse being priority at Maryland, I understand lacrosse is popular in Maryland but they might have 2,000 show up for a game and that's being kind.

They don't have anywhere near the money or culture to compete in Big10 football. So why bother.

Rather focus on resources on other sports they can be competitive. Since they get such a large paycheck form the Big10 media deal they can fund those sports

Year 20 everything changes for sure

yea, he'll be fully vested and can be fired without any guilt.

You have to try to suck to be this bad.

What a crap program

To add some color, Maryland and Long Island are basically the only places in the world where Lacrosse is treated like a "Tier 1" sport and attracts the best "generally athletic" kids a la Football and Basketball.

Recruiting becomes a lot easier when you're a large public school and half of the competitive playerbase is located within an hour's drive.