Portland State fires coach after costing steepler chance to make nationals

Lewis & Clark College is hiring a new coach too.

I prefer Sacagawea College.

Hold up, I can math.

I have no dog in this hunt, but two club women running low 57 for 10 miles puts them in 16:30 5000 range. Two other women running under 78 minutes for the half put them at sub-17. So you have four women from ordinary backgrounds running in the 16s. Wouldn't most D1 programs have a roster spot for them? Portland State would be delighted to have them.

I also think the post you responded to did a better job of selling Mike Blackmore and Dave Frank than himself. Your response is in poor form.

Final list according to latest sources:

1. Harmon

2. Newsom

3. Jordana

4. Rose after his latest post.

State is about to get boosted if any 4 of these hold true!

He made it sound like only one of the 1:17 humans was a woman. He’s a club coach citing athlete “projections” based on Strava data. Clown show. I doubt he has four women under 17. You think this guy would be hired by any college? He’d be lucky to get a job at a low end NAIA school, let alone a D1 program. Never going to happen. Only reason I care enough to post about this is we have seen his name several times in regards to jobs lately which shows how clueless people are on these boards. And I don’t feel bad calling him out as I have to guess more than half of those mentions were by him. Call it poor form, but this nonsense is annoying when some of us have an interest in who are actually viable candidates at a school we are invested in.

Lol and now he’s a finalist based off a message board post. This is getting pretty funny actually.

Believe it or not, I agree with the sentiment of your post. There are some coaches who are pretty deluded or sketchy and have no business coaching.

I really enjoy coaching this club, they are like an extended family. One of the things we try to do is allow everyone with a serious intention to join us, work hard and take a shot at getting better. That's a European-style club that is more inclusive. What this does is facilitate fan involvement in the sport. My sense is track & field is getting a little too stratified. With 200 people going to the Sound Running meets, and everyone else is a nobody with little to no skin in the game, that's not necessarily good for the sport. It's also a phenomenal group of high quality people that I'm very proud to associate with.

That said, your calling me out without doing any research is dubious. Did you run for Portland State? Is there a single NAIA school that has four women who can run in the 16-minute range? Our unsponsored, small women's XC team routinely knocks off the HOKA Aggies, Impalas and SRA Elite teams in the Pacific Association, you might have heard of those clubs and they have a lot of former D1 runners. Three are already sub-17 women in our group and the 4th set a 5+ minute PR in the half. She ran 18:30 in college, 17:32 last fall and it appears she'll have a shot at sub-17 on her next go.

I have coached a lot of runners, including three 50-54 year olds who could make a "low end NAIA" roster, routinely finish 1-2 at Club XC Nationals (and run for other clubs). They have also won an assortment of silvers and bronzes at various WMA World Championships too. One ran a 4:10 1500 at SAC State in 2018 and Ed Eyestone personally came over and congratulated him. More recently another ran 4:07.

That is not the first time Coach Eyestone has seen us roll either, as we had a kid come to Cal in 2015 that did not receive one recruiting letter of interest. Ended up qualifying for USATF Junior Outdoor National Championships in 2016, squeaking into the final and finishing 9th one place behind one of Coach Eyestone's highly recruited athletes in 3:53 in 100-degree weather. Everyone else was connected to a big D1 program and then there was our random club guy. He was getting bites from (i.e. UCLA) on the spot.

Take the guy who dabbled in triathlons in college who showed up to practice with a high school waterpolo and baseball background. Went from 4:27 1500m his first year and ran a sub-4:00 1500 and 1:56 800 in two years.

High school frosh shows up with a 50.5 high school 400 PR, runs 48.17 in two years. Walks on to the college team.

30-ish-year-old drops from 1:50.0? to 1:49.3 in the 800.

Mediocre hurdler from a "low end" NAIA school with 17:68 110HH and 1:02.78 400H PRs runs 16.04 and 56.76 in three years.

9:51 high school 3200 runner shows up to our club as a sophomore and wants to walk on to the Cal team. Runs 3:58 in the 1500 but gets turned down. Then we run XC and at the Pacific Association Regional XC Championships and he runs 30:48, breaking Michael Coe's Cal school record by one second. (Cal ran there annually whenever teams didn't go to NCAAs).

Marathoner drops from 2:31 to 2:18 with us and is taking a crack at the trials next weekend.

Marathoner from DC with 19 marathons under his belt went from 2:32 to 2:22 in one year with us.

17 kids have walked on to major NCAA D1 programs from our club, including one to the neighbor up the road - Univ. of Portland. Additionally, USATF Level 2 certified if that means anything to you, and I help assist with inner city track & field kids from Oakland who don't always come from good backgrounds, make sure their grades are up, and they go on to college. I was an NAIA assistant coach in the 2000s - we won XC nationals.

I could add hundreds of similar performances to this list. 95%+ of the people I coach set PRs and that's over 1000 people. But what's the point? You'll probably just fine something else to complain about.

Still, I said this once and I'll say it again - I didn't expect to be on this thread and ... you should go after Blackmore or Frank and Newsom sounds like a good suggestion too.

Carl Rose is a really big deal, just ask him! He’ll tell you at extreme length.