This article provided less info on Mcnulty's coaching than threads on the topic. Based on the article, and the high turnover, as well as the decison to hire and then maintain McNulty for some time, the director of xc&track should be canned as well. As an administrator or AD reading this, how can you not fire this person as a form of damage control.
From the article we learn McNulty was the worst of the bunch in a period when Dartmouth had significant turnover in xc/track distance coaches. Even outlining the injury status of the men's team doesn't do the situation the justice letsrun threads on McNulty have though. He was having his guys workout every day of the week - like 5 workouts a week. The previous threads make it sound like he rarely if ever assigned an easy run.
Clearly if you read the article, the problem is WITH the coaching staff and administration.
I read enough to know I would NEVER send a kid there. Yes the coaches are a problem. There is always someone higher to go to. Going public is just putting a death to the program. It's going to take many years before someone good wants to run for them.
Maybe, maybe not. If they hire a new director and distance/xc coach that might inspire confidence. There are some coaches with proven records looking for new positions right now.
Clearly if you read the article, the problem is WITH the coaching staff and administration.
I read enough to know I would NEVER send a kid there. Yes the coaches are a problem. There is always someone higher to go to. Going public is just putting a death to the program. It's going to take many years before someone good wants to run for them.
Looking at the success of other programs even in the same conference, why would someone run for a weaker school with crappy coaching?
Clearly if you read the article, the problem is WITH the coaching staff and administration.
I read enough to know I would NEVER send a kid there. Yes the coaches are a problem. There is always someone higher to go to. Going public is just putting a death to the program. It's going to take many years before someone good wants to run for them.
Shame on you for victim blaming kids with broken femurs. It is obvious from this article that the administration only dealt with this when they had no other choice. The AD and administration is the highest point you can go in an athletic department.... The real death to the program is covering up lies and thinking you can get away with it. I would be proud of my kids for sticking up for themselves.
These Dartmouth athletes and their parents are compete weenies and need to grow up and move on. How embarrassing for the athletes to have your parent involved.
Should everyone just stay silent about the issue then? And let porscha continue running the program into the ground?
No they should handle it internally. Making your college look bad for everyone to see doesn't help the program grow. This is a problem for their administration at this point.
The article states that the athletes tried to resolve internally. Sounds like others did too. Then you go public. McNulty is gone, and the broken femurs will now stop. Porscha should be next.
I read enough to know I would NEVER send a kid there. Yes the coaches are a problem. There is always someone higher to go to. Going public is just putting a death to the program. It's going to take many years before someone good wants to run for them.
Shame on you for victim blaming kids with broken femurs. It is obvious from this article that the administration only dealt with this when they had no other choice. The AD and administration is the highest point you can go in an athletic department.... The real death to the program is covering up lies and thinking you can get away with it. I would be proud of my kids for sticking up for themselves.
Anyone has a way of contacting college administrators beyond the athletic department. It's not hard.
So as someone with zero skin in the game, why *shouldn't* Dartmouth pivot to a sprint-heavy team? Why does tradition matter when a good sprinter can give you points across more events per athlete than a distance runner can, particularly in a conference where every other team is also distance-oriented?
I don't understand why this is being downvoted. What is the philosophical issue with Dartmouth potentially re-orienting their team around sprints?
So as someone with zero skin in the game, why *shouldn't* Dartmouth pivot to a sprint-heavy team? Why does tradition matter when a good sprinter can give you points across more events per athlete than a distance runner can, particularly in a conference where every other team is also distance-oriented?
I don't understand why this is being downvoted. What is the philosophical issue with Dartmouth potentially re-orienting their team around sprints?
They don't have to pick a focus, why can't they be good at everything? Since they have no scholarships, it should be a level playing field for distance or sprints, you don't have to take a scholarship away from one to give to the other.
All they have to do is hire a competent distance coach. But they refuse to do that. The past 2 have been D3 duds.
It's also worth pointing out that top sprinters are not going to want to live in New Hampshire. It's always really cold and they have poor indoor facilities. New Hampshire, however, would be a dream for distance runners since they have have unlimited trails to run.
Top sprinters are also not going to get accepted to Ivy League schools 99 times out of 100.
I don't understand why this is being downvoted. What is the philosophical issue with Dartmouth potentially re-orienting their team around sprints?
They don't have to pick a focus, why can't they be good at everything? Since they have no scholarships, it should be a level playing field for distance or sprints, you don't have to take a scholarship away from one to give to the other.
All they have to do is hire a competent distance coach. But they refuse to do that. The past 2 have been D3 duds.
It's also worth pointing out that top sprinters are not going to want to live in New Hampshire. It's always really cold and they have poor indoor facilities. New Hampshire, however, would be a dream for distance runners since they have have unlimited trails to run.
Top sprinters are also not going to get accepted to Ivy League schools 99 times out of 100.
Dartmouth has developed multiple world class distance runners. Kempainen, Abby D'agostino, Ben True, Schlactenhaufen, Alexi Pappas, Geoghegan...I'm sure there are some obvious other ones I have left out. But Dartmouth has to be the top Ivy in getting distance runners to the top rung in recent years.
On the other hand,
Dartmouth has developed exactly zero world class sprinters. To my knowledge anyway.
Sure, you want to work on your weaknesses, but you race to your strengths. Distance running is one of the jewels in the Dartmouth athletic program. Wrecking that is very painful to watch and just awful for the athletes. Such a lost opportunity and wasted effort.
I don't understand why this is being downvoted. What is the philosophical issue with Dartmouth potentially re-orienting their team around sprints?
They don't have to pick a focus, why can't they be good at everything? Since they have no scholarships, it should be a level playing field for distance or sprints, you don't have to take a scholarship away from one to give to the other.
All they have to do is hire a competent distance coach. But they refuse to do that. The past 2 have been D3 duds.
It's also worth pointing out that top sprinters are not going to want to live in New Hampshire. It's always really cold and they have poor indoor facilities. New Hampshire, however, would be a dream for distance runners since they have have unlimited trails to run.
Top sprinters are also not going to get accepted to Ivy League schools 99 times out of 100.
I sort of agree, but not really. If every other school in the Ivy has the exact same strategy, a game theory perspective would tell me that they're much better off investing focus in areas in which the other schools in the Ivy aren't focusing.
To be clear, I get it -- this hire sucked, the department has been incompetent, and it's been painful to see as a completely self-inflicted wound. But I don't buy the argument that Dartmouth should just continue to focus on distance as its hallmark just because that's the way it's always been done.
And if you can't find someone to run a 10.50/21 to come to your school while a school like UW-Oshkosh can find like six kids to do it, then you shouldn't be in charge of recruiting anyone at the D1 level. Obviously the academic standards are different, but the net for a school like Dartmouth to cast is about 1,000x as big.
I don't understand why this is being downvoted. What is the philosophical issue with Dartmouth potentially re-orienting their team around sprints?
They don't have to pick a focus, why can't they be good at everything? Since they have no scholarships, it should be a level playing field for distance or sprints, you don't have to take a scholarship away from one to give to the other.
All they have to do is hire a competent distance coach. But they refuse to do that. The past 2 have been D3 duds.
It's also worth pointing out that top sprinters are not going to want to live in New Hampshire. It's always really cold and they have poor indoor facilities. New Hampshire, however, would be a dream for distance runners since they have have unlimited trails to run.
Top sprinters are also not going to get accepted to Ivy League schools 99 times out of 100.
The Ivy's operate differently than most colleges, and often differently amongst the 8 school. Generally they work sorta like this: While they have no scholarship, coaches often have a number of "endorsements" that coaches offer to admissions. No that doesn't mean they can get someone with a 2.75 gpa accepted, in any scenario. But, when differentiating between the thousands of 3.97-4.0 students that apply, this helps. That said each team has X number of endorsements that is split amongst the entire program. So often difficult decisions have to be made. Decisions like how many endorsements per group, can someone get in on their own merit, roster spots, etc. So, theoretically if Porsche wanted to build a sprint heavy program, she could say of the 15 endorsements that the team has (I made that number up, I have no idea how many they have), I want 13 of them. That leaves 2 for distance. Makes recruiting awfully difficult as an XC coach when you have other Ivys and NESCACS guaranteeing spots, and all you can say is, "if you get in on your own, we'll give you a spot..." So no, while it is not taking scholarship from one group to give to the other, it is still a "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation.
And the blatant disrespect to the D2-D3 coaches out there is ridiculous. If you knew anything about the situation, Wood was well respected amongst his peers on a national level. McNulty obviously was not. These are two separate situations.
They don't have to pick a focus, why can't they be good at everything? Since they have no scholarships, it should be a level playing field for distance or sprints, you don't have to take a scholarship away from one to give to the other.
All they have to do is hire a competent distance coach. But they refuse to do that. The past 2 have been D3 duds.
It's also worth pointing out that top sprinters are not going to want to live in New Hampshire. It's always really cold and they have poor indoor facilities. New Hampshire, however, would be a dream for distance runners since they have have unlimited trails to run.
Top sprinters are also not going to get accepted to Ivy League schools 99 times out of 100.
The Ivy's operate differently than most colleges, and often differently amongst the 8 school. Generally they work sorta like this: While they have no scholarship, coaches often have a number of "endorsements" that coaches offer to admissions. No that doesn't mean they can get someone with a 2.75 gpa accepted, in any scenario. But, when differentiating between the thousands of 3.97-4.0 students that apply, this helps. That said each team has X number of endorsements that is split amongst the entire program. So often difficult decisions have to be made. Decisions like how many endorsements per group, can someone get in on their own merit, roster spots, etc. So, theoretically if Porsche wanted to build a sprint heavy program, she could say of the 15 endorsements that the team has (I made that number up, I have no idea how many they have), I want 13 of them. That leaves 2 for distance. Makes recruiting awfully difficult as an XC coach when you have other Ivys and NESCACS guaranteeing spots, and all you can say is, "if you get in on your own, we'll give you a spot..." So no, while it is not taking scholarship from one group to give to the other, it is still a "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation.
And the blatant disrespect to the D2-D3 coaches out there is ridiculous. If you knew anything about the situation, Wood was well respected amongst his peers on a national level. McNulty obviously was not. These are two separate situations.
just as an add-on, the rumour why Vin Lannana quit Dartmouth was because he couldn't get enough people past admissions and finally got fed up. And that was when Dartmouth finished second in NCAA XC twice in a row and he was king of the hill.
Now imagine how hard it would be for a newby like McNulty to talk the dir of T/F to give him an 'endorsement' athlete when she'd rather give them to sprinters, apparently.
Which I'm guessing is one reason she wanted a weak distance coach - someone who would not fight over those few 'endorsements.' to admissions.
It is insane to hire an unsuccessful D3 coach over Ben True on grounds of the latter's "lack of coaching experience." True at that point, in addition to his extraordinary professional achievements and his status as one of Dartmouth's best ever distance runners, a two-time recipient of Dartmouth's male athlete of the year award, and a member of its NCAA championship skiing team in 2007, had just written the workouts for Dartmouth's best heps xc finish in 18 years.
It is insane to hire an unsuccessful D3 coach over Ben True on grounds of the latter's "lack of coaching experience." True at that point, in addition to his extraordinary professional achievements and his status as one of Dartmouth's best ever distance runners, a two-time recipient of Dartmouth's male athlete of the year award, and a member of its NCAA championship skiing team in 2007, had just written the workouts for Dartmouth's best heps xc finish in 18 years.
I'm not disagreeing with you but...writing workouts is just a part of coaching. And really...writing workouts is not that hard. You could just follow some book and get 95% out of an athlete. (lord knows what McNulty thought he knew that no one else had figured out!)
the paperwork, tracking all those NCAA rules, the recruiting, the travel, the sacrifice of your own running and weekends, the college politics...these things are not easy and would be hard for someone who has never been a NCAA coach to jump into and swim.
I'm not saying True wouldn't be a great coach...I've no idea. But it's not just writing workouts and yelling out splits.
So as someone with zero skin in the game, why *shouldn't* Dartmouth pivot to a sprint-heavy team? Why does tradition matter when a good sprinter can give you points across more events per athlete than a distance runner can, particularly in a conference where every other team is also distance-oriented?
Yours is a fair question. For one thing, usually, there is a reason for the long-term distance dominance, namely, that Hanover is a great place for distance running and has really poor weather for sprinting and jumping; Hanover is heavily white and the sprints and jumps are heavily dominated by black athletes who may not want to live in a heavily white area where they will stand out; and distance recruits know of Dartmouth's tradition and will gravitate to it, whereas sprinters don't think of that place at all because they have no history of sprint success. So, the switch is unlikely to be successful. After all, there is plenty of competition for sprinters good enough to score points in multiple events, since every coach and AD knows that just two or three really good sprinters could allow you to win conference and place highly at nationals.
So as someone with zero skin in the game, why *shouldn't* Dartmouth pivot to a sprint-heavy team? Why does tradition matter when a good sprinter can give you points across more events per athlete than a distance runner can, particularly in a conference where every other team is also distance-oriented?
Yours is a fair question. For one thing, usually, there is a reason for the long-term distance dominance, namely, that Hanover is a great place for distance running and has really poor weather for sprinting and jumping; Hanover is heavily white and the sprints and jumps are heavily dominated by black athletes who may not want to live in a heavily white area where they will stand out; and distance recruits know of Dartmouth's tradition and will gravitate to it, whereas sprinters don't think of that place at all because they have no history of sprint success. So, the switch is unlikely to be successful. After all, there is plenty of competition for sprinters good enough to score points in multiple events, since every coach and AD knows that just two or three really good sprinters could allow you to win conference and place highly at nationals.
all this talk of why or why not a sprints focus but it's clearly not working. exactly 1 sprinter between both genders ranked in scoring position in the conference. redirecting endorsements to sprints isn't producing results plus other event areas are worse than ever
I'm not disagreeing with you but...writing workouts is just a part of coaching. And really...writing workouts is not that hard. You could just follow some book and get 95% out of an athlete. (lord knows what McNulty thought he knew that no one else had figured out!)
the paperwork, tracking all those NCAA rules, the recruiting, the travel, the sacrifice of your own running and weekends, the college politics...these things are not easy and would be hard for someone who has never been a NCAA coach to jump into and swim.
I'm not saying True wouldn't be a great coach...I've no idea. But it's not just writing workouts and yelling out splits.
Yes, writing workouts is just a part of coaching, but it is a lot harder than you think because it has to be a good way of doing things at your level and it has to be adapted to the athletes you have and how they are doing at the time. If they are getting injured, for instance, as they were with McNulty, then you have to adjust workouts or injury prevention work or both. Let's postulate that following some book is the way the normal team functions in the NCAA. Now, does the typical team get 95% out of its athletes and the best 100%? 5% improvement in the 5000m at 14 flat would be 13:18. If that's right, then NAU with a guy like Aaron Las Heras or Theo Quax (who both ran 13:16) is getting 100% out of essentially 14 flat athletes (Quax did run only low 8:30s 3k in high school). So, NAU is going to get on the podium every year in xc and win by getting 100% out of athletes, on this assumption, and Dartmouth is going to get 14 flat guys to 14 flat, under your typical coach adopting someone else's workouts. Under McNulty, they're going to get dns and n/t for most athletes because they'll be injured or quit. The typical coach then would never get to NCAAs with his 14 flat athletes unless he went to D2 but then he would probably have 15 flat athletes and not make it there either.
Okay, so we see that here True's workouts with no real men's coach got them to 4th at Heps for the first time in 18 years, so they were not just typical workouts but better. And as for his non-workout writing skills, we know that he's got charisma, pull in the program, national recruiting pull and fame in the running world and in NH and at Dartmouth, that the athletes loved him and unanimously wanted him to be their coach. So, it looks like he really had everything the program needed, except for incompetence and the willingness to be stepped on and denied the ability to succeed.