UMKC Track Coach

he posts on letsrun, regularly. maybe he will see this and answer you. News to me. right before track season?

I think they are collecting resumes. Sounds like some pretty good people are applying.

that is a shame - they lost a really great coach....feel sorry for the athletes there and those that had planned on coming but will now most likely go elsewhere. It sounds like this situation has been brewing since last summer....the administration sure is dragging their feet on this if they are looking to get something out of this program - or are they trying to let it go to waste and then expect people to come?! Have you checked their results out lately? They have some talent on the team, but it is mostly sprints, and some jumpers. Everything else is a crap shoot. I see one distance guy who has run well...but sometimes he is hot while others he is cold.

Their website shows only 1 coach, and a grad assistant??? I am assuming the grad assistant works with distance, as doing some digging I see that she actually ran for them.....hopefully they get someone a little more qualified in there to help out than that....for a D1 program you would hope for a little more.

I would have to agree.

kangaroo wrote:

I think they are collecting resumes. Sounds like some pretty good people are applying.

The have not posted the job anywhere so the only resumes they would have received would be from those that were asked to apply and those that just assumed they would be looking to fill the job.

The roster is small and I believe the administration will limp through the season and wait to advertise the position when they know someone would be willing to leave their current job. Think about it. What good ethical coach would leave their existing team mid-season? Hopefully very few.

why did Coach Drake leave?

I don't believe Coach Drake has been there for several years. Can't remember the name of the most recent coach. Does anyone have any idea why he left? Especially early in the season like this?

bump

Theo Hamilton, former KU star.

I think it was more the administration giving him the boot then him wanting to leave....from what I have gathered from other people....this is almost all to familiar with their program though - if you look back the last 8 years or so...Masanet was head coach Fall of 2000 through spring 2002, then they got Irv Ray who last 1 year, and then Theo Hamilton took the reins till now. If you really look at the recruiting done from those former two coaches....they really didn't help the program it seems. Other than Seth Summerside who only lasted 2 years before going to Arkansas and had much better success (Masanet I think recruited him) the UMKC numbers have dwindled drastically since the late 90's - going from Conference champs to this?! After those athletes graduated there was nothing left there....Hamilton did a good job working with what he had and getting the numbers to grow again, what the hell was the administration thinking when they let him go???

Masanet did an excellent job. Where is he now? I think he left to go to Illinois State or somewhere in Illinois?

It will always be hard to recruit to Umkc. The campus sits in or near a fairly dangerous part of KC. During the day it is fine, at night it can be dangerous. Men can raun at night without worry but I wouldn't want my daughter running at night in that part of town.

They need to get back to recruiting some local kids that can commute to campus and perhaps live at home.

It's odd they fired Theo before track since he had done a better job in track than in xc.

As was said in an earlier post, Hamilton wasn't looking to leave. The administration is fairly new/young and apparently wants to go another route. XC was subpar because Hamilton hasn't had a distance coach all year. Track is more his strong suit as someone else pointed out.

Geoff Masanet did a great job of bringing in some nice athletes. I'm almost sure he brought in Summerside. He was also there with Deandre Free (26' LJ I believe) though I don't remember who recruited him or who actually worked with him. Masanet's now at Eastern Illinois I think.

Irv Ray was there for only a year. There are plenty of folks on here that can say enough about Irv, that I don't feel the need to drop 2 pennies on it.

Theo Hamilton did a nice job trying to bring in some numbers. He seemed to do it by going quantity over quality in the beginning. Without much quality, the program didn't improve, and there didn't end up being much to sell.

As rib nerd put it, it's not in the best part of town. That obviously doesn't automatically preclude it from being able to be a solid team, but it doesn't help either. There's not a long tradition to build on. There not a recent history of success. It's a fairly good school, so the good athlete / borderline academic kid is tougher to pull. Also, there hardly seems to be any funding.

It'll take a change in the administration's expectations or funding to turn this around anytime soon. It doesn't look like a good situation to hop into. If the administration gives it more money, or allows a coach more time to develop it, then you may see some changes.

It's too bad for Theo and the current athletes though. Having met him a couple of times, he always came across as a good guy. Now the athletes are left with an assistant that's new this year (I think), and a GA that ran there just a year or 2 ago. can't see it being a pretty year for the Roos.

many older, major universities are in a 'bad part of town'; that is not a good excuse for recruiting. it's just hard when you have KU, KSU, MU and all of the good, D2 schools within an hour or 2 of KC, as well. The fact that they would fire the track coach right as track season is starting, is very unusual to say the least. there must be more to the story than is known to the public.

get serious.. wrote:

many older, major universities are in a 'bad part of town'; that is not a good excuse for recruiting.

That's true back east but not so much in the heartland. I guess Wichita State isn't in the best part of Wichita but every other D-1 program in about a 6 state area is in a fairly decent part of town.

I agree it shouldn't be an excuse for recruiting but you don't know how many of the parents are thinking, "do I want my kid goping there?"

About 8-9 years ago UMKC regularly beat KU, MU, and K-state in xc. With the right talent, they could do it again.

bad part of town? I agree with the part about being a guy running there at night is not too bad vs. a girl....but I was there several years and I wouldn't say it is a really bad part of town at all. You will get rough areas in every city...and most of the "bad" parts I would say were more North/North East of campus (Troost has always had a bad rep, but in recent years there have been steps to improve this). When running at school there most runs would be along the Trolley trail, down Ward Parkway, through Mission, or even through the plaza and down to Union Station a few times. I recall 1-2 instances when a female who ran with us on occasion encountered an incident while running at night on the trolley path - but also take into account this person was wearing headphones and ran alone...bad on both ends. I would say that the campus sits more on the edge of those areas, rather than in the middle of it. It can be actually a really good area, both in the day time and at night - I often would do a lot of runs at night, or just go out driving around when I got bored.

I wouldn't go as far to say UMKC beat KU, KSU and MU on a regular basis - in 2001 UMKC beat MU @ regionals in XC....but MU also had one of their top runners bail from the race. I think they would be much closer than what it is now, but not on a regular basis. UMKC has had a few distance runners in the past which could perform as well as them, but some either got burnt out, transfered, or just stopped. It seems more a struggle for them to keep the talent there when they have it....which like you said there really isn't a rich history of success yet....so it kinda sucks having to go through the bumps in the road to get there, they just seem to keep digging a hole deeper each year though. I really hope that the program can turn around and rise up again.

I agree that the part of town should not be an issue, not far from the plaza, but close enough to the bad part of town to be an issue after dark. My question would be, how many teams train after dark?

Coach Kruger built a quality team but became a little burned out because of the hours he spent. When they hired Hamilton they were hoping to go back to big conference title teams, so it makes you wonder why they hired a member of the old KU staff.

If the right person gets the job they could build a program that wins their conference virtually every year, it will just take a lot of recruiting without much financial reward.

Has this job been posted? If not does anyone know when it will be posted

I am probably moving to KC in May. Are there some good places to run there? Any good parks with soft surface trails in the area? Any info on this would be appreciated.

Landahl Park Reserve is just a little ways East from the city....I want to say it was exit 20 or something on Highway 70 - you would get off on interstate 7 and head north from there. Eventually the road becomes 2 lanes and there is a sign for an archery place - turn right there and that will take you to one of the gravel parking lots for the park - you can get 60-90 min of running on mountain bike trails without really having to repeat too much if anything, plus it varies on difficulty.

Little Blue Parkway trail, exit 17 and head north from the highway...there is a gravel trail (very similar to the Katy Trail surface if you are familiar with that) and that is at least 10miles one way, flat. There used to be a parking lot that was gravel to the right side of all the shops right there, but I was up in the area this past fall and it is no more - not sure why they got rid of it. The trail is still there though....the nice thing too is about 2 miles out from starting there is another parking lot, 6 miles out is another, and I want to say it was 8 miles or so was another lot....so it is great if you are doing some shorter runs and get tired of running the same area. Most of it is out in the open, so summer time can be hot if in the heat of the day.

Miner Park - about 7-8 mile one way trail which is fairly flat, but also allows you to jump on some roads too if need to add more. Runs around some soccer park fields too so you can get some good workouts in there.

Shawnee Mission Park - mostly paved, but you can find some soft areas to run on as well.

Trolley Path - this is right there at the plaza just about, and runs south (used to be the Twin Oaks apartment buildings but now demolished and some new student housing I think is going up) about 6.5 miles one way. 4.5-5 miles of this is gravel and soft....the last few are paved and runs through somewhat of an industrial area so I don't recall seeing too many people go that far down....but the gravel portion is perfect. You do have to cross a few busy intersections and a couple side streets, but other than that it isn't too bad.

Ward Parkway has a great grass median that runs the whole stretch from the plaza all the way till it hits Wornal again (I think....might be a bit rusty on the street names, but it passed the mall and Rockhurst High School before Ward Parkway ends) - we ran this a lot while at school, wide and flat...footing is very good for the most part.

If you go north of KC to Parkville there is English Landing park....great for intervals as it is about a 2-3mi loop of gravel trail (like the others) and is FLAT. We used to do 1K's or 800 repeats here at times. You can also jump on some of the other side roads to explore - there are some restricted areas....but easy to get to by foot if you are running and stay on grass/dirt.

There are plenty others, but that should be good to start. If you go to Mararunning.org and check out some of their trail races, you will find a link to a website out in the area, psycho something or other....I am sure they would have a bunch of other trails listed on top of the ones I mentioned here.

Where at in KC are you heading?