Most times, when everyone is the star runner, a running team will fail, and most will be injured.

yer sick

believe me i know wrote:

When you have too many studs, this leads to ego, and training competition, which in the end leads to injury.

I know of a program that faced something like this. The team members were extremely competitive and every practice was a chance to recalibrate the pecking order. Guys ran too fast on the distance/"recovery" days, and the team generally ended up having its best races in early October--a month too early.

[The coach solved the problem by having the Tuesday/Thursday distance runs at ~6 in the morning, instead of in the afternoon. Nobody was very interested in racing at 6am. Team won Nationals a couple years later.]

But yeah, OP, I've heard about this happening plenty of places. I heard (secondhand) about one of Dellinger's stud-filled teams (mid-1980s) that ran each other into the dirt, every practice. According to my informant, the only one doing the workouts at the intensity that Dellinger specified was Dub Myers, and Myers was Oregon's only AA that year.

So true, at least for my college situation.

I think personally a coach needs to understand when this type of situation develops inside the team atmosphere.

More emphassis needs to be on team philosophy, rather than whos feelings may get hurt.

I had a few runners on my team that felt that the team and school revolved around them.

I can understand you listing Washington here, especially with their blowup last year. But Oklahoma and Oregon? To my knowledge, neither of these schools has had a problem as you describe. In fact, Oregon was 2 time national champion (2007 and 2008) with lots of "studs". Please explain what you are referring to. If you meant OSU, and not Oklahoma, they were national champs with all their studs last year. Other than the aberration of Washington (was it the coach and not the studs that was the problem?) Your theory is about as bogus as they get.

Making the wild assumption that your claim is true in all cases, what's the proposed alternative? Intentionally recruiting slower runners?

This happened with my team, two girls each hit low 19's (like 19:05 or something) in October of their freshmen years. All of a sudden they started racing each other in every practice, determined to run sub-19 before the other, and thinking killing themselves to beat them in every workout will do it. Now it's two years later and neither has broken 19 yet, despite outpacing many boys who have in every workout.

believe me i know wrote:

Take a look at some of the schools with some major running talent.

Oklahoma, Washington, Oregon for example.

When you have too many studs, this leads to ego, and training competition, which in the end leads to injury.

Prove me wrong.

It depends on the coaching. Oregon, under Bowerman, this was not the case as he monitored runners and had a strict no racing in practice policy.

Under Dellinger, there were a lot of guys who underperformed because Dellinger wasn't as good a leader as Bowerman. But for the late 70's the talent pool was massive, so there were successful guys who survived the work load etc. Under Lananna, there have been some injuries, but there has been far better monitoring of athletes workloads and health.

Lananna stewarding Wheating through a calve tear, a stress fracture...back to health and Wheating's titles and PR's this year, was nothing short of Masterful.

I attended a college that had numerous high school all americans - many 'studs'. Didn't fit with your statement - we, I thought even then, were the exception to the 'rule'. Almost all benefited from the intensity - and friendship. We had plenty of guys who could lead out in a given (hard) workout. Most had 'healthy egos' but I don't recall that interfering with our individual or team goals. This was 'some time' ago however.