Is it still as rampant? Some coaches didn't exercise due diligence and validate times or races and ended up giving substantial aid to a Rift Valley "stud" who ended up being a 16:00 5000m runner.
When I was in college our head coach got snookered by a Canadian decathlete who took all his individual PR's and converted them to a decathlon score.
Post roster pics if you dare.
Jon Flagg wrote:
Is it still as rampant? Some coaches didn't exercise due diligence and validate times or races and ended up giving substantial aid to a Rift Valley "stud" who ended up being a 16:00 5000m runner.
When I was in college our head coach got snookered by a Canadian decathlete who took all his individual PR's and converted them to a decathlon score.
Post roster pics if you dare.
Its one thing to be snookered by an African, given the fact results are not easily verifiable. But if your coach got fooled by a Canadian decathlete, he is a f***ing idiot. All he had to do was his job and he would have been easily able to figure it out.
I'm pretty sure I heard that the coaches at Iona thought they got duped with that korir kid because last year he didn't even make their nationals team. but i guess he turned out to be legit after all
My coach got duped by 3 Kenyans. 2 of them were actually really fast, but the 3rd one was their friend. After the first 2 were at the school and established their position on the team, they tricked the coach to bringing their friend over from kenya. Their friend ran like 17:00 for 5k, and he's male. Anyways he lost his scholarship after a semester. He know lives in the apartment with the 2 other kenyans but our coach doesnt know this. He has a job and is paying for college on his own. Living the dream! I find this awesome.
Have you, my friend, ever been seriously duped? This, my friend, is not a comfortable experience and one that should not be referred to in jest. Just look to the skies, my friend, and you will find the answers you seek.
I remember back in college seeing a team where the coach wasnt exactly duped, but same idea. This was back in the 90s and it was a tiny liberal arts college that doesnt even exist anymore. The team was absolutely awful, and the coach saw four guys running on campus one day, all african, he stops and asks them about themselves and finds out they are from Africa and here on a refugee program and that they like to run. He gives the four of them scholarships. I don't think a single one of them broke 26. However, they DID make up 4 of his top 7, so it wasn't THAT bad of a call on his part.
A Kenya kid named Mike Korir at Limestone College turned out to be much less than expected in 2008.
He ran PRs of 21:33 for 5K and 35:45 8K that season.
They dumped his butt after a year. But it was pretty sad. The coach is a good guy there but he got taken.
Remember hearing a story of a NY Metro area D1 program (not Iona) in the 80's that brought in 3 kenyans
#1- bolted as soon as the plane landed never to be seen again
#2 - Was not the guy it was supposed to be but his brother who who was not a runner at all
#3 - Was the right runner and had run the times, but he had not run in many months following a car accident where his legs were hurt
3 wasted scholarships - the school never went back after Kenyan runners again
Circa 1980, a Kenyan 400 hurdler named Daniel Kimaiyo was recruited to come to a Midwestern university.
He wasn't running too well at first. He blamed the travel, being a long way from home, etc. Turns out the guy wasn't really Kimaiyo but someone who stole his identity. In the ensuing fracas it came out that the coach had paid for his travel to the USA, an NCAA violation, and the coach lost his job.
Anyone who'd watched the real Kimaiyo run would have immediately spotted the imposter, because the real guy led with his left leg and the imposter led with his right. Getting film or video was pretty easy, as Kimaiyo had won the Commonwealth Games prior to being recruited.
Lesson: do your homework.
a listener wrote:
My coach got duped by 3 Kenyans. 2 of them were actually really fast, but the 3rd one was their friend. After the first 2 were at the school and established their position on the team, they tricked the coach to bringing their friend over from kenya. Their friend ran like 17:00 for 5k, and he's male. Anyways he lost his scholarship after a semester. He know lives in the apartment with the 2 other kenyans but our coach doesnt know this. He has a job and is paying for college on his own. Living the dream! I find this awesome.
Lamar University????
Beaumont Bum wrote:
Lamar University????
Nope. Maybe it happened there as well?
good stories, keep them going.
A few yrs a go we had a kenyan girl just show up one day during the first week of school. Said she had never competitively before but was wondering if she could join our team. We figured what the hell! She didn't have any shoes or workout clothes so we gave her some and she when for a run with the girls. Ran about 4miles, kept up with the team on the first day, so we thought we were on to something.
Never saw her again, lost a pair of shoes and workout gear. Oh well.
My coach who used to coach at another college before they cut the program has some good stories.
He got some Africans over the years. Some of them turned out legit and some didn't. He has 3 stories of being duped by them.
1. He trained with the team during the summer until one day he saw the soccer team practice. He then proceeds to ask the soccer coach if he can join the team and soccer coach tells him to try out and was amazed at his performance all behind my coaches back. Once my coach found out, he dropped his scholarship and soccer coach gave him a scholarship.
2. This guy didn't produce at all. He ran like 27's for 8k. Coach dropped the scholarship after a year, but he still trained with the team and somehow afforded college, but he never ran faster than 27.
3. His profile stated him as 13:50 5k as 18-year old, the best Kenyan (by profile) my coach has ever successfully recruited. My coach gets him and offers him scholarship yadda yadda. He runs a respectable 14:57 as a frosh. My coach says ok, freshman year, still adjusting. 14:30's as a soph. 14:17 as a Jr. and then 13:58 as a Sr. Never hitting 13:50.
Oh and reverse-duped.
Coach gets this guy from Somalia. He runs a PR of 13:39 by the end of his sr. year. Anyway, he confessed to my coach in the middle of his senior year that he wasn't actually the guy who he claimed to be. The guy who he claimed to be was actually his neighbor (back in somalia), but his neighbor didn't want to leave his family, so he stole his identity to live the dream.
Apparently he is now living in the U.S. and works at a computer firm with his B.S. in Computer Sci. After his senior year, he confessed to U.S. Customs and had to go through shenanigans, but they let him stay. According to my coach, customs wouldn't let him change his name back to his original name, so he still goes by his neighbor's name. If he wants to change his name legally, he has to do it like a regular citizen I guess and has to pay 300$ and fill out some paperwork, just like if you or me wanted a name change.
I don't know if this is duping but why bring in runners with times like these, especially on the D1 level, when there are plenty in the region, let alone the state?
http://www.ysusports.com/sports/wtrack/2009-10/bios/yegon_nelly
Maybe she had a bad race or something, but this chick in 31st place at the Juco nationals didn't seem like a wise investment.
31 Songol Colleta 19:16 F KEN 30 Cloud County CC
Local DII school recruited a pair who reported fast times and everyone was all excited. Both ran horribly and lasted just a year. Apparently one was out of shape (went on to run decent at another school a year or two later), and the other simply wasn't a runner.
It's too bad, because cases like this detract from the legitimate runners who could use an opportunity like that. The coach will probably never recruit another Kenyan after that fiasco.
bump