screwed over wrote:
Wick basically got screwed over at BSU despite doing a great job with limited resources while there .
Please. He was given more to work with than most of the previous distance coaches at that school. He was lucky that Hardy was sympathetic to a decently strong distance group, having come from NAU. On the women's side, it's not so big of an issue, b/c there is generally always money to spare. He did the right thing and brought in some very good sub 10:50 2M girls that have done well under his coaching.
He also brought in, and was given more money for men's distance than the previous 5 distance coaches were generally allotted on a yearly basis. He did the right thing here as well, and landed at least 3 sub 9:00 2M boys and a few more sub 9:10 guys during his time there-not to mention a stolen transfer here and there. He has not produced on the national level with these as well as he has with his female runners. His women have re-written many of the school records, his guys...not so much.
In fact, the leaders on his most successful cross team that won the conference title on the men's side during their last year in the WAC a few seasons ago were all a previous coaches recruits. It's telling that the best runner of THIS group left as soon as he could(had a year to spare in Grad school), went down to AZ State, and was turned into a 13:45/29:low guy in one year by Louie Q.
So enough of this revisionist "young Coach" BS that goes on in this forum. He was lucky to get that job. He was the SIXTH candidate after everybody else turned it down, and was put in b/c the coach who hired him had no other real option. I mean C'mon. He was a D-III guy who had done some waterboy/van driving/stop watch holding/Grad asst. work while at Minnesota, and sold the idea that he "had a hand in developing H. Mead." That's crap, but generally the way it is done these days. Now, HE DID make the most of it.
I guess when you talk about "limited resources" it is relative. As compared to what, Texas? Stanford? How about we compare the Boise State setup to a similar school, in which case he had a great situation to work with. Let's call him what he is, a budding great women's coach, who hasn't figured out how to get it done on the men's side yet. Having said that, I wish him luck where ever he lands. I hope others can keep it real out there. Part of the reason why we have guys in some of these coaching positions who have only produced 3 national qualifiers in a 25 year career is B/C no one has kept it real.
And for the record, yes, I was a D-I coach who produced All Americans in my brief career, and I got out b/c I felt I wasn't good enough, despite the fact that I did produce sub 8:35st/13:50/29:00 guys and sub 2:04/4:20/9:30/16:25/34:20 women. Some of these guys need to get real about how good they really are...