Jordan tells Mary Cain to go NCAA

The two big questions to me is - 1. How much money can she get signing a contract straight out of high school. Especially what kind of guaranteed money. 2. What kind of support network will she have if she moves to Portland.

I don't know what kind of money she could get. I'm not sure where her parents stand with her running career. Would the move to Portland to be with her? If not, what then? She's just going to be an 18 year old professional on the other side of the country adrift when she is not running? That is where going to college and having an established support group with team members her age could be key.

Jordan says: wrote:

Jordan Hasay says "Mary Cain go to college..."

Cause it helped her so much :). Also I was thinkin she's telling her that cause she doesn't want to run against her.

Blink of an eye...

actually what she said was" Mary Cain go to Oregon"! That would be more acture.

ryan foreman wrote:

The two big questions to me is - 1. How much money can she get signing a contract straight out of high school. Especially what kind of guaranteed money. 2. What kind of support network will she have if she moves to Portland.

I don't know what kind of money she could get. I'm not sure where her parents stand with her running career. Would the move to Portland to be with her? If not, what then? She's just going to be an 18 year old professional on the other side of the country adrift when she is not running? That is where going to college and having an established support group with team members her age could be key.

What makes you think she has to move to Portland to be a pro? Plenty of pros do not live in Portland or Eugene, OR. She could keep doing exactly what she's doing right now (living at home, training under the long distance tutelage of Alberto) but use the contract money and track meet paychecks instead of dad's paycheck to fund her travel. After a few years of maturity and confidence running on the circuit, then she could contemplate moving out on her own...

I think she will run amateur her senior year of hs and freshman yr of college. Freshman year is an off year - no WC or Olys.

Sophomore year of college is the interesting one - that's an Olympic year. If she has a real shot at a medal I suspect she will go pro at that point to avoid the three season NCAA wringer.

I bet her parents and Salazar aren't sure themselves what to do here - not a lot of precedent for a smart high school jr who can make an olympic final.

So rather than wreck her NCAA eligibility, they'll probably go the normal route of amateur racing for a couple years.

Every single argument I have seen for her to run NCAA has been nonsense.

Yes she should go to college. But she does not have to join the team at that college.

Yes she needs a healthy social environment and the opportunity to make friends with similar interests. All colleges offer that. A college team may or may not, but at any rate she does not *need* a team to be a normal social person.

Yes she needs experience running to hone her tactics. The NCAA competition does *not* offer that to her. It would be similar to when Hasay was in high school, where she was always way out in front and she never learned how to run in a pack. By running with pros right now, she gains the exact experience she needs.

Yes she needs to be brought along slowly. But she does not require the "Rupp treatment". Rupp was not beating the entire field in NCAAs from day one. Similarly Hasay was not. Rupp and Hasay both demonstrated great potential entering college but they had a way to go. Cain is on a different level already.

What Cain really needs is to maintain focus in her college years, until the Olympics. NCAAs championships and so on are a distraction...she needs to be a little selfish in this area.

Noce, I hear you and best I can say is 'it depends on the person.'

Train is 17 years old...many 17 year olds are just not prepared to go to work full time on a high pressure stage - I know I wasn't. On the other hand, some 17 year olds are ready to work full time and deal with fame and pressure.

so saying she should go to college full time, and work full time (at running)...well, maybe. I'm sure her parents are figuring out what is best for her.

The good news is that they are wealthy so she will not be pressured into supporting the family.

just to complete the thought - some people need the structure of a team, a coach she sees every day, a group of people to run with, and a low-pressure set of races.

Maybe Cain would do better in that more secure collegiate arrangement, at least for a year while she adjusts to livign away from home and growing up.

Mary Decker ran a year or two at Colorado when she was already world class coming in, I recall. I think she won the AIAW (before women were in the NCAA) XC. It may have been the early years of pro track, but there was money to made, for certain. The point is, she gave college a try, but moved on for real competition, and money, I suppose.

Take two years in college, then hold press conference stating

NCAA does not offer enough competition. Go pro -- train for

Olympics --

but lose to drug fueled from Africa/Eastern Europe.

NCAA coaches can be exploitative and will not have Cain's long term interest. They just want to squeeze the most out of her in the short period she will be there

rats, I had the dates wrong - sr year of hs is the off year.

Age 18-22 is for college running

Age 22-30 is for pro/Olympic running

Unless the college coach is totally burning the runners down

the two programs are good for the runner. Shorter, Yale then

on to Olympics. Manzano, Texas and then on to Olympics. Joan

Benoit, Bowdon and then on to the Olympics. The 19 or 20 year

old worrying about the Olympics is wasting his time. Plan to

peak at 24/25 not earlier.

Age 18-22 is for college running

Age 22-30 is for pro/Olympic running

Unless the college coach is totally burning the runners down

the two programs are good for the runner. Shorter, Yale then

on to Olympics. Manzano, Texas and then on to Olympics. Joan

Benoit, Bowdon and then on to the Olympics. The 19 or 20 year

old worrying about the Olympics is wasting his time. Plan to

peak at 24/25 not earlier.

she should definitely not run for a college, it would be pointless. None of the girls would be able to run with her, and she would get NO competition in any race she ran, except on the rare occasion when she would get to run against pro's, and even then she wouldn't get any competition unless those pro's are some of the very best in the world.

She should absolutely go pro after high school (or even at the end of this summer). But she should have a group to train with. So the only hard decision is finding a school she wants to go to that is in the same location as a professional training group. People keep on saying she will only go to ivy league schools, hey i don't know her, so maybe that is true, but you don't know her either, so you can't just assume that. She has vastly more running ability than she does academic ability (she's an Einstein of running) so the best decision for her next year is to figure out where she can get the most out of running, while still going to solid schools. With her current improvement this year it makes absolute sense to go to Portland to train with Salazar's runners and go to one of their schools - i'm pretty sure the have at least a couple well respected really expensive schools.

Look at it the other way around, if you're a genius with decent running ability, are you gonna go to Oregon to focus on running, or are you gonna go to MIT to focus on academics. She's the opposite of this, she needs to focus on her running, it will provide for her for at least a dozen years most likely, it will make her lots of money, she'll see the world, have amazing experiences, be the best in the world at something most likely. Doesn't really matter where she happens to get her bachelor's from at long as its a decent school.

q3=4-59=32q45[ert3=-459 wrote:

I completely disagree with everyone about how Mary Cain should go pro. She should follow the Rupp model and win some NCAA championships before going pro. There is so much more she can learn on tactics and competition. It was good enough for Bernard Lagat also.

Remember Tiffany McWilliams? Turning pro really worked for her, didn't it. (And I'm not suggesting that they are similar.)

Miss Cain can always go back and get her degree. Go Mary go get them. Being the best of the best. Priceless. Plus she got Salazar the wizard coaching her. What could go wrong?

agip wrote:

just to complete the thought - some people need the structure of a team, a coach she sees every day, a group of people to run with, and a low-pressure set of races.

But aren't all of those things are possible if she joins a track club with pros? Even pros have low-pressure races.

Jennie x wrote:

Justin9I wrote:

hasay is the last ope-minded person in America, so..

1. What doe "ope-minded" mean?

2. "so..." what?

You are not really stupid enough to not know what he meant, right?