The Precipitous Decline of William & Mary's Men's Program

Didn't Alex Gibby leave for the job at Michigan around this time?

Rumor has it he is available to return.

It is funny how Gibby made a great cross country program at Michigan with I think 3 consecutive years of making the NCAA championships and is released, while Walsh has destroyed the William and Mary program and no one takes any action.

changes in coaching, changes in training, and closing some of their home meets. Without having open meets, w&m guys don't face top competition (lot of post collegiates who would pull the w&m guys to good times in Virginia and NC). It all adds up. Part of it too is due to aggressive recruiting by Tech, GMU, and UVA, not all the top in staters go to W&M any more. W&M just got used to being the top dog in the south east for too long and got complacent.

Cool runner wrote:

It is funny how Gibby made a great cross country program at Michigan with I think 3 consecutive years of making the NCAA championships and is released, while Walsh has destroyed the William and Mary program and no one takes any action.

Oh they're taking action all right—they're firing Gibby so someone else can come in and ruin another program he built!

Griffins have feathers.

It certainly doesn't help to have a coach with insecurity issues, the reading/writing level of a four year old, and an absurdly low level of even basic scientific principles.

Those are quite the accusations. This thread seems to be the work of current or recent members of the team that couldn't quite live up to the legacy of such a historic program. I can't imagine anyone that has the credentials to obtain a D1 coaching/ director position to have troubles with writing and grammar. Does Steve Walsh not come from a solid background of being an assistant at Providence and Penn? He seems to be making great head way with the women's team. Isn't John Jefferson an assistant at WM now?

What is the general atmosphere of the William and Mary Athletics department?Are they aware of such a rapid decline in performances? Surely there has to be some pressure from a long list of alumni that have gone through the program to seek change. I realize that transitional periods are to be expected but shouldn't there be some signs of improvement after 3 years or so?

Initially I had the same opinion as you as to the origin of this thread. However I do find it interesting that the program has actually decreased as time has gone on. THis seems to be quite unusual for a transitional period where things are worse at the start but seem to improve after 2-3 years. As more and more of Gibby's athletes have left the worse things seem to have gotten. Maybe there is reason to question the effectiveness of the current coaching staff. I remember seeing William and Mary dominate the SE region and I loved rooting for the little school doing big things. I think it is pretty sad what the facts reveal. I really hope some one figures out a way to put these guys back on the map.

I would agree that the men's distance program is not in the same shape as it was during the Gibby era, but is anyone paying attention to their women's team?

They've made nationals the last two years(Including 12th last year). I believe the last time they made Nationals before 2012 was in 2005.

Does Walsh coach the women or is that in the hands of Jill Miller?

When I was at SE regionals it looked like Jill Miller was doing the womens stuff and Walsh the mens. Like the pre race talks and warmup stuff. No idea who writes the girls training, although Miller is listed as womens distance coach and no one listed as mens

Definitely looks like some disgruntled wm people but maybe they have something. Either way not many programs fall as hard as they did.

The girls are under the tutelage of Jill Miller now.

Many former athletes have expressed their displeasure with the program's sharp decline, but I believe that the athletic department just doesn't really care. Cross country and track and field at a school where athletics are not a main focus leads to little pressure on the coach despite the clamoring for a change. Also note how many of the runners have either quit, been cut, or left to run somewhere else for their fifth year recently (another one will be this coming fall). That is not happening for no reason. The atmosphere there is toxic.

Don't forget this was a team that use to win the southeast regional consistently. William and Mary frequently swapped with NC State as champions of the Sotuheast between 2000-2010.

Also former William and Mary runners seem to run so much better at other places:

Zach Gates was 22nd at UVA, but never had better than a 100th performance at William and Mary.

Josh Hardin was 60th at nationals with Northern Arizona, but the year before he left William and Mary he was 25th in the southeast region.

Tyler Jones: Never broke 30 minutes in 10k at William and Mary. He left to Penn State and ran a 2:22 marathon and was 25th in the region at Penn State

Yes, they might have improved with age and WM training might have helped but I think these performances have a telling story. These athletes seem to make such big jumps at other places; its like something was holding them back at William and Mary.

And why are some of William and Mary's best runners leaving for other places?

You are crazy.

I am friends with a guy who use to be on the team. All he did was complain about being beat down mentally by his Coach. And didn't their demise coincide with the new coach coming and Gibby leaving?

I think they made it to nationals the first with the new coach but the top 7 was all of Gibby's guys.

Walsh pretty much writes the training plan for both the men and women. That's not where the problem lies though. Jill Miller is the everyday coach of the women while Walsh is the everyday coach of the men. That's the big difference. There must be something wrong going on between his interactions with his runners. As someone once told me about him, "he will steal your love of running". Miller has apparently found a way to inspire her girls to get things going while Walsh has managed to demoralize the men's side. They both get virtually the same talent, but one just uses it better. That being said, the success of the Women's progress is NOT because of Walsh but instead Miller, but of course as Head Coach, no one really sees that.

The administration knows jack $hit about running and even if they did know something, they wouldn't care at all. All they see is the women getting 12th at nationals and the men are still winning the INCREDIBLY PRESTIGIOUS CAA Championship!!! Conference Champions? Damn they must be good. Too bad winning a CAA title in cross country is one of the most pathetic accomplishments ever, no matter how long the streak is.

Let's put some real number to this claim about the Tribe's demise and see what we get. Using TFFRS we can see performances starting with Gibby's last year at W&M, and then move on from there. This will be a long post so if you don't want to look at the data just go to the bottom.

We'll do this by academic school year to make things simple. I chose the mile/3k/5k for indoors, and the 1500/5k/10k for outdoors because those are the distances raced at nationals (except 3k steeple which has fairly low participation). I recorded approximately the top 5-7 performances in each event to show the depth that the program had in that event. Gibby left after the 2010 track season, to be replaced by Walsh starting with the 2010 XC season. So let's see what happened...

2009-2010 school year: (Gibby's last year)

XC: 5th at nationals

Indoors: Mile - |4:08, 4:10, 4:10, 4:13, 4:13, 4:14, 4:14, 4:14|. 3k - |8:07, 8:14, 8:21, 8:25, 8:25|. 5k - |13:46, 14:23, 14:26, 14:29, 14:37|.

Outdoors: 1500 - |3:47, 3:48, 3:48, 3:50, 3:53|. 5k - |13:53, 13:54, 13:56, 14:01, 14:39|. 10k - |28:40, 29:38, 29:46, 30:08|.

2010-2011 school year: (Walsh's first year)

XC: 19th at nationals

Indoors: Mile - |4:08, 4:10, 4:10, 4:17|. 3k - |8:15, 8:16, 8:19, 8:21, 8:22|. 5k - |14:10, 14:26, 14:34, 14:39|.

Outdoors: 1500 - |3:44, 3:47, 3:50, 3:56|. 5k - |14:02, 14:18, 14:20, 14:22, 14:23, 14:27|. 10k - |29:25, 29:49, 29:55, 29:59|.

2011-2012 school year: (Athletes recruited/coached by Gibby marked with an asterisk * hereafter)

XC: 3rd at SE Regionals (breaks 14 year streak at nationals)

Indoors: Mile - |4:06*, 4:07*, 4:12*, 4:14*, 4:17*|. 3k - |8:10*, 8:10*, 8:20*, 8:20*, 8:21*, 8:23*, 8:24*|. 5k - |14:04*, 14:07*, 14:20*. 14:29*|.

Outdoors: 1500 - |3:43*, 3:48*, 3:54*, 3:57*, 3:57*|. 5k - |14:08*, 14:18*, 14:22*, 14:44*, 14:45*|. 10k - |29:28*, 29:51*, 30:43*, 30:50*|.

2012-2013 school year: (Walsh's third year)

XC: 8th at SE Regionals

Indoors: Mile - |4:07*, 4:08*, 4:19, 4:21|. 3k - |8:05*, 8:14*, 8:16*, 8:30, 8:31, 8:33|. 5k - |14:05*, 14:24*, 14:27*, 14:48, 15:06|.

Outdoors: 1500 - |3:46*, 3:51*, 3:53*, 3:54*, 3:58|. 5k - |13:55*, 14:13*, 14:13*, 14:35*, 14:40, 14:52|. 10k - |29:29*, 29:50*, 30:20*, 31:09|.

2013-2014 school year: (Walsh's fourth year)

XC: 6th at SE Regionals

Indoors: Mile - |4:17, 4:22, 4:22, 4:26|. 3k - |8:27, 8:33, 8:34, 8:34, 8:35|. 5k - |14:22, 14:43, 14:49*, 14:49, 14:57|.

Outdoors: 1500 - |3:48, 3:55, 3:56, 3:58*, 4:02|. 5k - |14:23*, 14:36, 14:38, 14:46, 14:47, 14:56|. 10k - |30:38*, 30:40, 32:11, 32:12|.

Some obvious things that stand out: As Gibby's athletes graduated/transferred the team got significantly worse. Walsh's first few recruiting classes have been significantly worse than the team used to be. I feel like four years is enough time to make a transition and get the athletes you want. It looks like there are a lot of frosh/soph right now which could bode well for the future.

Some questions that need to be asked: what the heck happened to the depth? Where did all the 10k guys go? Why did the top guys not come back for a 5th year? What the heck happened to Walsh's first recruiting class (as far as I can see not a single one has stuck around)?

Overall conclusion: Something has gone terribly wrong at this university. Whether it's administration, coaching, recruiting, or something else, it looks like a complete disaster from the performance side of things. From the above posts it looks like the athletes are having some coaching problems. Hopefully the administration can step in and make some big changes to the way things have been going. At any other big school with as good of a distance program, the coach would have been canned or left by now. Looks like the administration needs to do some research and get feedback from the current athletes.

It seems to me that these criticisms ignore the limited resources that W&M allocates to Men’s XC and Track & Field. The success of a small program like this one is always going to be limited by their ability to attract top-flight athletes. The runners who do chose W&M might respond to the rigors of collegiate training or they might not. Certainly the Women’s program has had great success in recent years. There’s no reason to believe that the Men’s program under Walsh isn’t capable of a similar run. Coach Walsh is extremely knowledgeable and well connected in running circles. He had great success in recruiting and developing fantastic runners at Providence and, over time, no doubt will have similar results at W&M.

Congratulations on dominating the CAA:

Only 5 men's teams (including the powerhouses of Hofstra and College of Charleston)!