doo doo wrote:
Head coach has had 30 or so years to develop a "culture."
Most of their success a few years back was when Magdalena Lewey Boulet was in charge of the training.
This is the truth for recent program success!
Magda is a fan of aerobic development in places like Mammoth, Tahoe, and coming down from altitude in beautiful places like Napa. All 3+ hours from Cal Berkeley.
Magda did a great job coaching/ teaching/ training Chelsea Reilly.
A Bear wrote:
UC Berkeley seems to get great recruits every single year yet they never seem to do anything with them. A 24th finish at prenats this year plus 2 years of last place finishes at conference in xc. What is going on over there? Are there any other programs in the NCAA who squander more talent than they do?
Assitant coaches come, assitant coaches go. Look back and Cal is typically among the top 3rd of D1 teams at regionals. That's just where they find themselves, and will likely stay. They had some better years 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, but they always wander back to that 30-50% position at Regionals.
They'll always have some spectacular individuals, but seldom a great team. Like Stanford, and other top academic institutions, there are a million other productive things to be doing with your time at a top-tier University other than training.
Listen to Wetmore at Colorado, summer training is where XC teams are built or busted, and that's all about individual athlete time and discipline. It's the key training period, and the coach simply isn't around, so you either have the winning desire to get fit or you don't.
Cal at NCAA West Regionals:
2003 Men 10th out of 26, Women 10th out of 31
2005 Men 8th out of 23, Women 11th out of 30
2006 Men 10th out of 25, Women 18th out of 30
2007 Men 4th out of 24, Women 9th out of 31
2008 Men 4th out of 25, Women 7th out of 30
2009 Men 8th out of 26, Women 8th out of 25
2010 Men 3rd out of 25, Women 5th out of 31
2011 Men 5th out of 25, Women 5th out of 31
2012 Men 13th out of 26, Women 9th out of 28
2013 Men 12th out of 27, Women 13th out of 32
Coaches still give mileage targets over the summer.
Being in the top 30% isn't an accomplishment with multiple sub 9 high schoolers on your roster.
Cal - Where distance running careers go to die.
Ouch.
Tony 2014 wrote:
After this dismal finish, I am reigniting my campaign to raise awareness to get Tony Sandoval fired from the Cal coaching staff by the end of the year.
He seems to have a lock on the position he has.
Cal Berkeley does not have an Athletic Director
http://www.mercurynews.com/sports/ci_26119008/cal-ad-search-could-take-year
Coach Tony's job is safe.
"June 27 that Sandy Barbour was out after a decade on the job, Dirks on Wednesday provided more details on his expected timeline and the process that will determine the next athletic director.
Cal alum Michael Williams will begin his assignment as interim AD in July 2014." Photo
Cal was 7th out of 9 at PAC 12.
pac 12 swagger wrote:
training that just consists of hammering the sh*t out of hard intervals year round instead of focusing on aerobic development and mileage.
You just described the training across the Bay on the farm. And pretty much every program in America. So... Ya.
Coach Sandoval signed a new extension last spring so he is contracted for another three years or so. So if you don't like what is happening then blame the AD.
that after 30 years he would start to get a clue of what isn't working.
You would think wrote:
that after 30 years he would start to get a clue of what isn't working.
You would think so, but a lot of coaches are very arrogant. They blame the runners when they run poorly and take the credit when they do well. Then there are the few successful runners he coached and he can point to them about how his training is working, but in reality those runners are so talented they would have run fast no matter what kind of training they did.
Really, another CAL sucks thread.
It's just sad when they get all these athletes and they leave or whatever. There are way too many talented kids that have left over just over the last couple of years.
Elias Gedyon: Originally committed, but later went elsewhere
Jantzen Oshier: Couldn't make the grades
Matt Carpowich: Not sure what happened, but was extremely talented
Bryan Jordan: Transferred! Also very talented
Andrew Bland: Not sure with this one! Talented with a lot of potential
Jaun David Garcia: Not sure, but great cross country talent
Jared Hazlett: Another great cross country talent
Jared Jones: Also great southern section talent
AJ Castro: Not sure with this one
Jeff Schafer: Great San Diego product
Probably missing more, but what happened to all these guys?
There has to be some common denominator behind all these talented guys leaving... Hopefully they can turn their fortunes around soon.
doo doo wrote:
Current roster pre nats vs high school.
Walden 19th at prenats, 14:07 4:08 and 8:51 in hs
Estifanos 94th at prenats 9:07 in hs
Joyce: 132nd at prenats 9:02 4:10 in hs
Tu (true frosh) 157th at prenats 9:13 in hs
Malone-White 239th at prenats 4:12 in hs
Lawson 50th at bronco invite 14:03 8:58 in hs
Hamilton 138th at bronco 1:51 4:10 in hs
Later (hurt) 14:13 8:50 in hs
Looks a lot like Colorado on the right, but not on the left.
Where is freshman Garret Corcoran? Didn't he commit to Cal?
(1:52.98 800m, 4:06 1600, 8:52.18a 3200)
Late night fun in Berkeley wrote:
You can not totally blame the coaches.
http://www.flotrack.org/video/727445-Cal-Onesie-Relay-2013
Onesie Relay? What ever happened to the beer mile?
Used to look up to these guys wrote:
It's just sad when they get all these athletes and they leave or whatever. There are way too many talented kids that have left over just over the last couple of years.
Elias Gedyon: Originally committed, but later went elsewhere
Jantzen Oshier: Couldn't make the grades
Matt Carpowich: Not sure what happened, but was extremely talented
Bryan Jordan: Transferred! Also very talented
Andrew Bland: Not sure with this one! Talented with a lot of potential
Jaun David Garcia: Not sure, but great cross country talent
Jared Hazlett: Another great cross country talent
Jared Jones: Also great southern section talent
AJ Castro: Not sure with this one
Jeff Schafer: Great San Diego product
Probably missing more, but what happened to all these guys?
There has to be some common denominator behind all these talented guys leaving... Hopefully they can turn their fortunes around soon.
I've been coaching high school in the area for several years now and have made some observations of the program that may or may not be true...but noticed what seems like some trends.
First, I'm not a big fan of Tony's and feel some of this under performance lies with the head coach for sure, but let's be fair...ask yourself who of these guys transferred and did ANYTHING. It seems many on this list were gone within a year (or never showed up) and had their chance to "prove themselves" later on. Here's the thing...as big as California is, the California running community is a small world. People talk. Coaches know each other. These are all California kids, and most of us could have told you long before they went to Cal that many were not going to work out at the DI/Pac-12 level...at least not at such an academically rigorous school. Every year other schools raided the motivated talent with a brain from the state, the kids who actually wanted to be something in the Pac-12 and keep up academically, and Cal got the left-overs: Super talented kids who didn't give a crap once they got to college or were horribly unprepared to handle the academic load. I'm not saying every one of those kids you listed...but we could have told you many of them were not going to be good fits there.
Second, and this does lie with the head coach to some extent, but the culture has seemed lacking. As mentioned, it's a very rigorous school. Cal tends to attract high achieving, highly sociable kids who go there to indulge in everything Berkeley has to offer...not the ideal Pac-12 running environment. You combine that with a bunch of borderline Pac-12 guys (if we're being honest) who aren't truly invested and make running a distant priority after they show up and you get the opposite culture of Colorado. I'm not blaming all these guys necessarily. It does start at the top. But let's not forget it's a two way street and there's only so much a COLLEGE coach can do.
How do you fix this in my humble opinion? Savvier recruiting and culture development/enforcement. Will this happen? Who knows, but a big part of a head coach's job is to hire the right assistants and seems like the two new ones are up to the task from what I've observed so far in talking to my kids and other area coaches. And they don't do this without the head coach on board helping direct it.
Again, I've wondered at times how the hell Cal hasn't been more successful (besides the late 2000's) over the last couple decades, but if you're truly paying attention, the whole "where runners go to die" tag and "run them til they drop" training generalization can be said about almost any consistent top-30 program...real DI college running is tough. Not every 4:0x/sub 9/low 15 @ Woodward guy is cut out for it.
As I've heard said around the Bay over the years several times "Tony is Tony" but to blame this all on him or the Cal staff seems short-sighted to me. He's had some serious successes and looks set to have some more.
Some of the trends that you noticed are true.
The boys and girls who end up at Cal Berkeley are ones who were asked to try out for Oregon's team, but offered free books at Berkeley.
A young man on that list above I know ran there. He viewed being a Pac 12 athlete as a destination and not a platform for him to develop his talent. The incentive was gone. He'd been admitted to a great university and received a great financial aid package that did not leave him wanting anything.
The summer before he went to Berkeley in late June would not wake up for morning runs and settled on the idea that he made it. (He was cautioned that all xc runners know - If you want to be good the 3rd week in November; you need to be rolling the 3rd week of June) - Famous coach Dave Smith/Mark Wetmore quotes.
Savvy recruiting is a choice term... If these assistant coaches are going to be successful - notice some of the institutional pitfalls - Our school attracts people of a certain lifestyle; Our seniors engage in inter-squad dating/ sex that wrecks the focus of the team goal; Some professors at our university do not support athletics and advice our freshman not to enroll in their classes during the competitive seasons; Our medical staff will need to incorporate new recovery techniques to keep our athletes free from injury and sickness; some schools are notorious for making 4:10 kids who lose interest in competing by their sophomore year. Look at the 2010, 2011, or 2012 state meet and ask yourself “where are they now?”
In line with the culture thing, the kids that choose Cal generally did not do their homework. They looked at the few top runners who did well while Magda was the coach and think Cal will be a good place, but their lack of research shows their lack of interest in the sport. Lack of interest commonly goes hand in hand with not making it a priority.
To the guy saying the training is the same as anywhere, you're actually wrong. They take any distance runner and train them like a miler year round. Other programs may hammer but at least it's 10k oriented.
i know for a fact that some of these dudes didn't leave - they get hurt and then get cut. go to Jan/Feb all-comers meets at Cal and you'll see a handful Cal guys running unattached. always the same story - "i got hurt and got cut, training by myself to try & get my spot back for outdoor or for XC in the fall". but never happens. sink or swim, no support system for guys that get injured (likely due to stupid training prescribed by coaches). the best guy on Cal's 2013 XC team didn't even race for them last fall...got hurt early in the season & they dropped him like that. shows up at PA XC champs a couple months later and gets top 5. ha!
Used to look up to these guys wrote:
It's just sad when they get all these athletes and they leave or whatever. There are way too many talented kids that have left over just over the last couple of years.
Elias Gedyon: Originally committed, but later went elsewhere
Jantzen Oshier: Couldn't make the grades
Matt Carpowich: Not sure what happened, but was extremely talented
Bryan Jordan: Transferred! Also very talented
Andrew Bland: Not sure with this one! Talented with a lot of potential
Jaun David Garcia: Not sure, but great cross country talent
Jared Hazlett: Another great cross country talent
Jared Jones: Also great southern section talent
AJ Castro: Not sure with this one
Jeff Schafer: Great San Diego product
Probably missing more, but what happened to all these guys?
There has to be some common denominator behind all these talented guys leaving... Hopefully they can turn their fortunes around soon.