York runners from ~ 10 years ago for $1000, Alex:
"I know a guy...he told me.. understate their mileage."
Initials J.D.
Aris and FM are bad for HS XC
High School Running
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FM boys haven’t been so good lately on a national scale.
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Well this year they may be able to if they get their 3/4/5 guys closer to their 1-2
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Lookdeeper wrote:
Hello???????? You are not Colorado or Syracuse etc...You are coaching HS boys. Get over yourselves and race them. You're going to put our great sport along the lines of lacrosse and soccer where the high school season and its' various championships are irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the all mighty Nike Championships. FM has obviously had an incredible amount of success on the HS national level. They have also done more to hurt this great HS sport in the last few years than you can imagine. It's not about Bill Aris, who year after year beats the stuffing out of his girls and boys. It's about our kids and our sport and the 99% of the kids who don't structure their entire seasons around a post season mega company's championship. It's about development for the next level and beyond. But they win so lets pay homage to a man with an immense ego. How about being honest about what he really does to these kids and steals their future.
All you coaches and athletes who admire FM's accomplishments need to look closer. They train their kids like seniors in college. It's all about the coach and his deification. I say shame on him and all who lift him up. He abuses these kids for his own glorification. Futures be damned. I for one am a coach of a national caliber program who will not abuse my athletes to try and beat them. My conscience won't let me. If every hs coach tried to keep up with FM and their training methods, we wouldn't have a bright future with our young athletes. Milesplit, Flotrack, Letsrun, and Runnerspace, stop the blind support of a coach and program that does way more harm than good.
I really have to say though. Many people really enjoy his training because they really enjoy seeing themselves improve so much
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Lookdeeper wrote:
Hello???????? You are not Colorado or Syracuse etc...You are coaching HS boys.
and on top of that, he punished them for something by not taking the kids, even their girls team to NXR
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Don’t compare Aris with Coach Newton. Mr Newton had huge turnouts every year, and his kids always came back for alumni events. He was an educator. Aris is a hall monitor who only wants to coach the talented kids- and his methods would not be allowed in many districts.
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Lookdeeper wrote:
Hello???????? You are not Colorado or Syracuse etc...You are coaching HS boys. Get over yourselves and race them. You're going to put our great sport along the lines of lacrosse and soccer where the high school season and its' various championships are irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the all mighty Nike Championships. FM has obviously had an incredible amount of success on the HS national level. They have also done more to hurt this great HS sport in the last few years than you can imagine. It's not about Bill Aris, who year after year beats the stuffing out of his girls and boys. It's about our kids and our sport and the 99% of the kids who don't structure their entire seasons around a post season mega company's championship. It's about development for the next level and beyond. But they win so lets pay homage to a man with an immense ego. How about being honest about what he really does to these kids and steals their future.
All you coaches and athletes who admire FM's accomplishments need to look closer. They train their kids like seniors in college. It's all about the coach and his deification. I say shame on him and all who lift him up. He abuses these kids for his own glorification. Futures be damned. I for one am a coach of a national caliber program who will not abuse my athletes to try and beat them. My conscience won't let me. If every hs coach tried to keep up with FM and their training methods, we wouldn't have a bright future with our young athletes. Milesplit, Flotrack, Letsrun, and Runnerspace, stop the blind support of a coach and program that does way more harm than good.
Totally agree. The guy is a glorified hall way monitor at the school. It is his ego that drives everything about how their XC program operates, to make up for him being unexceptional in anyway himself. He pushes kids far too hard for his own glory. Thinks he is a real big deal if you have ever been around him. What a joke, what a fool.
How did that professional group go that Nike poured money into for them? Did it ever have any ounce of success? No.
Time to start calling out these egomaniacs who are ruining HS kids to make themselves feel important.
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Do most people on the team or were on the team actually like him? Some do
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Hi look! An entries list!
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Guess Saratoga is too?
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Imagine there was a coach at FM who was well-liked, encouraging, cooky, set up a system that worked, and produced results for boys and girls of all shapes/sizes. It created a buzz. More kids joined the program. It was supportive, fun, and put them on the map.
Turns out, that coach is not Bill Aris, it's Jerry Smith that did that. It was supported by Mike Guzman and Jim Nixdorf.
Jerry left, and so did Mike and Jim eventually too.. Bill had nobody to keep him from the destructive, overbearing, and zealot behavior that many of us have always found outrageous. Bill took that system and made it extreme and unbalanced.
Roaming the halls and inserting himself into the lives of the students during the day. Talking to their teachers about them. Exerting overwhelming pressure on teenagers all day long. He truly believed these kids would be nothing without him. He believes he deserves the credit for all that they've done, and become. It's delusional, its self-centered, it's deeply disturbing.
Bill was not, and is not mean-spirited. In his heart I believe he thinks he's doing things right. Rather, I think he's a zealot and his methods are inappropriate. He's not been held accountable/responsible and has not adapted/learned over time. To 'buy in' to his system is to relinquish control of everything to Bill Aris. In his system, he is swami, guru, spiritual leader, greek mythical figure, father, son, holy ghost, etc. It resembles a cult of Bill and not a running program.
These many years later, it's fascinating to me seeing the revisionist history. That overwhelming desire he has to control and interfere in peoples lives down to the minutia of who they talked to or spend their free time with. How it's warped reality. It seduced some people, but alienated far more.
Every once in a while I look at these message boards. For years I thought that I should not say anything because someone will try to figure out who I am. Seriously though, who cares? A bunch of former FM runners likely feel the same as me. That a lot of how Bill behaves is wrong and as kids we didn't know better. I don't think the parents knew better either.
We all moved on with our lives. Our protest is not being involved in any of it anymore and not going back.
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