Aisling Cuffe Hurt again, Elise Cranny hurt again, wtf is Stanford doing???

That's easy. Stanford recruited over-trained, underweight, over-raced high school girls who burned too much fuel before getting to college.

At least they'll have a nice future after their running days are over.

Just two years ago, there was gobs of young talent with Mary, Alexa, Sarah, and Elise. Now it's dwindling down to Alexa....

+Anna laman who's gone backwards since being at Stanford

Can anyone comment (with any insight) as to the answer to the question. What's actually going on out there? Milt was known as a successful women's coach when he headed west. The men are doing well, extremely well in some cases. But the women's team has just been a series of disappointments. What's the deal? Or am I wrong or missing something?

seriously... wrote:

Can anyone comment (with any insight) as to the answer to the question. What's actually going on out there? Milt was known as a successful women's coach when he headed west. The men are doing well, extremely well in some cases. But the women's team has just been a series of disappointments. What's the deal? Or am I wrong or missing something?

The men's team has had plenty of their own injury issues. Miltenberg said he was very happy with how they did at NCAAs considering all the stuff they went through this year.

I'm not saying it's his fault the athletes get injured, just pointing out that it's not just the women.

You're absolutely right. The men's cross team had a very rough fall in terms of injuries. So in that sense, as you said, it's not just the women.

But at the same time, the men have done well in spite of their injury issues. The cross team overcame a lot to finish well, they are off to a good start indoors, and specific individuals have excelled in general.

The women on the other hand just haven't lived up to their recruitment and talent level of potential virtually since Milt went there. Why is that?

Do you mean injured or did she just bang her finger or something

Or was Cranny re-hurt

Too much running on the crete? Or not enough? They need to recruit heartier girls that aren't so fragile.

yahhh baby wrote:

There was a show on flotrack about indoor DMR and 2k chances. Aisling Cuffe is hurt again, Cranny has possibly been re-injured and out for the rest of the year. Cool.

WTF!!! This is such BS! And Cranny and Cuffe we both healthy in HS so don't start that eating disorder BS with those 2. Obviously the coaches at Stanford are rushing them back to soon and don't know WTF they are doing!! What a waste of supreme talent!

It's a combination of everything...the pressure from the coaching staff to succeed - which is what they have to do. The academic pressure to succeed. It's Stanford. The social pressure to be perfect - everyone else around you is. All that builds up, then you already have these Type A men & women who likely have a lot less upside than some of their competitors (not necessarily saying they were all over trained or under-developed physically in high school - it's just a statistical fact)...combine it with all this scrutiny...and of course there is going to be high rates of injury & burn out.

And this is NOTHING new with Stanford...I've been watching over there for 30 years and it's the same every year...super stars flock there, few get out alive. Maybe someone can do a statistical analysis that demonstrates the injury rate has actually risen over the last few years. But again, this is nothing new. This will be the exact same story with the incoming class of Fiona O'keeffe, Ella Donaghu, Hanna DeBalsi, Sarah Walker and now Christine Aragon. Only one or two of these women will end up with a "successful" career (whatever that means) at Stanford. But when these women have all been running around 10:00/4:40/2:03 for this long, how much more is a coach REALLY going to get out of them?

to be fair tho, it's always hard to predict which women will do well in college and which peak in hs.

many many schools have done the same with women - I think it's part of the game.

Men seem more dependable - good in HS, usually good in college, so that's what we use as a standard. Women work differently. I doubt stanford is worse than most places...it's just that they are so visible.

Regarding Cuffe & Cranny, along with the Rosas, here is a excerpt from Stanford's Indoor T&F Preview article a couple weeks back:

Neither Rosa will race until the Iowa State Classic 5,000 in mid-February. They will be joined in that race by Leibold, who made his Stanford track debut with a personal-best 4:02.65 mile in Seattle last week. Leibold, an outdoor All-America in the 5,000 at Georgetown, will run the 3,000 at Penn State National and at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships. The hope is that he will qualify in either the 3,000 or 5,000, with Garrett Sweatt taking a shot at the longer event as well.

The Cardinal women have a confluence of two great runners, sophomore Cranny and fifth-year senior Cuffe. Cranny is back training at full strength while Cuffe is running, but still early in her base-building. Cranny was spectacular at the 2015 NCAA Indoors, setting a American junior indoor 3,000 record of 8:58.88 while finishing second.

Cranny won’t return to action until Iowa State at the earliest, Miltenberg said, and her season debut could wait until the MPSF Championships. Cuffe is in a similar position in that she’ll run a qualifier and then NCAA’s in a single event. Her first race likely won’t be until MPSF’s.

I went to one of the top distance programs in the nation (we won ncaas that year). It wasn't that our workouts were extreme or harder than others. What was mainly the cause of our teams injuries? Ourselves and each other. Running too damn hard all the time even on warm ups and easy runs. I remember coming back from a serious injury and being told my first run back to just run the warm up with the team. Easy enough? Yea 3 miles at 6:45 pace after 2 months off was not what I should of done and probably not what my coach thought I was doing. I should of just ran by myself but ego and pride will get you and hence the cycle of injury

I'm acquainted with a number of runners who used to be on the Stanford team. For a lot of the people who quit, coaching has been the biggest factor - there were problems with the coach/athlete student dynamic that is what eventually has led to a lot of them quitting the team.

Miltenberg admitted last year that he did not coach McGorty correctly a couple years back, resulting in a stress fracture that kept him out of US Jrs and ultimately World Jrs his frosh year.

Likewise, Miltenberg admitted last fall that he should have gone easier on Cranny, given she had trained/raced year-around her final year of hs then as a Stanford frosh where she had nothing left for NCAA outdoors then picked up a stress fracture over the summer.

The Rosa's injury problems dating to hs have been well documented.

Thus, a much more cautious approach this school year with Cuffe & Cranny & Rosas and all the distance runners, holding them out of indoor racing to date.

This is especially evident with the frosh distance guys . . . appears that Fisher, Ostberg and Lauer are all redshirting indoors, the latter two having yet to race at all, even unattached, so far their frosh year.

This exceptional women's mid/distance class coming in next school year should benefit from improved coaching we seem to be seeing now from Miltenberg and his assistants . . . the social and academic pressures will always be there, that's a constant . . . but would not be surprised to see 2 or 3 of those girls redshirted next fall, especially since nearly the entire xc squad save Cuffe & McNamara will be returning.

Stanford has a history of injuries that go back to Brooks Johnson. Two problems, great training weather all year round, you don't have periods where you miss or scale back training because of weather, which can sometimes be a good thing. In track & field, it is better to be 10% undertrained than 1% overtrained. Stanford competes for conference and national titles in all three seasons, you are expected to compete at high level all year round.

Also, the school and the Palo Alto area has a lot to offer in terms of a social life, recreation and culture. Combine that with the academic workload, Stanford does not have any weak majors, even a secondary education teaching degree is challenging. This causes some athletes to rush workouts, rush recovery and is not a good fit for the moderately talented, too much type A personality or injury prone athlete.

Good point about the weather causing no meaningful breaks between seasons.

Let's also add there are no accessible running trails available to Stanford runners. It is mainly running on the roads and paved bike paths.

The golf course is closed the running which wasn't the case awhile back.

What I don't understand is that none of these athletes get hurt racing, they get hurt during training. Yet when athletes get hurt, they want them to never race once they get healthy. Maybe if these athletes actually did some frequent race efforts they wouldn't smash themselves into the ground in training.