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

Wonderlandlake wrote:

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

Should HAVE.

Djeez, English is not even my native language.

Big Meat wrote:

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

There is something to be said about that.

Farm Alum... wrote:

I'm an alum from the Brooks Johnson days (and am therefore old). Though I appreciate your comments as a whole, I'm always mystified by any suggestion that the xc/track program would have some universal issue regardless of the coach. It's all about the coach. No one complained about Stanford underachieving or having injury issues when Lananna was there. There were tons of injuries when Brooks was coach because Brooks was incompetent as a distance coach. It only took Lananna a few years to become a national powerhouse after something like 15 years of Brooks' disasters. (Yes, I know he had some good women's teams earlier on and seem good individuals).

A few thoughts.

1) There is no about that Lananna was a very special coach and is/was master promoter/recruiter.

2) That being said, I would disagree with your assessment that no one complained when he was there. Stanford xc is like Duke basketball. There are always going to be haters and if they don't win it all, people are going to gloat. Ryan Grote had a column here on letsrun where he just made fun of Stanford.

Why do you think so many top coaches turned down the job and leave the place? You are expected to win an ncaa title and have to live in an overly expensive area. The fact that we are even having this thread shows why so many people dont' want that job. By Foot Locker xc champ standards, cuffe has had a fantastic college career and you are ripping milt for it.

3) I 100% think there is something about the type of kids that go to Stanford or an Ivy. On average, they likely are working harder to produce their times in HS than kids that wouldnt' quality academically for Stanford. Then the academic load is stressful for sure when they get there and there are a TON of distractions.

I also think since they are more high profile recruits, that people pay more attention when they flame out. The status conscious kids that goes to Stanfords/Ivies are the same types that get on the messageboard and rip people when they don't live up to expectations.

4) The era has changed. When Lananna was winning, it wasn't nearly as competitive as it is now. Collegee running was an at all-time low in the later 90s/early 2000s. If you knew what you were doing - and he clearly does - you could dominate as did he and McDonnell.

Now thanks to the Internet every recruit in the land is known to all and every school's coach is just an email away from recruits. Oklahoma State is all in on distance, Syracuse, etc.

That Internet also applies to criticism. People know all of the recuits you have and what not. I tried to find an example of someone criticizing Lananna on the Internet when he was at Stanford. Here is an example but it just started at the end of his tenure.

A thread from 2004 - "Solinsky blasts Lananna":

He didn't have to deal with crap of most of his career. I once ran into a Canadian and Lananna's name came up. The guy said to me, "Oh you know he has a horrible reputation in Canada." I was like, "What?" Apaprently some Canadian junior record holder had gone to Dartmouth and not lived up the hype. That hurt him in Canada. Well that type of crap happens all the time on the Inernet nowadays except everyone knowsa about it and it's permanently there.

5) And the ncaa cracks down on stuff. Recruiting shenanigans aren't allowed. Coaches back in the day could get away with more crap i imagine than now.

In conclusion, Lananna was a master but he had it much easeir than a coach does now. Gabe Jennings can't rock the trials with a 3:35 pb.

Since when is it considered a win to retain people you recruit?

Stanford is the easiest place on the planet to recruit at, and the resulting expectation is, and always will be, national titles.

Performance is what matters, and this 4-yr old regime has consistently been below-target. Until "The Stanford-Spring arrives" and regime-change occurs, find another school if you want to be great.

broken arrow, I have to say that I didn't see great places RIGHT AROUND campus to run off pavement during the two summers I spent some of my time on campus. Maybe fine to get in limited mileage, but there were the woodchip trail near the track stadium, the track, Lake Lagunitas(? the dry lakebed--is that what it was called), and the Dish. The woodchip trail was short, Lake Lagunitas is kind of crowded and short but more importantly there are a few segments where you just can't or shouldn't really keep up a fast pace because you have sudden drops, blind turns, holes. I doubt that the golf course can be run on a fair amount of the time. And the Dish is all paved roads with fantastic hills for hill repeats, yes, and a very nice challenging run but let's face it: the pounding on the downhills is immense. So, as far as I could tell, unless you drove somewhere, it was hard to get in a lot of mileage on trails. I was probably missing some things but my bet is that these women have been getting injured from pounding down the dish hills instead of making it a point to drive out to the great dirt trails in the mountains.