Sad. I always liked Len Long, and I ran for a rival HS. Is it possible he didn't know what he was doing was breaking the rules?
Cheeplestase wrote:
Also, I saw that Len Long retired yesterday after all of this happened.
Yes. In fact we are allowed no contact. If they email the coach we aren't allowed to answer. We forward to the AD in which they say "check the website for freshman tryout dates."
lovely turtles wrote:Runners gunna run wrote: In Califiornia public and private schools all must follow the CIF rules (state) and section rules. In my league coaches are prohibited contact with freshman until the first day of school. That is more restrictive than public schools which can contact once enrolled in the school.Does mean that in your league, freshmen can do no organized running before the start of the school year?
I'm not from NC or even the GSL, but my understanding is that Spokane School District's Open Enrollment policy is new (maybe a couple years old now)? Perhaps that was the rule change.
Coach Soles wrote:
Simplemanted,
I think the important thing to think about in this thread is that when there are rules in place and some teams follow them and some teams do not you end up a major advantage for the teams who are not following the rules.
An example for our program is a rival program went out and recruited a top female sprinter out of San Diego when she was an 8th grader to come up and go to their school. She ran well for them and got a scholarship and was very happy at the school. All good things right? The downside is that we ended up losing the league title to them each of the years she was there by a handful of points. Take her off their team and they aren't even close to us. That one act of recruiting won't them 3-4 league titles they shouldn't have had and stole them from our athletes who went to our middle schools and worked hard to run for their school.
Interestingly enough, we ran into that girls parents when she was a 9th grader at the state meet. We had a pleasant conversation with them and asked them what was behind their decision to move from San Diego to our area and they were very open that the school had people at the youth meets that encouraged that school and even invited them up to check it out. They didn't even realize that what they were telling us is that they were recruited to the school. CIF doesn't do anything about it, which pretty much means we could do it too. You know why we don't? Integrity. That's a powerful word and one that I believe many great coaches in our country believe in. The ones that don't make it a lot harder for those of us that do. I know the program that beats us using other people's athletes has no remorse and will continue to get as many athletes into their program from other schools as they can.
At the end of the day are you a person that steals a $500 bill in Monopoly when playing with your kids and they aren't looking or do you play fair and let the game play out? Win at all costs or test yourself to see how good you actually are at something. Anyone can win at monopoly if they steal enough money from the bank. Anyone can win at track if they steal enough athletes from other teams. If someone comes to Great Oak, they aren't coming here because I recruited them. Winning that way is empty, like cheating at Monopoly. It doesn't test how good you really are.
Can someone from NC address the rules changes that occurred recently that caused what was legal before to now be illegal? I think that would help people understand this particular situation better.
Doug
FM is New York does the same thing
NW XC Fan wrote:
http://www.nwprepsnow.com/stor...ced-on-pr/
Crazy. I always wondered how they remained on top. Their the Bellevue HS (Wa) of XC.
At my school, the XC coach had the captain call the new runners, so technically no violation was committed.
lovely turtles wrote:Runners gunna run wrote: In Califiornia public and private schools all must follow the CIF rules (state) and section rules. In my league coaches are prohibited contact with freshman until the first day of school. That is more restrictive than public schools which can contact once enrolled in the school.Does mean that in your league, freshmen can do no organized running before the start of the school year?
Interesting that you take that point of view.
retroncxc wrote:
What's great is the cat fight occurring in the comments between current/ex-runners at NC, parents, et al., at The Spokesman-Review website:
http://www.spokesman.com/stori...ced-on-pr/
Good job by all to demonstrate the behaviors that led to this issue (i.e., immaturity, win-at-all-costs mentality, rationalization of unethical actions, etc.). Definitely a class program.
Technically any coach, teacher, player, parent is a representative of the school and it is still a violation.
Random8323 wrote:lovely turtles wrote:At my school, the XC coach had the captain call the new runners, so technically no violation was committed.Runners gunna run wrote: In Califiornia public and private schools all must follow the CIF rules (state) and section rules. In my league coaches are prohibited contact with freshman until the first day of school. That is more restrictive than public schools which can contact once enrolled in the school.Does mean that in your league, freshmen can do no organized running before the start of the school year?