Options after getting kicked off Umass team

Nice approaching putting yourself out there like this. How about giving some concrete examples of how your workouts were half of what they were last year?

To SouthernFriedAntagonistic. A coach and athlete relationship is way different than an employee and boss relationship. You must live a sad life being so negative.

I had a similar experience at a D2 college in the Northeast. During preseason I butted heads with the coach. No blow out fights in front of the team, but he wanted to only run 20 miles a week and was trying to limit everything we did. I was captain and tried to appear to him logically that we needed to keep up with our training or we were going to get blown out. Boom off the team. He tried to tell my father I skipped meetings with him and the AD and that was his reason. So I scheduled a meeting with him and the AD and he admitted he may have been "mistaken" about me missing meetings aka he lied, but still thought we should part ways. Luckily we had a different XC coach then track so I just trained on my own and was able to come back strong for the track season. Still sucked it was my senior year, I was returning captain and had trained very hard that summer and I missed my teammates.

I did get to run one race unattached that my team was at. The coach tried to get me kicked out of the meet before, but the home course coach knew me and told him to kick rocks. Smoked my team (was still friends with them and they cheered when awards came) and got a little satisfaction, especially seeing his fat face being so worked up about me being there. He also tried to make disparaging remarks about my sexuality to the girls team, I'm straight, but they brought up I did a service trip abroad and he said it was maybe because "I liked little boys". This was weeks after I was off the team, so I confronted him and laid into him...he tried to deny everything and then just say he was kidding in a good way...whatever you fat scumbag.

He ended up getting fired two years after I graduated in the middle of a season and one my buddies still on the team said he gave them an email to reach out to him.

Sent him an email Subject, "Heard You Got Canned" the message " "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." He looked at my LinkedIn that day. Petty but whatever, guy was a clown.

Psycho-logist has it pretty much right.

I'll add...Keep running. New England XC Championships are Sunday at Franklin Park. End your XC season there on a high note

The first BU Mini Meet is December 17th...Start your mile/3k training next week.

coach was 100% in the wrong to kick the OP off the team, assuming we're getting the whole story.

On the other hand, seems like the OP went nuclear too quick by airing the whole thing out on Letsrun. I'm willing to bet that if you just went and talked to the coach after receiving that email, he would have relented and let you back on the team.

Pretty dumb to use your real name. This will come back to bite you in the future. It's not like you're committing any crime, but when people google your name, they'll find a guy that has no issue with throwing people under the bus when he feels wronged. If I was considering you for a job, I would not hire you based on this, irrespective if you're right or not.

Shoulda gone to lowell you chump. Umass is for scrubs and UML is on the rise

STUrays wrote:

Think this through: If I'm a coach, why would I want a senior transfer who, when he's upset, is willing to throw me and my program under the bus? No thanks, I'll spare myself the headache.

Actually it's good the OP says who he is, to avoid getting the same kind of bad coach that he's leaving. That kind of coach would NOT want him on the team, but a good coach would. OP, I agree with the helpful suggestions. You're doing the right thing.

This is not an uncommon situation, in my experience. I know several guys who were kicked from teams for similar kinds of infractions. What it seems to come down to each time is that when a team performs poorly, the coach is already embarrassed because he knows that the other coaches in the conference or region are judging. The coaching fraternity, especially in NE, is notorious for measuring each other's self-worth based on the performance and behavior of their teams. For example, I know a full-scholarship guy who was kicked off the team for gaining weight, running poorly in the early season and, worst of all, laughing it off in front of other coaches.

Also, no matter the training the coach had you do, he believed it was correct, and the suggestion that the training is what caused a team to implode when it counted deeply threatens a coach's reputation, possibly their position and definitely their ego. Now, as a coach myself, imagining my varsity team blaming my training program for their poor performance would definitely piss me off. Would I kick off a contributing member to the team for it? No... I would lick my wounds and ask for their honest feedback about how to improve the training methods and make a better team. I've never reached such a situation because I frequently seek their feedback and have a good rapport with a majority of them. Doing so has developed strong bonds between team members and myself.

In the case of your coach, applying the stereotype that older guys are more set in their ways, I would assume he's not at a point in his life where he's ready to take that kind of harsh feedback. You shouldn't be surprised at the result.

I reiterate what several others have said; club running in New England is an awesome experience. For me, it was just as motivating as running in college. You also would have the benefit of conducting your own training which is something I craved in college because I so frequently felt like the training was inadequate or poorly timed within a season or year. The most significant challenge you might face is the limited structure of training post-collegiately since you'll most likely be doing a majority of your training solo. It will suck to be out on a run and cross paths with your former team. It also will suck because I assume a large portion of your friends are your former teammates and those friendship dynamics will change, but not too much. The thing that would suck most is if you gave up on your passion to run because of one old man who you admit wasn't conducting your training effectively. Don't let that be an excuse.

Know Issue wrote:

I would be very careful using the label senility or some other cognitive impairment. Additionally labeling age is also slippery slope. Unless their is known diagnosis or eventually a proven diagnosis that concludes such condition existed at the time of the public labeling, one can expose themselves to punitive and legal consequences if their is no such ailment. Also claiming someone is not good at their job because of age is dangerous. Age is a protected class under the law and one can not be discriminated against in an employment situation because of age.

All of what you write might be factual, but be aware of your potential exposures especially after naming yourself.

Clearly, none of us is in the position to evaluate the coach's frame of mind. Nobody rightfully advocates for any form of discrimination or ageism. The only information we have is what the OP posted, and no information posted on such threads should be taken at face value.

However, what we do know is that the prevalence of neurodegenerative conditions spikes with increasing age, especially after 65; whether it is due to Alzheimer's, Vascular Dementia, Parkinson's, Frontotemporal Dementia, or host of other conditions. Further, there is an intermediary 'mild cognitive impairment' stage that tends to progress to outright dementia. Lastly, cognition invariably changes with age, so the same person will have different cognitive abilities at age 80 versus age 45.

The OP mentioned the coach's age. It would be willfully blind to ignore all factors about the situation - whether it is the culture at UMass athletics, the opinion of other individuals around the OP, or the coach's advanced age - given the rather erratic, abrupt, and quite frankly unusual way in which the OP was fired from the team.

I am not taking anybody's side here. There are many sides to each story. The OP clearly has a bias one way. Nobody's online posts should be trusted inherently. More information is better than less. Ideas deserve scrutiny rather than lurking in the shadows.

The OP does deserve praise for being open about who he is - unless perhaps he isn't who he says he is...

80 years old!

(i) Someone needs to know when to step aside for the next generation.

(ii) UMASS have zero credibility as an institution allowing old blood like this to fester in their program. Long term planning is clearly not important.

Sharing your name made this situation more understandable. It looks like there were two underclassman, 4 seniors and you at conferences. The coach had only you to throw under the bus. Bet of luck in finding a new situation.

I think if I was going to get booted from a team I'd really rather be told of it by e-mail than by having to have a chat about it. In this case, I know that O'Brien has been at U Mass forever. I know a small number of people who have run for him and have nothing but good things to say. I'd love to hear O'Brien's version of this but we never will.

I agree with this. You're a Jr, if you don't see a future for yourself in running just join the club you want to, have fun, and plan for your life post college. At some point everyone goes through something like this, learning how to deal with unfit sometimes mentally unstable authority figures is part of the hidden curriculum of university education. And it's not any different in the real world, there will be a lot of shi'tty bosses you'll be at odds with, you just have to figure out when confronting them is worth it.

Current Umass Amherst sophomore here. Don't recommend joining Umass Running club. As someone who left a serious running environment in high school, the club felt pretty lame. I currently just train with my roomate, and we both take our training pretty seriously, even though we don't have many goals set. (You might have seen us awkwardly running behind the team on the bikepath last week...) We did those BU mini meets last winter which were pretty sick.

Anyway, sorry to hear that this shit happened, from what I've heard, coach O'Brien can be pretty harsh.

Westfield State

I was there in 1986/87 - same coach - seemed like he had been there forever back then! I transferred to Holy Cross for the last two years of college. Loved running at Holy Cross, not so much at the one size fits all philosophy at U-Mass.

I find it interesting that you all blamed the coach. According to Jack Daniels of the 4 key elements needed to develop a runner coaching is #4 on the list.

Desire and ability are far more important than the coach, since you seem to have noticed that you practiced less my question is why didn't you discuss this with the coach early in the season or done some additional workouts on your own.

You and your teammates need to take the blame here. Trust me if you go so another school the coach will call your old coach and have a chat.

The fact that you were kicked off the team I suspect you said some things you have not shared with us. You son will have a tough time finding another school who will take you on board.

My advice...go apologize and work with the coach to make the team better.

Stop. OB has a history of breaking athletes. He's only respected because he has been there forever. I would transfer if I was in that situation.