You should look into some Div 2 and Div 3 options. New England is full of them and your times should be very competitive. Maybe look into a stonewall?
You should look into some Div 2 and Div 3 options. New England is full of them and your times should be very competitive. Maybe look into a stonewall?
9:09 steeple? ya we'll give you pretty close to a full, if not a full, if you decided to come here. d1 but not a big name school. going to be fighting for top 7 or so at regionals here in a little over a week. you can definitely go somewhere smaller but still d1 for cheap (or maybe free) if you don't get too pretentious.
I am a long-time Amherst resident who ran cross country at a different Div I school in the late 70s. I have a few thoughts on this situation. Firstly, the UMass coach has been an unfriendly chap and lacking community spirit for his entire tenure. I tried to organize a few youth running events with him about 20 years ago and was stunned at how rude he was to me. And as for this thin-skinned authoritarian approach that seems to be the model for coaching today, I am deeply saddened. I ran under a coach who had been in the business for three decades, and he was never above taking heat from his athletes, and he still managed to ALWAYS be in charge. A good coach learns how to deal with young people, wether they are behaving in or out of line or in the grey zone. What I find most depressing about this thread is the number of young people who seem to think this sort of "keep your mouth shut and follow the rules system" is ok. As Barak Obama said last winter; "we are not a people who want to be ruled." The social contract works up AND down. Athletes deserve just as much respect as coaches, and a wise coach knows how to let a kid blow off steam once in a while. The way the guy at UMass handled this will not make him look wiser or stronger to his athletes. It will make him look like a guy who can't face the heat.
Why not head down the road to Amherst College? They have been showing up your squad for quite a few years.
Derry_DansonJr wrote:
asdfasdfa wrote:Why the heck would you transfer? You don't have a future in running. It sucks you can't do it but your future is wrapping up your studies and getting a job.
And you learned a very important lesson. Mouthing off to authority is a lousy strategy.
Omg so spineless and pathetic. You can take your obedience to the bank. But your savings might evaporate some day in the next market crash. #suckergame how do people like you have no cognitive dissonance, running distance but leading a sycophant life, in institutional hand holding?
Care to give me a single example in your life where mouthing off to authority did anything for you? There are tons more productive ways to advocate for change. Attack people and you tend to hit walls. A lot easier to engage the person and get them to adopt your position. This is basic Dale Carnegie stuff.
As a former UMass XC and track guy, I can attest to the uncompromising dogmatism in the front office. I do believe that a large degree of faith must be given to the coaching staff, but the unwillingness to hear other opinions is abhorrent, as is the lack of transparency.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
As for those who blindly follow authority -- look up from your feet once in a while
Also, make some noise and then hang your spikes up. Retirement is sweeter than the revenge tour
From what I've heard, UMass has a pretty high rate of kids getting cut and/or quitting the team.
In my experience, if a team is seeing a steady exodus of athletes from the program, it's not the athletes' fault. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math on that one.
Three Wheel Mobile Home wrote:
As for those who blindly follow authority -- look up from your feet once in a while
I agree completely. I recall seeing Adam and Kara Goucher interviewed shortly after they began training under Alberto Salazar. Their answers to a number of questions was "I dunno, talk to Alberto." The sublimation to his authority was complete. Then, after several years, they decide he was the devil. My interpretation of that chain of events is that we have a couple of generations now of kids who have grown up having everything micro-managed for them in such a way that they either bow down to authority, or they turn on it completely. It is as if there was no middle ground. Compare that to the relationship between Prefontaine and Bowerman; there was conflict, but there was also a growth.
I'm pretty sure WMDP is like 90% former UMass runners...I wonder how they will feel about you coming onto LetsRun and bashing their former coach.
Have you joined WMDP yet? It has been a whole day. Get a USATF membership and help their team at the USATF-NE Champs on Sunday. Running well is the best revenge.
The better UMass wrote:
Shoulda gone to lowell you chump. Umass is for scrubs and UML is on the rise
Did you know that Tom Dederian, Julius, Dr.J Irving, and Bill Cosby, all went to UMass?
Any famous people go to the Lowell cesspool?
None? Thought so.
People are saying coach Ken O'B is 80 or more. I'm pretty sure he's closer to his mid-70s.
While it's clear this young athlete, kicked off the team, is in a tough spot, I opine it would have been better if he'd been more discreet - it's possible to get a lot of advice & feedback here without naming names.
Either way, you'd get a few trolls, but that's part of the run, right?
it's not me it's you wrote:
From what I've heard, UMass has a pretty high rate of kids getting cut and/or quitting the team.
In my experience, if a team is seeing a steady exodus of athletes from the program, it's not the athletes' fault. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math on that one.
In my experience it's common for cross country and track teams to lose a fair few athletes over the span of four years.My school had six "promising" freshmen and me in my freshman year. Two of us lasted the whole time and none of us, including the guys who quit, had any problem with our coach.
No one is going to coach for as long as O'Brien has and not have people who were unhappy with him. But no one is going to coach at the same place as he has for as long as he has without doing something right at the same time. Again, we have ONE aggrieved party's version of what happened and why.
Jumbo Fan 420 wrote:
I'm pretty sure WMDP is like 90% former UMass runners...I wonder how they will feel about you coming onto LetsRun and bashing their former coach.
Seriously, LOL @ OP if he thinks he's joining the WMPD.
Also, he's been erased, no longer anywhere on the Umass Athletics page.
The better UMass wrote:
Shoulda gone to lowell you chump. Umass is for scrubs and UML is on the rise
But then you are in Lowell . . .
Some advice from someone who didn't pick up running until after college. You're going to be laughing about this in a few years. Unless you had serious dreams of becoming one of the 20 or so US runners who make a decent living out of it this is a total nothing event in your life.
It's a learning experience. Not in the sense of "always listen to your boss", but rather "learn how to deal with your boss to get the outcome best for you". I'm actually pretty shocked how many people on this thread are arguing that the coach must always be right. That's... odd.
In the real world you collect your thoughts in private and meet with your coach/boss one on one to work through them. If neither of you are willing to budge, you say thank you and it's time to move on. The reality here is that you aren't depending on this guy to feed a family, so who cares what he thinks?
O'Brien graduated in 1963. Assuming he was 22 then, he'd be 75-ish now..
You've been blessed kid - keep running for fun, but move on to greener pastures.
I remember a kid who ran 4:16 in high school ran for Umass, competed for 2 seasons and then was gone. My old coworker ran for them in the 90's. He was good enough to get a partial scholarship but he got injured his freshman year and O'Brien kicked him off the team a week after. I don't know why kids run for this school after seeing the low return rate for athletes.