SO Wetmore pretty much told his Womens team they sucked after they lost?

Whatever, but wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

Btw, I didn't think Colorado was even close to being a lock for winning the title, I thought there were 4-5 teams that were all capable on a good day and Colorado was somewhere in that mix and I had Oregon as one of those teams 4-5 teams. Colorado didn't run horrible, I think they were slightly overrated and Michigan and Oregon had a good day.

I agree with this.

Then both of you are idiots. Colorado needed an epic meltdown by their top two runners to lose, and even then was only 8 points from winning the title. Of course no team can ever be a literal lock, but pretending that there were other teams capable of winning on a good day? Please. Oregon and Michigan had outrageously good days and narrowly beat a disastrous Colorado performance. If Colorado has even just a below average performance, there's nothing any other team can do.

Will the runners be more or less motivated to run and risk something for Wetmore after his processing of the race? Would you be?

Leave out, stupid, idiot and moron. Then its

+1

Yeah, I could be less caustic, but it's difficult when it appears posters go out of their way to play the entitled millennials card. At least listen to the video before criticizing. Here's what the kid actually said: "One thing I really value is that they're honest with us .... It's hard to hear but it's the right thing to hear." How does that get interpreted as "my coach said mean things to me" by any half-thinking individual?

I've been here as a runner and coach on the national level.

It is as much or more on a coach than an athlete here.

I see this as a sign that Wetmore is on the decline, and is aging out.

He did not peak his runners.

Dudes, they still would have won by a landslide if Erin Clark just had a mediocre race. But she had a terrible race. It's amazing they were still so close to winning despite Ms. Clark's bad day. I only hope she can recover and have a good track season (if she has eligibility, I don't know).

So if nick saban calls a run play, but qb instead decides to throw it and it is a pick six, that's is sabans fault?

Coaching 19-20 year olds wrote:

Will the runners be more or less motivated to run and risk something for Wetmore after his processing of the race? Would you be?

No. When you sign up for a program at that level most runners accept the expectations, What is he supposed to tell them? "Good job, you tried and did your best and that's all that matters"?

Any coach that has a team ranked number one and doesn't have anyone in the top 5 injured better tune his team up if they lost. All the top programs do this and the kids that go to those programs thrive on it and respond

All the coach can do is recruit talent, develop and motivate that talent, get a team together and on the day and has to watch the team do the job that they are capable of.

I ran for a team that won a national title my freshman year with mostly seniors. The next year we had a team that should have been top 6 and finished 13th. A total disaster for an elite program but we also had our top two guys that were running injured and dropped out. Everyone else blew up. Our top two finishers were our 6th and 7th runners.

Even after that I recall my coach taking us up on a hill for a team meeting afterwards. He told us that this "should stick in your craw" whatever that means. And canceled the trips for those that were going to race at the US Nationals the next week when they used to have that the Saturday after NCAA's.

Nobody I recall on that team became less motivated, We finished 3rd at NCAA Cross the next year and won it the year after that. With the same team from 2 years prior. Other than the freshman that was our number one that year at nationals and transferred to UCLA.

Humble brag?

Vivalarepublica wrote:

Dudes, they still would have won by a landslide if Erin Clark just had a mediocre race. But she had a terrible race. It's amazing they were still so close to winning despite Ms. Clark's bad day. I only hope she can recover and have a good track season (if she has eligibility, I don't know).

Exactly. Everybody else on the team finished where they should have but Clark completely flailed in the most important race of her season/career.

Ironically, Rainsberger (from Colorado!) for U of Oregon, and Clark (from Eugene!) for CU each contributed for Oregon's win.

Rojo,

The difference is you really don't know what Wetmore said, because he didn't say it publicly to a camera like Karen Harvey did.

I still find that interview of hers completely selfish and insightful into who she was as a coach. As a coach when your entire team runs poorly, you have to look in the mirror as a coach and wonder what did I do, not get in front of a camera talk about how hard you work and that the athletes didn't perform. She is also the same type of coach had they won who would have been on the awards stand holding up the trophy. When they lost, she blamed her athletes. SHAMELESS. Wetmore isn't on the awards stand when they win, and he didn't get in front of a camera when they lost. He was honest to them face to face, they chose to share that with the media.

There is a BIG difference. Please recognize that.

Coach wrote:

Wow, Harvey definitely threw them under the bus. She said she gave her heart and soul to her girls and that shes exhausted. She said that she told them things that are hard to hear and that they choked.

Did Wetmore say these things publicly? Coaches shouldn't criticize their athletes in public, praise in public criticize in private.

Is that you Coach Belichek?

Pope T-Bag II wrote:

We live in a sexist world. Face it. I had never listened to the Harvey interview until now. I thought it was a) Honest and B) Not throwing people under the bus.

If a coach answers the questions honestly, they are constantly accused of throwing the team under the bus. As a coach, I would make it much more about me personally failing than she did but you can't win as a coach. I think I posted on her once that I didn't have the talent to compete with Princeton in xc and someone said i threw the team under bus. I

Wow. Aside from her delusional comments of what her imaginary best friend might have in store for her team, that was a great interview. Wish this woman was still in coaching & hope she does come back, weird eccentricities & superstitions & all...she handled that interview with grace & restraint, knowing how emotionally crushing that loss was - and was articulate throughout. Great role model for young women who ever want to earn respect in a tough, competitive world. And let's face it, their task - whether for better or for worse - is to be seen as "one of the guys" in the professional world.

[/quote]

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but Karen Harvey is one of the most hypocritical, and actually downright insane, people I've ever had the misfortune of encountering. That woman was a cancer to many of the girls that came to her school looking for a mentor to look up to, and instead found someone who shamed them into having hot tea for lunch.

The world is far better without her influencing young women, or generally interacting with polite society on a daily basis. She managed to put up a decent front to the outside world for quite a while, but the truth of her inability to accept her own personal failings, and instability in general, finally bled through too much to be ignored--and that's a good thing.

So, no, Karen Harvey and her "weird eccentricities & superstitions & all" should very well stay in whatever corner she has crawled into.

What a lot of posters seem to be missing is that college sports are a business. Even if your business does not make money (XC/Track) for your school it is still run like a business. This is not middle or high school sports where everyone can feel good for participating. Wetmore is paid to put his team in the best possible position to win championships, just like every other top tier coach is. His athletes are paid, via scholarship, stipends, or in the case of walk-ons simple benefits of being an athlete. Both the coach and the athlete's accepted those pressures and expectations when they signed on. If a coach can't tell it like it is to his athlete's when they perform poorly then there is a serious issue.

Did Clark bomb? Yes. Should Wetmore tell her that? Yes. It's not him holding a grudge or doing it maliciously. It's him saying you had a job, you failed, and the team suffered because of it.

The people complaining about this have clearly never competed at the level we're talking about.

Dan Petty of the Denver Post had some nice articles on Colorado. He's got quotes from both Clark and Wetmore in this one:

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/19/colorado-cross-country-women-ncaa-championships-2016/

Some quotes from Rainsberger here:

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/19/katie-rainsberger-oregon-ncaa-cross-country-championships/

Men's article is here:

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/19/colorado-cross-country-ncaa-championships-2016/

I think the real question here is WHY did Clark have on off day? I know no one like excuses, but there really must have been something going on with her, and that is unfortunate for her and the team.

I'm hoping she uses this to become the best runner she possibly can in the future.

Here's a quote from Wetmore.

“If both teams do that, times seven runners, then you have to look at the coach, and have to say: How did I fail to communicate with them the necessitates of this event?”

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/19/colorado-cross-country-ncaa-championships-2016/