Patti posts here on occasion. I would like to hear her input on this.
Patti posts here on occasion. I would like to hear her input on this.
YMMV wrote:
The Up & Up wrote:
Yes, that would be Steve Gachupin, Jose Tosa, and Al Waquie you're referring to. Between them they won the Pikes Peak Marathon, the La Luz Trail Race, and the Empire State Building Run-Up (in addition to many other races) numerous times.
I had the pleasure of competing against Waquie more than once in the 80s.
Going back further, Lewis Tewanima, who was a Hopi Carlisle School teammate of Jim Thorpe, won silver in the 10,000 at the 1912 Olympics. He was also a 1908 Olympian, where he finished 9th in the marathon.
And Patty Dillon (formerly Patty Lyons Catalano) has Micmac heritage, albeit from Canada.
Patti posts here on occasion. I would like to hear her input on this.
So that's the Patti that posts here? Awesome. I see her in live race discussion threads a lot, which are probably my favorite part of this board.
this is recent....wonder what the issue was
https://www.navajotimes.com/rezsports/principal-mum-on-thoreau-coaches-firing/
seymour butz wrote:
Let's face it, apart from Rupp and the Kenyan-Americans, American distance running (10K and up) is an embarrassment. We have professional runners struggling to run 28 minutes for 10K and 2:12 for the marathon. ....
What we need is easy access to epo with little to no testing. Like some other countries that dominate the international scene.
troll under a bridge wrote:
YMMV wrote:
Patti posts here on occasion. I would like to hear her input on this.
So that's the Patti that posts here? Awesome. I see her in live race discussion threads a lot, which are probably my favorite part of this board.
That's her!
+1
Better than getting drunk or high, too.
Porkie Washington wrote:
troll under a bridge wrote:
What's interesting is that a screwed up home life is what motivated me as a youth runner and I was quite aggressive. Running is a great outlet for pent-up emotions.
+1
Better than getting drunk or high, too.
Very likely that I would have resorted to substance abuse as a teenager if I did not run. My brother did.
But still developed a drinking problem later in life. Just got over that and feel better than ever.
Aside from Juco’s, no college coach pursues recruiting Native Americans. In recent years, there has not even been one successful 4 year collegiate native male runner.
For women, they have a few. One is currently leading Arizona State’s xc team
seymour butz wrote:
Let's face it, apart from Rupp and the Kenyan-Americans, American distance running (10K and up) is an embarrassment. We have professional runners struggling to run 28 minutes for 10K and 2:12 for the marathon. Since our white boys aren't getting it done, why are we not looking into recruiting Native Americans into the sport? A lot of these guys have incredible natural talent. I went to high school in South Dakota and every year there were Natives that would show up and run low 16s for 5K on basically no training. Problem is none of these guys would go to college so after high school they never ran a step again.
But just imagine if we get a large group of these guys to build up to 100 mpw over several years. We'd have more sub 2:10 marathoners than we'd know what to do with.
why 'tap' into anything?
If you want to run, run. If you aren't driven internally you won't make it anyway. Its not about talent, its about inner desire. If you have to go find a guy, its because he had no interest in running. And of course will never make it.
My old coach used to say there are plenty of world champions walking around the streets. Of course he was wrong. There are less world champions than wannabees. And lot so talented people who haven't got the interest or mental ability to be a WC.
Stop tapping into places where people wish not to be found.
I hail from the Navajo Rez land in AZ.
There was a New Mexico native in the top 15 at footlocker this past year. Sometimes natives can blend in with Hispanics.
Jackson Thomas is the most recent elite native runner. The young man showed promise and beat Alabama’s Vincent Kiprop head to head in a 3000m. There is video somewhere out there of the race. Jackson, as far as I know, is still training for the 2020 Olympic trials. There is woman that ran at the last Olympic trials 10k. He was running for NAZ Elite. Rochelle something.
Being from Arizona, there is such enormous potential with native runners. Unfortunately most are rather low income and grow up way too early. Another ordeal is we believe what we see over media, as the reservation is so far away from reality, we forget the grasp of how the real world is. Another disheartening variable is we believe we can play basketball. Doesn’t matter if one 5’1” or 7’2”. It takes their life away from running. We worship basketball, and trust me, most know it’s a dead end. There’s something about the confidence of a ball going through a hoop that helps us enternally feel its worth. However, running is how we heal and grow. Maybe we are encountering problems on the reservation from getting away from the sport.
I do know we need encouragement and we need more college coaches to come take an investment in our runners. I have yet to know of a college coach that came to meet any of our runners on the reservation. We are still here.
Central Arizona Commity College is the only current college that does well with Indians. Bacone College in Muskogee was also quite successful in the collegiate system in terms of recruiting and developing Indians. I don’t believe the program exists now. A college that had success with such coaches as Michael Daney, and Gerald Tuckwin was Haskell College in Lawrence, KS. They would churn out some studs for the juco level. Most went to very successful D1’s. Unfortunately, Haskell had a president that fired Haskell’s very successful coach, and he hired his nephew, Al Gipp, who never coached running in his life. By the looks of it, hands down the least successful coach in the country with as many full rides to offer. They can’t even field a full girl’s team for the past 3 years. They actually violating their conference rules by not fielding a full girl’s team at conference. Every time they try to hire another coach, the current coach connects with his uncle who is still high up on the Bureau of Indian Affairs and it’s terminated. Yes, we have native politics. As the previous poster said, we need more coaches to go meet our runners. It’s that simple.
Athletic talent going to waste among Native American communities is reminiscent of how South Sudan and Somalia have tons of talent going to waste due to political issues. They all suffer from poorly functioning governments that are not always recognized by outsiders. But once South Sudanese (Lopez Lomong, Macharia Yuot, and others) and Somalis (Mo Farah and others) abroad are trained with proper coaching and infrastructure, they easily rise to the top. Native American runners can definitely be a force to reckon with if they are transferred to more supportive environments.