no more fans wrote:
umpire... wrote:
Hate to say it, but glad she failed.
I used to be a fan of her while at Georgia, but not anymore. There aren't many people in this sport that I will root against, but Tara is one of them. She joins a list full of dopers and that steeplechase guy that pushed the mascot that was a 14 year old girl. Great job, Tara.
Maybe just quit track and focus on your youtube career, you have a better shot at being the next Kim Kardashian than being the next Brittney Reese.
k
I coached a couple of age group national champions in Texas, and Tara used to come to meets here from California (at her own expense) and kick our ass. She (and her dad) actually believe in competing against the best on their own turf.
I also coached (for free) some international class post-collegians who eventually had to retire because they didn’t have enough sponsor/travel/winnings money to keep going. I urged many of them to try starting a GoFundMe page. (Unlike sprints and distance, there isn’t a lot of money in the jumps.)
My concern with Tara is not that she is behaving like a professional before her college eligibility is finished. (If her brain trust is smart enough to find a way around the NCAA’s asinine rules, more power to them). It is that while she was arguably the very best U20 athlete in the world in 2018, she hasn’t improved enough since then to be competitive at the international level. That’s why I waited to donate to her fund until I saw whether she made the World Championships team.
For someone who transferred twice and sat out a year before finding a college coach and program that improved me enough just to make All-American, it is easy to understand why a young athlete who doesn’t improve under one college program would want to transfer to another. I hope Coach Floreal can improve Tara’s performance to the point that she can have the type success of success at the senior level that she has come to expect based upon her accomplishments at the age group and junior levels, but I think she may be too close to her maximum potential.
I’m rooting for her to prove me wrong.