Alex Gibby's Historic Coaching at Harvard

rojo wrote:

gibster wrote:

What other coaches have ever been able to turn around a failed team and produce Olympic level individual talent like this in half a decade with $0 in scholarship money?

1. I love coach Gibby and talk to him several times a year on the phone. Gibby is a great coach and has a gone a BRILLIANT job at Harvard.

2. But can we admit these coaching threads are the most annoying aspect of letsrun?

The ridiculous over exaltation and tearing down of coaches is crazy. Gibby is the perfect example of that. Here the OP is acting like he's a God. A few months ago, he was a moron on here for injuring Blanks and not convincing the freshman who ran 3:38 for 1500 in HS to not quit the team. And please don't mention his name to the old-time Michigan guys as he and Warhurst never got along so they don't like Gibby and act like he's horrible. All of it is so over the top in one direction or the other. There needs to be nuance on the coaching threads.

3. The OP should not have used the word historic.

What's historic about it? It's DAMN impressive but not historic. Mark Coogan did exactly the same thing a decade ago at Dartmouth when he took over a terrible team and turned it around immediately and coached Abby D to 7 NCAA titles and the Olympics.

My boss at Cornell - Nathan Taylor - took over a terrible track team, made it TOTALLY dominant at the Ivy level and coached national champs in back to back years in the triple jump. Steve Dolan coached Don Cabral to the NCAA title and the Olympics final. Didn't Kyle Merber run an NCAA record for Willy Wood at Columbia? I watched Morgan Uceny struggle to break 2:20 as a freshman when I was at Cornell and she ended up being an NCAA star and ended up world ranked #1 in the 1500? Didn't Sondre Guttormsen just win 3 straight NCAA titles and break the NCAA record in the pole vault? Vig coached the Princeton DMR to the NCAA title and Ed Trippas to the Olympics. I could go on and on.

4) It's weird what we focus on. When I was coaching, I'd score the conference meets 800 on up to see how I was doing as a coach. By that measure, the Princeton men just had one of the most dominant years in ivy history.

In addition to winning the triple crown in team titles, their men's mid-d and distance guys scored a staggering 161 points indoors and outdoors at conference. 2nd place was Cornell at 69. Harvard which clearly was hurt big time by Blanks' absence was third with 57.

So should we call what Princeton did under Vig this year historic? When I left outdoors Heps, I assumed so as it seemed like they were scoring 15 points in every distance event but then I went home and calculated the scores and compared it to the spreadsheet I kept for the 10 years I coached. In 2012, under Dolan, Princeton won the triple crown and scored 163 points 800 on up.

Full disclosure, I also talk to Vig several times year on the phone and think he's a great coach as well.

5) The reality is there are a lot of strong coaches out there. They just all need exceptional talent to be exceptional.

Harvard and Princeton consistently get exceptional talent. No one else in the Ivies does (at least I assume that's the case I don't follow it closely anymore). When I was coaching, Dolan at one point had 8 sub-9 guys on the Princeton xc team. Cornell had never had a sub-9 guy in the history of the school (remember I stopped coaching in 2012).

But Gibby has done an AMAZING job with Ramsden and Blanks. They just seemingly get better and better when I found it really hard for people who had brilliant junior campaigns to build on that for the next year.

gibster wrote:

So why is that? wrote:

All very good points. But why is it happening?

What's Gibby doing that's making it happen?

And why can't it happen at more Ivy League and similar type schools?

Controversial "maintenance pace" training method (all runs at 6:00 for men, 7:00 for women) has instilled a culture where only the runners who take it extremely seriously survive and thrive. Early examples of senior runners (Tuntivate -> Pereira -> Blanks) set the tone for what could happen if you take this training seriously, leading to a cultural shift on the team.

Ivy League is good for recruiting but otherwise think you would see Gibby having better results at schools with less distracting academics/extracurriculars.

Problem with others implementing this method is that it's pretty painful in the transition, as you're washing out a bunch of good runners who don't want to fully commit. Best to start with a struggling school with nothing to lose, much harder to come in to an already competitive school and change everything like he did.

inherited an olympian wrote:

Kudos to Rojo for this intelligent take. Gibby is an amazing coach but before anyone anoints him KING of all coaches, he has to win an men's Ivy League XC team title first. To his credit the Harvard women have been dominant, but the Ivy League has been weaker in recent years in the women's race.

The success of Blanks and Ramsden proposes the question why aren't his teams performing better in XC? If his coaching is the sole reason for Blanks and Ramsden's rise, then why hasn't his secret regimen made every single person on his team a superstar...or at least 5 of them for an XC team score?

Perhaps his training is so hard that it either makes you an Olympian or it breaks you - and this is why his teams struggle across an entire top 5-7 in XC. For every 1 that becomes an Olympian, many more just can't take the training.

Sean McCafferty wrote:

rojo wrote:

1. I love coach Gibby and talk to him several times a year on the phone. Gibby is a great coach and has a gone a BRILLIANT job at Harvard.

2. But can we admit these coaching threads are the most annoying aspect of letsrun?

The ridiculous over exaltation and tearing down of coaches is crazy. Gibby is the perfect example of that. Here the OP is acting like he's a God. A few months ago, he was a moron on here for injuring Blanks and not convincing the freshman who ran 3:38 for 1500 in HS to not quit the team. And please don't mention his name to the old-time Michigan guys as he and Warhurst never got along so they don't like Gibby and act like he's horrible. All of it is so over the top in one direction or the other. There needs to be nuance on the coaching threads.

3. The OP should not have used the word historic.

What's historic about it? It's DAMN impressive but not historic. Mark Coogan did exactly the same thing a decade ago at Dartmouth when he took over a terrible team and turned it around immediately and coached Abby D to 7 NCAA titles and the Olympics.

My boss at Cornell - Nathan Taylor - took over a terrible track team, made it TOTALLY dominant at the Ivy level and coached national champs in back to back years in the triple jump. Steve Dolan coached Don Cabral to the NCAA title and the Olympics final. Didn't Kyle Merber run an NCAA record for Willy Wood at Columbia? I watched Morgan Uceny struggle to break 2:20 as a freshman when I was at Cornell and she ended up being an NCAA star and ended up world ranked #1 in the 1500? Didn't Sondre Guttormsen just win 3 straight NCAA titles and break the NCAA record in the pole vault? Vig coached the Princeton DMR to the NCAA title and Ed Trippas to the Olympics. I could go on and on.

4) It's weird what we focus on. When I was coaching, I'd score the conference meets 800 on up to see how I was doing as a coach. By that measure, the Princeton men just had one of the most dominant years in ivy history.

In addition to winning the triple crown in team titles, their men's mid-d and distance guys scored a staggering 161 points indoors and outdoors at conference. 2nd place was Cornell at 69. Harvard which clearly was hurt big time by Blanks' absence was third with 57.

So should we call what Princeton did under Vig this year historic? When I left outdoors Heps, I assumed so as it seemed like they were scoring 15 points in every distance event but then I went home and calculated the scores and compared it to the spreadsheet I kept for the 10 years I coached. In 2012, under Dolan, Princeton won the triple crown and scored 163 points 800 on up.

Full disclosure, I also talk to Vig several times year on the phone and think he's a great coach as well.

5) The reality is there are a lot of strong coaches out there. They just all need exceptional talent to be exceptional.

Harvard and Princeton consistently get exceptional talent. No one else in the Ivies does (at least I assume that's the case I don't follow it closely anymore). When I was coaching, Dolan at one point had 8 sub-9 guys on the Princeton xc team. Cornell had never had a sub-9 guy in the history of the school (remember I stopped coaching in 2012).

But Gibby has done an AMAZING job with Ramsden and Blanks. They just seemingly get better and better when I found it really hard for people who had brilliant junior campaigns to build on that for the next year.

Glad you mentioned the other Ivy League coaches. UPenn has Olympians this year in Whitaker and alumna Akins.

Clarification - 2012 was under Samara and Dolan. Dolan was the head XC coach, but Samara head indoor and outdoor.

rojo wrote:

nysouthrunner wrote:

The most interesting thread on here in the past year was that deleted one about Vivien Henz ripping Gibby's coaching. That sort of juicy gossip is what this forum's all about. Obviously the brojos only keep that sort of stuff up if it's someone they're not buddies with. Wouldn't be surprised if this post gets deleted.

While I agree with you that the gossip on letsrun is often times awesome, what you wrote is simply false.

I deleted it because Heinz emailed me and told me to take it down, writing: "I would really appreciate it if you could take the thread down, the opinions that are presented as mine in the article do not really reflect reality. I am on good terms with Gibby, I never really got "kicked out" of the team, that was an exaggeration made by the journalist and I have an overall great relationship with my teammates, which could get damaged by this thread."

Any other posts about him will be deleted and I may delete this one and your post tomorrow anyway but want to post it now to so you know what happened.

rojo wrote:

gibster wrote:

What other coaches have ever been able to turn around a failed team and produce Olympic level individual talent like this in half a decade with $0 in scholarship money?

1. I love coach Gibby and talk to him several times a year on the phone. Gibby is a great coach and has a gone a BRILLIANT job at Harvard.

2. But can we admit these coaching threads are the most annoying aspect of letsrun?

The ridiculous over exaltation and tearing down of coaches is crazy. Gibby is the perfect example of that. Here the OP is acting like he's a God. A few months ago, he was a moron on here for injuring Blanks and not convincing the freshman who ran 3:38 for 1500 in HS to not quit the team. And please don't mention his name to the old-time Michigan guys as he and Warhurst never got along so they don't like Gibby and act like he's horrible. All of it is so over the top in one direction or the other. There needs to be nuance on the coaching threads.

3. The OP should not have used the word historic.

What's historic about it? It's DAMN impressive but not historic. Mark Coogan did exactly the same thing a decade ago at Dartmouth when he took over a terrible team and turned it around immediately and coached Abby D to 7 NCAA titles and the Olympics.

My boss at Cornell - Nathan Taylor - took over a terrible track team, made it TOTALLY dominant at the Ivy level and coached national champs in back to back years in the triple jump. Steve Dolan coached Don Cabral to the NCAA title and the Olympics final. Didn't Kyle Merber run an NCAA record for Willy Wood at Columbia? I watched Morgan Uceny struggle to break 2:20 as a freshman when I was at Cornell and she ended up being an NCAA star and ended up world ranked #1 in the 1500? Didn't Sondre Guttormsen just win 3 straight NCAA titles and break the NCAA record in the pole vault? Vig coached the Princeton DMR to the NCAA title and Ed Trippas to the Olympics. I could go on and on.

4) It's weird what we focus on. When I was coaching, I'd score the conference meets 800 on up to see how I was doing as a coach. By that measure, the Princeton men just had one of the most dominant years in ivy history.

In addition to winning the triple crown in team titles, their men's mid-d and distance guys scored a staggering 161 points indoors and outdoors at conference. 2nd place was Cornell at 69. Harvard which clearly was hurt big time by Blanks' absence was third with 57.

So should we call what Princeton did under Vig this year historic? When I left outdoors Heps, I assumed so as it seemed like they were scoring 15 points in every distance event but then I went home and calculated the scores and compared it to the spreadsheet I kept for the 10 years I coached. In 2012, under Dolan, Princeton won the triple crown and scored 163 points 800 on up.

Full disclosure, I also talk to Vig several times year on the phone and think he's a great coach as well.

5) The reality is there are a lot of strong coaches out there. They just all need exceptional talent to be exceptional.

Harvard and Princeton consistently get exceptional talent. No one else in the Ivies does (at least I assume that's the case I don't follow it closely anymore). When I was coaching, Dolan at one point had 8 sub-9 guys on the Princeton xc team. Cornell had never had a sub-9 guy in the history of the school (remember I stopped coaching in 2012).

But Gibby has done an AMAZING job with Ramsden and Blanks. They just seemingly get better and better when I found it really hard for people who had brilliant junior campaigns to build on that for the next year.

NorseMN wrote:

rojo wrote:

1. I love coach Gibby and talk to him several times a year on the phone. Gibby is a great coach and has a gone a BRILLIANT job at Harvard.

2. But can we admit these coaching threads are the most annoying aspect of letsrun?

The ridiculous over exaltation and tearing down of coaches is crazy. Gibby is the perfect example of that. Here the OP is acting like he's a God. A few months ago, he was a moron on here for injuring Blanks and not convincing the freshman who ran 3:38 for 1500 in HS to not quit the team. And please don't mention his name to the old-time Michigan guys as he and Warhurst never got along so they don't like Gibby and act like he's horrible. All of it is so over the top in one direction or the other. There needs to be nuance on the coaching threads.

3. The OP should not have used the word historic.

What's historic about it? It's DAMN impressive but not historic. Mark Coogan did exactly the same thing a decade ago at Dartmouth when he took over a terrible team and turned it around immediately and coached Abby D to 7 NCAA titles and the Olympics.

My boss at Cornell - Nathan Taylor - took over a terrible track team, made it TOTALLY dominant at the Ivy level and coached national champs in back to back years in the triple jump. Steve Dolan coached Don Cabral to the NCAA title and the Olympics final. Didn't Kyle Merber run an NCAA record for Willy Wood at Columbia? I watched Morgan Uceny struggle to break 2:20 as a freshman when I was at Cornell and she ended up being an NCAA star and ended up world ranked #1 in the 1500? Didn't Sondre Guttormsen just win 3 straight NCAA titles and break the NCAA record in the pole vault? Vig coached the Princeton DMR to the NCAA title and Ed Trippas to the Olympics. I could go on and on.

4) It's weird what we focus on. When I was coaching, I'd score the conference meets 800 on up to see how I was doing as a coach. By that measure, the Princeton men just had one of the most dominant years in ivy history.

In addition to winning the triple crown in team titles, their men's mid-d and distance guys scored a staggering 161 points indoors and outdoors at conference. 2nd place was Cornell at 69. Harvard which clearly was hurt big time by Blanks' absence was third with 57.

So should we call what Princeton did under Vig this year historic? When I left outdoors Heps, I assumed so as it seemed like they were scoring 15 points in every distance event but then I went home and calculated the scores and compared it to the spreadsheet I kept for the 10 years I coached. In 2012, under Dolan, Princeton won the triple crown and scored 163 points 800 on up.

Full disclosure, I also talk to Vig several times year on the phone and think he's a great coach as well.

5) The reality is there are a lot of strong coaches out there. They just all need exceptional talent to be exceptional.

Harvard and Princeton consistently get exceptional talent. No one else in the Ivies does (at least I assume that's the case I don't follow it closely anymore). When I was coaching, Dolan at one point had 8 sub-9 guys on the Princeton xc team. Cornell had never had a sub-9 guy in the history of the school (remember I stopped coaching in 2012).

But Gibby has done an AMAZING job with Ramsden and Blanks. They just seemingly get better and better when I found it really hard for people who had brilliant junior campaigns to build on that for the next year.

While worshipping coaches is probably foolish, I guess I disagree with Rojo’s post as a whole. At the NCAA level I’d argue that coaching is at least equivalent to talent in predicting distance running success. Approximately the same coaches are creating great runners year after year, even when equalized for talent differences. When a new program emerges as a power. It is usually because a new coach is emerging on the scene.

if anything, I think we undervalue the power of the top 5-10% of coaches, who can reproduce their success anywhere they go.