Pomona-Pitzer Men's Team Coaching Carousel DRAMA

Despite several upset posters looking for dog whistles where there are none, I think for those who want to see the PP XC team be successful, this is a fair point for people to be concerned about. Regardless of race or gender, PP let one national championship coach walk and didn't bring back another to bring in a coach who has shown no track record of success coaching men's college distance runners.

As several people have pointed out- it appears the AD simply doesn't care about success in XC, would rather balance out the diversity of the coaching staff for representation purposes, and build up the other parts of the track team. All these are fair reasons to hire her as a coach as her track record of coaching sprints is at least positive.

Personally, as a former D3 distance runner, if I were on the team I would be pretty upset. PP should be the arguable favorites to win XC, have won 2 of the last 3 titles, return a ton of the squad, and are rewarded with a coach with no distance coaching accolades.... Seems like a slap in the face and clearly some of the guys on the team feel that way evidenced by the transfer portal.

While this may help the rest of their track team in the long run, I have a feeling this will be the end of PP as a distance power house once their current studs graduate or leave the school.

I mostly agree with this. It totally depends on who they bring in to coach distance. De Lira is capable but mostly coaches the women's team as Kirk seems to be in more of an administrative role at this point. Look out for Christian Mora, a Flores disciple who coached the team in an assistant role last year, likely has access to the Flores training plan and a finger to the pulse of the team culture.

None of the PP guys are going to transfer, most have a year left and will finish their degree next spring before making a move to D1 if they feel like finishing out their eligibility. Most of their guys knew about the terrible situation with admin and are still completely bought into building success and team culture. The senior class is loaded with talent (Booth, Kirkpatrick, Fearon, Florsheim, Horsburgh) but there are great runners below them too. This is nothing new for the program, hopefully this will be the last major coaching change and the team gets some stability going forward.

Unbelievable…a runner with promise got injured in college!

which D1 program would that be….?

oh that’s right…all of them!

Exactly! All this fuss about a DIII team! Only distance nuts think that the head coach of the Track & XC teams needs to be a distance coach. Distance only accounts for 23.8% of the events in track & field, what about the other 76.2%

It’s D3, who cares? They’d probably lose to a couple of the high school teams in my state.

Which HS team in your state has their 5th man, a mid-distance specialist, at 14:20?

Many people on here missing the point. Distance folks are annoyed to see the Head Cross Country Coach (which is a separate sport) being Sprint specific after PP had years of dominance in Cross Country. Head Track Coach having a sprint/hurdle back ground is not an issue. Makes sense. However, distance kids account for 100% of the Cross Country team, so giving them a Head XC Coach with a background in Distance seems to make much more sense. Split the programs with two different head coaches if you want a head T&F coach with a sprint, throw, jumps, etc background.

Also (not in the quote above) but all the people saying that the only reason people could have to be upset about this is due to race or gender are morons. It has everything to do with experience in events and the specific program currently run at PP. Slap in the face to the current roster. I do think most will stay because the academics are great and at the end of the day, the degree and experience as a whole is what matters. They are tough kids & will find a way to be successful regardless of who's in charge.

Amber was not there long enough to decimate the distance program. How much do you know about Colgate?

Setting aside the merits or demerits of hiring Coach Williams (she does sound like an excellent sprint coach at the very least), in the short term the PP distance program will continue to thrive regardless. Though people have graduated with eligibility (so maybe they are in the portal) no remaining top runner I think is transferring. The culture on the team is a great one with highly motivated athletes who support each other and are super well informed. They literally could coach themselves. There are more than a few on the team that have a knowledge base regarding training etc that rivals or exceeds many good coaches. A lot of what the athletes need to succeed from the coach relates to logistics, liking getting them in the right events, to the airport on time, breakfast before meets. I don’t mean to devalue the actual coaching, but I think they will be ok as long as a new coach is not meddling in a negative way. Positive ideas would be welcome, but neutral will be fine. No reason to think the new coach won’t be highly organized and helpful as it pertains to basic stuff. Emma and Kirk are very experienced distance coaches too, and can help.

As to the future, I can see having a sprint coach as the face of the program might hurt recruiting, but a place like Pomona recruits itself. There is really no school like Pomona (setting aside Pitzer for the moment as most of the athletes attend Pomona) on the west coast. CM is a very different place. Anyway, all this to say, PP distance program is far more likely to be unperturbed by the coaching change than it is to be wrecked. I guess only time will tell for sure.

You have high school teams with multiple low 14 min 5000 guys? Tell us more….

AND most of the people in non-distance events can easily double or triple, which is a lot harder for distance runners

Attention dum-dums: people are only upset because the Head Coach of the Cross Country team is not a distance coach. Understood on the track side; many of the best distance programs have coaches who are not the Director of T&F, but they are the XC HC.

XC is a different sport, with a different championship.

You are right, she is the best sprint coach on the planet. Why is she wasting her time trying to coach XC at a D3 school? She should be interviewing for the South Carolina head coaching job. She deserves to be at a Power 5 school. I think she'd dominate the SEC.

I don't think anyone here has an issue with or would argue that it often makes the most sense that a speed/ power coach is director of a track and field program. I think people's issue with this one is that this now makes two straight NCAA title winning coaches (who were by all appearance were loved by the athletes) that were not retained. The AD has every right to do whatever she wants with the director position, and if this is her vision, great! Amber will likely do a fantastic job, I've only heard good things.

The issue for folks seems not to be about sprints vs distance for the director position, but about valuing the efforts of past NCAA title winning coaches and the student-athletes in that event groups. Keep in mind, this is an event group that would be the odd's-on favorite to win the national title in XC this year. I can't think of a title-winning coach that has been let go right before a season where they would be a favorite to win again. Their most recent coach will probably land on his feet, but not retaining him in some fashion seems strange.

I ran for Colgate in 2010 when the men got 4th in the Patriot League (ahead of Lehigh and Bucknell) and the women won the Patriot League.

Under Amber the cross county and track teams floundered. Her cross country teams generally placed 9th or 10th or if 10 teams. Her last outdoor season at Colgate the men only scored 10 points at the Patriot League championship and the women only scored 1 point.

Their fastest 5k runners that year? 18:35 for the women and 15:43 for the men. Alumni were not happy with Amber.

This year Colgate is much stronger than at any time during Amber's tenure. Even their sprints are significantly better, as well as distance. They have a good recruiting class. Colgate is finally having since success after Amber sank the whole program.

Do you have any insights into what transpired? Was it a recruiting issue, or driving talented runners off the team, or improper coaching or what? I’m genuinely curious.

How did the track team fare, specifically the sprinters?

Can you confirm that PP has no intention of hiring an assistant coach for XC and distance?

I ran at Colgate while Amber was head coach and wouldn't solely attribute the poor performances to her. She didn't coach distance and I would say she started a trend of sprinters performing better. Very little administrative support and poor recruiting (which are linked, of course) were the main issues for the men, in my opinion. The women had those same hurdles along with even more discontinuity in coaching: Amber took over in the midst of a stretch during which there were three women's distance coaches over the span of three or four years.
Amber did well to support the distance program without getting out of her depth, and she had success with some sprinters, jumpers, and hurdlers.

The consensus agreed it was complacency and slight incompetence. The staff didn't work hard and didn't recruit much. It's a tough league but most men's teams have no scholarships so they weren't at as much of a disadvantage.
In 2023, they had women in the finals of the 100, 200, 800, 1500, and 400h. A 16:52 5k and a 2:10 800, 2nd place in discus. For men they won the long jump, 3rd in the 4x1, 4th in the 400, 4th in triple.
It's their most robust recruiting class ever, by far, this year across all events.
A men's 22 foot long jumper, 14.53 women's 100 hurdler who high jumps 5'4 and another girl at 14.83 in the hurdles. A 12'7 women's vaulter, a men's 4:11 for the full mile, another male at 4:17/1:55/9:26. There are more that aren't on milesplit yet.
It's night and day compared to Amber. Amber's tenure was a very dark time at Colgate, one that all alumni want to forget.

They are doing this well DESPITE no additional support from the administration. They also had a head coaching change mid-year when Meaders left.