No respect for Dave Smith and Oklahoma State men’s cross country team

Peter was recruited from an American HS by Coach Heins, and he was by no means a blue chip recruit. It was more of a sentimental thing based upon Lopez Lomong's importance to the program a decade or so prior. Peter Lomong's top 10 finish his Junior year is a great testament to how well NAU develops runners.

The freaking kid won Kenya high school xc championship in 2022. He wanted to go to a great program, you can't fault Dave or Denis for their decision. This is Brian Masau's first year in cross country, nobody wanted to recruit a 3:50 Kenyan but glad Okstate did. He ran the East Africa secondary school championship and got beat. Their times are not as fast as the Alabama kids while in Kenya, but they adjust in Dave's program easily, Denis's 13:43 is not crazy fast compared to Nico and Bosley's 13:11......No coach will say No to a talent like Denis, this drama was not brought on Stanford duo (Ky Robinson & Hicks-White Internationals) It's more about color than anything else!

The issue is the color, not the talent. Yes, I don't remember seeing any posts on the European transplant(Ky Robinson and Charles Hick)….you will never find any on Australian Jessica(Oregon) or UW milers! Never….gotta be Africans! Not surprising at all

wrong - the issue is (apparently) nobody wants to go to college in oklahoma. not even kenyans who grew up half the world away & don't know much about the US. Ignore all the college football players who want to go to OU its MADE UP by the FAKE NEWS MEDIA.

everybody knows that when it comes to college, the state its located in is the most important factor for every kid. Not academics. Not the team. Not the history of developing pros. Not the facilities. Not the campus vibe & college town. No, what every recruit really cares about is the state the college is located in. I don't make the rules I just enforce them and I'm here to answer any questions

Just here to say that Charles Hicks is not "foreign." He is a natural-born US citizen with American parents and an American passport (before the idiot patrol weighs in: "natural-born" means he was born a US citizen, not that he was born in the US). He also has a UK passport from being born there and living there as a child when his American father took a job in London. Carry on...

Seriously, Ky Robinson came to Stanford at 18, while Charles Hicks is Florida-born and while his family, which has deep roots in Florida, took him to the UK for a good deal of his childhood (and which he competes for internationally), he came back to Florida for part or all of middle school and high school before he went to Stanford at 18. I give BYU plenty of heat for its various ways of gaming the system and its typical reliance on 24-26 year old athletes. The Kenyan secondary school champion is a prime recruit and had to be to win a major meet his very first race in September with Dave Smith. You can't seriously think that Dave Smith made him great with six weeks of training at most. But if he just graduated from hs and competed at U18 African Champs, that means nothing about his age. Age cheating is absolutely rife in Kenyan athletics. My point, though, is not about age, but about being unable to beat Mike Smith without recruiting international guys already prepared to be top five or ten NCAA when they arrive on campus. If that were the competition, why even bother with American 18 year olds? You can find at least a hundred Kenyans every year who say that they are 18-22 and who could be top ten at NCAA. Wait till NAU and Stanford realize they have to do it to compete.

the school that don't play NIL money will lose out

Oh lord, Dave Smith has done it before with the majority being Americans! I thought Abdi (Somalian) South African kid and now South Sudanese (Australia) helped Mike! He couldn't win without them period. Please don't act as if Kenyans don't whoop our elite at the senior level if age is the issue here! According to your logic, Dave shouldn't recruit them coz they were super talented, He should go for them slow Kenyans...lol, pay slow Kenyan $45K coz NAU little white supporters are whining about new Africans!!! Your racist behind also assumes they are 24-26 coz they are Kenyans......Ky came to the US at 18 so did Brian Masau but again he is African. I feel ya pain though.

You just love playing the race card don’t you? Abdi Nur came to the US as a child. He wasn’t even a runner for half his years in high school. He came to NAU as a walk on. NAU and Mike Smith developed him to the national champion he is now. Kang has never been on any of NAUs previous championships squads. He’s a Jr now and seems that after 3 yrs of development under Mike Smith he is ready to contribute…

Thats the difference between Mike and Dave. Dave used to develop and do things the right way. He won his previous championship with hard work and by developing his runners. Not this year. He got tired of losing to NAU, got lazy and in desperation went out to Africa and recruited ready made runners. He has 4 Africans and a total of 13 foreigners on his distance roster. That tells you everything. He’s no longer developing runners but importing ready made foreigners. In comparison Mike Smith only has 3 foreigners total on his squad. Dave Smith may very well win Saturday and good for him, but he doesn’t deserve to be called a good coach. Good recruiter maybe but good coach? This year he bought the championship not earned it through hard work and development. He’s turned into a lazy coach. Now cry about it lol 😂

Abdi is from Minnesota and moved to Phoenix when he was a teenager. he played soccer all his life and didn't get into track & field until high school.

i don't think he was a walk-on at NAU, but he couldn't compete because he was academically ineligible so maybe that messed up his scholarship. he worked hard on his grades and after some soul searching about whether he still wanted to run and encouragement from Smith he rejoined the team where he slowly improved every year.

weird people always put (Somalian) in parenthesis next to his name as if he just got off the boat. I don't think he's been there since he was in diapers.

he talks about all this on The Running Effect Podcast.

okay i’m late to this thread but I go to OkState, and you may perceive me as biased because i have skin in the game.

but i’m not really sure why having foreign runners on the team is so bad, you guys treat them like they are only vessels to score xc points, Denis and Brian are both very nice guys and truly members of the team, If you lose respect for someone because they welcome foreigners that’s really on you.

Also i’m not getting where the notion that Dave is a bad coach is coming from, he always talks to the team and personalizes training for individuals, literally everyone who goes here loves Dave, he’ll even hop in reps on track workouts.

but whatever your opinion on international recruiting, I wouldn’t base your respect for someone on hearsay, especially the tired old GF thing.

Read my post more carefully. The keywords in my post were “stacking” and “shortcuts to success.” I don’t have a problem with a coach who has one or two international students on their team, but there’s a big difference between “welcoming foreigners” and stacking your team with them.

OSU has 13 international runners on their team. 13! That’s called stacking. Whether or not those runners are nice guys is irrelevant to my point.

Three of the top four runners on the team this year are East African imports who were not on the team last year. That’s what I mean by taking a shortcut to success.

Smith was mad about losing to NAU last year on his own home course in heartbreaking tie-breaking fashion, so he took a shortcut to success by importing foreign talent who were ready to be top contributors right away. I have no respect for that.

And I don’t need hearsay to have an opinion on what Smith did to German Fernandez. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw one of the best American distance running prospects of all time get ruined by a coach who is more interested in winning championships by any means necessary than his athletes’ long term development.

It’s interesting that people will say he isn’t developing talent and all of this but then also recognize what his girls team is doing with two redshirt freshman from the state already contributing on one of the top teams in the country. Whether it’s America or another country runners are just faster in general coming into college than 3 years ago.. let’s wait to see what these guys are running as juniors and seniors to see how well they develop then we can revisit this.

OkSt isn't in the top 10 of most ncaa championships from all sports

then you know literally nothing about German Fernandez

They have 52 NCAA Titles which puts them at #4 just ahead of Penn State (51).

Man Coach Smith is doing a number to you in your head. I am not sure he was mad at losing on the tie breaker, but maybe upset. I was too. Like the other poster said these guys are a team and they get along like a team. I love the fact they get to know people from all over the world and make connections and bonds that will be life lasting. Be more mad at the transfer portal than recruiting foreigners. That will be the destruction of the NCAA in all sports. I hope you get some help so this doesn't mess with your health.

I don't buy the argument that getting the best recruits that you can is a shortcut to success - it's part of success.

That’s a clown post, bro. Creating a thread about someone doesn’t mean the subject of the thread is messing with an OP’s health. What a stupid notion.

The only reason I thought of Smith is because, duh, it’s championship week and Oklahoma State is one of the contenders. I didn’t even know the details of Oklahoma State’s roster until I read the Letsrun recap of Regionals in which they wrote about it. Hence this thread.