Retired College Coach wrote:
Political correctness is destroying sports.
Please elaborate.
We have higher quality athletes and more depth in ALL sports across ALL levels.
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RW once again that they are clueless when it comes to elite running. Same with FastWomen.
Mark and Heather are great coaches and RW does not understand that side of the sport.
All three women that recently wrote books all made themselves victims and the public ate it up because it was promoted by those that don’t understand this level of running. All 3 of these women only have a platform because of what their coaches (the villains in all of their stories) made them do. No coaches No fame No stories.Thank you Mark and Heather for creating champions. Thank you Colorado for understanding and navigating this situation in an attempt to keep the ignorant appeased.
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Wise Old Man wrote:
joedlrt wrote:
You know what won’t make them hesitant? The world champions that have come out of the women’s program. They offer their athletes every resource available to make a world class runner. Just because some lack the maturity to handle voluntary body composition testing doesn’t mean it doesn’t lack merit as a training tool. Some kids just want to participate, others aspire to become professionals. While it may not appeal to your sensibilities (D3 athletics), doesn’t mean others don’t have higher aspirations. A number of their athletes have gone on to have long, incredibly productive careers. That is not something one typically associates with a “meat grinder”.
Just think people should be open to the possibility that some coaches, even ones with a great track record of competitive success, may be toxic jerks, and always have been. The sport is better off without them. If Wetmore is being unfairly maligned after a long and distinguished career, that stinks for sure. However, coaches, just like athletes need to be accountable and there should be a way to identify and get rid of abusers even if they have hung championship banners.
Having known Wetmore and people who have worked in the program, I would not call Wetmore a toxic jerk. He is someone who genuinely cares for his athletes and is an asset to the sport. D1 athletics aren’t for everyone. The direction of a program should not be dictated by those on the fringe. I ran for three different coaches in my university years, two of whom were great coaches. There were people who had issues with each of them. Go to any program in the country and you will find athletes that dislike the coach. CU is no different in that regard.
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RW is not for us wrote:
RW once again that they are clueless when it comes to elite running. Same with FastWomen.
Mark and Heather are great coaches and RW does not understand that side of the sport.
All three women that recently wrote books all made themselves victims and the public ate it up because it was promoted by those that don’t understand this level of running. All 3 of these women only have a platform because of what their coaches (the villains in all of their stories) made them do. No coaches No fame No stories.Thank you Mark and Heather for creating champions. Thank you Colorado for understanding and navigating this situation in an attempt to keep the ignorant appeased.
Solid take. While I believe Title IX has good intentions and women deserve the same fair shot as men, I think the authors knew they had a built-in audience. K. Beck has talked about this as well and has made good points--he's spot-on re: FastWomen and other sites like that even though I don't always agree w/his takes either.
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Yeah CU is so terrible and has such a bad culture that Cook, Starliper, and now Dishon are all running to the mountains of Colorado?!?!?! Watch out NCAA here comes the Buffs this fall!!!!
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pavement88 wrote:
Ex D1 P5 wrote:
None of them are qualified or experienced enough to head a D1 program successfully, there is so much more than writing schedules and having a presence at workouts and races to leading a college program. The AD would run a risk of even poorer oversight of the full program with any of them put in charge. Someone like Bryan Berryhill or Chris Siemers is far more qualified. I could even see Mike Smith making the jump for both the challenge and the greater resources and pay.
You mean the same AD that hired Deion Sanders as the football coach?
You can not underestimate the recruiting pull that someone like Ritz would have.
So see Ritz serve as a recruiting assistant, first. Deion Sanders to any of your wish list as the T&F/XC coach is apples to oranges. You seem to be overlooking that he was hired as head coach and ran a successful D1 program somewhere else previously. So stop being silly.
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HRE wrote:
rojo wrote:
I'm pleased the administration didn't cave and fire the coaches. This is the right outcome. People need to be allowed to make mistakes and improve, not just be canned.
A few other thoughts.
1) Is Wetmore and Burroughs' focus on "body composition" totally not needed?
I was surprised they wrote this to the team, "We believe that optimal body composition is second only to serious training in relevance to your racing results.”
I've long said that of course weight is important to distance running but in my mind weight loss in incredibly highly correlated and the natural result of "serious training." It seems to me if people are fit, they will naturally be lean enough to compete if they were meant to be an elite distance runner. Why not just focus on the training? I think the nutrition / diet stuff is vastly overrated. Unless they are eating like a complete moron, so much of it is training/genetics.
If someone isn't thin despite training hard then they likely aren't cut out for elite distance no matter what they try to do with their diet just in the same way that if I can't keep 280 pounds on m y frame, I'm not going to cut it as D1 offensive lineman no matter what I do.
Nearly half of the women involved in the inquiry reported negative experiences with Wetmore and Burroughs and about the same number said they did not trust the coaches.2) I'm stunned by the guts of the dietician. She openly admitted, she “practices performance nutrition within a Division 1 school with high-performing teams, not an eating disorder clinic.”
The dietician telling the lineman to eat 8,000 calories a day to way 330 doesn't apologize, so why should she?
3) It's said to me that according to Runner's World nearly "nearly half of the women involved in the inquiry reported negative experiences with Wetmore and Burroughs and about the same number said they did not trust the coaches."
Half the female athletes don't trust the coaches? That's not good. Period.
It says NEARLY half don't trust their coaches which seems to mean that over half of the women involved do trust their coaches.
I'd say that is nearly half do not trust a coach, that is a really, really big problem.
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huhuh wrote:
Is every program doing this? wrote:
Are all top NCAA women’s distance programs doing body composition testing though? I remember reading that NC State does not do this and neither does BYU. Two of the best programs with excellent female coaches.
Body composition testing seems unnecessary even for performance. Most people including body builders find it difficult to change their body composition. You typically gain both fat and muscle when you put on weight and vice versa, but the relative proportions are highly individual.
Weight matters but body composition hasn’t been shown to matter for performance, all else being equal, for elite athletes.
If you are only looking at elite athletes then there is going to be a narrow range to start with. A male distance runner who is elite is going to be around 5% body fat already so that removes it as predictive (much like other measures such as VO2max where virtually every elite distance runner has a high one already so the range is narrow and makes it far less predictive).
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"Bodyshaming" is completely acceptable if it results in massive PRs. The woke PC movement has banned this discussion though.
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samcallan wrote:
huhuh wrote:
Body composition testing seems unnecessary even for performance. Most people including body builders find it difficult to change their body composition. You typically gain both fat and muscle when you put on weight and vice versa, but the relative proportions are highly individual.
Weight matters but body composition hasn’t been shown to matter for performance, all else being equal, for elite athletes.
If you are only looking at elite athletes then there is going to be a narrow range to start with. A male distance runner who is elite is going to be around 5% body fat already so that removes it as predictive (much like other measures such as VO2max where virtually every elite distance runner has a high one already so the range is narrow and makes it far less predictive).
Exactly my point. In fact, the one sport where you think composition would matter the most, weight restricted Olympic weightlifting, it turns out that the strongest lifters aren’t always the leanest looking.
Studies of elite runner performance in particular don’t show a correlation with fat percentage.
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huhuh wrote:
samcallan wrote:
If you are only looking at elite athletes then there is going to be a narrow range to start with. A male distance runner who is elite is going to be around 5% body fat already so that removes it as predictive (much like other measures such as VO2max where virtually every elite distance runner has a high one already so the range is narrow and makes it far less predictive).
Exactly my point. In fact, the one sport where you think composition would matter the most, weight restricted Olympic weightlifting, it turns out that the strongest lifters aren’t always the leanest looking.
Studies of elite runner performance in particular don’t show a correlation with fat percentage.
Huh? Which studies?
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Winnn wrote:
huhuh wrote:
Exactly my point. In fact, the one sport where you think composition would matter the most, weight restricted Olympic weightlifting, it turns out that the strongest lifters aren’t always the leanest looking.
Studies of elite runner performance in particular don’t show a correlation with fat percentage.
Huh? Which studies?
Really? Here’s the first hit I get on google. Can pull more later.
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That article has nothing to do with elite runners. Try again if you don't think there is a direct correlation between performance and body fat. This isn't controversial.
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fast it wrote:
That article has nothing to do with elite runners. Try again if you don't think there is a direct correlation between performance and body fat. This isn't controversial.
Can’t care to. Learn to read being the title. Or believe whatever you like.
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RW is fake news wrote:
Yeah CU is so terrible and has such a bad culture that Cook, Starliper, and now Dishon are all running to the mountains of Colorado?!?!?! Watch out NCAA here comes the Buffs this fall!!!!
Exactly…
Not to mention two of the top incoming class of 23 freshman: karrie baloga and abbey nechanicky.
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"Approximately 400 athletes have been members of CU’s program since I was hired 31 years ago."
Is Wetmore referring only to the women's cross country program? It seems like he would have coached significantly more athletes during his 31 year tenure.
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jecht wrote:
That's truly up to the individual; good point. I was a volunteer assistant coach at Northland HS in Cbus in 2016 and this also applies to HS football--as Coach Parcells (NYG) said in his autobiography guys have to be treated differently (I'm paraphrasing) based on their mental makeup.
Some guys LOVE negative feedback and "chip on the shoulder" mentality--they will run for you. Others need them to feel like you're their best friend (NO sarcasm, honestly). It really is personal based on the student/athlete.100%. My daughter is not aggressive interpersonally, and a spectacular soccer player on teams with coaches of the second type; teams with coaches of the first type just make her anxious and cause underperformance.
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“I hope this PC culture stops so I can do body composition on my female athletes”
unemployed coaches on this board who spend a lot of time talking about who schools should hire and what coaches should do with their athletes. Thank goodness none of you are being hired by these schools
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fast it wrote:
That article has nothing to do with elite runners. Try again if you don't think there is a direct correlation between performance and body fat. This isn't controversial.
Don't confuse correlation with causation. What's a better way to get to an ideal bf% range for a given individual, decide that it's a relevant goal and underfuel (aka starve) yourself there or fuel with nutrition appropriately for your training level and approach at a healthy rate? If health and performance is the goal then the other metrics should simply be side-effects. It's like everyone has forgotten about Allie Kieffer.
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