RUNNING COACH AIRING OF GRIEVANCES 2023
I’ve got a lot of problems with you people, and now you’re gonna hear about it!
As a High School Track and Field coach, I get to see a very broad view of the sports landscape. T&F is the basis of athletics, we sprint, run, throw, and jump. To be good, we need to be specialized and particular, but because the athletes on my team do a lot of other stuff, it's easy for me to (and good for me to) pay attention to what's going on with other sports, and appreciate the whole spectrum.
With this broad view, I see a lot of stuff. Most of it is great. We have more good coaches across sports now than we ever have. But, I've got a lot of problems with some of you people, and now you're gonna hear about it!
(Disclaimer: I am blessed to coach where I do with a great AD, cohort of coaches, supportive and educationally minded S&C coach, happy parents, resources, and motivated kids).
These are all based on real interactions or things I've seen on social media.
1) Private coaches who encourage athletes and parents to hide their employment/consultation from their HS coach.
There are some good reasons to have a private coach, such as, you're a field event athlete and your school cannot find a coach for that particular event.
But, if you're telling a teenager to lie to an authority figure, you have flawed ethics and should not be coaching young people.
(But Colin, you're a private running coach! Yeah, you ain't seeing me coaching other HS kids).
2) Sharks [recruiting specialists] in social media land that will charge teenagers money to help them "revamp social media" or "shoutout" [retweet]. Dude, you have 300 followers and most of them are just other HS athletes. Any HS coach will do both of these things for free. I'm sure this person would charge somebody money to write a letter of recommendation.
3) Coaches who say "my athlete" and/or talk about how many state/national champions they have coached. The dirty little secret is those athletes are usually extremely gifted. Our job is simply to teach them how to love what they do and keep them healthy. Not many champion athletes were built by their HS coaches. [Note: after writing this but before posting, I saw a good tweet about how little development IMG academy does, and how they just inherit and combine talent.]
4) Athletes who shoutout their club teammates more often than their HS teammates. I think that the proliferation of club sports has taken away from the pride in community that HS sports promotes.
5) Influencer running coaches and everything they do on social media.
"HERE'S HOW I PRd BY 45 MINUTES IN THE MARATHON"
Bro, you have been running for 2 years and your first marathon was 4 hours. How did you PR by that much? You ran a lot more. Also you have no kids or other distractions. You clearly live your life on instagram and tiktok.
6) Private school coaches recruiting HS athletes to their club team or gym. Please get off my turf before I call my throwing coach over here.
7) Running influencers who have normalized bike pacers for... everybody. It's out of control.
8) "Strength training for runners." Runners do low weight high rep unilateral work for an hour a day every day. It's called running. Stop this nonsense, pick up some weights, and get strong and explosive.
Now that the grievances have been aired, Here’s to another year of coaching to the real ones that I know are staying humble, growing, putting the kids first, treating the athletes in their care as individual people, learning, and collaborating.
Now for the feats of strength, which you hopefully have been preparing for with real strength training.
