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Recruting - Mary Cain

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sebastianc

Diaper Dandy
Apr 11, 2010
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This is an interesting article about Alberto Salazar "coaching" Mary Cain while she is still in high school. Be curious what others thought.

Me? Your life - do what you wish. On the other hand, I am a strong believer in letting kids grow-up and enjoy their childhoods. There is plenty of time to be an adult. Don't rush it. Cain no longer runs with her school. I think she loses something there.

Note: this is not an argument. I do not claim to be right. Others may have a totally different view and I would not argue against it.

For VU fans, this undoubtedly means Mary Cain is going to Oregon and getting an early start on a pro career. This is a scholar-athlete in VU's prime recruiting area and figured there might be a good chance she might come to VU. Only competition might have been Harvrd or Princeton because Bronxville is in the pricey suburbs and her grades are good (4.0). No chance now.

To paraphrase a line from A Man for All Seasons: "Why Mary, it profits a woman nothing to give her soul for the entire world, but ... for Oregon?"

Runner's World
 
sebastianic,

I saw it on Let's Run yesterday and haven't checked back for any comments today.
I thoroughly agree with you, but where is this nonsense going to end. I doubt if it will.

Although I have spent the last 50+ years up here in the hills of New York, I grew up in
Havertown, Pa. We had CYO games, but most of our sports were a bunch of kids from Oakmont
playing kids from Brookline without any coaches or refs. In the class ahead of me at Saint Denis
there were probably a dozen boys; one pitched in National League; another kid played in the NBA.
 
I don't know if she was going to gain anything by dominating every single high school race she entered. I would sort of like to see what would happen if she skipped college altogether. We're the only country in the world that does this, and she already runs faster than some people with professional contracts.
 
If my daughter was US rec holder I'd probably take the money--if offered-- and send her to school of my/her choice. In this case who knows, Cain could end up at P,Y,or homebase Columbia?

Going to Oregon doesn't appeal that much to me if I was a pro and wouldn't be competing there. I'm assuming she signs with Nike in June '13?

I've seen it happen before though that kids are sometimes taught that they should be competing for themselves as individuals and not HS or college. I'm not saying Cain has an attitude (like Liz Mueller) but maybe she sees herself as different (because she is).

McGeehan was apparently offered 350k/perks to sign with New Balance. Eamon tried to get the Irish Board to change policy and let her " B" standard get her on the Irish '12 Oly.team (who only would take A's). Things didn't work out as planned for her but maybe it will for Cain and she'll be on the US team for '16?
This post was edited on 10/22 3:13 AM by Or1on
 
Interesting topic, especially on the girls/womens side. It can work out or it can go bad. But too much pressure on these girls too early can have catastrophically bad outcomes in rare cases, just google the name Kathy Ormsby for the worst of the worst stories.

Sometimes it works if you have a parent with some sanity. Ex: Neely Spence at Shipp. She could have gone anywhere. Family decided to keep her under her dad's tutelage at Shipp and it appears to have worked out well. She ran well, won some D2 titles and appears to be headed for a shot at a successful pro career.

But there can be horror stories. The name Brianna Jackucewitz from Colts Neck, NJ jumps out at me. Her old man pushed her way too hard at a much too early age, he is a nutcase. He had her out running 5-10K road races all summer as a 12 year old trying to set age group records. She was being compared to Mary Decker as a 13-14 year old. Spin 8 yrs. later and she is just barely making the top 5 on Harvard's XC team. IMHO, too much too soon for her.

Kids need to be allowed to develop at their own pace and parents can sometimes be the worst enemy in that goal.
 
Everybody's different. If the kid wants to run, let them run. It doesn't sound like Mary is being forced into doing anything, plus Alberto has a pretty good track record of not overworking/over racing kids.


This post was edited on 10/22 5:30 PM by TheFoyeEffect
 
Foye: I agree to some degree. But I think the adults have to be smart enough to know when to pull a kid back, even if they want to work their tails off it may not be in their best long term interest to do so. It's the job of the adults, thankfullly a guy like Salazar knows what he is doing, to rein the kids in at times. Some parents don't have any clue on that stuff. We see them every w/e on soccer/lax/baseball/hoops fields across the country.
 
Exactly. Where she benefits here is that Alberto knows from firsthand experience what over training will do to you. He went from the best marathoner in the world to an also-ran remarkably quickly because he trained like a psycho.

He's big into lower impact type training, and that girl won't run a race if there's a loose piece of gravel on the course/track. It may not end up working for her, but if he's talking about how she has some biomechanic kinks while she's already this fast, that's just scary.

I'll admit that I was a skeptic of Alberto before this summer, but now I think he should coach as many athletes as he can.
 
The Olympics introduced us to Missy Franklin, who won a few medals in swimming - including four golds. She is already where Mary Cain hopes to go. Franklin is a high school senior and still doing the teenage thing. She enjoys competing with her high school team and its social life. Next year she will be attending Berkeley. That is a far cry from Oregon. Her family is also fairly well-off. They could have bought into all of the hoopla that goes with stardom and gone pro now with endorsements, etc. She chose not to. I believe that is healthier.


As for Salazar's coaching … How do you correct biomechanics from 3,000 miles away? Right now, Cain projects as 800 / 1600. What success has Salazar had coaching middle-distance runners like that? Yes, he has had success with Rupp and others, but that is distance. And I am not so sure his record coaching women is all that great. Whatever happened with him and Ari Lambie?


I hear what some of you are saying. If you want to be great, then get on with it … now. However, I still think you should take some time to smell the roses.
This post was edited on 10/23 4:48 PM by sebastianc
 
I think Missy Franklin has put herself in a position that she could regret in the future and is making a grave mistake.

Case in point: Allyson Felix. Felix was a young superstar, but nowhere near as dominant as Missy Franklin (no gold medals) with a solid support structure. Adidas offered her a contract, paid for her tuition to USC, and allowed her to run on her own terms while also getting a free education rather than running at the whim of a college coach whose main goal is to score points and win championships. Missy Franklin is of a higher profile than Felix, so there's no way she couldn't get the exact same deal while also being nearly set for life.
 
Swimming and track is apples to oranges. Most swimmers, esp. women, may peak in their late teens. Not usual for teenage swimmers to be breaking world records.

You aren't going to see that in track. Most sprinters peak in their mid to late 20s and distance runners in their late 20s to early 30s, or even later. To have a girl training like she is a world class athlete at a very young age can lead to burn out very quickly.
 
I doubt she'll be training like a world class athlete. I'd be much more afraid that a high school coach would ruin her, to be honest.
 
Can't disagree with you there. My brother is a volunteer coach for his kid's HS XC team this fall and knows a ton about training and racing. The head coach is a great guy and the kids love him (heck they have 104 kids out for HS XC team) but he acts like XC is baseball. They run 2 meets a week (3 miles each) and he doesn't think twice about it. My brother finally got him to rest the top 7 guys on the minor midweek meets so that they wouldn't be raced out by the time their district meet rolled around, which is today. The guy thought it was just as important to win some rinky dink tri meet on a tuesday vs. running well at Paul Short, or Districts and had no qualms about all those races they had on their legs. The kids in the past were practically dragging by the big meets at the end of the season. Thankfully, the guy came around and has pulled back on the racing to get the top kids to peak when it counts.
 
Cain has moved beyond mere HS stardom into a level of national celebrity that only a few US runners have experienced.
She may run against NCAA competition but I wouldn't be surprised if she bypassed the whole team process while getting paid to go to school by Nike.
This post was edited on 1/26 8:39 PM by Or1on
 
TIRUNESH DIBABA ETH
ASHLEY HIGGINSON USA
SARAH BROWN USA
BRENDA MARTINEZ USA
SHEILA REID CAN
MARY CAIN USA
NICOLE SIFUENTES CAN
GOTYTOM GEBRESLASE ETH
TARA ERDMANN USA
MARDREA HYMAN

I believe this race will be on fairly early tomorrow evening on ESPN3? Sheila v.Mary (with Dibaba so far out in front pack will likely stretch out early with pr's probable).


This post was edited on 2/2 3:34 PM by Or1on

Reid v. Cain over 2m
 
Dibaba destroyed the field in 9:13, Reid 2nd in 9:37, Cain 3rd in 9:38. Cain broke national high school indoor 2 mile record by 17 seconds. She is a talent.
 
WC - 'n the class ahead of me at Saint Denis
there were probably a dozen boys; one pitched in National League; another kid played in the NBA."
Who?
dozen boys?? St D was HUGE.
 
Geronimo,

My class was even smaller, but I am not going to mention
people's names on an international message board. The point
I was trying to make was that two of our kids succeeded without
all the organized teenage sports of today which I can not stand.

I am just a huge VU track fan, and I probably have been to the
Penn Relays 35 times or more. And if I am on the right side of the
grass in April I will be there again.
 
I would offer to Mary (long odds or not). I'd tell her she --with Al-- can select her race schedule herself. All that will be asked is that she run NCAA CC ( 1 race) and the Outdoor championships in June (heat ,final).

This would not work but I'd try anyway. She'll probably take a few visits in about 6 months.
 
If I'm Mary Cain, I'm going pro tomorrow and getting a shoe company to pay my schooling like Ajee Wilson is doing.
 
+1, she should go to school, but turn pro and not run in NCAA meets. It can be dangerous though, it didn't work out well for Webb and it has been an adjustment for Andrews.
 
Eh, Webb still had a decent career. He holds the American record in the mile, he's run good times at other distance races, had a world lead in a championship season, and made an Olympics.

If she's not going to go to Oregon on the AlSal plan like Rupp, it's not worth it.
 
They were too high. Also, part of Webb's problem was that he's switched coaches like a dozen times. What Rupp had was continuity in that area, he's been with Salazar since he was a junior in high school and he gets better every year without failure.
 
Very true, Webb would have had more stability if he had stayed in college. At least off a couple more years.

Has rupp run a marathon yet?
 
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