Monday, July 23, 2018

USF XC & TF coach Helen Lehman-Winters hired by University of Oregon

After 15 years at USF, Helen Lehman-Winters was just hired by the University of Oregon as the associate head coach for cross country and track and field. Lehman-Winters coached at El Cerrito and Carondelet before joining UCLA as a volunteer coach.

You can read more about Lehman-Winters' hire at this LINK.

You can also check out my coaching legend article about Coach Lehman-Winters at this LINK.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting hire for Oregon. Clearly she was successful, but her success was based on recruiting and fielding overaged, all-European teams. We'll see.

Anonymous said...

You have to have the horses to win and recruiting top athletes is first and foremost to succeeding. But once you get the horses, you need to be able to coach if your are going to win.
Helen won despite recruiting internationally which is a degree of difficulty beyond domestically. Imagine how she will do with her track record of recruiting internationally and now having the allure of attracting the top runners in America to Nike University. Despite where her athletes came from, she produced top ten NCAA finishes at a school that was as low as you could go before she arrived. She can coach.
I wish her family well in leaving California.

Albert Caruana said...

I think the city of San Francisco was a big draw for foreign athletes which is why some of her most successful runners were from abroad. She has proven herself as a coach and I am sure it's an exciting move for her to get the opportunity to recruit and coach some of the best runners in the United States.

Anonymous said...

anon @4:48: "Won despite recruiting internationally"??? Give me a break. She won because she recruited internationally. Mostly overaged girls too by US standards. Sure, she needed to find the horses and she found them, but let's not fool ourselves here.

Albert, not "some of her most successful runners were from abroad" but all of them.

Anonymous said...

If international recruiting is so easy, why isn't everyone doing it?
Cheyne Inman (CA) won a WCC XC Championship ending a 28 year streak of Portland champions
Hillary Kigar, Heather Zytkewicz, Nicole Bowler, Alice Baker, Hayley Niles are five Californians on USF's first WCC Championship team. Out of state Sophie Curl (Washington) and Eva Krchova (Czech) were the 6th and 4th runners on that championship team.

Anonymous said...

anon @11:45: Going back to 2009 to make your point? Entire top 7 this last year was from Europe. A bunch of them age 23 or age 24. Heck, Charlotte Taylor turned 24 a while ago, still has a year of eligibility, and will be 25 before next track season. It's within the rules, but it's not anywhere near the same thing as what Chris Fox did at Syracuse, taking a dead program and winning with almost all locals (yes, even Justyn Knight grew up within a 3-4 hour drive from campus, though you can discount him if you like. The point stands.)

Albert Caruana said...

The most successful cross country and track and field coach in history, John McDonnell, had a lot of success recruiting foreign athletes. I think every coach finds their sweet spot in recruiting and Lehman-Winters found hers in Europe. Now that she is at Oregon, she will have her pick from many of the top runners in this country.

Anonymous said...

Albert, Disagree about McDonnell. But you're making my point. How about this: Ted Banks won 17 NCAA titles, including 6 of 7 in XC from '75-'81 in only 9 years of coaching at UTEP. Of course, he had 29 year old Kenyans running on all-Kenyan UTEP teams. Isn't he the greatest coach of all-time??

Albert Caruana said...

John McDonnell

Accomplishments and honors
Championships
NCAA Championships: 40
NCAA Triple Crowns: 5
SWC Championships: 38
SEC Championships: 46
Awards
30-time national coach of the year
49-time conference coach of the year
62-time region coach of the year

Anonymous said...

Albert, we're devolving into a separate argument. McDonnell won 40 NCAA titles in nearly 40 years of coaching (nearly half in indoor track, which is something of an asterisk to me since a lot of schools don't take indoor track seriously -- especially then -- but whatever), and Banks won 17 in 9 years, including 6 of 7 in cross country at one point. The point is that I don't think either of them is the greatest coach of all-time. Nobody even talks about Banks and people mostly shake their heads at UTEP's run of success with the all-Kenyan teams with ages in their late 20s, but how is Lehman-Winters (or McDonnell for that matter) really any different? By certain measures (winning titles), they were all successful, but a lot of folks including me think that there are more and less impressive ways to win. You can think they're amazing, fine. I think they deserve asterisks. For the record, my bigger issue is that the international kids are so frequently way over-aged (the 21 year old "freshman" that is so common), like a lot of the USF girls. The Europeans as I'm sure you know don't have university-based programs and run at a high level for their clubs (and countries in some cases), so don't lose NCAA eligibility and have a huge advantage with multiple extra years of training and competition as compared to the local 18-year old kids who show up straight out of high school.

Albert Caruana said...

And now we will find out how she does coaching just graduated American high school runners.

Anonymous said...

I fail to understand why an issue is being made of (a) European (or other foreign) athletes and (b) "overage" athletes. If her recruits' nationality and age do not violate NCAA regulations, why the drama? During her tenure at USF, she adhered to the rules and her teams did well. Congratulations to Helen Lehman-Winters on her accomplishments and her new position at Oregon.

Haters gonna hate, but maybe go hate elsewhere?

Anonymous said...

Come on we all know California kids just can't wait not go run at USF :-)

Albert Caruana said...

Ok, kids, playtime is over.

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