Leading off today: Acclaimed cross country and track coach Bill Aris is on paid leave pending completion of a Fayetteville-Manlius school district investigation, Syracuse-area media reported this week.
Aris told cnycentral.com he was removed from coaching responsibilities early this month. The school board approved hiring a lawyer with expertise in education and employment law on May 11, and the investigation appears to stem from parents' concerns about his training techniques.
As documented by national running writer Marc Bloom in a 2019 book, Aris has leaned heavily upon the Stotan ("Stoics" plus "Spartans") principles adapted from Percy Cerutty, the Australian coach of legendary miler Herb Elliot. Though built on rigorous training, the F-M success also rests largely on mental aspects of a demanding sport -- namely a mindset that the real racing on 5K trails happens in the second half with the ability to run though the pain of exertion.
Aris, who turns 71 next week, built Fayetteville-Manlius distance running into a state and national juggernaut. The F-M girls cross country team won the Nike Cross Nationals championship 11 times in 12 years beginning in 2006, a streak interrupted only by a second-place finish in 2013. The boys won the meet in 2014 and posted six other top-five finishes from 2004-18.
Now, however, the school board appears to be reacting to parental complaints that surfaced last August about possible overtraining. The cnycentral story also cited a perceived "climate of fear," with a complaint drafted by an attorney saying "athletes feel complaints will result in retribution from Coach Aris."
Aris, who was sidelined midway through the outdoor track season, said he has not been interviewed yet by the district's appointed lawyer. He was instructed not to communicate with athletes or parents and is only allowed on school grounds if given permission.
The story may sound familiar
The depth of the state's distance-running talent is such that New York is its own region in Nike Cross Nationals, the unofficial national championship (qualifiers technically compete as club teams rather than representing their schools) in the sport, thus guaranteeing at least two of the 22 berths.
While other programs have qualified for NXN and enjoyed success, only two have been consistently great: Fayetteville-Manlius and Saratoga Springs. However, the last two years have been tumultuous in Saratoga Springs.
After many complaints by runners and parents -- some going back as far as 1989 -- the school district released a law firm's findings in March 2024 that concluded Saratoga officials did not go far enough in addressing concerns about multiple coaches.
The training methods of former distance-running coaches Art Kranick, who died last fall, and his wife Linda came under particular scrutiny. In a move highly unusual for a scholastic-level program, USA Track & Field announced a permanent coaching ban for the Kranicks last December. USATF cited "physical misconduct" and "emotional misconduct," in its decision, The Times Union reported.
As is now the case with Aris at Fayetteville-Manlius, many families publicly defended the Kranicks.
A key difference at this juncture is the sensational nature of some of the grievances at Saratoga Springs. Most famously, a complaint from Kristen (Gecewicz) Gunning, who ran from 1985-89, said she was tied at the waist to the back of a truck that Art Kranick then drove as she ran behind it in order to push her to run faster.
"It is unfortunate that it took 40 years for any organization to acknowledge what thousands of students experienced," Gunning said in December, "but this decision represents the first step toward preventing emotional and physical misconduct in school sports."
Mary Cain resurfaces with the release of a book
It was impossible to write about New York high school sports early last decade without referencing Mary Cain numerous times. As a Bronxville distance runner, she rolled up numerous state championships and even qualified for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials in the 800 meters. She also set an American schoolgirl record in the outdoor 1,500 and was named the Track and Field News High School Athlete of the Year in 2013.
However, at the age of 16 Cain chose to forego her remaining high school eligibility as well as collegiate eligibility in order to join Nike's Oregon Project under Alberto Salazar in 2013.
As was extensively chronicled a decade ago, Cain flamed out, failed to qualify for the 2016 Olympic, sued Salazar and Nike, and large disappeared from the spotlight.
Now a 29-year-old medical school student at Stanford, Cain has written "This Is Not About Running," a memoir about her athletic experiences -- good and bad -- and the toxicity permeating youth sports.
"Whether it's the sports executives who monetize the bodies of others, the coaches who are given carte blanche control of young people, the teammates who mistreat one another all for a spot on a team, the media that denigrates athletes for article clicks, or the fans who develop unhealthy parasocial relationships with strangers -- sports normalizes cruelty," she said in a New York Post interview.
Cain shares a lot of deeply personal information, including the deterioration of her working relationship with the since-disgraced Salazar. That includes cutting herself and having suicidal thoughts, a disclosure she says the coach and the team's sports psychologists dismissed.
"They responded by saying they were tired and wanted to go to bed -- is really the long and the short of it," she told NPR. "And I think what's so sad for me is how, in that moment, I didn't think, wow, their reaction is wrong, or their reaction is bad. I thought, I feel so bad I'm such a burden to them. And I want people who've ever kind of been in that position to know, like, that was not OK that that person did that. But you also shouldn't feel shame for having that reaction 'cause that's really what abuse does to you."
