I was recruited by Derick to run at Earlham College and ran under him for six months before he left for another job at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, another school in our conference. I feel it would be best to put the ideas I have into a core thesis before I dive deep into some points. Derick is a highly skilled coach in developing athletes into Conference champion/National qualifying distance runners (3k-10k); however, his shortcomings in interpersonal communication skills and his own personal desire to advance his career stunts the development of positive relationships with his athletes. To start with the positive, Derick's commitment to developing quality distance athletes was a main reason I committed to run under him. He never boasted about it, but through my own research and discussions with him it was evident he had a wealth of knowledge from a variety of distance coaches and sources to put together a quality training program for distance runners. When I ran for him, he would work as hard as possible to make sure we had the spikes, injury prevention tools, and other materials to ensure we could be successful. That being said, looking through the personal bests of his athletes and where he's had most success as a coach, it's evident he's still mastering how to best coach middle-distance. In my time at Earlham, we had an upperclassmen who as a senior in high school had run 49 for 400m and around 2:00 for 800m, yet Derick insisted for three years on training him as a long distance runner which didn't allow him to reach his full potential. There was never good communication there regarding the rationale for this, and it just didn't make sense for this athlete. If you're going to run under Derick, be prepared to be trained almost entirely as a true distance athlete. Derick's communication skills in my time left much to be desired. Not necessarily his ability to motivate me, but just basic day to day stuff. Scheduling weekend practices proved to be a struggle often with little forward advance until the last minute. If this proved that difficult with a small team of 15-20 men and women, imagine this with any bigger sized team. I also have a hard time looking back at my days under his tenure when seeing how I was an obvious part of his favoritism system. There's nothing wrong with coaches giving athletes as much attention as the athlete gives in terms of work, but this wasn't how it entirely worked under Derick. I was our top men's runner, so I never got the short end of the stick and most of our men's team didn't as we were a Conference championship team. However, our women's team, which was still emerging during my time with Derick, received only a fraction of his attention despite him being the head coach for both. And to my previous point, there were multiple women's athletes who were committed and putting in a level of effort that should've warranted some effort in return. There's a saying that the only thing worse than hate is apathy, and for some of the emerging athletes on our team, they received a great deal of apathy from Derick. I'll try to keep my own emotions out of my next point for the sake of the athletes, who are mature enough to come to their own conclusions. The reason why it's hard to keep my emotions out of it is the fact that Derick left smack in the middle of my freshman indoor season, with zero advance notice (No more than one week) to anyone, Admin included. As stated previously, he then chose to immediately take a job at a rival school leaving our former assistant coaches (then promoted to interim head coaches) largely shorthanded. What does this mean though for athletes being recruited by Derick? In my opinion, it means be prepared to not have as strong of a relationship with him. At his last three jobs (Trinity, Albion, Earlham), Derick has stayed around for 3-6 years roughly for each. A general commonality amongst the top Division III running schools is they generally have coaches who have chosen to settle down and build at an institution for a decade if not more. Derick is now on his fourth Division III school and if he chooses to leave again, it's highly likely it will be to a smaller DI or DII. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's good to have aspirations for where you want to go, but potential athletes of his have a right to know this as this isn't of course something that would be mentioned in a recruiting pitch. Academically, our team was USTFCCA All-Academic under Derick, but I see that mostly as a product of each athlete's own individual hard work. Derick rarely asked us about our attendance or performance in the classroom, but just said enough to highlight to us that it was important to stay eligible. Nothing crazy in that department. This will likely be a longer review for those who may read it, but I hope you all find it helpful and fair. To be honest, I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the way things ended with Derick, but I hope my review was able to transcend that and offer valuable insight.