New Pirates coach in need of women runners
Porterville introduces new coach and course
Porterville College introduced Brien Friedman, the Pirates’ new women’s cross country head coach, to the campus and community on Wednesday morning in a small, informal meet-and-greet at Jamison Stadium Track.
Friedman, along with PC Director of Student Programs and Athletics Joe Cascio, took questions from a handful of attendees interested in the progress of the new program. The team has garnered some interest from prospective runners but Friedman is still trying to field a roster of at least five runners.
“In simplest terms the goal is to field a team, which is at least five scoring runners,” Friedman said. “Preferably seven because the last two can displace other scoring runners. More than that would be great. As Joe’s been saying, if we could get guys that would be awesome. I love coaching guys, girls. It’s all good to me. But the primary goal is five scoring runners in the conference meet — five women across the line. That’s it.”
Friedman accepted the head coaching position in July, and comes from both a club and collegiate coaching background. His late start shouldn’t hinder him or the team too much since the Pirates had already planned for their first meet to be in midseptemeber.
“The goal is let’s get a team together first using this part of the year, into the first week of the semester,” Cascio said. “Get the word out to the students on campus when they come back and then give those students an opportunity to train and have enough training that they can be competitive for themselves whenever we decide to run our first meet. And competitive meaning that they feel good about what they’ve done...like you’ve gone from point A and you’ve made progress towards point B.”
Limiting his search radius to an hour away from the school, Friedman said he’s spent much of his time contacting local coaches and others from across the Valley to help him find runners for his team. PC is also starting a new running, jogging, and walking class, where Friedman will train students from all different levels of fitness. It’s a class where Friedman expects he may pick up a runner or two.
“That would be awesome,” Friedman said about getting runners from the class. “I’ve
trained people, I've done some personal training as well. So people if they want to just lose weight, if they want to get fitter, if they want all that kind of stuff, that's all great. If we throw them on the track and build their cardio a bit and next thing I know they're running halfway decent. Then why not? [They] have eligibility, it's going to be fun. Get to take some cool trips and be part of a team,
why not?”
Cascio added that the course is also for more than elite or collegiatelevel runners, but for those who prefer to get their exercise outdoors.
“And just to add to that, we're using this kind of as a pilot program,” Cascio said. “This class that we're offering in the fall is kind of a big umbrella, anywhere from intercollegiate competition all the way down to any sort of fitness level, with the idea that maybe at some point Porterville College would
offer like a jogging and walking for fitness course. Or running for fitness.
“Other than the classes that occur in our fitness center, having something like this — there's a lot of people that don't like to work out inside,” Cascio continued. “They enjoy being outdoors, they enjoy the road work. We're trying to fill a need for both intercollegiate athletics and for our students that are trying to graduate from this place and need that physical fitness outlet.”
Friedman and Cascio say there's also the chance that male runners can compete unattached in a number of different types of meets and still have access to the school resources. Friedman added that he would be “happy” to train male runners and find races for them to compete in.
For more information on PC'S new women's cross country program or running, jogging and walking course, contact contact Coach Friedman at (860) 368-1762 or by email at brienfriedman@gmail.com.