Imagine studying at an Ivy League, as wonderful as it may seem from afar, it can get ugly under the burden of relentless expectations. While you’re battling to prove yourself, guidance from teachers and coaches can come as a boon. But sometimes, the coaches struggle too. There is no reason to believe coaches are immune to the high intensity Ivy League environment.
Citius Mag took to Twitter to announce the comeback of the Office hours to its podcast, and who is a better choice to kick it off than Alex Gibby, the Harvard cross country coach? The Crimson coach emphasized the pressure to juggle between academics and athletics in a community like Harvard. “You’re taking kids and trying to teach them seven different things at once – like how to adapt for the first time away from home, being able to manage the academic piece, the recovery piece, the social piece.” The NCAA coach also has a novel approach to dealing with setbacks.
The Ivy League coach does not believe that your mistakes define you, he believes they only lay the foundation for what you can someday achieve. “You’re probably going to see them do six or seven things well and three or four things wrong. You just keep moving those markers until you get them to a place where they can perform at a high level and do something they didn’t think they were capable of doing.” Gibby is not one of those to take you down over your mistakes, but offers a hand every time you fall on the track, so that one day you don’t.
The tweet features Gibby donning a Harvard sweatshirt with a text over it that read, “we say this all the time in our program: you’re either winning or you’re learning… there’s so many lessons to learn. As a coach you’d prefer perfection, but perfection doesn’t exist – and if it does, it’s a factor of luck.” Losing isn’t an option in Gibby’s coaching program, and neither is luck.
“You’re taking kids and trying to teach them seven different things at once – like how to adapt for the first time away from home, being able to manage the academic piece, the recovery piece, the social piece….You’re probably going to see them do six or seven things well and… pic.twitter.com/t79ejWNOIp
— Chris Chavez (@ChrisChavez) February 28, 2025
In his 28 years of coaching, the coach has been at William & Mary, Michigan, Charlotte, and SFA. Besides being a coach, he has also been a friend, and maybe that’s what the best part is about the culture he is building in Boston, Massachusetts.
Alex Gibby never starts practice on time
‘We’re going to take what we’re doing seriously, but we’re not going to take ourselves seriously.’ The men’s and women’s middle-distance and distance groups’ mentor has been with the Crimson for 8 years now, and this has been his philosophy; he wants the students to sit back, relax, and enjoy with their teammates when they cross the river into Harvard Athletics. But don’t mistake him as lenient, the Graham Blanks’ coach might love his juggling, but he also goes for the decimal. The coach does what he can to pacify the high intensity Ivy League environment.
He continues in the podcast, “I never start practice on time. Everything else in their life is down to the minute…Everything else is down to the minute, down to the second, the decimal, you name it.” Some might argue that his approach is a bit more relaxed, but that is how he just likes it, and when you see what he has done in Boston, you would beam with pride and respect for the man.
It has been phenomenal since he joined the Ivy institution’s track and field team in 2017. The crimson’s coach gave them the season of history books (2023-24), mentoring student-athletes to three NCAA national titles. Graham Blanks wrote history by becoming the first student-athlete in Ivy League history to win the NCAA Men’s Cross Country National Championship in 2023; then it was Blanks again who got All-America First Team status in the 5000m at the 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championships followed by Ramsden being named the school’s first finalist for The Bowerman; all this under Gibby’s mentorship. But do not mistake the 2023 USTFCCCA Northeast’s Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year for just a one season wonder.
In the 2022-23 campaign, Gibby led Maia Ramsden to her first national title and Ramsden to All-America honors at the 2022 NCAA Cross Country Championships, along with All-America First Team status in the indoor mile and the 3000m. This was also the season when Gibby brought home the women’s Ivy League title and was named the Ivy League’s Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year for a second time. The first one came in the very previous season when he coached the women’s team to its first Ivy League Championship in cross country since 2016.
The team has been up to another great season under Gibby in 2024-25, with the women winning the Paul Short Run for the first time in school history. What accolades do you think are loading for the man this time around?
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