"By far the worst coach I have ever had. At first upon meeting Christine I thought it was gonna be a good fit because of her bubbly attitude and seemingly caring nature towards me on phone calls and recruitment visit. That quickly changed once I joined the team, there was a clear hierarchy present during practices and meets that was shown in the way she treated you. Her favorite was obvious and it was always the athlete who was peaking, doing the best that season. To everyone else, she only spoke to you to give you your workout and sometimes would not even talk to you after your race. When you request a meeting with her to discuss an issue, she would become stone cold and unapproachable immediately blaming the problem on athlete no matter the situation making them feel like the issue. Absolute dog sh*t training methods, overtraining, no tapering at the end of seasons, and pain-numbingly routine workouts. Training was so monotonous I knew exactly what workouts we were doing before practice even started. Over training showed through my teammates fractured femurs, repeated injuries, and test results from doctors visits. Yet still, she changed nothing and made the athlete feel useless by highlighting the one teammate who was doing well saying 'see its working for her'. She was clearly on a power trip and saw all the athletes as beneath her. Her wardrobe of wearing black every day match per bleak personality. Toxic environment caused me to develop severe anxiety and depression building up to the point where I had to take time off because I could get through warmups without balling my eyes out. All of this was a shared feeling throughout the team but we couldn't talk about it in front of coach because she would then get mad that we we're making it a 'positive environment'. I could go on and on but I'll leave you with this... if you want a good quality D1 track/XC program this is not the place to be. That being said if you have your heart set on UMass Amherst I'd recommend joining the club track team and compete at the D1 meets unattached. Best of luck to whoever sees this and I wish you the best on your journey."