Coaches Art and Linda Kranick on the Saratoga Springs High School track on June 16, 2004, in Saratoga Springs. They have now been permanently banned by U.S.A. Track and Field for emotional and physical misconduct. Ark Kranick died in November.
Philip Kamrass/TImes Union archive
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Seven weeks after renowned track coach Art Kranick died, he and his wife, Linda, have been permanently banned from coaching by USA Track & Field.
Both were banned for “physical misconduct” and “emotional misconduct,” the national governing body for track and field announced. The decision was made on Tuesday, more than a month after Kranick’s death in early November and eight months after both coaches resigned.
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Over nearly four decades, Art Kranick was at the helm of one of the country’s top high school running dynasties. The Kranicks mentored a slew of champion runners and winning teams, leading runners to Nike Cross Nationals titles in 2019 and 2022. Their cross-country teams combined to win more than 20 state championships and nearly 30 titles at the state Federation meet.
But Art Kranick’s coaching methods were the subject of scrutiny in recent years, amid complaints that began almost as soon as he was hired in 1985.
USA Track & Field began investigating the Kranicks at least two years ago, and took testimony from women who had been coached by Art Kranick in the Saratoga Springs School District. But the organization did not decide on Kranick’s case for more than a year after it told the women that it had finished collecting information.
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In the meantime, school district officials vehemently defended the Kranicks, while admitting that they knew about decades of complaints against them. Parents came to school board meetings to defend the coaches as well, saying that their tactics were needed to create winning runners.
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The Kranicks had students run every day, year-round. That’s against state rules for high school sports, but they skirted those rules by creating a club that ran on the days that the track team wasn’t running. Doctors reported serious injuries due to overuse, and reported that students were threatened with being dropped from the team if they took any time off to treat injuries, including broken bones.
Perhaps the most shocking moment came in 1988 when Art Kranick tied student Kristen Gunning to his truck during a track practice, in an effort to force her to run faster. School records showed that the superintendent heard about the incident almost immediately and counseled Kranick not to do it again.
“It is unfortunate that it took 40 years for any organization to acknowledge what thousands of students experienced, but this decision represents the first step toward preventing emotional and physical misconduct in school sports,” Gunning said Friday.
Gunning is now president of Rise Beyond Control Inc., a New York-based nonprofit that wants to end “coercive control and abuse in school sports.” One of the nonprofit’s first goals is to put teeth in the state’s Dignity for All Students Act by getting legislators to approve an amendment that would allow students to file civil lawsuits for violations of the act.
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Now that the Kranicks have been disciplined, questions remain about how the school district supervised them.
Martin Greenberg, the attorney hired by local families to file a complaint about the Kranicks, said that the athletic director and superintendent should resign.
“Now it’s time for the administrators to be punished,” Greenberg said from his home in Florida. “They should immediately resign and apologize to the parents for the harm they have done.”
School Superintendent Michael Patton did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Patton, who became superintendent in 2018, has defended the Kranicks, rehiring them annually. After former students went public with complaints, Patton said he wouldn’t have fired a coach for tying a student to a truck. He also said students chose to “train hard” and were not being forced.
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Greenberg said Patton was ignoring the complaints of physical abuse because he wanted to preserve the district’s reputation for track champions.
“This has been swept under the carpet because winning is everything,” Greenberg said. “However, the school district failed to protect the student- athletes and violated the trust the parents put in them.”
On many occasions, according to school records, the Kranicks were told to stop distributing vitamins without parental permission, forcing students to run daily, and over-training. On some occasions, district officials said the Kranicks had to get their practice plans approved in advance.
But the district did not enforce its rules, according to law firm Harris Beach, which was hired in 2024 by the school board to look into the Kranicks.
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“It appears these matters were adequately discussed with the Kranicks, but the district left the management (or the correction) of these matters to the Kranicks in their discretion,” the law firm said in a report. “With several of those complaints or allegations, evidence reviewed by the investigation team suggests that the district’s review did not go far enough and/or the manner in which the district addressed the complaints or allegations lacked follow up or oversight of directives given.”
The school board rehired them after the report.
But a year ago, Art Kranick suffered a serious illness. In April, Art and Linda Kranick resigned from their coaching jobs. On Nov. 8, Art Kranick died.
Linda Kranick could not be reached for comment on Friday.
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USA Track & Field should have made a decision earlier, Greenberg said. He does not want it to stop there.
“When we handle abuse cases, there’s two prongs to the abuse. One is the perpetrators and the other is the administrators who permitted the abuse to happen,” he said. “We need to punish administrators so there is a lesson to be learned that they can’t let this perpetuate. This is the worst abuse case that I’ve had in high schools in this country … and the administrators let this happen and did nothing to stop it.”