Significant personnel changes are coming this month to Hoka NAZ Elite, and the first and perhaps biggest departure was announced Wednesday morning, when founder Ben Rosario officially resigned as executive director.
It is not overstatement to call this an end of an era.
Rosario, 44, formed the professional group in Flagstaff in early 2014, after the dissolution of the Adidas McMillan Group, and built the team into a force in marathons and, later, the track. Rosario’s exit doesn’t not signal the end of the Hoka-sponsored team, which will continue to compete with other major groups, including, in Flagstaff, Under Armour Dark Sky and the new Nike group that Mike Smith will helm starting this summer.
Two years ago, Rosario handed over the NAZ Elite coaching reins, first to Alan Culpepper and now Jack Mullaney, but now he has severed all ties with the brand, Hoka, and the team. He said in an interview with Flagstaff Running News that, since stepping down this fall, he plans to start an event management company and will reveal more about the business later this month.
His leave-taking is only the start of changes within NAZ Elite. Athlete contracts are up at the end of the month, and sources said that several well-known and veteran runners on the team will not be offered new contracts for the four-year cycle leading to the 2028 Olympics.
Among the departures, sources said, are reported to be 2020 U.S. Olympic Trails Marathon champion Aliphine Tuliamuk, marathoners Kellyn Taylor, Stephanie Bruce, Lauren Hagans and Alice Wright on the women’s side, and Nick Hauger, Futsum Zienasellassie and Matt Baxter on the men’s side. In addition, 2023 U.S. steeplechase champ Krissy Gear has already left the team of her own accord, though she has years remaining on her Hoka contract.
Such a purging is not unusual for sponsors after an Olympic year. Most pro groups evaluate talent and shake up their rosters based on prospects for the future. Plus, athletes themselves leave for better, or at least different, deals.
But the exodus from NAZ Elite perhaps is especially noteworthy because Taylor (38) and Bruce (41 in January) were founding roster members and Tuliamuk (35) was a high-profile signing in 2018 who gave the group its first Olympic Trials victory and who was a four-time national champion.
Rosario addressed Hoka’s overall decisions to sign and develop younger talent with an emphasis on both the track and the roads, as opposed to older runners on a career downslope. Rosario said he left his director position in October, but worked for several weeks pro bono to help with the build up to the New York City Marathon in November.
And, though he was involved for the past year with Hoka executives in deciding future contracts, Rosario said he “wasn’t around” when final personnel decisions were reached.
“They (Hoka) are doing what any brand does when it evolves; they are trying to get better and sell more shoes and trying to grow globally,” Rosario said. “As it relates to sports marketing – and I’m in agreement with them – you have to then match that level of growth in the sports marketing department.
“Part of that is that athletes you are signing have to be at a higher level than the athletes you were signing before. That’s the approach we took as the team as well. It’s business. I wanted to make sure all the final decision on roster and contract were done without me, so that I wasn’t getting in the way because I knew I was moving on. It didn’t feel fair to me to be involved in all that when I was going to be moving on.”
In response to queries specifically about Taylor, Bruce and Tuliamuk, Rosario deferred, saying, “Until Dec. 31 comes, we don’t know for sure (about roster moves.)”
However, he added:
“It’s about data, you know. … which is what every brand does. It’s nuanced, right? Each athlete is different. They have their own brand and performances to look at. If you’re the brand (Hoka, in this case), you say, ‘Look, if this athlete has been with the brand for 10 years and objectively, from a data perspective, their best performances you, say, 2016 to 2020, that’s four years ago.
“So if we’re looking at offering contracts for the next Olympic cycle, we have to project that this athlete will produce even greater performances than they ever have over the course of the next Olympic cycle, and if the answer is no, if we don’t believe that, then it stands to reason they aren’t going to offer the athlete a contract. The athlete themselves might believe that (they can still perform) and (they) very well might do it, but (the brand) can only go on the data.”
Asked whether cutting loose older marathoners is age discrimination, as Taylor vaguely alluded to in a recent social media post, Rosario said he could empathize with both sides of the argument.
“In sports, there’s performance discrimination,” he said. “But it’s not discrimination. If you want to look at it scientifically as to why the athlete isn’t performing as well as they used to, of course you’re going to look at age. But at its core, this is a pro sport. I just think we have to have empathy in this situation for all involved. Meaning, put yourself in an athletes’ shoes. They’ve been with this brand for 10 years and given everything they have and performed at a high level for a long time, including fairly recently, and then they are told they aren’t going to be offered a new contract. It’s emotional.
“But, if I’m going to put myself in their shoes, I’ve got to put myself in the brand’s (Hoka’s) shoes, too. They are saying, ‘Hey, we want to get better. We want to have an even better next four years than we had the last four years. Are we going to do that with these athletes that, on paper, had their best performances, four or five years ago? Or are we going to say, let’s look for a new crop of athletes that are, on paper, experiencing an upward trajectory. I see both sides. But it’s not really sides. That’s what we always want to do in this world, take sides. You’re either right or wrong. You’re either with me or against me. But it’s more nuanced than that.”
Rosario denied that he left in October to avoid the difficult task of informing athletes he’s worked closely with for years that their time was up.
“That’s not really true,” he said. “I was a part of plenty of conversations on who was going to move forward and who wasn’t. I sat down with the athletes individually in the summer and told them changes were coming. In September, I led a meeting where I said big changes were coming and that these were the criteria.”
What was said at that meeting?
“If you weren’t running at this level, if you weren’t doing these things, and if your contract was up, there was a good chance you weren’t going to move forward,” Rosario said. “My theory was, these people deserve to know so that they can begin to make plans.”
The battle for talent is competitive, and the dollars shoe companies allocate for signing runners is finite. Hoka is in competition not just with Under Armour Dark Sky and the deep pockets Nike will use to set up Mike Smith’s team this summer, but there are other brands and teams — ON Running in Boulder, Puma in North Carolina, Bowerman in Oregon to name just a few – that serve as rivals.
“Put yourself in an athletes’ shoes. They’ve been with this brand for 10 years and given everything they have and performed at a high level for a long time, including fairly recently, and then they are told they aren’t going to be offered a new contract. It’s emotional. But, if I’m going to put myself in their shoes, I’ve got to put myself in the brand’s (Hoka’s) shoes, too. They are saying, ‘Hey, we want to get better. We want to have an even better next four years than we had the last four years. Are we going to do that with these athletes that, on paper, had their best performances, four or five years ago?’”
Ben Rosario
Nike, in particular, is expected to make its presence felt strongly in Flagstaff under Smith, the soon-to-be-former NAU coach.
Rosario said the pro group landscape is not oversaturated, in Flagstaff or across the country. But he gave a caveat: that groups will have to step up their performance to remain relevant in the next four years. Coming from a background earlier in his career as a running-store owner in St. Louis, Rosario used the running boom as an example/
“There was a time with running stores where they got a little saturated,” he said. “People said this is the end of running stores. Well, no, the cream rose to the top and the bottom went away. What you’ll see here is that it’ll get even more ‘elite,’ if you will; it’s an overused and somewhat controversial word in our world. I think people will still come (to Flagstaff) to train. There’ll be more people here than ever. But in terms of the teams, you’re going to have to be performing at a high level to make it.
“As that is related to Hoka and NAZ, that’s why I’m in favor of what they’re doing (with contracts), even though it’s difficult. Another way to look at it is, if your roster includes athletes that Nike wouldn’t sign, why do you have them? That’s a brutal way to look at it, but … Look, I’m competitive. If there’s one thing I’m sad about leaving, it’s that I’d love to go against Nike. Nike will do a great job, Mike will do a great job, no question, but there’s nothing that says another brand can’t compete. But they have to put in the resources. We’ll see.”
Rosario is not leaving Flagstaff; his new venture will be based here. And he said he’s not ruling out going back to coaching, perhaps on the side – “but I’m not going to start a group, that’s for sure,” he added with a laugh.
This is a major career move for Rosario, who sold his running stores in St. Louis in 2012 and came to Flagstaff to coach a few athletes and mull options. Once McMillan’s group dissolved, Ben and his wife, Jen, started NAZ Elite with their own funds in 2014, a risky proposition.
A year later, Hoka signed on as the title sponsor, and the team grew and thrived.
“It was an interesting time,” Rosario said of the early years. “At the end of 2013 was when Adidas McMillan elite dissolved. It left a void. There were a number of athletes, Kellyn, Steph and Ben Bruce, Scott Smith, Amy Van Alstine, who liked the group structure but had no group. There was a need.
“I felt we’d succeed, but my way of doing things in building a brand is, yes, I had a five-year plan, but I pretty much just lived in the present. It’s like watching a kid grow up. You don’t realize how big they are if you’re with them every day, but when Auntie comes in from another state, she’s shocked how big they are. When you’re in the middle of it, you don’t realize how big it’s getting until you get a chance to step back.”
Rosario took a step back two years ago when he decided to leave his dual role as coach and executive director to focus strictly on the business side. He said he does not regret the decision, but he felt a bit separated from the day-to-day dealings with the athletes.
His departure may affect more than just NAZ Elite. Rosario spearheaded many fund-raising and community-building efforts in Flagstaff and beyond, including helping raise money for Hopi High School’s cross country program and starting a run in Ferguson, Mo., to help promote diversity in recreational running. He also has sponsored and led several youth running programs in Flagstaff, and this past fall, he served as a volunteer assistant to the state championship Flagstaff High program.
Looking back on his career, Rosario said he considers himself an entrepreneur who “likes to build things.” He sold his running stores after six successful years to build NAZ Elite. Now, he’ll have a new, as-yet unannounced business venture to build from scratch.
“With the team, the excitement was building the brand and getting the sponsorship, winning our first few national titles, getting our first few world marathon major top 10s and winning the U.S. Olympic Marathon trials,” he said. “Then, partially because of the pandemic, it was like, to me, yeah, it was built. I was thinking about (leaving coaching) as early as 2021. I knew I needed a change. I thought, well, ‘I’ll have somebody else coach and I’ll focus on the business and we’ll do these cool things.
“A lot of the things that drove me, in retrospect, as far as the content and the website and videos – just everything – was the coaching. I didn’t realize that when I made the switch. I just cared about the athletes so much, I wanted to get them the recognition they deserved. … When I wasn’t coaching, you get a little bit detached. I don’t think I had the same drive to create the content I felt in the first eight years.
“There was a period of time when I tried to create a narrative in my own mind. Oh, it’s because of my mental health, it’s because of my family and all these things. No. I just needed the change.”
Unafraid of change and taking chances, Rosario said he knows it’s time to sever himself from his own creation — NAZ Elite. It’s time, he said.
“From an outsider’s view, it seems crazy,” he said. “But it seemed crazy to leave the stores back in 2012 because they were doing so well. I ultimately believed that instead of just trying to come up with some beautiful answer, I’d just tell the truth. Which is: my gut told me it was time. That’s not a sexy answer but that’s the answer to leaving the whole thing and doing something new.”
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