Sean Brosnan's Book on Newbury Park's Success

Brosnan has a coaching job. it’s already known the running word. At least I heard it was confirmed during the Olympics and I wasn’t surprised at all he chose to work with pros. Its fits him much better then the NCAA.

Who is Brosnan coaching? Are you expecting us to believe he has a job and hasn't announced anything when he's announced and is selling a book that isn't even written yet?

I'm sure he's chosen to work with pros, the issue is, the pros will need to chose to work with him.

ya i feel like if you want to leave a legacy as a coach you at least need to have a longer career than your athletes. If he'd gotten a few years at UCLA and produced some national quality athletes, I think you could start talking about a legacy (although coaches like Smith, Wetmore, McDonnell, the Powells, and maybe even Ben Thomas now would still have undoubtedly left more of a mark on the sport).

I think I give Brosnan more credit than most for instilling a remarkable mindset in the Youngs and Sahlmans. From the way Mike Smith spoke about Nico when he first started at NAU (raised the bar for the whole team), I don't think Nico would've made the 2024 Olympics if someone else had been his HS coach. I'd believe he could be an NCAA champion still, and might make the Olympics in 2028 since he's still insanely talented, but he wouldn't be running sub-27 in the Olympic final at age 21 without Brosnan coaching him in HS.

That's what I'd be most interested in hearing about in the book. I'd love to see him recreate it somewhere else, but he's gotta start coaching people for that to happen. Until he proves his success outside of NP, he'll kinda just always be a sentence in the Young's and Sahlman's Wikipedia pages.

If he does ever have a big success again though (and I think he will) I will literally never let any of you forget about it stay mad Brosnan haters

I think it is unfortunate for him the way his career has played out. The longer he is out of coaching the more unlikely that he ever coaches again. If nothing happens this year for him in a post-Olympic setting then nothing ever will. And to be honest, we will never really know his level of ability, though my suspicion is that he would have been an excellent coach over the long term. Fatal flaw: getting the wrong person pissed off.

I'm no expert, so don't mean to criticize, but I'm not sure having the website for the only channel to purchase the book, be down for first several days, is the most effective strategy to sell the book.

By the way, having a collectors edition available for purchase, before the book is even written, is a total power move. What chutzpah! HaHa

Because RWB is very overrated as I imagine this book will be. RWB was a well written chronicle about a great time in Colorado's history, but I have never understood why people were so over the moon about it? I also found "Once a Runner" to be overhyped. It's a good read but not some life altering piece of literature.

If the way Brosnan promotes himself is any indication, this book will probably be 80% "Look how awesome I am!!!", 10% "Tanya did an amazing job, too, and the remainder will be some tidbits and opinions about the athletes that did the running.

The book was written by the coach who Redefined Fast and changed the way we look at HS running. Never seen before.

Im stoked to read this book. Just like every other book out there you don’t have to read it. If you’re wasting time say you won’t read it then don’t. The reality is you will most likely give it a read. Haters feed off stuff like this.

Brosnan is successful because he doesn’t give a sh!t what people think and does what he does. Haters always hate and Brosnan like it or not was one of the best coaches seen.

FYI he got you talking about his book. He wins again

Thanks Sean.

By the way your site is down again. Are you and Letsrun sharing a server?

I don’t want to read this I just want the celebrity memoir book club to read it and give me a summary

The primary reason that RWB is so popular is that Lear was there embedded in Boulder. It is pure first person journalism unfiltered. A book written based on interviews with Brosnan, Youngs, and Sahlmans years after the events will be a lot more biased, less interesting, and less true.

At best, I am hoping for a weaker version of sub 4: Alan Webb. Lear had no agenda in writing sub 4, Brosnan clearly does with his book.

I agree with your assessment of RWB's popularity. That hit the nail on the head as to why I really liked it vs say, RUM. For any team that podiums at Nationals there would be very interesting back stories of success and failure that are now relegated to the fading memories of the participants. Maybe not literary masterpieces but something I would read nonetheless.

Also, no doubt that there are risks that the NP/Brosnan book may fall short of expectations but what other options are there? From what I saw of their running history prior to NP there was solid potential but nothing that indicated how good they got. I'd say it's worth the potential for disappointment.

This is more insightful than you realize. For the first 40+ years of his life, he was completely irrelevant. Then he crosses paths with the Youngs and Sahlmans and he's in the spotlight. That's all he really wants is for people to talk about him; to be important.

Exactly. Now that he can't find a job, he is desperately trying to stay relevant by cashing in on Nico Young and Mike Smith's results.

Not Sean. But I’m a huge track fan and been following California track & field for 25 years

If we are looking at facts Mike Smith has benefited from Brosnan’s success more then the other way around. Smith in a recent interview gives big credit to Brosnan for preparing Newbury Park athletes for the next level.
No other team in high school history created the buzz and excitement that Newbury Park did. Brosnan did things right and teamed up with well known authors to create a book about the best hs team we have ever seen. As a coach myself I’m definitely going to give this a read. Obviously a lot of time and money went into this book and I can’t say that for a lot of other running stories out there.

I never gave high school running a second of my time until Newberry Park was on the scene. Teaming up with Chris Lear has me intrigued big time. No reason not to read it.

That’s the great thing about a book. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to read it.

Personally I will read it because I’ve been a huge fan for a while now. The Newbury Park era was unlike no other.

Only Brosnan fanboys would credit the high school coach more than the college coach who led Nico to the Olympics.

Any Coach who had the Sahlmans and Youngs in their school district would have won a high school national championship.

Brosnan needs to prove he can coach a successful team without those 2 familes before 99.9% of letsrun would even consider reading this book.

He never coached a successful team before Newbury Park, and he got fired(no renewed) from his only coaching job after.