Best High School Cross Country Coaches Ever

I saw Pat Tyson at a clinic this summer and I was very impressed by his enthusiasm for the sport of Cross Country. University of Kentucky got themselves a fine coach who will do wonders for their distance program.

Harry Johnson (South Eugene, Eugene, OR)

In 1970s, won about 8 state xc championships

From Tennessee, George Gibson (Houston) with about 5 state championships over the past 10 years, Jim McNamee (Oak Ridge) with 8 over 26 years, Tom Coghenour (Dobyns-Bennett) with several boys' and girls' titles and a bunch of good collegiate runners, Sam Roberts (Knox West) with 1 boys' and 1 girls' title but a load of individual wins, Mike Wood (McCallie) too.

Oops, Van Townsend (Baylor), too.

Oh, please, here we go again. It isn't true, and all you need to do is to look carefully. I've posted information on York runners a number of times over the past few years and won't do it again here.

The reality here is that York HS has around 1900-2000 students total, and 130 boys go out for XC each year. It's tradition there. Sure, Newton gets a lot of runners; some coaches never do. But the question still asks who the best coaches are, ever- not who does the best with fewest runners, etc. I've seen a lot of good names here. I'm obviously biased, but you can't argue with Newton's success- 25 state titles in a highly competitive state, 19 second place finishes, and only once lower than 5th. In something like 48 years. A few York runners still can be found among the top times for 3200- Sage, White, Craker, Bakken. York has one of the fastest 4x800 ever and perhaps the great xc team with the Sage led team of a few years ago- a case could be made.

Van Rose-Shawnee Mission NW

Verlyn Schmidt-Shawnee Mission South

if we're gonna go Louisiana you've got to say Dave Anderson.

Only coach to win a 5A xc title from a public school (5 of them)

Only coach to win a 5A title from a school north of Baton Rouge. (Again 5 titles)

also a great track coach. coached Ruston high to several state title then left to coach at West Monroe, a school who scored 0 points at the state meet for the past three years, and won a title in his first year. He will now be back at Ruston.

Louisiana often gets overlooked, particularly in cross country, but this guy can coach any event (coached two national champions in the javelin, one in the triple jump, one in the high jump, and i belive a 4x1 as well as something like 150 or 160 all-americans in several events)

Great job coach anderson.

The Kranicks have to be given their due with their incredible finish last year at NTN. To have their boys win and girls finish 2nd without their top runner is an amazing achievement for any team.

Greenliner - to set the record straight, York has been 2nd in the state 10 times (not 19).

Lange, Heath, Newton, Tyson are the Hall of Famers.

woodlands, kingwood, Mtn View are the next best. I'm sure we could add two or three more.

There have been many great coaches but we should be looking at the last 25 years. Winning states twice does not merit consideration. They may become the best coaches ever but you don't compare the rookie of the year to Babe Ruth.

Oops, typo- sorry. Point still holds.

What about our local Rockford hero, Mr. Brad Prins??? Forget the Sudafed thing, he coached Ritzenhein, Hartmann, Toedebusch, Blaisdell and so many others!

on a more serious note, Kevin and Keith Hanson were (and are) great HS coaches long before they gained accolades for the ODP program. I'd nominate them for the best in Mich.

I do know Jeff Young and the way he runs his program. He is a very talented guy, and although I did not get to participate on his team, I did get to go and do a sort of camp in Grand Junction with the team and some former runners. It was great, I even believ I saw Hector from the previous post. He is a good coach and I love what he does for the kids on his team.

That's pretty impressive. I know Tyson did not coach at Mead for that long, but his record was pretty slick. I'm not sure if they finished worse then 2nd ever, maybe a couple times. They won it year after year after year when they only had a 3 year high school, meaning less time to develop runners. Then they split the school in half and made Mt. Spokane as the 2nd school in the district, and added 9th grade to both, it was a hit to Mead for sure but they still rocked.

I think one of the most impressive things about Mead is that they win in a VERY competitive state. In fact just their league in Spokane is extremely competitive. Over the years Mead, Mt. Spokane, Ferris High, and University High have all been ranked in the top 10 in the country. I believe Meads 92 and 93 teams (1st in the US) raced two other top 20 teams in their own city. Here's the crazy thing, back then only 2 teams went to state so a top 20 nationally ranked team couldn't even go to the state meet. And yet Mead got 20 points at state.

Pat Tyson was amazing.

Are their any Mead runners who can post his lists of runners / team performances? He is truly amazing. Washington will miss him, Kentucky will appreciate him.

JL

For the above that mentioned that the York runners are burned out and dont run in college, about 2-3 years ago, 13 York graduates were running in the NCAA, and I think 9 of them were at D1 programs. That '99 team lead by Sage, all 7 of those runners went on to run at D1 programs.

Joe Newton, Pat Tyson, and Danny Green, in my mind are the best High School coaches in XC history. Mead's '94 team and York's '99 team, and Danny Green has had something like 6+ Footlocker Finalists and tons of State Titles.

There are many great up and coming coaches but all of those coaches have been in the business for a while and have proven themselves over time, with great Nationally Ranked teams.

N E W T O N

enough said.

Alberto Salazar - Central Catholic, Oregon.

I was looking on this website to find the stats on Mead. It's pretty impressive for like 6 years they won state with 43 points or less. You can see when they split and their number 1 returner (Becker) went to the new high school they fell off a bit (a couple 2nds and a 3rd) and then they bounced back.

The three years (91-93) of Davis, Aubrey and James were nuts, 28 points, 20 points and 31 points respectively. They had a lot of individual state champions as well starting in Tysons first year with Chris Lewis.

What you said was true about the spokane competition, it seems like when they lost it was to another spokane team (including the other half of Mead, Mt. Spokane) and when they won a spokane team was usually second. What great running city.

What I'm wondering if this Chris Lukezic in the link here (2nd to a Mead guy) is the same Chris Lukezic who is running so well today???

I just noticed that the team results from that link were:

1)Mead

2)Mt. Spokane (school that split from mead)

2)Ferris

All spokane schools.

Here is the link for anyone curious about the washington state meet results