Newbury Park is the greatest prep xc team in history

That's a fact Jack wrote:

Coach Brosnan is one of the best distance coaches in the country. I'm talking all levels, Pro, College, High School. Amazing what he is doing

Arguably the best using a 100% clean team.

Just some fun statistics:

In 2010

-Saugus girl's averaged 17:53 at Woodward Park for the State Meet then 19:54 at NXN . They finished 3rd as a team so it's not like they raced bad.

-Great Oak ran 18:18 vs 20:42.

-La Costa Canyon was 18:13 vs 20:48

We'll take the best NXN performance and say NXN was 2 mins slower for girls vs Woodward Park. This puts the FM converted team avg. at Woodward Park to be 16:58.

For perspective, only 9 girls EVER have ran faster than 16:58.

The equivalent would be Newbury Park boys averaging 14:43 at Woodward Park

Wise Old Man wrote:

After Woodbridge it’s obvious. 4 runners under 14, and their “5th runner”, Dan Appleford is recovering from illness and did not run in the sweepstakes. He ran sub 9 in the 3200 at Arcadia last year. They are strong at 6 and 7 too. While we are at it, let’s also declare the Young brothers, Lex, Leo and Nico the greatest sibling trio in prep distance running history.

They train like a college team. Not saying this is good or bad, but comparing to other high schools isn't really a fair comparison.

This presents a massive problem for college coaches as well as for talented runners who are at sucky programs. How do you know who to recruit? What happens to the enormously talented kid who runs 30 seconds behind these kids on 40 miles a week of crap coaching? Those kids used to rise to the top from talent alone. Now they go unnoticed.

Newbury Park's theoretical top 5 to average exactly 14:43 at Woodward and equal 2010 FM girls:

1. 14:29

2. 14:32

3. 14:37

4. 14:39

5. 15:18

It's going to be close!

welcome to 2021 wrote:

This conversation is why american kids for the most part suck at distance running. You have a coach that shows the way to better performance and there is a large contingent of people that want to shoot down his methods and chalk it up to other factors. It can't possibly be what he is doing that is causing these next level performances.

Nope, it must be demographics, a pipeline of talent, an unfair economic advantage, excuse after excuse ad nauseam.

He is a great coach. An amazing coach. But you must be a High schooler.

In high school, you like to think it’s all about coaching.

That’s why younger runners spend so much time asking “how does XYZ train?”

The more you run, the more you realize running is 90% birthed talent. For example, Hobbs Kessler ran a 3:34 1500 this year as a 17 year old. He was the 5th fastest runner in the U.S — surpassing people who have been training with renowned coaches for 10-20 years. He’s only been training seriously for 1.5 - 2 years. We know Hobbs is an otherworldly talent. That doesn’t at all discredit the job Warhurst has done. We are happy Hobbs is with a great coach like Warhurst.

The Youngs probably would’ve been sub 9 runners as seniors with Joe the PE teacher at the helm. But with Brosnan, they run 8:45 at 15.

So in conclusion, no one is discrediting Brosnan, or chalking it up to just talent.

We are saying he inherited the top 1% of talent and happens to be the right person to harness it. And I’m happy they have him and encourage more talented high schoolers to seek out great coaching and top notch teammates.

It’s on youtube if you are really curious. I’ll contend that his training isn’t even that groundbreaking. What he has done differently, is raise the bar as far as what’s considered fast and his kids have bought in.

It’s similar to what’s happened in Japan. In Japan a good high school 5k is now low to mid 14s. Consequently way more Japanese high schoolers run low to mi 14s. Why? Because kids that want to be good with rise to the occasion.

In the US most high school kids and coaches think sub 16 is fast. Consequently most decent US high schoolers plateau somewhere in the mid to high 15s

I’m just someone who sees a coach who’s doing a good job and recognizes it. I see no reason to knock him down a peg.

but again, do all these kids live in his school's catchment? it beggars belief, frankly.

if he's just gathering talent from other schools it's a lot less impressive.

Also earlier in the thread people were remarking on how good, but small the Newbury Park team is, and I gotta say, it seems like Brosnan and NBP is great is you're super dedicated to running and are willing to spend hours per day doing it and going to summer camps, and basically training like a pro. But the flipside of that is, the reason there's only like 16 guys on the team who aren't freshman is because most kids don't want to do that in high school, I mean heck, I enjoy running quite a lot but probably would've been turned off by that if that was what I encountered in high school. Obviously for the kids who stick with it, it makes them fast, but I have to think there's a good amount of kids out there and who experience running and enjoy being on the team, and maybe not break 4:30 or even 5 in the mile, but still have fun, and I feel like that's what high school teams should be about, sure encourage the more motivated guys to do high mileage and care, but also let some kids just fool around and run like 30 mpw and have fun.

Leo Young the new course record holder at Woodbridge beat two 8:43 3200 Guys in winning the race and the Arcadia mile champ from last year!

Now, I think his politics are absurd and harmful. But that's not the question. The question is his coaching, and it is great. If he's getting fast kids out of middle school, that might well be because he has been busy in organizing and giving clinics to the middle school coaches and athletes. For that matter, he's probably organizing the morning mile at the area elementary schools where the kids run laps before school for prizes and so forth. And this is at a high school that did nothing in the distances before he got there. Now they have altitude camps and average sub 14 for 3M. And even Nico Young, formerly the one great, great prospect already dropped a 13:24 as a freshman at NAU and was 4th at NCAA xc, so we are looking at a major "talent" pipeline now with four kids already at Young xc levels, though he didn't have anyone to run with when he ran 13:39.

So what if he had absolutely nothing to do with the middle school or club pipeline? Would you then consider it at least fortunate to get that pipeline?

adbcxacbd wrote:

So what if he had absolutely nothing to do with the middle school or club pipeline? Would you then consider it at least fortunate to get that pipeline?

Give it a rest. So what his runners do in middle school and college are what’s most important? Not what they do in high school, when he actually coaches them?

It’s fairly relevant what his runners do in middle school. It’s a least an indicator of how good they can be in high school. Is it possible that he is both fortunate and a good coach. Does it have to be that he alone is solely responsible for the success?

1) The team is clearly amazing.

But how big is the district? Can't any kid in the district choose to go there? How many HS boys are eligible for the HS?

I only say that because in my HS boys class of 70-0dudes per class, in my class alone, we had myself (2:23 marathoner), another guy who ran 9:12 for 3200 in hs, Wejo ho ran 28:06 for 10,000 (9:35 ins HS), and another 10:22 guy. That's just my class on the HS team.

Newbury Park has like almost 4 times as many males in their HS alsone(2500 enrollent of both genders so that's roughly 300 per gender per year)- plus I think anyone in the district can go there. What is the number of potential males that are eligible for Newbury Park as I assume all of them would go there that are any good at running given the team's success?

It has to be at least 10 times bigger than my HS in terms and it wouldn't stun me if it's 50 times greater or even 100. Anyone know how many HS boys are eligible to go to that school?

2) Conclusion: Good coaches can get people to run fast if they train hard.

adbcxacbd wrote:

It’s fairly relevant what his runners do in middle school. It’s a least an indicator of how good they can be in high school. Is it possible that he is both fortunate and a good coach. Does it have to be that he alone is solely responsible for the success?

Jeez guys, it is probably a combination already. I ran a 5:02 in my first mile race as a freshmen in hs. I wish I could have had this kind of coaching, who knows what could have been. I was left to mostly figure out my own training, and didn't improve nearly as much as I probably could have. I think these kids are very lucky to have such support, many of them will get scholarships and have opportunities that never may have happened.

I agree with you, the denominator matters a great deal. My daughter’s run at highly successful D5 program in CA. They have multiple state championships and podiums. The school only has 550 kids total, boys and girls, but the xc team has nearly 100 runners this season. More runners, more chance to have some talented ones. The team size is greater than many D1 teams and it makes sense that our little school does so well because it’s functionally like a big school program. Now a lot of this turn out can be attributed to the coach and the legacy of success he’s built at the school, but to a great extent it’s a game of probabilities. More kids, more talent.

c7runner7 wrote:

Just some fun statistics:

In 2010

-Saugus girl's averaged 17:53 at Woodward Park for the State Meet then 19:54 at NXN . They finished 3rd as a team so it's not like they raced bad.

-Great Oak ran 18:18 vs 20:42.

-La Costa Canyon was 18:13 vs 20:48

We'll take the best NXN performance and say NXN was 2 mins slower for girls vs Woodward Park. This puts the FM converted team avg. at Woodward Park to be 16:58.

For perspective, only 9 girls EVER have ran faster than 16:58.

The equivalent would be Newbury Park boys averaging 14:43 at Woodward Park

That may happen this year. I stated back in the spring that Newbury Park may score 17 points at NXN, before they take out the individuals. Appleford will be the key. If healthy he can run with the top four. He is a 8:56 3200 from this spring. Coach also said he would get Martinez and Cantu closer to the top five. This is a beast of a team. Also they don’t over race. They race about as often as a college team.