How does one HS produce so many of the top HS runners in the country (Crater & Newbury Park)? Don't say it's luck

niwot happens to also be where many professional runners train. many of those kids have very good genes which certainly helps

Can someone provide details on what each team is doing in different training periods?

Simply putting it down to "runners believing in the training" is idiotic.

I know lots of people who have utter belief in training that doesn't work. In fact, that's their problem; rather than trying something new, they refuse to give up on training that's proven ineffective time and time again.

So "belief" can be destructive if it's not supported by results, and you don't get consistently good results unless the training works.

How many years was Brosnan at NP?

It sure looks like he cherry picked top regional club/middle school kids, who then went to NP via (perfectly legal) school choice in CA. I do agree he was a very good coach.

In most states, you only can go to 1 local hs. If you want a choice, you must move the whole family, or go private.

Hello!! You need 5 runners to score. Newberry Park had 3 Young brothers and 2 Sahlmam brothers. They ran together as kids. Timpview HS in Utah is at altitude, parents were runners at BYU, Mormon clean living... but its the altitude and coaching at BYU

High School running is starting to look like gymnastics, figure skating and junior hockey. In those sports, athletes with high potential and over zealous parents are identified early and connected with coaches and programs specifically designed for elite athletes. In these programs, the athletes drop any resemblance of a normal life and devote every waking minute to becoming the best, not really really good, but the best.

The difference with these running programs and figure skating is that the programs we are talking about are public high schools that are creating the elite athletes cults and leaving behind the runners who may have ordinary talent but get great benefit from the sport.

Yes, it is not dumb luck that a few high schools have created so many dominate runners, but is it in the best interest of public schools to support coaches that cater only to the top .01% achievers?

Training takes about 20 hours a week, so how could they be devoting every waking minute to becoming the best. Many of them are honor students and have girlfriends. Some even have part-time jobs.

Your description of High School high school distance running would be over the top even when applied to the East German methods in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

I guess Walt Lange's 50+ years at Jesuit qualify...

Another factor that seems to be overlooked is the school's administration. Does the school principal and athletic director provide an environment where distance running is supported. The following are SoCal examples of school admins creating poor environments. At one school the cross country team could not use the track while the football team practices while the track was locked on the weekends and the cross country coach was never issued a key. At another area school coaches were instructed by the Principal that his runners cannot run on the roads, they must stay on school grounds. Lastly, several years after I retired, a football coach/ athletic director along with a new principal banned running camps and out of area competitions. From what I've read and observed the programs with incredible programs were fostered under supportive administrations. Then once those programs are hitting on all cylinders it can survive new administration policies and even create enough backlash to reverse restrictive policies. When it can't, coaches like Doug Soles look for a new home that provides the environment necessary to succeed again.

Of course the football coach doesn’t want the XC team out there during his practices. Aren’t there IM fields on school property or a nearby park? At an adjacent park, we had quarter and half mile loops to create any distance we wanted.

I find it hard to believe XC coaches want to stay on the track.

Crater is not one of these programs. They have plenty of JV kids who develop nicely while they are there. Same goes for AF, Herriman, York and most other top programs. NP is an interesting exception as Brosnan almost exclusively focused on the top guys and left the JV kids to an assistant coach.

I was at that Running Lanes meet and made the world's best video of those, two races. Also, pre race content on the lines. And post race in the finish area. Talk to newberry runners and coach. If you have seen any video in the finish corral, you probably saw me.

Well, Newbury Park not so much anymore, the current coach managed to destroy that program with his total lack of knowledge when it comes to coaching young talent......

Its the same thing in College, Example SEC Schools get MOST of the Sprinters, I know some other Schools outside the SEC Example USC of the Big 10, TCU, Texas Tech, Houston etc, but MOST go To SEC Schools, In The PROs Distance Running There are a very tiny number of Coaches that have all the Good American Runners. One of My Coaches Larry Greer used to Tell Me, Good Runners are the product of 90% Good Coaching and 10% other Variables like Genetics, Environment, Diet, Motivation, Work Ethic, Perserverance, Consistency, But He told me Make no Mistake it is 90% how good the Coach is, When Fernando Mamede ran 27:13 for a New World Record, I told him about and he said if I Coached him he would be well under 27 Minutes, When Marita Koch ran 47.60 for 400 I told him about it and he said Imagine how good she could be if I was Coaching Her, I asked how fast she would be? He said 1-2 Seconds Faster. Arthur Lydiard once said If I Coached George Kerr you would have The First Man under 1:40 in the 800. When I asked him why German and Russian times had fell off a Cliff in the early 1990's I asked was it, They Stopped using Steroids (I called ALL Illegal Performance Enhancers Steroids,) He told me No It was just all The Good Coaches wanted to try other things now that they were free, and The Coaches who replaced them were not as good, He then said if He Coached Them, He could Make Germany and Russia A Lot better than they ever were.

That's not accurate. Brosnan was completely dedicated to coaching everyone on his team at Newberry Park. My nephew was on his team, and even though I lived in a different state, I asked for advice for my son who was a 4:53 junior miler. Nothing extraordinary, really. Brosnan graciously invited me and my son to his altitude camp in Big Bear where 90% of the team was present. He was definitely the JV coach as well.

Most of the phenoms that schools produce start training at a very young age, often in elementary school. For example, I’ve heard that kids at Scenic Middle School (the feeder school for Crater High) are running up to 60 miles a week. By the time they reach high school, they’re already doing college-level workouts. I think this early, intense training is part of why many of these phenoms don’t accomplish much after they leave high school - they peak too early.

It's amazing how people think you shouldn't work to become good at something. If you want to be great at just about anything, it takes time and dedication. You want to be a great piano player or guitarist? Hours a day of practice. Great student? Hours a day of studying. Great at sports? Hours a day (swimming, football, soccer, gymnastics). But somehow people think if you want to be a great runner you should only run 30 minutes a day until you get to college.

When my daughter was doing gymnastics, at one of the best gyms in the city, ran by a multi-Olympic gold medal winning gymnast, she was starting to talk about doing gymnastics at a high enough level to get a scholarship to a D1 school. She had the talent. I told her she'd have to spend hours a day to get to that level (she was already training 2.5 hours a day at that point and the higher level practices were at least 4 hours a day, with the best gymnasts also booking private lessons outside of that). I told her if she wanted to go for an athletic scholarship without having to sacrifice academics, that her best bet would be running because it is the least time intensive sport. Nobody averages 2 hours a day (at her easy pace that would be about 100 miles a week). I told her that if she could handle 90 minutes of training a day plus 30 minutes of overhead (stretching, etc), that she'd be training twice as much as just about anyone else in high school.

This summer she might be putting in 2 hours a day because she's also lifting weights sometimes. It's less exercise than she was doing as a middle school student and she still finds the time to be involved in tons of school activities, achieve a super high GPA, have boyfriends, spend lots of time with friends, watch TV, and still spend way too much time on the phone. And she's also pretty solid on the guitar. Doesn't seem to be overstressed or rushing around, she's about as chill as a kid could be.

High school running is finally starting to resemble a serious sport, where people actually train properly, instead of a dumping ground of failed athletes who want to letter in something without doing any work.

In 2021 the NP girls team had one person per family in their top 7, and took 9th at nationals

I remember someone mentioned in another thread that the presence of Sahlmans and Youngs motivated other people on the team to do their best and improve as much as possible