so that's it. no wonder that program is such a mess. parents trying to be coaches and coaches trying to be parents. sounds more like a soap opera than a great running program.
so that's it. no wonder that program is such a mess. parents trying to be coaches and coaches trying to be parents. sounds more like a soap opera than a great running program.
But all these coaches don't coach in college - they coach HS. Look at Eleanor Roosevelt in MD. Great HS team, even though they broke every rule in the book to get those transfer students, but not a single good college runner.
The coach gets job offers from college all over, but that's the nature of the beast.
Get a good team. Look good. The coach gets $2000 a year to coach, he/they are looking to up their paydays also. Nothing wrong with having great HS teams.
PS. Runners in the 60's and 70's always ran 100 mpw in training and ran well after college. Maybe the problem is not enough runners are putting on miles in HS and get to college and crash and burn. Coaches should have runners running more - not less.
True "Toga Blue wrote:
What about Nicole Blood's mom? Oh wait, that is the category of parents who thought they were coaches.
Hey, what a great idea! I think you are on to something.....A coach, that is also a parent. That way they can relate more to us kids as opposed to a coach that is not a parent. This could be the missing link and could create a more well rounded coach and program.
Wild Oscar wrote:
This vote goes to Chuck Koeppen of Carmel High School in Indiana.
Dating back to the late 1970s his cross country programs have always placed well in state competition (including several state championships), but he hasn't had one damn runner amount to a hill of beans in college or beyond.
Someone once made the argument that Mark Rodholm ran decent 800 times at Indiana University, but he suffered only his junior and senior years under Koeppen.
Has anyone from York in Illinois done really well in college?
Koeppen has done a great job. He has had continual success, and I only think one of his teams was loaded with athletes who could make a large impact D1 Style.
He has large teams that are deep, and he makes the most out of his talent. He won state in 1997 with a Football Player racing the day after a Semi-state football game. The dude can coach.
Dude, we all know the Kranicks dont allow Parent involvement of any kind. You are still so disgruntle, get over it you crazy message board guru.[/quote]
Okay then how about the category of parents who are coaches? Hmm, don't see those Lane girls doing much lately. I'm sure it is just a freaky coincidence!
Chris Lewis never ran sub 4 at Wisconsin but he did qualify for indoor nationals and ran around 8:03.
True "Toga Blue wrote:
Dude, we all know the Kranicks dont allow Parent involvement of any kind. You are still so disgruntle, get over it you crazy message board guru.
Okay then how about the category of parents who are coaches? Hmm, don't see those Lane girls doing much lately. I'm sure it is just a freaky coincidence![/quote]
Your personal attacks really are pathetic. First it's the bloods and now the lanes. Get over it. Those two have been gone for over 2 years now. Look at a calendar. It really is 2007. So who cares? At least they've both given themselves a better chance to run competitively at college and beyond. Unlike the many that have been robbed of that opportunity.
Which brings me back to the discussion at hand. So, where are they now? Maybe you can channel some of your wasted energy into some research on the whereabouts of the above mentioned former toga athletes. It sounds like you have the resources to do the research.
There is a theme in these comments that there are very few people involved in working with young athletes who have the capacity to transition from thinking this is what's possible:
[quote]present wrote:
One example, then no more screeds (on this topic, anyway). A guy who runs 9:00 for 3200 in high school is terrific, right? Yet if, years later, he is somehow fortunate enough to carry that pace for 10,000m--more than triple the distance, a *fantastic* improvement on his prep mark--he's a low-28 10km runner: (American) national class, for sure, but more than a lap behind the fastest men in the world, and without a prayer of medaling in a world championship. So I guess the high school coach who brought him to 9:00 burned him out, right? Right...
quote]
To, in reality, this is possible(from Ryan Hall's training log of last week):
"On Tuesday I ran my first ever 26-miler. It wasn't anything crazy, in terms of pace, but it gave me a lot more confidence that miles 20-26 aren't something to be scared of, just respected. It was nice to have my coach accompany me on the bike, giving me the fluids, and talking to me about London. I was surprised when I finished with two miles on the track expecting to be running 5:20 pace and seeing 9:25 for my last two miles. "
I am no huge 'Toga fan but I detest stupidity - especially stupidity mixed with animosity - even more. Saratoga currently has 7 athletes competing in college. Another athlete competed for a Div I program for two years after graduating high school. Will all the blowhard experts on high school running please list all the scores of programs out there who have more than seven athletes currently competing in college. If you can't get more than ten schools, that means the evil, hated, Saratoga is one of the top ten schools in producing collegiate athletes.
You have to put things into perspective here. High school is high school, guys are generally competing at the highest level against guys from their home states. Occasionally some national caliber meets and much less so in the 80's and 90's.
Someone recently posted that Tyson coached 12 or 13 runners to run from 8:50 - 9:10. I'm pretty sure Tyson had most of them go Division 1 on scholarships and at the minimum score in there conference championships in track. Some of them had quite a bit of success. Greg James was never better than 4th man on Mead's cross country squad, but he placed top 60 at NCAA cross one year, scoring for Oregon who got 3rd place. Rob Aubrey never made foot locker nationals as Mead's 2-3 guy, but he helped lead Oregon his last couple years and had a top 50 finish at Nationals. Micah Davis had a lot of success in the steeple chase in college, a conference champ (twice?) and and NCAA competitor (twice?). Matt Davis place 5th at NCAA cross one year, despite being injured most of his college career. Matt & Micah's older brother Nathan Davis qualified for NCAA's in the steeple while at WSU, but wasn't allowed to compete because their football team had commited NCAA violations and the track team suffered for it. Chris Lewis ran sub 4 as a freshman at Wisconsin and competed at the indoor NCAA's. Evan Garber scored on Iona's great cross country team last fall. Granted some of the Mead guys didn't produce as much, but really, how many programs have had this much success after college? They certainly can't be the worst, if they are among the best.
Now I'm a Washingtonian and have followed these guys more than you, but if you assumed that fell off completely because you never saw their names at the top 3 of the NCAA championships you have a poor perspective. Most of them were not at that level in high school, when you add top young foreign athletes into American high schools you will get a more accurate picture of the NCAA.
All you've done is make a few individual citations. Yes, a few guys have done well after HS, but how many good Mead athletes as a percentage have done anything in college? In any given year Tyson had probably 15 guys that could have been #1 runner at 90% of any other Washington HS's, yet the best collegiate runners to come out of Washington high schools are rarely (never?) from Mead. Maybe it's not even that he burned them out, maybe he just trained them to their peak running ability while in HS. Either way, most Mead kids don't improve beyond Mead (improve as in: don't run equivalent to their high school times or rankings as a collegian).
Now I'm a Washingtonian and saw enough while competing as a high schooler and coaching high school in Washington. Obviously the guy knew how to consistently turn out good HS teams, but at what cost?
Baine,
What WA HS can beat:
Davis, Davis, Davis, Kuntz, Yukon, Aubrey, James, Garber, Barnes, Lewis? I would wager Mead has one of the best NCAA showings for alums of any high school in the country. A very low percentage of ANY high school alums will run in college. It's the way it goes. Not only do Mead guys run, they go to Nationals. You say you were a high school coach. Please give an alumni status for your athletes.
Urgh wrote:
I am no huge 'Toga fan but I detest stupidity - especially stupidity mixed with animosity - even more. Saratoga currently has 7 athletes competing in college. Another athlete competed for a Div I program for two years after graduating high school. Will all the blowhard experts on high school running please list all the scores of programs out there who have more than seven athletes currently competing in college. If you can't get more than ten schools, that means the evil, hated, Saratoga is one of the top ten schools in producing collegiate athletes.
If you detest animosity, you must detest the Saratoga program completely.
We are discussing what HS coach has burned out the most runners. And that should not exclude any HS coach that got their athletes off to college just in time so that they may become someone elses statistic.
The key word: Currently. You say Saratoga has 7 athletes currently competing in college. Let's see what happens. I wonder how many Seniors they have that are still running in college?
So what about the formers that were mentioned in the other posts? Who are you referring to that only ran for div 1 for 2 years and why? What happened with Erin Davis? She was a HS standout that actually had the potential to run beyond college (maybe even pro) but from what I've read, she was struggling from the start of her collegiate career and quit running all together shortly after. What do you suppose is the reason for that? Maybe you will agree, maybe you won't, but I believe running at the high intensity level that the toga program requires of their jr high/high school age kids is simply too much, too soon. Perhaps that is the main reason why many of these kids are destined to burn out. They are only kids and when running becomes a job (and in this case, a job with NO vacations) then it is no longer enjoyable and burnout becomes inevitable for most. It's really quite sad. I mean, you should be able to run and enjoy running, along with the many other things that kids this age should be enjoying and experiencing.
The Kenyans do lots of running at an early age, but it is in a very unorganized fashion. Gymnasts are very competative early, but most of them quit by the time they are 16 anyway.
All you've done is make a few individual citations. Yes, a few guys have done well after HS, but how many good Mead athletes as a percentage have done anything in college? In any given year Tyson had probably 15 guys that could have been #1 runner at 90% of any other Washington HS's, yet the best collegiate runners to come out of Washington high schools are rarely (never?) from Mead. Maybe it's not even that he burned them out, maybe he just trained them to their peak running ability while in HS. Either way, most Mead kids don't improve beyond Mead (improve as in: don't run equivalent to their high school times or rankings as a collegian).
Now I'm a Washingtonian and saw enough while competing as a high schooler and coaching high school in Washington. Obviously the guy knew how to consistently turn out good HS teams, but at what cost?[/quote]
Tyson's #8 runners could have been #1 on 90% of the high schools in Washington. This doesn't mean they are great or elite. It just means that there are only a handful of really good runners in each state every year. Most of those Mead guys that went to college could run their best high school pace (for 5k cross) for the 10K distance cross by the time they were done. How is that not improving?
Also, you can't compare a #10 national ranking in the 3,200 in high school to a ranking for NCAA D1. It doesn't equivalate. Let's say you run 9:05 for 3200 and are ranked top 10 in the nation for high school. Now you go to UW or Oregon or WSU and run 14:20 for 5K. You've just qualified for the Pac-10 championships running slightly slower than your pace for 3,200 meters for 5,000 meters. The Pac-10 championships is a much bigger event to compete in than the Washington State Championships. Out of the 13 guys that were listed as running 9:10 or better in high school, the majority of them ran solid times in college like. If I really did the research I could come up with a list of probaly 10 guys who ran Pac-10 scoring times in college, and a some of them NCAA scoring times. A lot of them competed on their teams at the NCAA cross champ's as well.
What more can you ask for? Most of these guys were good (not great) high school runners who ran at a great high school. Then most of them went on to become better runners as Division level 1. If they hadn't run their best in high school a lot of them wouldn't have earned the chance or the scholarships to compete on these reputable teams at the top level of college running.
You can always cite a single runner from another high school who has improved in college to beat a lot of those Mead guys. But how many guys on his team or his school have done that? Most likely just him. So what happened to his teammates? Did they improve? Did they burn out? Did they stop running after high school?
I highly doubt any other high school in Washington, and maybe a couple in the country have had as many runners go on to be competitive in D1 track or cross country as Mead has. Pat Tyson did a helluva job.
I'd have to go with Joe Newton.
this is going back a couple of decades, but there was an outstanding distance coach at Shawnee Mission South High, a suburb of Kansas City, who had not only had quality runners but more quanity of decent guys, too. This was back in the late 60s to mid 80s; Verlyn Schmidt. No one could argue that he got good results; but few of his stars did much afer high school on the same level anyway.
The whole question surrounding this issue with any of the top prep coaches mentioned in this thread is: "is it the high school coaches fault that his runners didn't produce or even stay with it in college or is it the RUNNERS fault?"
It's almost like the 'chicken and the egg' story. No one answer, fits all.
Wild Oscar wrote:
This vote goes to Chuck Koeppen of Carmel High School in Indiana.
Dating back to the late 1970s his cross country programs have always placed well in state competition (including several state championships), but he hasn't had one damn runner amount to a hill of beans in college or beyond.
I think that Diane Bussa was one of his athletes. She had a decent career on the roads and won the Bolder Boulder Citizens race at age 40+. That's not being burned out.
Shamrock, I don't disagree with anything you said. But you side-stepped part of the question.
Now that you have defended (and rigtfully so) Koeppen's success with his high school TEAMS, give me a list of his runners who did anything outstanding at the college level. I have already acknowledged Mark Rodholm, and someone else on this thread mentioned Diane Bussa.
So that's a whopping two.
It's easier to name Koeppen's All-State runners who never amounted to squat in college: Dave Widmer, Adam Smith, Dan Boston, Richie Garing, Leonard Bareford.....let's jump to the late 90s and beyond.....Tito Downer, Joe Hinson, Sammy Shaw, Matt Kotlarski, Joel Shaw. And let's not forget his own kid, Charlie, who was a bust at both Northern AZ and Indiana.
Yes, Koeppen has 10 state XC championships under his belt, but what more can you really say about the way he develops talent for the long haul? Not much.
the ignorance on this board is fantastic. most great HS programs are built with 4:35 guys that would be 4:50 -5 minute guys at the schools around them. The 3,4,5 guys that may run 4:25 mos likely will not do anything at College level. Not to mention that te NCAA is littered with 4;15 guys that never run much faster for any number of reasons (not the least of which is that some kids simply don't want to spend their college years running 12 months a year). To name the coaches that have been named hereon this board is totally asinine. But, these board is mostly a joke. Maybe all these posts are a joke. Then the jokes on me. I don't know.
Cue green slime.