What HS Coach Has Burned Out the Most Runners?

Burnout happens. Perhaps the reason that the programs mentioned on this thread are being mentioned because these are the programs that have possessed many of the young, promising athletes of tomorrow, only to witness them sizzle out or quit running all together before they even have a chance to experience the next level. Not every kid joins running because their parents make them join a sport or not even just because they hope to get money towards a scholarship. Some kids are different. Some kids actually join a high school team because they love to run and compete. Some of those kids may even have high hopes and dreams to make it to the olympics someday or perhaps even hopes to become a professional runner. Who knows? But do you think that the high school coaches that push these kids to the limit day in and day out 7 days a week for 5, 6 years in a row are thinking of the kids and their needs? How about the ones you've heard of that force kids to run through injuries? Or the coaches that place these young kids in 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 events each meet (including duels) just so they can WIN! This is high school people! Are these types of coaches thinking of the kid's future and well being or only about the next trophy they'll be putting in their case at school? To me, a great high school coach is a nurturing one and always puts the kid's best interests at heart...even over their own. If more coaches did this at the high school level, there is no doubt in my mind we'd see more of these promising young talents running competively in college and beyond. There's something to be said about too much, too soon.

likeisaid wrote:

Hi-

This is Diane Bussa. I never ran for Koeppen - my parents forbid it. (see earlier thread by me). One of the reasons I had a long career and am still running is because of this decision not to get pummelled by Koeppen. I will never forget one comment he made to my father, when I was a Senior at Carmel High School. I was running the state meet in the mile, and had mono at the time, but didn't know it, and finished far back. He told my dad, 'Her running career is over. She doesn't have it upstairs to compete anymore." I went on to be an All American in College, and run professionally for 10 years. He got fired recently for some kind of scandal.

Wow, sounds freaky familiar. I know of similar comments that seem to easily roll off the tongue of a "Great and Powerful" high school coach in Upstate New York.

Burned out means being run to the ground, being used up.

Burn out happens when you have miserable, control freak coaches that you can never please.

Lindsay Ferguson--Notre Dame

nicole blood--oregon

ashley campbell--maryland

cameron vahanian--boston college

karyn delay-columbia

kipling hill--columbia

greg kelsey--maryland

greg kiley--notre dame

meghan o connor--uconn

melissa t--manhattan?

Thanks, Chuck.

So once again, ten examples of coaches that DON'T burn out kids would be...? Which schools put out more collegiate stars than the ones being mentioned?

um, pat tyson?well i guess the rockford mich coachand i guess a lot of unnamed coaches since college stars mostly are more spread out than high school starsand by spread out i mean spread out high schools.

Urgh wrote:

So once again, ten examples of coaches that DON'T burn out kids would be...? Which schools put out more collegiate stars than the ones being mentioned?

didn't mike stahr run for carmel?

Jennifer Adams Saratoga 04 keene state college 3 times All American National Champion DMR

adams never ran xc for saratoga. she swam. and keene is D3.

but saratoga is a really good program. the kranicks might not be the best coaches but if they really were doing something bad then ppl would have found out by now.

I am going to speak of Mead because the Mead program is the only HS program I really know because I only went to one HS. Tyson is able to motivate guys to run better and more consistently than most other coaches. That is the key to his success. He can get 15-20 guys to show up most days of the school year to run an easy morning run at 6:00 am. Most college coaches as most HS coaches are not great motivators let alone know much about coaching. Besides that I and many of the other guys I ran with at Mead just did not care to get up and run that often and that consistently in college. It was not that we were burned out but like many others on this board have posted we were doing other things; working, drinking, partying, studying. All things that we did not do or did much less of in HS. Also I think as many of you will agree HSers have a very distorted view of the world; we though running was every thing, it is not.

There are also a lot of Mead guys that continue to run competitively after HS and do well for themselves, but you would not think of them in conversation because they are second tear runners on the Mead team. Again I will speak to my era because that is what I am most familiar with. Pat Chessar a 2-4 guy on the Mead XC team ran 30:00 in the 10K at a junior college and was one of the best freshmen in the nation that year. Bryan Becherrini another 2-4 man on the Mead XC team went on to Iona and set PRs in events ranging from the 800 to the 10k. Nate Boyer another 2-5 guy on the Mead XC team ran something like 1:50 in the 800M. Steve Michaels a 3-6 Mead XC guy is currently a scorer at University of Montana a DI school in the big sky division. Andrew (forgot last name) a 5-7 Mead XC guy went on to run well at a small UC school and is improving on his HS times.

Other guys ran well while they were in college but other factors took them out of competition; ie one Mead guy was 5th in the Pac 10 steeple his freshmen year but could not maintain the grades he needed to stay eligible at the school his running got him into.

Its funny you make statements that all these good guys are not doing anything after HS. But your argument is flawed from the start because on one hand you say a good HS guy is a 4:20 HS miler or a 9:20 HS 3200 M runner. But on the other hand you also say there are all these nation leading sub 9 3200 M runners that did nothing.

The 4:20 type guy: He was never a world beater he ran pretty good times because he had a good coach he went on to do pretty well in college maybe run 3:5_ for 1500 but did it in NAIA, JC, DIII, DII, or a lesser known DI school but when the top teams in the nation are loaded with guys who are much faster than this guy you do not notice what the ex 4:20 miler is doing.

The sub 9 minute 3200 M runner: For the most part these guys have done very well in College at least when they were eligible and healthy. Some of them even raced well as post collegiate athletes. Examples; Rob Aubrey, Evan Garber, Matt Davis, Micah Davis, Nathan Davis, Sky Detray, Jesse Fayant, Jason Fayant, Greg James, Chris Lewis, Greg Kuntz, Laef Barnes.

kay wrote:

Lindsay Ferguson--Notre Dame

nicole blood--oregon

ashley campbell--maryland

cameron vahanian--boston college

karyn delay-columbia

kipling hill--columbia

greg kelsey--maryland

greg kiley--notre dame

meghan o connor--uconn

melissa t--manhattan?

So all that tells us is that these girls all have decent GPA's. So do the Kranicks get credit because these athletes made it into their first year of college? Besides Blood and Ferguson, are any of these girls running?

Is Melissa T. running for MC? I don't think she ran for Toga her jr or sr year due to nagging back injury. Hopefully the 1-2 year break away saved her.

Urgh,

You can't handle the truth!

For starters, answer this:

Is it healthy for a 12 year old girl to pound the pavement 7/365?

Searching 4 Answers wrote:

For starters, here's Saratoga's 2002 State Championship Team:

Nicole Blood, Melissa Trauscht, Ali Rowe, Meghan O'Conor,

Jamie Sweeney, Kirsten Hornbach, Amanda Meyer, Ruby Solomon.

Also, Danielle Coon, Brittany Welsch, Samantha Curran

Where are they now?

Urgh, what colleges did these girls end up running for and are they still running competively now?

Wild Oscar...since you are so offended by anonymous people taking stabs at you on the internet, maybe it would be harder for people to ridicule you if you posted your real identity. Then maybe I would understand where you are coming from. I mean, since you're going to call out individuals by name and try to tarnish their identies, you could at least man up and state your own true identity.

It's easy to do. My name is Tito Downer and I ran for Koeppen and have been an assistant coach at Carmel for 6 seasons now. I have to disagree with your pre-conceived notion that our program is based on high intensity, high mileage training. It is not. You are wrong. If you want to talk more, you can click on my name for my real email, and I will explain how you are wrong.

As far as our particular program is concerned, I think we are an easy target for those who say we burn runners out. Part of the secret to our long term success is that Koeppen is what some people would call a 'Master Motivator'. He gets a lot of kids to become motivated in this sport to perform. We focus on the TEAM concept. And so yes, we have had much success over the years, relative to other high schools. However, we are not in the business of producing blue-chip runners. Those kind of runners are once in a blue moon kind of deal, and we are just as likely to get them as any other school. Which is to say, not very likely.

As for your short list of runners, myself included (thanks for the shout-out), none of those were truely blue-chip runners, as far as I know. You did exclude Bill Shuey from late 70s, early 80s who went on to Purdue and set school records that stood until the early 00's when my teammate Donnie Fellows broke them. I would call Bill a success.

You also neglected to list Katie Harrington, who was a state XC champ for us. Admittedly a blue-chip runner. She went on to Stanford and was on the varsity squad that toed the line to win the title 2(?) years ago. I haven't done a good job keeping in touch, so don't know exactly how well she's doing currently, but I would say we didn't exactly burn her out.

As for my own record, I was a 9:27 2 miler, 4:25 miler in high school. Should I have been expected to compete as if I was a Dathan Ritzenhein or Alan Webb? I think not. Call me a realist, I guess. I did go on to drop a minute from my 5K time in college, running a hair under 15 mins. And 9:17 steeple. I know I didn't set the world on fire, but does that make me a failure? I think not.

What's more is that virtually every year, our #1 boys runner will run similar times to what I did. That makes them good, not 'great' runners. To expect every one of them to graduate and set the world on fire, because they are from Carmel, is an unrealistic expectation. Not just for us, but for any successful high school program.

why did koeppen get fired? i went to his running camp and was a big fan of the guy and was just wondering if anyone can let me know what happened