Newbury Park - is it the coach or the kids?

Threads about coaches are nothing but personal attacks its absolutely crazy.

Fitzgerald was way faster in the 400 and 800. My point is, other runners who were good before high school did well who didn't attend Newbury. So, are you the coach's parent, a parent of one of the runners, one of the runners or the coach himself? Why so sensitive? You do know there will be people in life who don't agree with you, right? Since I guess insulting and making judgements is the path we're now heading down, you sound really insecure.

Rather than being by far the luckiest HS distance coach in history, some posters want to make him into John Wooden.

When I was in HS, our baseball teams were always below average but a few years later our school won the section title. I bumped into the coach and asked him what happened and his answer was "better athletes." He didn't say anything about having become a better coach.

Are there posters that ran distance in HS who think they wouldn't have run just as fast if they had the had the NPs brothers' talent? With 59 speed I ran 9:28 which I believe is as fast I possibly could run given my age and top-end speed. I'm 100% confident I would have been just as good as the NP guys with their talent. I wouldn't needed anything more from my parents than free room and board and running shoes and my coach wouldn't have needed to have a degree in psychology.

Dude, you seem really angry and insecure (and maybe narcissistic). The thread is not about the coach, it's about who deserves the credit for the team's success. Relax, take a deep breath and try to have a good day.

Runninglame wrote:

Los Ang -1984 wrote:

Threads about coaches are nothing but personal attacks its absolutely crazy.

Dude, you seem really angry and insecure (and maybe narcissistic). The thread is not about the coach, it's about who deserves the credit for the team's success. Relax, take a deep breath and try to have a good day.

The thread says " Newbury Park - is it the coach or the kids?" People are personally attacking the coach.

I agree with the poster above., If you're going to just come on here because you wasn't to personally attack someone then stay off the boards. It'a completely obvious.

I'm a huge fan of the sport and have seen multiple attacks in the last few day of a few coaches and its beyond me why people sink so low.

Any good coach will tell you, good athletes make coaches look good.

Put brosnan in a rural Midwest school with 400 kids and he wouldn’t assemble some insane super team.

It’s a culmination of factors. He seems like he trains the kids well enough to get a lot out of them, but you don’t break records like they’re doing without an extreme amount of talent

Los Ang -1984 wrote:

Runninglame wrote:

Dude, you seem really angry and insecure (and maybe narcissistic). The thread is not about the coach, it's about who deserves the credit for the team's success. Relax, take a deep breath and try to have a good day.

The thread says " Newbury Park - is it the coach or the kids?" People are personally attacking the coach.

I agree with the poster above., If you're going to just come on here because you wasn't to personally attack someone then stay off the boards. It'a completely obvious.

I'm a huge fan of the sport and have seen multiple attacks in the last few day of a few coaches and its beyond me why people sink so low.

Seriously, LET IT GO! Nobody is attacking the coach. It's a valid question and there have been thoughtful points made on both sides.

xczvzxcv wrote:

I'm honestly curious as to how exactly Sean Brosnan got the best talent in the entire country to go to Newbury Park before it had produced a single great distance runner.

Newbury Park High School XC won three individual California State Championships long before Brosnan ever got there.

What years? Their boys and girls are very good now.

There's a list of all the regional and national titles NPHS sports teams have won in there. Maybe it's not 100% complete, but it's likely that the previous poster just pulled the "3 individual state championships" thing out of his ass.

You can't judge the coach because his freshmen this fall weren't at the level of that 2019 freshman class. The team just went 1-2-3 at nationals and their top four ran 14:15 or better. They had other really good guys. Some of them started really fast, in part because they had an older brother on the team to train with. They have since improved a lot. They have enough top guys already on the team to be favored to win nationals again next year. He got talent but he does something more with it than any coach in high school has ever done. They had a soph this year run 15:12 his first meet, along with another soph in 16:01. Another senior not among their top 7 in 15:45. Next year, they are returning guys who at Woodward Park for states this year were 14:28/14:30/14:46/15:11 juniors and a 15:40 sophomore. They're returning four of the top 9 guys in the state D1 meet, plus 26th. Plus, you have to see how those freshmen and the other good sophomores develop after being in the program longer, as they didn't have brothers already in the program to run with in junior high.

plop wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbury_Park_High_School

There's a list of all the regional and national titles NPHS sports teams have won in there. Maybe it's not 100% complete, but it's likely that the previous poster just pulled the "3 individual state championships" thing out of his ass.

Oh brother.

Jeff Wilson from Newbury Park won the California state title in back-to-back years 1990-1991. He also was Footlocker (Kinney) National Championships runner-up his senior year.

Melissa Sutton was their female phenom in the 1980's, finishing 6th Place at Footlocker (Kinney) National Championships in 1985.

Vesper11 wrote:

xczvzxcv wrote:

I'm honestly curious as to how exactly Sean Brosnan got the best talent in the entire country to go to Newbury Park before it had produced a single great distance runner.

Newbury Park High School XC won three individual California State Championships long before Brosnan ever got there.

The CIF 2018 results describe Newbury Park as winning its first state team xc championship that year.

"Newbury Park claimed their first team title with all-time second-best DII time of 77:51."

Vesper11 wrote:

plop wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbury_Park_High_School

There's a list of all the regional and national titles NPHS sports teams have won in there. Maybe it's not 100% complete, but it's likely that the previous poster just pulled the "3 individual state championships" thing out of his ass.

Oh brother.

Jeff Wilson from Newbury Park won the California state title in back-to-back years 1990-1991. He also was Footlocker (Kinney) National Championships runner-up his senior year.

Melissa Sutton was their female phenom in the 1980's, finishing 6th Place at Footlocker (Kinney) National Championships in 1985.

Hah, guess you were right. Still, it's worth noting that the school's been around for 55 years and the xc team as a whole didn't accomplish anything significant before Brosnan arrived. They were an average program that hit the talent jackpot once a decade. Since 2019, they've gotten 9-10 runners to reach that level.

Vesper11 wrote:

plop wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbury_Park_High_School

There's a list of all the regional and national titles NPHS sports teams have won in there. Maybe it's not 100% complete, but it's likely that the previous poster just pulled the "3 individual state championships" thing out of his ass.

Oh brother.

Jeff Wilson from Newbury Park won the California state title in back-to-back years 1990-1991. He also was Footlocker (Kinney) National Championships runner-up his senior year.

Melissa Sutton was their female phenom in the 1980's, finishing 6th Place at Footlocker (Kinney) National Championships in 1985.

Okay but no team titles, and more importantly nothing for the previous 25 years before he got there.

plop wrote:

Vesper11 wrote:

Oh brother.

Jeff Wilson from Newbury Park won the California state title in back-to-back years 1990-1991. He also was Footlocker (Kinney) National Championships runner-up his senior year.

Melissa Sutton was their female phenom in the 1980's, finishing 6th Place at Footlocker (Kinney) National Championships in 1985.

https://venturacounty.runnerspace.com/gprofile.php?do=title&title_id=818&mgroup_id=44760

Hah, guess you were right. Still, it's worth noting that the school's been around for 55 years and the xc team as a whole didn't accomplish anything significant before Brosnan arrived. They were an average program that hit the talent jackpot once a decade. Since 2019, they've gotten 9-10 runners to reach that level.

That’s not all. Denise Ball ran at Newbury Park in the early 1980s and was even better than Melissa Sutton! Denise also was a Kinney National XC finalist, but maybe even better she placed 2nd at the California State Track Meet (with no divisions) in both the 1600m and 3200m. She would’ve been state champion if not running against Polly Plummer, who held the US National mile record for 30 years!

Yes, Sean Brosnan is an unbelievably good coach. But the point is, Newbury Park is obviously a hotbed of talent if you get a good coach in there. I mean come on, Newbury Park has had at least three national elite-level distance runners already in the past. 99% of high schools have never even come close to having one.

Good point, and it actually illustrates the absurdity of the thread's original premise ("is it the coach or the kids?"). The area is a hotbed of talented athletes but the school never previously achieved success as a team before having an equally talented coach. Clearly not an either/or question. Individual greatness can come from anywhere, but you can't have team greatness without also having a great coach. Add in some exceptionally fortunate timing (Youngs and Sahlmans), feel free to call it luck, and you get NPXC 2021. But if all you have to say is that SB is the luckiest coach ever, you are, in fact, diminishing his hard work.

You are also dismissing the luck of having all those kids show up at the same time. Look back at that 2019 freshman class. That has never happened before and will never happen again. That is called luck.

We’ll see if he can make the same impact with the 2020 and 2021 class. If so, all the doubters will have to eat it.

toilet time wrote:

You are also dismissing the luck of having all those kids show up at the same time. Look back at that 2019 freshman class. That has never happened before and will never happen again. That is called luck.

We’ll see if he can make the same impact with the 2020 and 2021 class. If so, all the doubters will have to eat it.

Your reading comprehension is deficient. I specifically mentioned the luck of having all those kids show up at the same time.