Newbury Park Track 5,000m: AMAZING!

this team would’ve probably smashed the nxn team score record if there was a meet. The overall team is better than last years. All will probably be at major running universities.

What race is this?

Do aspiring young runners move to Newbury Park school district or are these home grown runners. 5 under 14:50 is amazing . 5 homegrown runners (3 of them underclassmen) going sub 14:50 is essentially impossible. Good coaching and a consistent 4 years of training can take most average talent runners to the low 16’s. To break 15 in HS you must have natural born talent as well. IMO most average high school teams in the US will have a runner with natural potential to go sub 14:50 every 10 years or so....

jmjxc wrote:

Do aspiring young runners move to Newbury Park school district or are these home grown runners. 5 under 14:50 is amazing . 5 homegrown runners (3 of them underclassmen) going sub 14:50 is essentially impossible. Good coaching and a consistent 4 years of training can take most average talent runners to the low 16’s. To break 15 in HS you must have natural born talent as well. IMO most average high school teams in the US will have a runner with natural potential to go sub 14:50 every 10 years or so....

Yes, maybe schools will have a runner with potential walking the halls but I’d say on average most schools produce even a sub 15:30 high school guy.

They had two seniors graduate last year, Nico & Jace.

13:50 5k and 8:44 3200m.

If Newbury Park had NCAA eligibility, these 7 guys could probably be a podium team in a few years.

Most schools don’t even produce*

jmjxc wrote:

Do aspiring young runners move to Newbury Park school district or are these home grown runners. 5 under 14:50 is amazing . 5 homegrown runners (3 of them underclassmen) going sub 14:50 is essentially impossible. Good coaching and a consistent 4 years of training can take most average talent runners to the low 16’s. To break 15 in HS you must have natural born talent as well. IMO most average high school teams in the US will have a runner with natural potential to go sub 14:50 every 10 years or so....

Aspiring kids move into the school. For example, Christian simone was the top runner at Great oak just the year before, but moved to Newbury after Great oak lost to them at NXN. Also Aaron Cantu, a freshmen from nevada moved into Newbury park, and although he didn't run this race he is a 4:20 mile freshmen. Not to take away from their coach though, he's an amazing coach too

jmjxc wrote:

Do aspiring young runners move to Newbury Park school district or are these home grown runners. 5 under 14:50 is amazing . 5 homegrown runners (3 of them underclassmen) going sub 14:50 is essentially impossible. Good coaching and a consistent 4 years of training can take most average talent runners to the low 16’s. To break 15 in HS you must have natural born talent as well. IMO most average high school teams in the US will have a runner with natural potential to go sub 14:50 every 10 years or so....

Yes but you don't need absurd levels of talent. We are talking low 4:20 milers who train for endurance not sub 4:10 guys. The thing is most of use have zero clue what the talent level in the average HS is. How many HS gets out a decent chunk of runners and then get them to run 60+ mpw for 3 years? Probably a couple dozen.

But by any measures this is damm impressive. They would be a real solid DIII team and even DI in a lot of the nonPower 5 conferences. I know people will complain the coach is going to burn them all out. He is also giving them a chance to be great.

I know of that many in my state. There are hundreds nationally.

Only in L.A. where you can train every day of the year.

jmjxc wrote:

Do aspiring young runners move to Newbury Park school district or are these home grown runners. 5 under 14:50 is amazing . 5 homegrown runners (3 of them underclassmen) going sub 14:50 is essentially impossible. Good coaching and a consistent 4 years of training can take most average talent runners to the low 16’s. To break 15 in HS you must have natural born talent as well. IMO most average high school teams in the US will have a runner with natural potential to go sub 14:50 every 10 years or so....

It looks like they all have been running a while at a pretty high level looking at athletic.net.

Colin Sahlman - running track since 2013 with a 1600 PR of 4:48 as an 8th grader.

Lex Young - running track since 2013 with a 1600 PR of 4:45 in 8th grade

Christian Simone - couldn’t find anything before high school, but attended 3 different high schools so far. Wonder what the story is there.

Nicholas Goldstein - running track since 2013 with a PR of 4:41 in 8th grade

Leo Young - running track since 2013 with a 1600 PR of 4:55 in 8th grade

Aaron Sahlman - running track since 2013 with a 1600 PR of 4:46 in 8th grade.

Maybe that’s typical in their area to have that many fast, experienced kids on a team.

What??? How is it possible for five guys on the same team to run under 15 minutes? Is this school an elite academy for youth runners? Are they doing drugs? What is going on? Are we sure these aren't 2.5 mile times?

Why is a california team running a race in Mesa Arizona?

Consistent, hard training pays off. In Japan, the top 20 high schools consistently have at least 7 of their runners go sub-15. That depth continues through college and the pros...so there is an established precedent of trading hard at a young age without burnout.

I applaud any coach who can establish a great culture. This one also produces great runners. As fans of the sport we should be excited and complimentary toward this coach and his program.

Oh wow. They've all been running for 7 years? I've never personally met anyone that legitimately ran before 7th grade. I wonder if that's their big secret. Start em young, so they have a few years of relatively easy work under their belt before anyone else.

Of course, other countries do that all the time. But the US definitely doesn't.

What it proves is that if coach sets very high expectations and athletes follow his instructions, they can all pretty much run national level times. They may be done as far as college improvement, maxed out, but they've done big things. And in the end I think we'll see that many continue to improve in college.

I don't get the maxed out past college improvement argument

If this is truly their full potential and they'll never improve, they'll at least run in college if they choose so and can probably score well in conferences and stuff

But if they hadn't been training well and in a bad team maybe they'd be 4:45-4:30 kids and not really have a chance to do anything

I live in a state that doesn’t have middle school sports so I’d like to hear more about the feeder system. Those 8th grade times are shocking, is that a middle school team? Are these kids running 50mpw in the 8th grade? The first day of XC practice for 9th graders is the first run most of them have ever gone on in their life, so no sophomores are running 14:50 any time soon here.

14:30 gets you onto a decent college team but if you stagnate at that level, you don't score. You don't even compete.