Newbury Park is the greatest prep xc team in history

welcome to 2021 wrote:

Saban's BM wrote:

Here's another example

NP number 7 boy in 2021

Zaki Blunt

2019 - 15:35

2021 - 15:13

Desert Vista number eight boy in 2021 (7 didn't run in 2019)

Diego Rueda

2019 - 17:25

2021 - 16:17

Not to single out Blunt, and NP. He's a great runner and they're a good program, But this just shows your picking out one scenario doesn't mean anything.

Real cute. I bet you're proud of yourself.

Lauren Ping is one of the most talented runners in the country. She didn't show any marked improvement.

While Sam McDonnell went from being a good runner to one of the best in the country. If it was all about talent then Lauren Ping should have won by a large margin.

Comparing 2 less talented runners is useless. All your example shows me is that you've got to be a minute faster the break into NPs to 7.

You're dumb. Comparing the improvement of someone who has been training and competing at a very high level since the beginning of time, with someone who just started running competitively three years ago is useless. You admitted they're both very talented, one just had a huge head start on the other. Lauren Ping improved from 5:13 1500 (5:36 1600) to 4:50 1600 in 3 years. That's pretty good improvement, no? They are just in different stages of their improvement.

If it's not about talent, comparing two less talented runners would make much more sense to determine the impact of coaching.

So, it is about talent.

Wise Old Man wrote:

This is a critical point. I’d put my daughter’s D5 coach up against Brosnan or any other hs coach. He’s won a few D5 CA team titles, but what’s most impressive is where the kids start as freshman and then finish as seniors in terms of the magnitude of improvement over the entire spectrum of talent he’s coaching. Of course, he’s working with a limited talent pool. He gets the back of packers to be solid middle to front of pack runners and he gets those with some ability to be up front. The kids show marked improvement wherever they enter. There’s very little attrition from the team and they enjoy it and they don’t need to be future D1 runners to benefit from his coaching.

Of course you could put your daughter's coach up against Brosnan because you are vested in his coaching ability - and that's a good thing.

But, when you put said coach up against Brosnan he would be trounced, at least at a competitive level, as would all HS coaches in the country. We have never seen anything like Brosnan. He's clearly a disruptor in the HS coaching ranks. His results are mind blowing. He is already one of the all time greats. He clearly has the technical, motivational, and mental aspects of coaching distance runners down pat. I feel faster just listening to his interview.

There is no way he'll be coaching in the HS ranks in 3 years time. Any college would be crazy to not be actively pursuing this guy.

As to the naysayers who point to the two talented families; having talent is only part of the equation. Getting that talent to buy in and achieve their potential is the hardest part of this sport and he's done that.

I'll admit that I was skeptical when Nico and the rest of NBP was rising in the ranks but what he has done deserves a tremendous amount of credit and if every HS coach in the country isn't trying to understand his methodology then they'll missing out on a huge opportunity to improve as a coach.

This should be obvious, but it's more than coaching and talent. Brosnan is clearly a very good coach, and he's got great talent to work with, AND he's a great fit for a large high school with flexible transfer rules in a wealthy and highly competitive environment like Newbury Park.

If you dropped him into a small school in Iowa, for example, he'd probably be a successful coach, and we'd never hear his name. His team would win their state division now and then, but the chance of another team getting 5 great guys in a year when he's trying to get someone to run instead of working fast food after school is just too high. He'd do pretty good in rural Georgia, but he couldn't count on getting top athletes. There's no reason to think he'd be a great college coach, where recruiting talent (from out of state and overseas) plays a much bigger role than developing talent.

I think what Brosnan and NBP are doing is fantastic and it's great to watch it happen. But there's more to it than just talent and great coaching. Context counts.

First - You have no idea how long Sam McDonnell has been running. Everything you said after that is just nonsense.

Someone brought up NP's number 7 boy was 15:13. How did he get there? How do you get a number 7 kid to run faster than most teams number 1 or 2?

Why is Carmel the best team in Indiana year after year? Why is Desert Vista the best team in Arizona year after year? Why was York the best team in Illinois for decades? Why do FM girls contend for the NXN title year after year?

Let me guess, the most talented kids in each of those states only live in those school districts year after year after year? That's just total nonsense. They're good because they have good coaches? Talent is great, but it becomes useless if you don't know how to develop it.

Brosnan does a very good job of coaching. To dismiss him because of talent is stupid.

Have you read the book "Friday Night Lights?" No, it's not just talent but the obsession with a sport from a young age and the professionalization of it can produce a great result year after year. But you could have crap coaching at Permian (in football) or Newbury Park/York and they'd still be good based on the way the kids are coached and prepping for high school success with middle school sports and the area's resources they pour into it. That being said, I think the Newbury Park coach is good even if I don't love some of his statements/politics.

Hats off to the Newbury Park program.

But I'm not so sure that having more programs striving for these kinds of times would be such a great thing. Sounds a bit like a recipe for over-coaching and an over-emphasis on ove rtraining in HS (yes, I know, too many "over"s).

I actually think that over the last ten years or so we've reached a pretty good balance between trying to achieve peak performance in HS and allowing young bodies and young minds to develop in a healthy, balanced way. I'd hate to move any further toward excessive expectations and training.

Most of the schools that are perennial powerhouses are large wealthy schools. they have more natural talent than other schools and the kids come from families that stress hard work. Those things have nothing to do with the coach. It forms a large pipeline of very good runners. Any decent coach would continue to do well at those schools.

8:56 wrote:

welcome to 2021 wrote:

Pretty positive nobody said they weren't talented. Of course talent is a factor. But, Newbury Park doesn't have a monopoly on talent.

Everyone wants to chalk it up to talent. It's more than that.

It’s coaching but also talent.

If all the kids had different last names it would be an easier sell.

Lex Young ran 14:40 his first ever XC race. Idk if Brosnan was coaching him for more than a few weeks a that point.

Summer training starts in June in California.

The guy is insane. SO awesome to watch

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

But you could have crap coaching at Permian (in football) or Newbury Park/York and they'd still be good based on the way the kids are coached and prepping for high school success with middle school sports and the area's resources they pour into it.

Not necessarily. NBP was not very good prior to Brosnan's arrival in 2016(?). I just went back to 2015 Woodbridge and NBP's top runner ran 15:46 with no other runners under 16:00. Incidentally, Luis Grijalva won that year, in a now pedestrian, 14:48. Clearly there has been a change in culture at the school.

Maybe someone with more time can do a quick comparison of Newbury Park before and after Brosnan?

I agree with you and others who stated that if you were going to pick a not very good HS to coach at with goals of being the best ever probably Newbury Park was the better pick than say, Birmingham Alabama.

This conversation is why american kids for the most part suck at distance running. You have a coach that shows the way to better performance and there is a large contingent of people that want to shoot down his methods and chalk it up to other factors. It can't possibly be what he is doing that is causing these next level performances.

Nope, it must be demographics, a pipeline of talent, an unfair economic advantage, excuse after excuse ad nauseam.

welcome to 2021 wrote:

This conversation is why american kids for the most part suck at distance running. You have a coach that shows the way to better performance and there is a large contingent of people that want to shoot down his methods and chalk it up to other factors. It can't possibly be what he is doing that is causing these next level performances.

Nope, it must be demographics, a pipeline of talent, an unfair economic advantage, excuse after excuse ad nauseam.

You nailed it.

Brosnan is a game changer and is blowing everyone's mind on what's possible in High School running. Coaches like this don't come around often. All running fans need to take a seat and enjoy what we are seeing.

Brosnan is a terrific coach, no doubt…..he may very well be the best HS coach in the US. But, until he serves as long as Joe Newton, The Kranicks, Bill Aris, et al, and produces longer than 5 or 6 years, I reserve judgment to gain entry into that exclusive club.

Jefe in the CO wrote:

Not necessarily. NBP was not very good prior to Brosnan's arrival in 2016(?). I just went back to 2015 Woodbridge and NBP's top runner ran 15:46 with no other runners under 16:00. Incidentally, Luis Grijalva won that year, in a now pedestrian, 14:48. Clearly there has been a change in culture at the school.

Maybe someone with more time can do a quick comparison of Newbury Park before and after Brosnan?

I agree with you and others who stated that if you were going to pick a not very good HS to coach at with goals of being the best ever probably Newbury Park was the better pick than say, Birmingham Alabama.

I'm talking more about the youth track infrastructure and recruiting dynamics. Maybe it's just anomalous but everyone is pointing out these kids have run like sub-4:50 in middle school and then hyping them up before they join Newbury Park. Or they've run fast at another school. Not quibbling about what Brosnan has built, I do not think the prior coach was building the program/tapping into the talent and parent's resources like before. My point is you put a mediocre coach in but keep the really fast youth pipeline, altitude camps and such they'd still be a top program. This is a very unusual high school program taking track/XC way more seriously than most HS programs. Yes, the coach's prowess is part of this.

No. The 2004 Saratoga Girls are the greatest prep XC team in history.

They however, are a close and solid second.

Not sure we agree on what is a mediocre HS coach. My kids have mostly had, what I would consider, atrocious coaching at the HS level. I mean they were either lazy, egotistical, clueless or some combination of the three. A couple of these coaches (my 17 yo has had 5 different coaches in his 3 1/2 years in HS) are what people might classify as mediocre or "ok". I obviously don't feel that way and they would take a 4:50 8th grader and turn them into a 5:00 miler by their senior year.

But back to your point, I think a competent coach could take a 4:50 8th grader and turn them into a 4:20 miler by senior year (I've seen a couple of these examples in our local area). It takes a great coach to turn that 8th grader into a sub 4:10 miler. That is what Brosnan is doing.

Which leads to the next philosophical question: should he being doing that? My answer is...sort of. We all get one or two shots to be great at something and there are no guarantees in life. So, if we take a donkey and train him to run with the horses - then yes. If we take a race horse and run him ragged so that he's hanging with the donkeys - then no. If we take a race horse and get him to run with the pronghorns- then definitely yes.

oinion wrote:

No. The 2004 Saratoga Girls are the greatest prep XC team in history.

They however, are a close and solid second.

Nice! Ok, let’s see. That Saratoga team placed 4 in the top 12 at NXN. I think all four went on to run D1 xc and finish in the top 100 at NCAAs. I think this NP team will be better, but we will need to wait until the end of the season to know for sure, and we will need to account for difference in competition level…2004 until now, girls v boys.

Well, yes some of this is coaching but some of this is resources and commitment. I think I had very good coaching in high school (my school was tremendously successful), but it was not professionalized. We didn't have required practices on Saturday, and we certainly didn't devote 3-4 hours daily to training. We'd maybe run 45-55 mpw Senior Year, but we weren't trying to tap out or anything and a lot of it was your own initiative. Our best guy, a national star ran more like 60-70 mpw and did more of his own thing. I think my high school coaches would take a 4:50 middle-school miler to 4:15, but Brosnan might do 4:10 based on altitude camps and the sheer volume of auxiliary stuff they do that you more see in the collegiate/pro ranks.

For mediocre, maybe I was too generous. I meant like the typical HS coach who might prescribe too much speedwork and semi-low mileage, but not at an egregious bad-for-development level. There are a lot of really bad coaches out there I'm sure. Brosnan is far better than that but I suspect a guy with somewhat of a clue could succeed with the right resources and talent around.

Well, that was a time sink. Just took your suggestion and tried to look up as many of the kids on the roster as I could find for the past 10 years. I'm sure I've missed some and maybe record keeping was a bit lacking 10 years ago, I don't know, but here's what I found.

From 2012 to 2017, there were 2 kids that ran sub 5:00 1600 before coming to NP.

From 2017 to present, there have been 16 kids that ran sub 5:00 1600 before coming to NP.

What stood out to me is how fast kids have been lately. We're not just talking sub 5:00, but deep in the 4:40's!!! What I also found surprising is how many kids have formal running before high school in their past recently compared to the past. Almost every one of the top 15 kids on the roster ran some sort of club or middle school. In the pre 2017 period, there were very few. Maybe that part of the country has just blown up with youth track in the past few years.

Wise Old Man wrote:

oinion wrote:

No. The 2004 Saratoga Girls are the greatest prep XC team in history.

They however, are a close and solid second.

Nice! Ok, let’s see. That Saratoga team placed 4 in the top 12 at NXN. I think all four went on to run D1 xc and finish in the top 100 at NCAAs. I think this NP team will be better, but we will need to wait until the end of the season to know for sure, and we will need to account for difference in competition level…2004 until now, girls v boys.

NXN was actually NTN back then.. so no individuals.. so we'll see if Newbury Park has 4 in the Top 12 for team scoring (which I'd bet a lot of money they will). They'll probably have 4 in the absolute Top 12 which would be crazy.