CA State Meet Saturday — How many Newbury Park boys can break the Woodward Park course record: 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4?

I don’t think it’s the advantage of running at a young age that is what’s important. It’s the indication of talent based on times they ran as youngsters. Running in the 4:40’s or 4:50’s before high school indicates ability. Someone please tell me that having that many kids running that fast before high school isn’t a VERY rare situation. Find another school that has a similar situation. Maybe I’m wrong and it happens at other schools. I just can’t imagine.

chjjjbjkk wrote:

masters runner from the CO wrote:

no kidding - in 20 years I have only had 3 boys that were sub 6 in the mile before joining my HS program.

Yes, those are good times. But not crazy times. For example Keegan Smith ran 4:25 for the 1600m in 2021 (grade 8)

Levi Jackson ran 4:22 in grade 8 in 2019. Every year, there are dozens of middle school kids that run sub 4:40

But yes, of course, you don’t get to be the best HS of all time by starting out with one kid who runs a 5:55 mile in middle school and 4 other kids who never ran in their lives before entering HS.

Yes, they seem to have a very good feeder program.

Also, Elliott McArthur ran a 4:22 as an 8th grader in 2019 and he was only the 4th fastest junior in MN this year in XC. Just goes to show that being fast that young does not cause future success.

But it’s certainly correlated

This is true, but you can find examples of 10-15 kids each year faster than this and most have not made the leap in times or improvement that the Youngs, Sahlmans and others have made. It has taken a team culture and hard work to get to the times they have. Compared to the kids in the country ahead of them in 8th grade, they basically surpassed them and quite a few have not improved much nor are top in the country let alone their own state.

Clearly these kids are exceptionally talented but it’s crazy to discount coaching here. Even keeping these kids healthy and running well at the end of the season is a task. How many college coaches make it to NCAAs with their top five runners healthy and all running well?

And Dev came into the season as a 4:27.7/9:35.4 guy over 16/32, with Hector 4:28.5/9:23.8 over the same distances.

Brosnan knows how to make cross country runners out of decent people. He knows how to make champions out of good people. Great people, he sends to NAU.

Cougars *older men wrote:Times didn't improve from early Oct to late Nov.

Are you sure about that? Flatten out Woodward Park and reduce the distance from 3.1 to 3.0 miles and at least three of their guys are under 14:00 again. Maybe somewhere in the 13:40s, right where two of them ran earlier this season.

Trumps boyfriend wrote:

I don’t think it’s the advantage of running at a young age that is what’s important. It’s the indication of talent based on times they ran as youngsters. Running in the 4:40’s or 4:50’s before high school indicates ability. Someone please tell me that having that many kids running that fast before high school isn’t a VERY rare situation. Find another school that has a similar situation. Maybe I’m wrong and it happens at other schools. I just can’t imagine.

The fastest PR for an incoming freshman I’ve ever had at Hughson is 5:07. He went on to run 1:50.03 as a college sophomore.

The second fastest was 5:17. He went on to win multiple league titles and was one of the best runners in our area as a high schooler.

Most of the time, if a kid has a pre high school PR of 6:30 or better, I think of that kid as someone that might be an important part of our scoring 5 eventually. Granted, those 6:30s are PE miles rather than competitive miles. If a kid ran middle school track and broke 6:00, he’s certainly someone who can help our team.

More common is the kid who hasn’t broken 7 or maybe hasn’t broken 8.

At least in our area, this is the level of incoming talent (or level of development) that we deal with. You can have all the culture and coaching in the world, but if the backbone of your team is kids who’ve never broken 7:00 for the mile, you’re going to spend a couple of years just trying to get those kids to the 8th grade achievements of the NP kids.

That being said, NP has an excellent coach who has developed an excellent culture. Clearly in the history of the US, there has never been a mixture of talent, development at the lower levels, culture, financial resources, and parent support like NP currently has.

izzienutz wrote:

So those Cali boys are wicked fast but nobody gives a shat to set up more than one camera?? Sad.

Here's a brief recap with more angles/cameras:

That being said, NP has an excellent coach who has developed an excellent culture. Clearly in the history of the US, there has never been a mixture of talent, development at the lower levels, culture, financial resources, and parent support like NP currently has.[/quote]

No, he just has access to a ton of talent. Other coaches have had runners in the 8:40s and coaching 4 is no different than just one. There are thousands of HS athletes and having having sports available is all the "culture" that is needed. Parents can't purchase 8:40 runners and most parents that don't live in NP also support their kids.

NP has tremendous talent and some posters are attributing it to factors that don't exist. My favorite is " collective excellence". Here in the Sacramento area, Cordova HS had powerhouse football teams that dominated every year in the 70s and 80s. Much of their talent came from military family kids from a nearby base and when that base closed, the pipeline ended . Even though they continued to have the same coach, they started to field below teams. In more recent years, only win a couple of games a year.

I don't understand these stories. Our JH team runs 15 MPW but we average 2 boys per year under 5 minutes in a class of 300.

"Other coaches have had runners in the 8:40s and coaching 4 is no different than just one"

This entire thread is just you obsessively hating on a high school program, its incredibly weird. Such a negative loser

Nekked Baker wrote:

Cougars *older men wrote:Times didn't improve from early Oct to late Nov.

Are you sure about that? Flatten out Woodward Park and reduce the distance from 3.1 to 3.0 miles and at least three of their guys are under 14:00 again. Maybe somewhere in the 13:40s, right where two of them ran earlier this season.

Boy’s top 5 averaged 3 seconds faster per runner thank at Clovis 6 weeks prior to state on the same course. Girl’s team top 5 averaged 9 seconds slower than at Clovis 6 weeks prior on the same course. Only one girl Ran faster at State than Clovis and it was by 1 second.

xcrunner22765 wrote:

"Other coaches have had runners in the 8:40s and coaching 4 is no different than just one"

This entire thread is just you obsessively hating on a high school program, its incredibly weird. Such a negative loser

No. It's not that. If you read enough of his posts across this message board you will see that he is just fixated on the belief that only someone with "talent" can be good.

He doesn't believe that coaching or culture or hard work plays into it much. In his mind it's only about talent and nothing else.

So because he thinks that way all of his posts seem like he is hating on the program.

15_50 wrote:

xcrunner22765 wrote:

"Other coaches have had runners in the 8:40s and coaching 4 is no different than just one"

This entire thread is just you obsessively hating on a high school program, its incredibly weird. Such a negative loser

No. It's not that. If you read enough of his posts across this message board you will see that he is just fixated on the belief that only someone with "talent" can be good.

He doesn't believe that coaching or culture or hard work plays into it much. In his mind it's only about talent and nothing else.

So because he thinks that way all of his posts seem like he is hating on the program.

As opposed to the other posters who think the coach is responsible for creating the 8:40 runners and don't acknowledge that he's had a HUGE head start and advantage by having so much talent. It's hard to get over the number of fast kids coming to that school and the proportion of them coming from outside the school boundaries. If you don't acknowledge that is highly unusual, you're just ignoring the facts. A few have mentioned they have a couple incoming runners that fast, but to have 8 of them in a two year period is far, far beyond what happens anywhere else.

You're ignoring the fact the NP is the best HS in the country hands down. Only people with low self-esteem and lack of knowledge say they get all the talent. Honestly it's a looser thing to say. Jealous coaches have been saying this for year about all kinds of programs they only wish they could emulate.

Facts are facts and no one is doing what Newbury Park is doing and it starts with the coach getting the kids to believe.

You are ignoring the fact that they had more talent coming in than any other HS in the country. That has already been documented.

15_50 wrote:

xcrunner22765 wrote:

"Other coaches have had runners in the 8:40s and coaching 4 is no different than just one"

This entire thread is just you obsessively hating on a high school program, its incredibly weird. Such a negative loser

No. It's not that. If you read enough of his posts across this message board you will see that he is just fixated on the belief that only someone with "talent" can be good.

He doesn't believe that coaching or culture or hard work plays into it much. In his mind it's only about talent and nothing else.

So because he thinks that way all of his posts seem like he is hating on the program.

No it's very exciting for NP to have such talented runners and it's unprecedented in HS XC. The difference in my point of view is that talented kids in all HS sports compete and most of them are self-motivated. Many of you make it seem like distance runners are sensitive creatures and if you a coach says "boo" to them they'll quit.

There were great runners before XC and track was avaliable in middle school. The talented ones would run 5:00 or faster in P.E., the coach would hear about it and recruit them. The NP studs would have been identified the same way.

Family support is not required. Craig Virgin grew up on a farm and his father was miffed that Craig wasn't home afternoons to help with the chores. His coach had no experience in coaching distance but they sat down, figured out what needed to be done and he ended up setting the HS 2-mile record. To say Craig was self-motivated is a gross understatement.

Distance running is not some repulsive sport where kids have to be stolen from the not so popular HS sport of Soccer. For talented talents kids, running is a lot of fun. Some you are attacking me for my opinions but I'm not the one who thinks the sport is only attractive to nerds.

I wasn't debating this one way or the other.

I was just pointing out that the aztec guy doesn't hate the program, he just has his belief system .

If I were to weigh in on the actual discussion I'd simply say running and coaching is far too complicated to boil it down to a black and white issue.