Your cross country team is the best *relative to other competition they face*, not in an absolute sense. I guarantee if you made the football, soccer, or lacrosse teams train for cross country all three of them would obliterate the XC team. The difference in talent is truly stunning and nobody realizes it because nobody here played team sports. The really athletic kids in actual mainstream sports are leagues above even the best runners at your school.
Brosnan is right 4:20 is genuinely really not fast at all for a mile. Those kids come a dime a dozen and they all ride bench on the football and soccer teams. The 4:10 guys are starting on the field and the 4:00 guys have scholarships to play ball in college. It takes a unique perspective to understand how true this is because not many people have been deeply invested in a team sport and also track.
I played lacrosse on a mediocre high school team, I was about 3rd fastest in all around running capabilities speed and endurance. I ranked my athletic ability as above average but nothing crazy. The lacrosse players weren’t even the best athletes in school. The very best athletes played football. So you can imagine my surprise when I was curious about my 400m potential and randomly ran 50.5, a second off our school record, with pretty much no training. I know for a fact I’m neither the fastest nor strongest guy on my team let alone in my school. The track team is made of people who weren’t athletic enough to play real sports and I’m sorry but that’s true.
The only thing Brosnan is doing is getting the real athletes to run track. He’s not getting lucky with talent, and his coaching is no different than anyone else’s.