List them. Top 5?
List them. Top 5?
Powell
Van Hoy
Thomas (might not be in the ncaa at the moment)
Marcus O’Sullivan belongs on the short list.
Who ever Pat Henry says to handle the workouts
Vanhoy, Pete Watson, Pat Henry, Sudbury, Powell
basing off up to last year since track hasn’t started.
Ben Thomas would be at the top if he was still at Oregon. HM to Bonsey, Marcus O’Sullivan, Vin, Sean Carlson. Probably missing others
Could a middle-distance runner have great success coached under Mike Smith at NAU?
How about Jon Marcus? I’m not sure who he coaches currently but he’s been successful over his career.
He coached Geordie Beamish to an NCAA Mile title.
Absolutely true.
And Tom Donnelly, who also coached Marcus post collegiately.
University of Iowa has had about 10 guys who only ran 1:53-1:56 in high school and ended up running 1:45-1:48 in college over the past 10 years. So every year on average there's a under the radar high school runner who becomes a 1:48 or faster dude. Leading the way of the group is Erik Sowinski who was a 1:54.29 his senior year and ran 1:45.90 four years later at Iowa. And then kept training in Iowa City to run a couple 1:44's as a pro.
It should be worth pointing out the progress people made. If a college recruits a bunch of 1:50-1:52 high schoolers then they better have a lot of 1:48 or faster college guys since they don't have to improve much to get there.
Iowa Middle Distance wrote:
University of Iowa has had about 10 guys who only ran 1:53-1:56 in high school and ended up running 1:45-1:48 in college over the past 10 years. So every year on average there's a under the radar high school runner who becomes a 1:48 or faster dude. Leading the way of the group is Erik Sowinski who was a 1:54.29 his senior year and ran 1:45.90 four years later at Iowa. And then kept training in Iowa City to run a couple 1:44's as a pro.
It should be worth pointing out the progress people made. If a college recruits a bunch of 1:50-1:52 high schoolers then they better have a lot of 1:48 or faster college guys since they don't have to improve much to get there.
Taking a 1:50-1:52 guy down to 1:46-1:48 still takes quite a bit of coaching prowess. Many of those guys are already training like collegiates in high school. Sean Dolan, for example, was a 1:50 guy in high school, but his father is the Penn coach. Taking a guy like that to 1:46 in a couple years is extremely impressive.
A lot of those big improvements come from seriously undertrained high schoolers that would run fast no matter where they went. Sometimes they may also have a weak open 800m PR, but a very fast split or 600m time. The Iowa State track coach talked about how he recruits athletes with fast 500m/600m times because they run the 600y indoors at conferences, and those guys often fly under the radar. A great example would be Cebastian Gentil, who had a 1:53 open 800m PR and now runs 1:46. However, he also had a 1:19 600 (US #1) and a 1:49 4x8 split.
That said, Iowa does have a great middle distance program. Along with Iowa State and Indiana, they're one of the more underrated 800m programs in the country.
This thread is also very male-centric, so I figure it's probably important to mention that if you include women, this conversation starts and ends with JJ Clark, the most successful US 800m coach of all time. He hasn't been at Stanford very long, but considering he's already gotten a woman to 4:04, I expect he will be successful there too. Their cross country might suffer though (it already is tbh).