I’m pretty sure I could also get 16 boys to run sub-10:00 by telling 100 kids to go run 70-100 miles per week, injuring 50% of them, and burning out the rest. Is that great coaching or irresponsible coaching? Where are all the amazing Great Oak alumni now?
they run 40-70 and the only ones who get injured are freshmen whose bodies aren't used to running consistently yet. the longest workouts they do are 3 mile tempos
Herriman was also one of the better distance teams in the state as of last year and the years before it too.
This to me is evidence that coaching is so much more important than talent, which a lot of highschool coaches with poorly performing teams hate to admit.
The amount of kids that are capable of running +\- 2:05, 4:40, 10:00 under high quality training is way higher than most people realize.
1000% agree. NP is what made me realize that when there was the whole "4:20 isn't fast" controversy, and now that kids/coaches have had 4 years to shift their mindset, we're seeing high schoolers run sub-4 and still come 4th place.
My class in high school sucked. We had 1 guy who ran 4:49 as a freshman, and he got down to 4:29 as a senior. I think he was the only one to break 5 too. The year below us was stacked though, they had 5 freshmen between 4:50-4:55, and half a dozen more below 5:10. Only 1 of them broke 4:20, and 1 more broke 4:30. We had the largest school in the state, a stacked freshmen class, and in 4 years, 1 of them scored in the 800 at the state meet. When covid started I did my own training by following advice here, and in 6 weeks I was in the best shape I'd ever been in. Really makes me wonder how fast we all could've run if we'd had a great coach.
Great post. I read that comment and was gonna say basically the same thing.