My gift to young distance coaches. (Definitely not trolling!)

WORDS OF WIT wrote:

I taught and coached for more than 40 years, some of those years were as a substitute teacher, but I attended many coaching workshops, and bought many videos that I watched multiple times.

What is very common with XC and Track & Field is to have to battle with the football coaches. Many individuals have lost jobs because they won and proved themselves superior to the football coaches in the sport of Athletics. They were removed for many reasons but the main one is often that football wants and needs to win. Beware of that and be prepared to adjust. In my case we did extremely well in XC and I was removed from my T & F position immediately after we won the Big XC Title! The new football coach took the head coaching position and filled his staff with football coaches. None of them had any experience in T & F, except the new football coach who "played track" in junior high. They went nowhere in Track of course because they used it as spring football. Often the entire team played soccer, rugby, or did football drills!

It's definitely not me alone. A buddy of mine was a state champion in high school and had five boys under 2:00 returning in the 1970s at a small school when that was a fast time. He was converted to be the girls coach while football took the boys team! No kidding.

In my case when the football coach took over T & F, I went to the middle school for that season and continued to try to recruit. I developed lots of resentment towards the head football coach. What I might have considered more closely is to be a volunteer high school distance coach. Perhaps it might have taken a season or two to get that, but you have a better shot at winning in XC if you do. Also, I needed to improve my relations with the head football guy and the A.D.

I you read my words of wit, I hope you take the time to comment. The above is factual!

HSXC Coach wrote:

Times are changing. With the advent of easily found online results, recruiting news, shoe company national championships, and NIL, athletes and parents are demanding specialty coaching. Some rural areas may still be dealing with what the coach described above but, I am seeing more schools take individual sports seriously by hiring qualified coaches. In my state, the top 20-30 schools are coached by former D1 athletes and educated coaches holding national certifications. A few private schools have staffs that are better than what most local colleges can put together.

ADs want results and trophies for their own job security. They might love the old ball coaches, but they also understand that a former college linebacker or point guard doesn't know how to get kids to state or NXN. I am even finding that the history teacher that hobby jogged a few marathons back in the day isn't getting asked to run the XC squad any longer Savvy ADs are recruiting qualified people that understand the physiology and psychology behind training. The days of endless wind sprints, 400 reps, and burpees are over.

HSXC Coach wrote:

Times are changing. With the advent of easily found online results, recruiting news, shoe company national championships, and NIL, athletes and parents are demanding specialty coaching. Some rural areas may still be dealing with what the coach described above but, I am seeing more schools take individual sports seriously by hiring qualified coaches. In my state, the top 20-30 schools are coached by former D1 athletes and educated coaches holding national certifications. A few private schools have staffs that are better than what most local colleges can put together.

ADs want results and trophies for their own job security. They might love the old ball coaches, but they also understand that a former college linebacker or point guard doesn't know how to get kids to state or NXN. I am even finding that the history teacher that hobby jogged a few marathons back in the day isn't getting asked to run the XC squad any longer Savvy ADs are recruiting qualified people that understand the physiology and psychology behind training. The days of endless wind sprints, 400 reps, and burpees are over.

multi-tool wrote:

WORDS OF WIT wrote:

I taught and coached for more than 40 years, some of those years were as a substitute teacher, but I attended many coaching workshops, and bought many videos that I watched multiple times.

What is very common with XC and Track & Field is to have to battle with the football coaches. Many individuals have lost jobs because they won and proved themselves superior to the football coaches in the sport of Athletics. They were removed for many reasons but the main one is often that football wants and needs to win. Beware of that and be prepared to adjust. In my case we did extremely well in XC and I was removed from my T & F position immediately after we won the Big XC Title! The new football coach took the head coaching position and filled his staff with football coaches. None of them had any experience in T & F, except the new football coach who "played track" in junior high. They went nowhere in Track of course because they used it as spring football. Often the entire team played soccer, rugby, or did football drills!

It's definitely not me alone. A buddy of mine was a state champion in high school and had five boys under 2:00 returning in the 1970s at a small school when that was a fast time. He was converted to be the girls coach while football took the boys team! No kidding.

In my case when the football coach took over T & F, I went to the middle school for that season and continued to try to recruit. I developed lots of resentment towards the head football coach. What I might have considered more closely is to be a volunteer high school distance coach. Perhaps it might have taken a season or two to get that, but you have a better shot at winning in XC if you do. Also, I needed to improve my relations with the head football guy and the A.D.

I you read my words of wit, I hope you take the time to comment. The above is factual!

Yeah... I don't see it.

Joe Newton at York, IL was one of, if not THE, most successful HS xc/ track coach in US history. He was a sprinter who brought a work hard mentality to xc when xc was seen as more of an activity than a sport. Despite the prominent success of his xc and distance runners, York managed to compete against powerhouses like East St. Louis in track by also consistently producing state finalist sprinters, hurdlers and sprint relay teams. I guarantee you that Newton would not have been as successful in distance as he was if had totally neglected the non distance events in track.

I'm sure some HS track programs are run by under qualified ball coaches. Most aren't.

If you are a distance/ xc coach you should probably accept the fact that a football coach can recruit more athletes/ points to a track team than you can. Take that as a license to focus on 4 events: the 4x800, 800, 1600, and 3200. In reality that means you need something like 6-7 committed and talented upper class men to fill those spots and maybe a dozen underclassmen waiting in the ranks. If you consistently produce conference champions and state qualifiers from those ranks you will always have your spring track position plus the head xc position unless you are a complete creep. That is plenty to manage. Let the ball coach(es) worry about the 13 other track events and the 30-45 guys it takes to man a quality sprinting, hurdling, jumping, and throwing squad.