Worst high school coach in the world and why

?

Okay, sure, I guess he gets my vote...

My old high school coaches (i a new personal one now) had us do 3-4 miles hard 5 days a week. No intervals, no speed work, no long runs, no recovery days. Most of the kids run 19+ min for 3 miles.

The track coach is even worse. For the "distance guys" they do at most a 3 mile run once a MONTH. Yesterday they did a "workout" that consisted of 3X600,3X400 with a recovery WALK of 400m between each. They do stuff like this every day, well except friday, because...i mean..who practices on friday anyway? lol.

As a product of John Donodeo's coaching, I have to say that you should shut up and stop whining. Instead of being anonymous, and bashing him on a messsage board, why don't you tell me who you are?

Unless he's changed the workouts completely in 4 years, what you've said is a load of crap.

All I have to say is that I went from being a 6:15 miler to a 9:50 in high school (not impressive, but for someone as untalented as me, I'd say that's a big improvement). He coaches what he knows and has been able to put together some great middle distance teams. Sure his training might not be perfect for 5k, but by following it, I managed to run quite possibly the fastest 800 that I think is possible for me.

And for the college runners thing? Have you even done any research? I'd say I've done acceptably for myself, as have our boys at Notre Dame, Princeton, Columbia, Holy Cross, etc. Sure he hasn't had any Alan Webbs, but his athletes have been as successful as any other Regis graduates.

Bill Boyd He coaches at Canton High School in Michigan. He is the worst coach ever. We did 14 mile time trial to see who would run the meet the next day. I ran my PR the first meet of the year before he started coaching me. He should be fired. I could go one for hours about this jackass but I will stop now.

S. Fly,

I went to Plymouth Salem years ago. How's coach Geoff Baker and the rest of his team doing?? Also, we beat your guys' butts everytime during my years. lol. Anyway, I heard there was a 3rd school set up on campus (used to be the Phase 3 building).

Good to hear from a Plymouth/Canton guy.

I cannot believe there's a post about D up here. And sorry, I agree with Animosity -- the guy sucks. I graduated in 93 and remember he had a team going to the Millrose 4x8 in 91. Meet's on a Friday and in the days before the race he has Grzanka (sp?), Barker and Rearden run workouts like repeat 400s in 56-57 and 600s in 1:28-1:31. Dodge has a cold and doesn't go to practice all week. The result at Millrose? Those three guys who go to practice all week run something like 2:06, 2:10 and 2:08, Dodge runs a 1:59, Regis finishes DFL by more than half a lap. I have never seen a lousier coach in my entire life. Obviously, D knows how to taper in addition to giving the boys rest days every now and then. And nice job at Penn the last few years, too...

(And I did run D1 for three years and couldn't believe the difference in running for someone who knows what he's doing.)

Um... have you ever seen Millrose results, most teams seem to have problems there, at least once. Breaking 2 at millrose is usually pretty hard, and the winning team is usually at best around 8:10 or so. Don't forget that Dodge was the fastest of those guys by far. For every time like that at millrose, I can bring up a time when his boys did quite well.

Look, D isn't the perfect coach, but he does spend a lot of time and money coaching you guys (his stipend not cover even the gas for driving to meets), I can't see how the man can do it when he has to deal with ungrateful, bitter people like this.

No doubt, D tries hard. I just don't think that 4 straight days of intervals on the Great Lawn oval did anybody any favors week in and week out.

And in fairness to those other guys, Dodge wasn't THAT much better -- had them by a wide margin in the mile, only 1 second or so in the 8 and 4. Knowing the way D talked about his best runners from the past when I was there, I'm sure he makes it sound like Chuck walked on water...

Is this will berriel of claremont mckenna, i thought you were a soccer player in high school?

I couldn't play soccer for the life of me, I've got no athletic talent.

Maybe they are bitter because that coach is too ignorant to educate himelf about the sport. It is the obligation of all coaches to try to help their runners and to be competant. He is inhibiting any runners that have the potential to do well later in life with his poor coaching.

And people like you, William, make me sick.

Don't blindly jump in to defend Donodeo like they are attacking him as a person. They are saying his coaching sucks, not him.

The worst HS coach is no coach and program because the city school district had a tight budget and canned the indoor track team. To save $, they bus you across town to practice with one of the other HS teams. I'd have preferred a lousy coach over one that barely recognized my existence. (Geez, it's sad that I'm still bitter nearly 30 years later.)

This whole thing makes me sick. If you guys really had such terrible coaches, why didn't you do somehting about it? You could have run more on your own, you could have run slower in practice if you had hard repeats the day before a race, and I find it hard to believe that a coach would ever tell you to race your runs every day. That is your own fault. Most HS coaches work for virtually free and give as much as they can to their athletes. It is sad to see that you people are so ungrateful. Maybe I just see things differently because I have had great coaches in HS and college, but I think that a lot of what is being said here is bullshit. I doubt that a coach would be dumb enough to give the workouts that you are claiming to have done and I doubt that a coach would do things to intentionally make his athletes fail. It is true that some coaches are not as successful as others, but if you think/thought that you know what is going wrong, why not mention it to the coach instead of complaining to some random people on the internet?

Also, as far as Will Berrriel goes, he is a great runner and he wouldn't have ever started if it weren't for Donodeo. Will's reasons for defending him are not sickening. The guy gave him a chance and started developing him into a talented distance runner (who has been rather successful in college).

Burninator, you really don't know what you're talking about. Damn man, and critisizing people for responding to a thread, people should write whatever they want.

Yeah, believe it or not some coaches ARE that horrible. I had one that had me doing 100m and 200m sprints almost every day...I ran the 3200m. What was I supposed to do, argue with him about it? I tried that, got half a dozen extra sprints for daring to question him. Run more distance on my own? Well, you really think I had the energy to run mileage every day after several dozen sprints?

As for dogging intervals, coaches know about what you are capable of. If you are 5-10 sec off what you usually do for 400m, it won't fly, they'll catch on unless they're really stupid.

HS athletes are in a real bind often. They are stuck with what coach they have, and many of those coaches have little formal experience coaching runners.

Some of us were in HS before there was easy access to information like there is today.

We didn't know what bad coaching was because of this. We did what the coach said, backtalk didn't get you anything but a kick in the ass.

The tragedy in HS coaching, at least in the state I live, is that school faculty/staff have priority over coaching position than any other deserving candidate.

If some local 32:00 10k / 2:30 marathoner wants the job, he has no chance if some english teacher (who jogs 3 days a week) decides he/she wants to coach.

Yeah, people should write whatever they want. I wrote what I wanted to. I usually don't post anything on this site or even look at it, but I was bored and trying to avoid studying the other night.

In any case, the common theme on many of these message boards is to insult/critisize other people. Whether they are world class runners who had a bad or good race, DIII teams, coaches, whatever. People rarely say anything positive. It seems like most people claim to be really concerned with running, so why not spend the time that would have been spent bitching on this message board training or thinking about how to improve your training? It's just a suggestion. I'm not attacking anyone, just offering some advice.

Also, I think I do know what I'm talking about. I've had 3 great caoches, but I haven\'t always agreed with them. When I've been told to do something that seemed like it would effect my running adversely, I\'ve mentioned it to them. If they didn't have a good reason for making me do it, then I did what I thought I should do instead. This doesn't mean blatently telling the coach that they\'re a dumbass or screwing up workouts completely, it just means that sometimes I do some extra work on my own etc. If you want to run well, it requires effort and sometimes that effort includes dealing with dissagreements with your coaches.

Anyway, good luck to all of you and I hope that you can figure out what you need to do to train more successfully.

Oh and I'd like to recognize one of the best high school coaches ever: Brian L. Davis, Granada HS in Livermore, CA

Maybe you guys could start talking about good caoches too and help each other out a bit.

AH is exactly right. You have no idea what it's like to have a coach like that.

The problem with trying to correct or change something that a coach is doing is that it will often be seen as questioning authority. It's either their way or the highway. When you have a good coach, this isn't a source of frustrations because you agree with most or all of their methodology.

My coach did something nutty that worked out brilliantly and something that seemed smart but turned out disatrously.

On the day before I was to run a two-mile in a major meet, the guy had us do 25x60-meters, all out. Sounds insane, and a sure hamstring shredder for non-sprinters who usually never did anything shorter than 400. But although I did show up extremely sore to the meet, it wasn't the kind of soreness that slows you down. Quite the contrary.I set a PR by almost 20 seconds.

I was looking forward to a great spring when, in March, the coach excitedly told us that he'd gotten access to an indoor tennis facility BEFORE the first tennis players came in in the morning - which meant 6:30 a.m. And he'd have it for about 20 minutes, so we'd better make it count, like run 4x800 in 2:20 or so. Of course, there would be an afternoon workout, too.

I showed up for my first morning class like a zombie, and I was surely lethargic at the afternoon workout. I pretty much lost all enthusiasm for the season. I did break the school record by a couple of seconds, but I'd expected to better it by more than 20 (it was a very soft mark).

But in retrospect, what I WISH the coach had paid at least some attention to was our nutrition. I went to a school in a wealthy suburb, and there seemed to be plenty of money for everything except the lunches. The lunches were worse than prison fare, barely edible at all, and about all I could stomach was a canned fruit cup. Maybe that was way I was worn out halfway through afternoon workouts, and got tired on the 6th and 7th laps of so many two-miles. Ya think?