How does one HS produce so many of the top HS runners in the country (Crater & Newbury Park)? Don't say it's luck

PS. Success breeds success. That's certainly part of it.

Even Loftus has a hard time putting this level of high school running into perspective.
"It's hard because I'm still in it," he said. "When I talked to (coach) Brosnan, he said when guys are doing this stuff and it's crazy, it's because they just start believing and you can lay out anyhing for them and they're ready to go."

It’s luck. There, I said it.

What are the chances that you'll win the lottery? Pretty much zero.

What are the chances that somebody will win the lottery? Obviously much higher than zero.

It's not just dumb luck. The coaching is obviously good, and having 2 sets of siblings totalling 5 runners (with 2 being twins) plays a big role as well. That's far more likely than having 5 unrelated national-class runners in such a short timespan.

Brosnan's girls teams were also successful. One of the girls finished 6th at Runninglane the same year they had four boys in the top 6.

I think it is developing a culture where the team WANTS to be successful and commit to it year round.

most schools don’t have anyone that is all in on running. I was on a team that had a few top 5’s at the state meet and we only had 3 kids running year round.

It is the same as Texas or Florida football where kids, the schools, families all buy in and treat it like a serious sport not just a participatory one.

The recent crater high workout video they have 30 kids out there and it’s June! The state meet is over. Think about that culture.

Then get lucky with a few really talented kids

The Newbury Park school records are 4:37/10:12 for the girls so not in the same universe as the NP brothers.

Before them, it was the likes of Southlake Carroll powered by “Paavo”.

Belief System Critical to Success
“The biggest part of it is the belief factor,” said Leonard. “I don’t think Paavo is the end-all, cure-all. No matter what system you’re using, if kids believe in what you’re doing 100 percent, then they will excel. Our athletes believe in running every day.”

espn.com

Southlake Carroll teams powered by Paavo

Two days before last month’s Nike Cross Nationals, when the country's teams arrived in Portland to begin a weekend of festivities on the sprawling Nike campus, the first thing on the agenda for the Southlake Carroll boys of T...

Open link

It’s not that hard. What sets Crater and Newbury Park apart is three things:

1. A positive culture that values challenge, excellence, and the process of reaching the top.

2. Knowledgeable coaches willing to take risks. While not advocating that you break kids, too many coaches play it safe or dumb it down for varied reasons that keep their athletes mediocre.

3. Selling something bigger than winning league or qualifying for state. This gets both the runners and their parents fully engaged. These kids want to be full time runners, not half-azzed participants in multiple sports.

Training is simple: build the aerobic engine and train for the demands of racing. More kids can handle 60+ miles than coaches want to think. Too many coaches are still stuck on methodologies from the last century. Far too many coaches want to keep collecting their stipends or keep parents off of their backs by playing it safe. The common thread between Brosnan, Loftus, Soles, Mostert is that they understand the science and that the sport is changed. They don’t baby their charges. Do kids get hurt? Sometimes. Then again, kids get injured on low miles and only running in season.

It's not totally luck, but I would agree it's mostly luck. Nico Young just ran 12:45. The odds are he would have been a great runner no matter which high school he attended, and his younger brothers were obviously inspired by his success.

That said, of course coaches are important for guiding development, building team culture, and much more. I'm reminded of Gault's profile of Gary Martin's high school coach, Paul Streleckis, who had never coached a sub-5:00 miler before Martin came along. Having Martin on his team was sheer luck. But to his credit, Streleckis went out of his way to seek expert help when he realized Martin was a special talent. That extra care and support from Streleckis helped Martin to break 4:00 in high school.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2022/06/paul-streleckis-had-never-coached-a-sub-500-miler-then-gary-martin-entered-his-life/

Niwot’s returners (no overlap)

4:03 mile

4:11 mile

8:50 3200

9:00 3200

9:17 3200

I‘m sure they were inspired by Newbury Park too

You say they have 30 kids running year around but their 4th fastest 1600m runner ran 4:25 this year. That tells me it was all luck to have two such talented runners and it had nothing to do with culture.

There have been super-elite runners from places like Coos Bay, OR, Lebanon,IL, and Modesto, CA. The common denominator was that they were all very self motivated

4:37 is very good for a girl. In fact 4:37 won Brooks PR last week. If you don't think 4:37 is "successful" then you are just a ranting moron.

Obviously there's some amount of luck, but during L&L's senior year I said we'd be seeing schools popping up with similar (if not more) success in the coming years, and the Crater guys have shown that to be true. I think it's a culture thing. You can listen to Brosnan on podcasts talking about how important it was for the first kid to really buy in to Brosnan's training, and even though the guy only ended up running like 9:20, it was important for guys like Nico to see that was possible, and what it took to get there. He's also in interviews from years ago (the famous 4:20 isn't fast one iirc) saying we should have more HS kids run sub-4, more pros running sub-13, and even college guys running sub-13. While there was certainly luck involved in Brosnan getting Nico, I don't think it was a coincidence that the first guy to break 13/27 in college had maybe the only HS coach in the country saying American collegiates should be breaking 13.

I don't buy the idea that some siblings just have way less talent than the other. I know there are plenty of examples of one sibling being way better than another (even twins), but I think that has to do WAY more with environmental factors than genetic ones. People love to say on here that L&L aren't as talented as/have a lower ceiling than Nico, but they were faster than senior year Nico when they were juniors in HS, and Leo just ran 3:35 as a sophomore, which is way better than Nico, and up until 2 weeks ago Lex seemed to be doing better than Leo.

The other thing I think set NP apart was that Brosnan really focused on getting his athletes to not put limits on themselves. One thing that sticks out in my mind is the L&L video where they did a hard mile repeat workout, and Brosnan measured it 3-4s too long, but didn't tell them until after the workout. Afterwards, when they found out they'd run several seconds faster than what they thought their limit was, it helped reenforce that their limits are more mental than physical.

This is exactly why someone like Graham Blanks has success. He grew up in Georgia, no real running culture. There is another thread about this. If Graham ran was from Newbury Park in high school he would have been a phenomenon like Nico.

It is good for a girl and equates to maybe 4:05, but there was only of her, and the 5 brothers were all comparatively better.

Newbury Park was a collision of several factors.

#1- 2 exceptionally talented families that produced 4 boys close enough in age to be Juniors and Seniors at the same time.

#2- an overqualified high school coach.

#3- location (California) that allows for comfortable year round distance training and also presents a high local bar for what "success" looks like.

#4- the Nico Young effect. Older brother shows the way, sets the standard for how you commit to training. He also normalizes the idea of being a national champion.

Nothing against Brosnan or these athletes, but if you fiddle with those factors their high school results definitely look different. The Youngs and Sahlmans likely have the same collegiate success, but this combination of factors is why they were so good so quickly.

Yup, it's luck. These coincidences don't happen year after year. The exception being York high school.

Come on. Barry Bonds had a younger brother that never advanced past Single A, and Henry Aaron, who hit 755 home runs, had a younger brother that made it to MLB and hit 13. There are times listed for Grant Fisher’s younger brother in Athletic.net that suggest he wouldn’t have been fast enough to run in college.

Once they left NB, Brosnan had absolutely to do with how the brothers performed in college. Nico has run so fast because he has the talent to do so, and if you want to give the credit to a coach, it would be Smith.

Can you name any runners that could have run 8:40 that put a 9:00 limit on themselves? The reality is that if 9:00 feels easy, they’re going to improve right past it.

The difference between Brosnan and other coaches is self-promotion. I prefer coaches that are humble and let others sing their praises. I saw an interview with Angelo Dundee and the first thing he said was that Ali would have been just as good had he been coached by someone else. He then went on to describe what a great man Ali was and how much he learned from him. Maybe Ali was better because he was coached Dundee, but you wouldn’t have heard it from Angelo.

I'll give it to a guy like Doug Soles as well. Brosnan is a good coach, but hard to put him on the very upper tier because he never replicated it over a long period of time. Instead, he decided he was too good for that level.

I'm sure deep down inside, at the very least, he knew he could never replicate what he had for those few years.