Columbus North (IN)

1. Hard Work

2. Large talent pool

Their success as a program is very impressive. It should be noted that the school, while large, is not enormous. The enrollment is around 2000 (much smaller than, say, Carmel High School or Ben Davis High School, which both have around 4500 students). And the town of Columbus is home to only about 40,000 people. So we aren't talking about an enormous community with a huge and diverse population. That makes their continued success that much more impressive to me.

If they only have 2000, then I would ammend with...

2. Excellent coaching

3. Crappy football program?

sorry, "amend"

Pretty impressive team. How many of their top 7 are seniors? I know they are usually one of the top teams in the state but are they loaded with guys that have been training together for 4+ years?

chikin wrote:

If they only have 2000, then I would ammend with...

2. Excellent coaching

3. Crappy football program?

#2 must be the answer. I don't know much about Rick Weinheimer but he must be an excellent coach. I think he also uses PAAVO -- as much as I cringe at that program from what I have read-- it must be working for CN though!

It's true, he does use PAAVO. I've spoken with him and despite what people may say about PAAVO, it gets results. It may be a program of attrition, but at the end of the day you have 7 of the most prepared runners out there on the starting line.

Coach Weinheimer does use PAAVO, so do a lot of other coaches and schools. The difference is Rick himself. He's an incredible man, incredible coach, and his athletes love him. He's a complete coach, not just a schedule writer. Good luck to him and his team!

Rick Weinheimer might be the best high school coach in the country. Good man outside of coaching as well.

Mike Hillyard wrote:

Rick Weinheimer might be the best high school coach in the country. Good man outside of coaching as well.

I wouldn't doubt it with the success he has had. It does ALMOST want me to look into PAAVO more. I don't think it would work well for a small school like ours though.

I actually ran CC & track with Rick in high school. Great guy, funny & smart...although he was not very fast in those days!

Coach Weinheimer is an incredible coach. I ran for him in high school when the boys program was a shadow to a shadow of what it is today. The girls team was a perennial state top ten, but the boys program was lucky to have 5 guys break 17 while I was there. I was the number 1 my senior year and now I would struggle to make the varsity.

I'm not quite sure what has changed in the program, but I'm sure Coach has had a lot to do with it. He's a real inspirational guy - coaches the whole person, not just the athlete. He's funny, passionate, and really cares about his kids. He also made us true students of the sport. We had to bring binders to camp and to practice to take notes and record our workouts. He's also a huge quote guy.

I'm in my 5th year of coaching now and dreaming of being as good of a human being (let alone coach) and Weinheimer is. And I'm making my most humble efforts to build a program that can rival what the Bulldog program did for the hundreds of kids who have had the honor to run for it.

Goal oriented people find ways.

We go with goal oriented people.

Every day is a great day.

Don't waste a heartbeat.

Extra effort is the key to success.

Hard work, given time, beats talent.

Run hard when it's hard to run.

Wide Load wrote:

Coach Weinheimer is an incredible coach..

It's great hearing about former team member and even former teammates of his. I have noted one interesting commonality in all the great coaches -- Joe Newton, Weinheimer, Vigil etc.. They do indeed seem to coach the whole person and inspire as much as create great workouts. Now if I could bottle some of those great coaches' motivational magic I could really have something. Good luck to you Wide Load. I am sure you have lots of great ideas to draw upon from running for such a great coach.

Indiana Guy wrote:They do indeed seem to coach the whole person...

What does this mean? And I ask the question seriously because, as much as I'd love to coach from the standpoint of writing workouts and designing training programs, I fall short in terms of motivating, etc.

Showing my ignorance wrote:

Indiana Guy wrote:They do indeed seem to coach the whole person...

What does this mean? And I ask the question seriously because, as much as I'd love to coach from the standpoint of writing workouts and designing training programs, I fall short in terms of motivating, etc.

Tough one. It's not something that has a real formula or anything. It's about caring about more than the athlete. It's about getting involved in kids' lives. It's about wanting to nurture and build better people, and having athletic development be only a part of that progress. The Positive Coaching Alliance out of Stanford has done some good work with this.

Newton talks about this a lot, if the kids really believe that you care about them, then the coaching part is easy. If they truly believe that you want what's best for them as an athlete, student, and human being, then they'll do what you ask and can accept the level of work that it takes to be great. One of my early coaching influences told me "You can't want it for them, you have to find a way to get them to want it for themselves."

Coach W has been there over 30 years.Won his first state Championship in 2002, second in 2003, 3rd in 2009. May be stronger this year and getting national attention.

While boys were favored last year in Indiana, the girls, considered top 5 but not at all favored, pulled off the upset and also won state championship in 2009.

It would take a long conversation for me to expalin how Columbus North program is so good. Starts with Coach W and PAAVO. He even conducted a couple of hour clinic to explain PAAVO method to parents so we could talk to our kids! He's always had good teams and some good runners and made less talented kids into good runners. I think the program really took off when Christian Wagner got there( ran for Wisconsin, best runner since Rudy Chapa in Indiana high school history though I get some argument from others on that). We got there for the 2003 championship and already you could feel a legacy building. The kids passed it from Senior to Freshman. The kids were expected to be self disciplined. My son ran every day for 4 years, drank one soda in four years, and improved from running around 250 out of 300 in a middle school race (8th grad) to where by his enior year he had beaten everyone of the 249 ahead of him. Dedication, discipline, whatever you want to call it. They finished 3rd and 5th in state after the two #1 in 2003/2004, then a few down years due to injuries and just the normal cycle of talent. But I have kept contact with the program and the spark, the legacy, was there. This last 2-3 years the kids are just super dedicated.

Why don't more coaches use PAAVO? Results are not immediate, it's hard and you won't stick to it if you are not committed to the long term. Coach W doesn't have anything to prove. He became comfortable after 25 years of coaching with the possibility he might never win a state championship. Magically a few years latter CNXC started on this wonderful roll.

CNXC website

http://cntf-cnxc.org/

Sorry for the lengthy post, not the norm on LR. But the door was open for me to share some insight on a great program.

Coach Weinheimer really is a great coach; that is the reason for the level of success they have had (and certainly the same reason for the success of other top programs). When Columbus North won state and finished ranked in the top 5 in the nation in 2002 and 2003, they only had 25-30 guys on their team each year- certainly a good number but hardly an enormous talent pool.

One other thought: while Christian was a great runner, the high school athlete who really started the resurgence of the guys' program at Columbus North was Joe Eckerly, who graduated in 1999 and went on to run at Wisconsin. The program was on its way before Christian arrived, and Christian thrived in the atmosphere and helped them improve even more rapidly.

One could make the argument that Joe Eckerly, despite finishing no higher than 4th at state, is the godfather of the current Indiana boys distance boom.

Former CNXC Parent wrote:CNXC website

http://cntf-cnxc.org/

Nice web site for a high school program. I noticed that Christian Wagner wasn't on any of the freshman lists. Did he not start running until he was a sophomore, or did he transfer from another school? Just curious...

Transferred from another school. Attended Lafayette Central Catholic as a freshman and moved in just before the start of his sophomore year.