Best Coaching jobs of teams at Nationals

Eric Houle - SUU

Cam Levins

Nate Jewkes

School of 6000

This isn't high school, school size doesn't matter. Now if they have limited scholarships because of their size - then okay.

I think Hayes at Texas needs to be commended.

I am sure they have absolutely everything resource-wise, but imagine it is tough to get more than 5 scholarships from Bubba. Would guess that every school in front of them has at least 7 and to me, scholarship money is everything because it doesn't cost much to have a xc team!

red rocker wrote:

Eric Houle - SUU

Cam Levins

Nate Jewkes

School of 6000

Houle is a tremendous coach with limited resources. It's hard for him to recruit the state's best CC talent, which either goes out of state or goes to BYU. It'd be great to see him get a top job somewhere and see what type of program he could build.

Jewkes would be great in any other program. Houle doesn't coach Levins. Levins does his own thing. He is self made. Just because a coach gets some lucky picks occaisionally doesn't make him great. If you want to know if a coach is truly wonderful, look at the majority of their runners. Can a coach get all of his runner to improve. Heck most coaches can't even get most of their runners to be better. Shields was at SUU and had a break out year. He went to BYU and got a little better. Shields could leave byu and go to Colorado and become even better. If shield were back at SUU he would probably get worse. Give Houle credit for stepping back and letting Levins do his own thing, I bet most collegiate coaches are too prideful and set in their way to let an athlete have a say in his training.

Southern Utah could have been a top 10 team this year if Shields was still on the team. Great job by their coach

I actually really like the job Gibby and Gary have done with their teams in the Great Lakes. Giby has a couple studs from high school and then 2 no-names rounding out his top 5 and Gary's top 5 is made up of 9:20/4:16 guys.

Good to qualify, great to be inside the top 25!

Gary has been the head TRACK coach for 6 years now. If he decides to only put 2-3 scholarships in the area, it is his own undoing if they don;t perform higher.

Gibby probably has fights every day to get more aid while thei track program has stunk since Laplant screwed Ronnie over.

While you are correct that Jewkes could be great in any program, he was not recruited heavily by all of the Utah schools. As far as Levins doing his own thing, this is not accurate, he does run more distance than the rest of the guys, but that lends to his strengths and was a mutual decision made by he and Houle in order to push the envelope and get him ready to compete at the highest level this year. However, he does run and train with the rest of the team most of the time. I am not sure why you think Shields would get worse had he come back to SUU, but I guess that is your opinion

Awesomeness is Awesome wrote:

If you want to know if a coach is truly wonderful, look at the majority of their runners. Can a coach get all of his runner to improve.

Check out the credentials of Levins and Jewkes from high school.

4:16 miler

9:30 3200

Do the same with the rest of their squad who just about made it to NCAAs this year. Some of the worst recruits in the state and only finished behind BYU at the region meet. Great coach imo.

Also, Rex Shields hadn't got much faster since leaving SUU until this season. Send Houle the kids BYU gets and watch what would happen.

It seems that Vin Lananna did an exceptional job with his women this year. His team came in with four of their top 7 runners out, yet he somehow cobbled together a team (ranked 16th) and finished in the top five. Having watched the race, though he really didn't have a #5 runner (using an 800 meter runner) it was obvious that he was able to get his 2-4 runners to buy into running together for the team's sake. Kudos to Vin also for the success he has had keeping Jordan Hasay so enthused and showing continued improvement.

I come from a school within the same conference as SUU and Houle and I will be the first to say that he does an incredible job coaching his athletes. You can guarantee that if they have a down year, they rebuild within the next two years. Kids always seem to improve greatly. Cam might do his own thing (which I don't think is true), but he still has to be at practice every day and workout with Houle. And besides Cam, anyone remember Jessen Baumgartner? 3rd at nationals his junior year(and 70ish at his high school state meet)? I think it was about 5 years ago when that happened. These aren't the only runners to have great careers through there, and you'd be crazy to think that a coach that consistently has good, deep teams isn't doing a great job with the talent he receives.

red rocker wrote:

Awesomeness is Awesome wrote:

If you want to know if a coach is truly wonderful, look at the majority of their runners. Can a coach get all of his runner to improve.

Check out the credentials of Levins and Jewkes from high school.

4:16 miler

9:30 3200

Do the same with the rest of their squad who just about made it to NCAAs this year. Some of the worst recruits in the state and only finished behind BYU at the region meet. Great coach imo.

Also, Rex Shields hadn't got much faster since leaving SUU until this season. Send Houle the kids BYU gets and watch what would happen.

Um...are you kidding me? Coach Eyestone is possibly the best coach in the country. Look at some of the guys in their top 7. Hardly any of them were heralded out of high school and they were the 4th best team in the country. PS What did Austin West do for them this year? Wasn't he supposed to be the real deal?

Also Miles Batty...you heard of him? Yeah he's decent.

Iron deficiencies.

uh... wrote:

PS What did Austin West do for them this year? Wasn't he supposed to be the real deal?

Just be patient and wait till next year. SUU looses Levins. Jewkes will improve but the rest of SUU will stay around the 32:00 minute mark like the majority of his team in years past. Also High School times aren't the best indicator of talent. We have a guy who was 9:50 in highschool thats as good as Jewkes if not better now. He was undeveloped in high school and just took off in college. Great coaching I bet? The kid was doing 30 miles a week. 30 miles a week + super fast= TALENT.

You have a good point. We have a guy who was a 4:22 mile in high school. In college he just randomly took off and all of a sudden started running 4:05. This is with 3 weeks of training coming off of a 3 month injury. Guy who run 4:05 doing less than 10 miles a week are talented and a coaches dream. They can have those kids do whatever they want while they pick up the credit. I can only wonder what he would run under Eyestone or Whetmore.

This whole conversation about Houle is a joke. How can a guy who hasn't qualified a team for nationals be regarded as the best coach? He has Levins that's it. And he doesn't even train with the team. In my opinion both Eyestone and Whetmore do the best job of turning average athletes in high school into great teams.

I think its time we start talking about some of the other great coaches. Kudos to SUU for getting 2 amazing recruits and for letting Levins run 130 miles a week while the rest does 60-70. The question of who is the best coach is a difficult one to answer. The top teams get top recruits and we are always left to wonder how good the team would be if they were getting recruits like SUU does. I think it is the dumbest thing in the world to hand over the trophy for coach of the year to the coach of the winning team.

Major Props to BYU who does consistently well with most Utah talent. It may be for the most part Utah's best, but that should be all the more commendable.

Eyestone doesn't get the Puskedras, Fernandezs, Lowes, Centrowitzs, or Rosa twins. He makes most of his runners faster and takes a group of Utah boys and does well. I'm also curious about the Oklahoma team they seem to have a good program.

Wisconsion, Top Flight Football program, Top Flight Hockey Program, Top Flight Running program.

Where are is all the scholarship money coming from for these 3 powerhouses?