Best High school coaches in country?

I wasn't posting to slight anyone, just to add to the discussion. Those coach's resume's speak for themselves historically. I met Art and Linda Kranick when we went to Manhattan and they were very nice people. I would add one more New York coach to the list though, Rob Cloutier from Shen does an amazing job!

The majority of coaches I have come across in my tenure at Great Oak are either good coaches or are trying to become good coaches. Everyone is on a different scale in terms of where they are at as a coach. I'm sure I'm much better at a lot of things now than I was in 2008. California has some great up and coming coaches with Joe Robles at Roosevelt, Sean Brosnan from Newbury Park, and Chris Williams at Dublin high school to name a few. Again not slighting anyone not named, these are just off the top of my head. :)

Some things to look at is who coaches both boys and girls teams and finds success with both genders, who also does a great job with the distance role in track, whose kids tend to improve year over year, who develops kids from PE classes versus who brings in a lot of youth club kids and transfers. When transfers come in do they get better? Which coaches are consistently good season after season?

Doug

Yes, that is the main problem with the American system in general. But to be successful in terms of producing results, you have to train at a certain level to be competitive. Two decades ago it was a lot harder to find what other people were doing but now it is much easier to obtain knowledge about the sport. Just look at what this website has done for the sport. It’s a cream rises to the top situation. You see the same thing at the NCAA level with high level racing throughout the year and there being three NCAA seasons throughout the school year. A lot of international talent is developed better in their respective countries early on, but we got a higher population and an exciting system. To be honest, I wouldn’t trade our system for any other in the world because of how exciting big competitions throughout the year can be. Just don’t kid ourselves when talking about whether it leads to overtraining, over racing, etc.

Chris Parsons Cabell Midland HS in Ona, WV numerous state titles and has had athletes beyond his program break 4, make the trials. In the unhealthiest, most drug addicted cradle of society in the country.

Miles, Popp, and Kirkpatrick are all legends. Also just the lake conference in general is truly an elite area for running.

Bill Miles (Wayzata, MN)

Tom Kaufman (Madison West, MN)

Jamie Kirkpatrick (Edina, MN)

Scott Christensen (Stillwater, MN)

Mike Mulrooney (Arrowhead, WI)

Lalo Diaz of Loyola High School

Year after year turns kids into incredibly talented runners. Has coached 5 CIF ss champion teams, 6 state champion teams since 2002, including numerous other podium finishes, and 2 team NXN appearances. Loyola is one of the deepest programs in the country and has some of the best ability to reload. In 2017, Loyola had eleven runners sub 9:50 in the 3200m, nine of those were returners. After having an incredible 2017 cross country team who had broken course records and posted the #6 all-time team performance at Mt. SAC with six seniors and only one returner, they reloaded in 2018 and ran faster in the 2018 state meet than 2017! With six of the seven being new to the varsity lineup!

Another very important aspect is how amazingly his runners perform after high school. With post-high school talents like Mark Matusak, David Torrence, Charlie Marquardt, Elias Gedyon, and Robert Brandt, to name a few, including sub-4 milers, all-americans, national champions, and olympians, you can almost guarantee that Loyola runners will not be leaving burnt out.

(Check out "A Decade of Dominance" on Milesplit, and when you average out the scores from the three distance events 800/1600/3200, Loyola has the highest average.)

portlandia2 wrote:

Dave Frank - Central Catholic - Portland, OR

Check out their record of state championships, number of kids on the team, alumni involvement, etc. Great guy, coach, and amazing program!

I was going to suggest Dave as well. He graciously allowed me to assistant coach for him in 2011 and it was a tremendous program to be a part of. Go Rams!

Jesse Griffin Lee's Summit West Girls was national coach of the year for two different groups that last two years.

Sean O'Connor Lafayette (Wildwood) boys also author of the Sprinter's Compendium.

Sorry I meant Sean wrote Distance Training Simplified. Lol

Doug Soles is salty that FM beats his girls team every year - he called them out in an interview at NXN 2016 saying something along the lines of them training middle schoolers is unfair

What happened to Spencer Dodds, Cole Spencer, Destiny Collins, Nelson Quintana and others you have coached @DougSoles? Seemed like they all burned out??

runner1234321 wrote:

I think you have to give the following coaching staff a lot of credit:

Greak Oak

FM

CBA

Saratoga

Woodlands

any other?

Definitely NOT Doug Soles of Great Oak. Sick of seeing him burnout athletes who then hate running and hate their teammates. Not to mention, ZERO improvement at the collegiate level from G.O. male runners. Did you see any XC results from Isaac Cortes this past Fall? ....Exactly....

“Some things to look at is who coaches both boys and girls teams and finds success with both genders, who also does a great job with the distance role in track, whose kids tend to improve year over year, who develops kids from PE classes versus who brings in a lot of youth club kids and transfers. When transfers come in do they get better? Which coaches are consistently good season after season?”

Interesting that it’s ALL “performance-based metrics” and is not balanced with: What kind of person they are becoming, how they treat their team, what kind of leader/mentor they are to younger runners and the rest of the team. And of course, how they run at the collegiate level. Not at all surprised by the high-level of college-burnout by Great Oak runners.

Haha, 3 posts in a row? Don’t be such an obvious troll. ;)

Ok, i’ll bite just for you since you tried so hard.

-Destiny Collins is the #1 XC runner at Texas.

-Evelyn Mandel is the #1 XC runner at TCU.

-Isaac Cortes moved to the middle distance group at Stanford and is training well.

-Solomon Fountain ran 3:47 for Columbia as a Frosh last track season for the 1500.

-Sandra Pflughoft was the #2 girl for SCAD and helped her team with a 15th place finish at NAIA nationals.

-Spencer Dodds runs for Virginia. I believe he had an injury this fall but I’m not certain.

-Gavin Korby was a top 5 guy for Long Beach State this past fall.

-Brandon Shields was a top 5 guy for UC Riverside this past fall.

-Justin Eipp was a top 5 guy for UC Riverside this past Fall.

-Jacob Korgan was a top 7 guy for Nebraska this past fall.

-Anthony Ruiz was a top 5 guy for Concordia in Irvine this past fall.

-I believe Nicole Rice redshirted in the fall at Ole Miss.

-Cole Spencer ran for one year at Cal and decided to focus on academics.

-Nelson Quintana left the Naval Academy and is taking classes locally and doing well.

-Sydney Belus transferred to UC Riverside.

-Ericka Burgess ran top 7 for DePaul this last fall.

-Carlos Carvajal redshirted as a frosh at Florida.

-Skyler Bollinger was top 5 for Texas this past fall, but got a foot injury.

-Nick Doan now runs Steeplechase for Liberty University.

-Matt Tibbitts is a top 7 guy for William Jessup University.

I want to publicly apologize for helping to save all of these athletes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hopefully, someday in the future they will all be able to forgive me.

Doug

Coach Justin Leonard from Southlake Carroll should be in this conversation.

Tim Broe has to be on the shortlist. Wellesley high in Mass; he gets a ton out of the kids without fully squeezing the juice!

His kids love him and he builds a great culture that goes beyond winning

Thanks for the update, Doug. It's cool to see how the recent grads are doing.

I couldn't help but think when someone asked what results Isaac Cortes has gotten: hellooooo a Stanford education?! Nothing he does on the track will ever match the value of being part of the Stanford family. Doors will open for him in the future before he even knocks.

Funny, how only one coach comes on to this thread to defend (promote) himself. Insecure much?

It's all about you, always will be.

Doug Jager of GR Christian in Michigan