It is hard to say a coach at HS is better than another because most coach who they are given by the demographics of their area. Other coaches recruit talent, and they look great, but they are not. A true measure of a coach goes beyond who has the fastest kids and wins the most championships. The real factor is how well kids develop in their program, how many of their kids improve in college, and how many of them still love running years after college or HS racing ends.
Best High school coaches in country?
High School Running
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Talent beats coaching. A crappy coach can have a load of talent and still be crappy.
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MN-WI wrote:
Bill Miles (Wayzata, MN)
how does he compare to the other Bill (Aris)?
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Bill Miles had a massive amount of success when it comes to results.
Bill Miles is a man of honor and high integrity. His kids would die for him; he placed an emphasis on making sure every one of the 100+ kids on his team would be valued. He didn't place an emphasis on making kids better runners; that was just a by-product of helping them become better people. Wayzata's dominance wasn't just at the top end; a normal year at Wayzata would produce over 30 sub-5:00 milers. The entire culture was (and still is) about a full team, not just a scoring 7.
Any coach who places an emphasis on results, or only wants to coach a handful of kids "that are willing to work hard" at a high school when the FIRST goal should be to get more kids to participate - NOT only coach the kids that are willing to put in the work - is not a good HS coach, no matter what their results. You can coach amazing teams without turning kids away.
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Clearly Jesuit New Orleans.
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Donn Behnke for Stevens Point has to be on this list
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Jesuit New Orleans wrote:
Clearly Jesuit New Orleans.
Agreed Collin Doody is the current best distance coach for high school boys.
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I mean it depends on what you mean. Who gets the kids to run fastest in high school or gets the kids set up to run fastest over their lifespan.
Also, as long as a coach isn't jeopardizing a kids health, do they really need to "save their legs for college?" Less than 3% of high school xc runners will run in college and even most of them won't run for a full 4-5 years.
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RiceCakeRunner wrote:
I think coaches who can bring in a few kids to state and a team every once and a while are honestly ideal coaches. My coach rn isn’t the coach of a “powerhouse” school by any means. At the national level, no one would know us. But we do very well for our area, especially considered how small our school is. A coach who listens to kids needs is important. If they can prevent injuries while also getting kids to PR and have fun, then I think they are a great coach.
Oh I agree. My high school coach I would put up there as "one of the greats," but coming from - not such a large high school (but then having to compete against the large schools - at that time, there were only two divisions in track & XC, now there are 3) they just can't compete with the bigger schools that have a larger population to draw from.
but consistently sending individuals to state, here and there a team (back then it was harder to qualify for the state meet, unfortunately. Like I said, they only had two divisions as well - the medium-sized schools got a bit squeezed having to always compete with the largest suburban schools). Also, he had success with both girls & boys teams.Edit: When I was in high school, every other year they would send a boys or girls XC team to the state meet. but like I said, back then it was harder to qualify as there were just two divisions - the medium-sized schools got "squeezed" Now there are three divisions, which is better.
Edit2: ALSO, I had this coach right before he retired: maybe this isn't true for all coaches, but at that point, he had *perfected his craft* haha. He made all of his mistakes with his teams years prior - namely, he had workouts that were *too hard* back then, imo.
By the time I had him as a coach, he had figured out a formula that worked for high school athletes: hard but not too hard. Challenging, but you gotta have some fun with it, too.This post was edited 13 minutes after it was posted.10 -
Sean Brosnan couldn't hold a candle to the late Joe Newton of York Community HS, Elmhurst, IL. There will never be another coach like Coach Newton- 28 state titles under his leadership, never a finish lower than 8th over 50 years and that was a fluke.
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afafafafaf wrote:
Sean Brosnan couldn't hold a candle to the late Joe Newton of York Community HS, Elmhurst, IL. There will never be another coach like Coach Newton- 28 state titles under his leadership, never a finish lower than 8th over 50 years and that was a fluke.
2022 was the first time York did not make state since 1959
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Exactly. He was a good HS coach, but he couldn’t coach a normal talent to these times, or even to like 9:00/14:30 for a track 5k. I think the Youngs and Sahlmans would run like 8:55 on normal coaching.
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Well, Coach Newton died a few years ago. 2022 was under Charlie Kern.
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I'm a fan of some IL coaches- Chris Quick, Noah Lawrence, Paul Van Der Steen, a few others.
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afafafaf wrote:
I'm a fan of some IL coaches- Chris Quick, Noah Lawrence, Paul Van Der Steen, a few others.
Naperville North, Dan Iverson, has done a good job with the girl's team. He has coached for a while, he's a blurb about him
Some of the female Naperville North runners do quite well in college, too. These are a couple of Dan Iverson's former runners that I noticed recently, performing well in college as well.An Illinois runner I believe she just got second in the Big 10 Indoor conference.A North Carolina runnerJudy Pendergast from Harvard, she graduated last yearI give him props for - these runners are still hungry for more at the Div 1 level after having a great team in high school.
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CORRECTION: I don't think Maggie Gamboa (Illinois runner) got second in the Big 10 Indoor, I just checked the results - sorry for the misinformation, I read that wrong.
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I meant to include Coach Iverson as well- he is a good guy and a great coach. I just had a brain freeze.
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