Do top high school athletes have their own private coaches write their training during their school season?

Supernova1 wrote:

Do top high school athletes have their own private coaches write their training during their school season?

Does anyone have any experience or know of stories of if this happens?

Are you speaking specifically of running?

I know of situations (and not necessarily top athletes) where a private strength and conditioning coach is putting a kid through workouts without any clue of what the coach is having them do in practice. It can lead to poor training. For instance, came across an anecdote from a coach I know online (high school basketball coach). He had a hard practice scheduled and one of this starters was dragging. Coach learned that the kid's dad had hired a S&C coach to work the kid out before school. That meant the kid was 1) not getting enough sleep--a problem for teens as is and 2) coming to practice with dead legs.

To the dad's credit, he saw the error and decided to cut loose the S&C coach until the off season and even then to make sure the S&C guy coordinated the workouts with the baseball coach. Honestly, something a S&C coach (no idea the credentials of the guy) should have done anyway.

The problem is that there are too many meat head S & C coaches out there. The football mentality doesn't work well with distance running.

Yeah I was speaking to distance running more specifically. Like does Touhy, Marin, Sprout, Mu, ect. for example get coached by their HS coach or does an outside coach tell them what to do each day and their HS coach just helps facilaite the workouts?

It's pretty rare, but it does happen. Drew Hunter was coached by Tom Schwartz, Brody Hastey was coached by a private coach, maybe a couple others. I know of a couple athletes in my area that were coached by a former high school coach (Coach A coached at School A very successfully, was fired due to some bs and decided to stop coaching, Athlete A attended school B but didn't like Coach B, and Coach A agreed to send him workouts and stuff), but that was also rare.

Supernova1 wrote:

Yeah I was speaking to distance running more specifically. Like does Touhy, Marin, Sprout, Mu, ect. for example get coached by their HS coach or does an outside coach tell them what to do each day and their HS coach just helps facilaite the workouts?

Can't comment on Marin and Sprout, but Tuohy and Mu are both coached by their high school coach.

Just wondering, is MU actually coached by her HS coach? She does not run for her HS?

Have heard through the grapevine that Touhy has a strength & conditioning coach working with her.

I am aware of a club coach who sneaks around the head coaches and trains athletes. Problem is, the club coach does not care about how the athlete trains during high school track practice. When it comes to competing for the school at the more important, the athletes are so burned out, they perform sub par.

Even after the top school officials tell the club coach to not interfere, they ignore the schools officials and keeps training the athletes.

This is a problem that has been going on for some time. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The high school has a really good coach.

I was once hired by a single mom to coach her daughter (a jumper) a few weeks before the Texas state meet. The daughter had received a 25% in-state scholarship to a Big12 school along with a promise that she would get a larger scholarship if her performance improved. (She had not improved from her sophomore to her senior year, in part because of injuries). In addition to doing some evening workouts with her I gave her some rules of thumb to follow in her high school workouts, if she could. The high school coach figured out what was going on and was understandably upset, even more so when I showed up at the State meet and spoke with her before her event. After they got into an argument, quite to my surprise the high school coaches left her alone and I was able to coach her during the competition. She set a couple of significant PRs and won the 6A state championship (in a major upset). More importantly,

she did get a modest increase in her scholarship to 40%.

critic 100 wrote:

I am aware of a club coach who sneaks around the head coaches and trains athletes. Problem is, the club coach does not care about how the athlete trains during high school track practice. When it comes to competing for the school at the more important, the athletes are so burned out, they perform sub par.

Even after the top school officials tell the club coach to not interfere, they ignore the schools officials and keeps training the athletes.

This is a problem that has been going on for some time. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The high school has a really good coach.

Is this Massachusetts?

no... mid west.

Supernova1 wrote:

Do top high school athletes have their own private coaches write their training during their school season?

Does anyone have any experience or know of stories of if this happens?

This happened with me in 1986. My school didn't have indoor team or coaching but we were allowed to compete in meets. Approached former college coach who had a good reputation and he coached me to two state titles. My high school coaches were fine with it until it made the newspapers then yea not so good.

Helped me get that all elusive scholarship that made all the difference to my life.

Yes. And as a HS coach I have no issue with it as long as they participate as a member of the team. IE Come to practices regularly, do warmups and drills, come to team dinners, show up to meets (even if the don't take them serious and run tempo), etc.

The top Americans in the NCAA ran for their HS coaches. The top high school runners who went with a private coach all seem to disappear in college.

CoachWag: If I was the HS Coach I would have a big problem with what you described below. You were undermining the HS Coach. IMO, the athlete, parents and private coach need to be on the same page as the HS Coach and this should be done before any meet and even better before practices begin. Most likely the HS Coach was inexperienced with jumpers so he/she probably would have been appreciative of your help had it been done in a professional way.

>>>>I was once hired by a single mom to coach her daughter (a jumper) a few weeks before the Texas state meet. The daughter had received a 25% in-state scholarship to a Big12 school along with a promise that she would get a larger scholarship if her performance improved. (She had not improved from her sophomore to her senior year, in part because of injuries). In addition to doing some evening workouts with her I gave her some rules of thumb to follow in her high school workouts, if she could. The high school coach figured out what was going on and was understandably upset, even more so when I showed up at the State meet and spoke with her before her event. After they got into an argument, quite to my surprise the high school coaches left her alone and I was able to coach her during the competition. She set a couple of significant PRs and won the 6A state championship (in a major upset). More importantly,

she did get a modest increase in her scholarship to 40%.

If you are on a team, the team comes first. If you are a coach and want to be successful you develop a TEAM. The culture is important, does not work if everyone is not on the same page.

Private coaches do not coach teams and do not care about teams, they coach individuals.

If you are on a team you need to be 100% on it.

The answer is that some do and some don’t. There are a lot of high school coaches that post here, some of who have had bad experiences with private coaches, so you’ll find some biased attacks against the use of a private coach.

I am a long time coach. Every kid that I have had that worked with a private coach ended up doing poorly at the end of the season. The private coaches didn't get tapering, or how important the big meets were. We currently have a guy trying to only work with the top distance kids. He looks successful because he's poached the top kids who were already successful under there previous coach. He has made a ton of enemies though.

I was a 9:05 guy, I was coached by my regular high school coach and we both had input on what the training was.

From what I noticed about the top guys and girls in my state that had "private" coaches outside of their high school is they did not succeed in college. I think it's because a person that feels the NEED to only do what this private coach says and thinks that the private coach's workouts are the ONLY way to get fast, and in college they don't trust their coach because it's likely different from what their private high school coach did.

There are many many many different training plans and workout styles that can make a person fast. For the most part, if you work hard and run a lot you'll get faster. Especially at the high school level. Running around 9 flat for two miles isn't THAT crazy fast, you don't need some special program to get to that point. Now trying to run 13:20 in a 5k or 3:55 in a mile, that can take some more fine-tuning. But a high school kid just trying to run under 4:20 or under 9:20 has no business going against their high school coach to be trained by some other person.

Tom Schwartz also coaches Grace Ping.

And I'd say that any private coach that doesn't understand tapering (or understand the kids that do not respond well to tapering) or consider big meets like regional and state isn't a good coach. Nothing wrong with hiring a private coach as long as they work with the high school coach and BOTH keep the best interests of the athlete in mind. Too many coaches (private and high school) with big egos.