Best College Distance Coaches D1

Mike Smith girls or guys!

Ed Eyestone at BYU is top notch. Easy to talk to and doesn't throw religion on you. BYU does has had non-Mormons on the team but not many. People are different and some people at BYU are super religious and others aren't very religious. Most, however, are fairly religious at BYU.

Mike Hillyard at University of Southern Indiana is another very good coach at a smaller school. They are lucky to have him as he could easily be at a bigger name school.

Khadevis Robinson

Wetmore is slightly better than average distance coach. I would like to see him coach the 60M hurdles, he would be like a fish out of water.

Mike Dupaul

If you are purely looking to evaluate the effectiveness of college XC coaches look at their body of work. Not just if they win, that is more about can they allocate the funding to buy the fastest runners out of high school.

Look to see if the runners in their program are improving, year to year. Many of the coaches referenced in this chain as great, recruit really fast runners whom seem to never improve and infarct run slower in college than they did in high school. What is so great about that?

It is worth noting some men and women have different development patterns. Some Coaches seem to have more success developing women, others men.

A few programs I have observed seem to produce consistently improving runners are Magness at Houston, Smith at Oklahoma State, and Dager at W&L.

The coach does play a big role in the college decision making. But focus on the other factors (team culture, location, academics, etc.) as they are the ones more likely to remain that way during your four years. Coaches can very easily leave for greater pastures at any given time.

Magness is leading the way for the wave of young coaching talent in the D1 rankings. Coaches like Jake Huryst, Sean Carlson, Rhonda Riley are solid recruiters. Developing runners is the most interesting aspect of distance coaching, and theirs definitely some other great young coaches out there who are getting it done!

forecasting tornados wrote:

Magness is leading the way for the wave of young coaching talent in the D1 rankings. Coaches like Jake Huryst, Sean Carlson, Rhonda Riley are solid recruiters. Developing runners is the most interesting aspect of distance coaching, and theirs definitely some other great young coaches out there who are getting it done!

one of these things is not like the other

ComeAgain? wrote:

forecasting tornados wrote:

Magness is leading the way for the wave of young coaching talent in the D1 rankings. Coaches like Jake Huryst, Sean Carlson, Rhonda Riley are solid recruiters. Developing runners is the most interesting aspect of distance coaching, and theirs definitely some other great young coaches out there who are getting it done!

one of these things is not like the other

What you mean?

The k my thing KD has done at OSU was make a middle of the pack program into a bottom feeder.

OSU doesn’t even have the best XC team in Columbus.

Have to add Gary Stanley to that list. Look up his results year in/out in Louisiana, they are surprising

I think that is the point ComeAgain? is making.

Getting talent to campus is valuable skill, but a different skill than helping people run faster.

thegoatprefont wrote:

Have to add Gary Stanley to that list. Look up his results year in/out in Louisiana, they are surprising

Gary out here hyping himself

Since tech joined C-USA how many kids has he had score?

His best finish in XC is 5th usually comes 9/10th. That's um not very good considering some of the talent he's gotten.

Andy Ronan from Stony Brook University in NY is one of the best distance coaches in the country. He is meticulous and makes all his athletes much much better. Very good school, too.

radarunderflyer wrote:

Andy Ronan from Stony Brook University in NY is one of the best distance coaches in the country. He is meticulous and makes all his athletes much much better. Very good school, too.

Couldn't agree more The America East has some great distance coaches including Robert Hoppler - New Hampshire ( Ellinor Purrier, Laura Rose Donegan), Gary Gardiner - Umass Lowell (Paul Hogan, Kaley Richards... plus many more upcoming) and Annette Acuff - Binghamton (Erik Van Ingen, Jesse Garn, Dan Schaffer, Aziza Chigatayeva)

ok Stanley wrote:

thegoatprefont wrote:

Have to add Gary Stanley to that list. Look up his results year in/out in Louisiana, they are surprising

Gary out here hyping himself

Since tech joined C-USA how many kids has he had score?

His best finish in XC is 5th usually comes 9/10th. That's um not very good considering some of the talent he's gotten.

He’s about as bad as western Kentucky... bottom feeders!

forecasting tornados wrote:

ok Stanley wrote:

Gary out here hyping himself

Since tech joined C-USA how many kids has he had score?

His best finish in XC is 5th usually comes 9/10th. That's um not very good considering some of the talent he's gotten.

He’s about as bad as western Kentucky... bottom feeders!

Sad to see Western Kentucky doing as poorly as they have been. Used to be a very good program. Same with Murray State. Once a good program now just terrible. They even cut Men's track back in the late 80's.

Top Coaches wrote:

forecasting tornados wrote:

He’s about as bad as western Kentucky... bottom feeders!

Sad to see Western Kentucky doing as poorly as they have been. Used to be a very good program. Same with Murray State. Once a good program now just terrible. They even cut Men's track back in the late 80's.

Yes but Western turned into a sprint program and then lost half their budget to cuts. Can’t keep a distance coach, but techs coach has been there forever so theirs no excuse it’s on him.