Looking back at high school, my coaches were a couple of women. With what I have learned on LRC and what I remember they did with us, I now realize they were pretty bad coaches who didn't structure any training plans or intervals for us and just had the team run some distance in the parks. With that kind of unstructured training, it was no wonder I could never be competitive.
The most vivid memory I had of them when we were at track practice and I overhead them gossiping about the thigh gap of some girl runners from another school that were using the same track. They sounded quite jealous seeing as how they were a bit overweight and middle aged, as all coaches are.
I really wish I had better coaches who would have at least taught me to do intervals and to run high mileage instead of the park runs the coaches got the team to do. This was before the days of smartphones and YouTube so it was difficult to know what I should learn. So many wasted years.
And that's how I became a hobby jogger.