Originally Posted by bantazmo
Into the fray, I go. I have read through each of the posts on the thread, and I think a couple of things need to be cleared up. First Charlie Francis is on the Mt. Rushmore of great track and field coaches. Better yet he is one of the tallest Redwoods in the vast forest of human performances. His branches and roots connected to many of the past and current coaching greats still influencing the world of track and field. As many of you might or might not be aware of until taking on the bucket list item of writing the Sprinter’s Compendium three years ago I was exclusively influenced by Clyde Hart (long to short) and few others. However, since traveling on this adventure and hearing from so many great coaches who have contributed I wasn’t entirely aware or could speak in any depth about Charlie’s ideas or the short to long system. Reading, studying and even buying many Charlie’s books here along with Mike’s it opened my eyes up to the concept of comparing and contrasting different methods or philosophies of training. I want to give coaches options that best fit what they believe and works with the type of athlete they might have or will have in the future. Charlie, Pfaff, Winckler, Anderson, and Burris have all been a huge influence on coaching in general. Writing the book has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my life as an adult because it had forced me to consider different methods and adopt principles that I was completely ignorant of before I started the journey. We are up to 44 contributors who have answered questions for the book. Many who frequent the Charlie Francis Community. Last winter I had the distinct honor to be president of the Missouri Track and Cross Country Coach’s Association (MTCCCA). In this clinic, I had the goal of bringing great minds from around the country to present on different topics. My friend Nick Buckvar and I thought it would be great to use our presentation as a compare and contrast on the two separate ideas not strictly a cut and paste program. At Central, we use more a concurrent philosophy, but the direction we take the sprinters is athlete dependent. The presentation itself provided the greatest post clinic conversation we have ever had from our conference because depending on what side you sit regarding training it forced you to consider the value of the other side.
As a coach, I use different systems depending on the talent of my athletes. Most of the time my sprinters are quick twitch oxidative. Which means their biology is geared more toward the 200/400 or even 400/800. However, if I have a sprinter that is neural and quick twitch type non-oxidative than we use a short to long system and even though most of these athletes are not world class or DI products. I pride myself on the progress of the sprinters. I do not coach the boy’s team. That team is still coached by Steve Warren who has been there since 1978. I do coach many the kiddos in the offseason and proud to say those boys who trained did very well this season. My philosophy as a head coach has changed in the last five years too. In the past, I would hoard all the best athletes on our team, and our sprints were very strong for Missouri. However, as I have matured, I realized this was not the best method to build a team or keep assistant coaches. We now have a much better overall team, and I believe we have done a better job pushing our athletes into the best events for them and not just to make me look good as a sprint coach. However, for our level, we have still won numerous sprint medals at our state championship and qualifiers to the state meet. This year we medaled in the 300LH, 400, 800, 4x200, and 4x800.
What has not changed is my initial reason for becoming a coach in the first place. My goal is to take athletes from being average to great because most of the kids we get are average. So, if it were about creating All-Americans, then I would be exclusively a club coach or private coach. We did have a large club team, but as the coaches including myself got married and had children, you have to make time for them. It was brought up to look at athletic.net for our stats. In Missouri the largest database for performances is mo.milesplit.com. However, I have been coaching since 2003, and I can share with you the best times since then if you would like to see them and get the complete picture. Someone mentioned about the distance girls at our school and yes Emily Sisson was on our team with another college All-American Diane Robinson. When I took over both of their training in their junior year, they ran massive personal records. I had the pleasure of coaching Emily exclusively for six months running a personal best in the 800, 1600, and 3200. Her father coached her from the summer after that season until she went to Providence two years later. Diane ran personal records in the 800(split), 1600, 3200, and 5000 in XC the next year. They were both teammates with Kathleen Thompson and Lauren Johnson. One being a captain for KU xc and the other running as a walk-on for Baylor. I have been blessed to be a part of 48 kids going on to college joining numerous teams and sports. Including this year. I am proud of my elite kids but also proud of kids who start out running a 1:19 in the 400 and by the time they are a senior running a 60 point. How many coaches could get a kid to buy into the process over four years to scratch and claw for those improvements? Same for the 100-meter sprinter who transfers from one school running a 14.8hh to a 13.3ish fat in her senior year. Those are things I am proud of as a frustrated sprinter who could not stay healthy his entire career growing up. In seven years we have only had one hamstring pull, and I believe we have built a system that can help other coaches.
I took over the girls program in 2003 to give the female athletes a chance to express themselves through sport and to know that it is cool to be athletic. Our school had no such culture for female athletics. The only woman’s sport that had success was swimming due to having a district-sponsored club that trained kids all year round since the age of 8. Our school only has 1264 kids as of last year we are about 80 schools bigger than us in a given year in our state alone. We live in an affluent area 14 miles outside of the city of St. Louis and have the most diverse school in the state which includes kids from every continent on the planet without penguins. We have one of the largest Indian, Jewish, Middle Eastern, and Asian populations in the entire state. A number of these kiddos are ESOL. Culturally many these kids especially female do not take up high school athletics to focus on other things that interest them which makes our school a neat and beautiful place. We also have 100 kids that are severely physically and mentally challenged as we are the center to educate these young people out of our four districts high school. In St. Louis soccer is king and girls’ soccer is in the same season as girls track. During the woman’s World Cup St. Louis Missouri had the highest viewership of any place in the USA. We have the largest number of private schools per metro area outside of Boston. Those schools recruit heavily from the affluent areas and up to 30% of our area population are at private schools mostly for playing sports. We don’t have an indoor track within 100 miles of the St. Louis suburbs. We don’t have an indoor track season which can make winter training difficult most winters due inclement weather conditions. This winter was fantastic, and we were able to take advantage by getting outside more than usual. I share this to give you a complete picture of our environment. I have been coaching at Central since 2002 and the head girls track coach since 2003. I coached football until the fall of 2008 until I had an opportunity to coach girls xc which gave me a chance to train my kiddos all year round. I have the greatest job in the world. I wake up every day excited about the opportunity to reach and teach young people. The Sprinter’s Compendium is not a paint by numbers book. Instead, it is more a cookbook with a number of delicious options for a coach to try as they work with athletes of different levels, ability, and focus. I promise it will be a nice addition to have in your coaching library because of all the contrasting views and ideas that have been shared by great people.
I welcome any positive correspondence here as a chance to continue to learn in both directions and bounce ideas. Thanks for reading I look forward to future conversations here feel free to ask me if I can help. I do hope you know I appreciate strong opinions and passionate people.