Iowa Trip

Back from Iowa this afternoon, what a great trip. Coach Laster and I were planning on getting one or two new ideas out of the conference, we ended up getting 21 or 22 new ideas!

The presenters there were amazing. The Olympic distance coach who used to be at Adams St. There was a coach who took over a brand new college program and got them, in one season, from the worst team in the worst conference, to 15 in the nation for DII. The coach of The Woodlands HS in Texas was there. 14 state titles in Texas, 6 individual state champions, and 3 out of 4 NTN appearances. And Frank Shorter was there, he won the marathon gold in 1972 and won the silver in 1976. Wow. It was pretty awesome, the amount of knowledge that was present in that room.

So, what did we learn? Well, the first thing that we learned is that CHS Distance has a pretty good program already. The coaches do a lot of things right, in terms of specificity, progression, strength and mileage for the kids. We also learned that we have an excellent team already, because we have athletes that are already committed, motivated and talented. That is great, we DO NOT have to re-tool the entire program, and we DO NOT have to introduce totally new ways of doing things. We do have to tweak some things, we do have to look at some things from a different perspective, and we do have to amplify some of the things we already do. That is easy, so Coach Laster adn I decided we are going to do it.

I thought one of the most important things we learned was not about training, or technique, but about T-E-A-M. Communication, trust and support are three things that go into being a successful team. And in order to achieve individual success, you need a strong team. You need a strong work ethic, and a strong training schedule, but you need a strong team first and foremost. I think our team is pretty strong already. I think there is one thing we can work on to make it better though, and that is communication. Starting this week, each athlete is going to individualy sit down with me or Coach Laster after practice and talk about thier goals for the season. This is going to give the coaches a better idea of where we can go and how we should go about getting there. In addition, we are going to go over a team “covenant” every day before practice. (The covenant is already written, it’s like a team mission statement.) I think this is something that is going to help us bring the team closer together and also remind us on a daily basis of why we are here and what we need to accomplish as a team.

This is stuff that all the other coaches do with their teams, from the Olympic level, to the collegiate level to the elite high school level. I truly believe that this team can reach the elite level not just in Colorado, but in the entire country. It is going to take dedication and hard work, but if you show us the commitment to excellence, we will be committed to you and this team can accomplish some fantastic things.

SEP