The Fawning: A Newbury Park Biography

Somewhere, deep in their mother's basement, a 19-year-old community college student-athlete scrolls through post after post of the Newbury Park athletes social feeds.

"There has to be a reason they receive praise while I only received ridicule" he mutters to himself, through a mouthful of stale cheesepuffs. He wipes his crusty orange fingers on his shirt, and sets the tub down on the floor next to his numerous urine-filled gatorade bottles.

"I was all-conference before they came around and pushed me out of contention" he rasped as he pulls up the LetsRun.com message boards for the 90th time that day. "I'll show them...."

*tap tap tap* Enter

The Fawning: A Newbury Park Biography

"I can't wait until everyone else agrees with me that no attention should be given to a couple sub-8 3K, sub-1:50 800m, and mediocre milers!"

Yes

The above poster is one of the Sahlmasm's.

In 2016, Sean Brosnan took over as a head coach.
“Give me 4 years and we will win a state title!”, said Sean.
Then he saw a bunch of people on the swings and said “Listen, you’re wasting my time.” He’s not sure if coaching high school is really for him.
Ethan Duffy, the senior captain, held the team accountable. He was making sure everyone was on task and no one was goofing off.
Fast forward to the section meet. Newbury Park goes to state for the first time in a long time.
In 2017, it was just another season. Newbury Park did not go to state that year.
In 2018, Newbury Park won the first state title. Then they were waiting and waiting for an at-large bid, and during the night, they have found out that they earned it.
At NXN Newbury Park earned a 6th place finish.
In 2019, more freshmen came in from outside of the district. One of them ran at NXN, which was eventually won by Newbury Park as a team and Nico Young individually.
2020 was a very odd year. Because of COVID, Newbury Park was not able to race in many meets as a team, but they were able to squeeze some of the meets in. And of course, they did not lose any races.
In 2021, Newbury Park won RunningLane with seven guys going sub-15 in the 5K.
During track 2022, Newbury Park was able to get 5 guys to run under 8:52 in the 3200.

Never heard of a Sahlmasm before. Unless you mean Sahlman.

Well Fayetteville-Manlius Girls got a book by Marc Bloom. Let's wait another 15 years and see if the dominance remained consistent.

That is going to be a very HARD pass

I’m sure Aris will already be in retirement 15 years from now.
Also, fm girls team isn’t dominant anymore. Saratoga has beaten them for the last few years.

Continuation:

In the summer of 2022, Sean Brosnan took a job at UCLA.

Tanya Brosnan and Steve Hawkins were named as interim coaches of Newbury Park.

Days later, Brayden Seymour moved from Florida to California and enrolled to Newbury Park.

Days later, another transfer was announced: junior Brandon Guevara. He will not be allowed to race varsity until October 3rd because he did not move.

In the first meet, Newbury Park got to witness three freshmen guys go 16:10, 16:25 and 16:30. Gabriel Bernardino was 46th at the first 1.5 mile. However, he made up 35 spots to finish 11th place and finish as the top freshman of the day.

The top Newbury Park finisher of the day was Arnav Shetty.

They also got to witness a freshman girl Sophia Grant win the varsity D1-D2 three mile in 18:28. Based on that result, it was clear that she would be one of the scorers.

At Westlake, it was the first time in the season that Newbury Park ran their full varsity (minus Hector Martinez who is currently injured).
After the race, it was announced in the interviews that in the next race, Lex and Leo Young will be sitting out, and Newbury Park will be racing Aaron Sahlman, Aaron Cantu, Dev Doshi, Brayden Seymour, and three JV guys.

Despite having sold his soul to the devil, this time for something more than a 4:20 mile, Sean Brosnan wrings his hands over the 2019 combined California state results for 2019. He sees three sub-16 freshmen at Woodward Park, Newbury Park's Leo Young, 15:41, Campolindo's Alexander Lodewick in 15:48, and Jesuit's Jacob Swanson in 15:58. He knows that Lex Young did not run. And he sees that Nico Young beat Matt Strangio for the unofficial combined title. Lex and Leo will have to beat Lodewick and Swanson for the title in 2022. How will that be possible? Ah, but as he knows, family is destiny. The Youngs are genetically superior to everyone, the Youngs and Sahlmans, that is. If not Young, then Sahlman. If not Sahlman, then Young. Lodewick will regress back to 4:26 as a junior. Swanson will run 9:34 for 3200m as a junior. Youngs will run 4 flat, 8:30s, 13:43. The title will be ours--us and my wife. The Youngs will win in 2022. Through none of my actions, only destiny and a single blood contract.

look where Swanson from Jesuit is at now

Swanson isn’t even #1 on his own team this year

Nico! Go get my go pro, we're going to train until we're back!

If xc is a team sport, why did lex and Leo run away from Aaron at Clovis. Aaron was far enough ahead of the chase group that it wouldn’t have hurt for the 3 of them to run together.

Funny how we are comparing this team to Crater here. Cause I watched the NXR NW live, and Crater crushed Jesuit and all teams there. And the Crater team said in an interview they are gonna win NXN

That's my point. Just because you are really, really good as a freshman does not mean that you will develop or even be better as a senior. Whereas those other programs were unable to do anything with freshmen of similar ability, Brosnan was able to help develop these very talented eighth graders into among the best high school distance runners ever, and more to come this year.

I know you’re a huge fan, but Brosnan’s batting average is pretty much like every other coach. He’s had hits and misses, but the Young and Sahlman brothers are complete outliers.

He’s done a good job with youth studs like Appleford, Goldstein and Ascbrenner, but has also had misses with other youth stars like Cantu, Blunt and Martinez (who couldn’t even finish his high school career because he was so fried).

Nobody is perfect. Brosnan did some good things, but also has had WAY more talent than anyone else. Some didn’t work out, some worked out well and then there were the Youngs and Sahlmans which we may never see brothers so talented, especially on one team.

I think the UCLA situation has shed some light on the situation. He has mediocre talent and he’s getting mediocre results. If he was such a genius you’d think he could make a noticeable impact on runners after 4 months of his super duper training.