The Woodlands Cross Country?

Provided you haven't see this, here is a workout they did a while back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04yfBJ2PCv8

mcvred wrote:

Provided you haven't see this, here is a workout they did a while back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04yfBJ2PCv8

Yes, very good stuff. I like the 400's on a course like that. Just wish it was an easy access for myself to do that.

I think the continuity of having Dan Green's son Juris take over coaching is a big factor. The top Texas HS cross country programs are all rich kid suburban schools. Woodlands is one of the richest. The district has lots of resources and all the middle schools have cross country teams with quality coaching. Lots of kids participate district wide so that the HS team is very large and has tons of talent. A lot of rich kids have parents who do marathons or triathlons. So they get introduced to the sport early and have help at home when it comes to training, gear, injuries and racing. Add to all that a quality head coach and it is difficult not to have a team with 6 kids who are sub 16 runners.

Precious Roy wrote:

I think the continuity of having Dan Green's son Juris take over coaching is a big factor. The top Texas HS cross country programs are all rich kid suburban schools. Woodlands is one of the richest. The district has lots of resources and all the middle schools have cross country teams with quality coaching. Lots of kids participate district wide so that the HS team is very large and has tons of talent. A lot of rich kids have parents who do marathons or triathlons. So they get introduced to the sport early and have help at home when it comes to training, gear, injuries and racing. Add to all that a quality head coach and it is difficult not to have a team with 6 kids who are sub 16 runners.

This, plus having a good team culture is way more important than the actual training they're doing...hard work and success is the expectation, not just the goal.

Exactly... it's not all about "they're rich!", because, they're not. I've known several former athletes from TWHS whose family was not "rich", but yet, they succeeded in their time there. They work their tails off, and it's a great program.

Hard work seems to be a theme wrote:

Exactly... it's not all about "they're rich!", because, they're not. I've known several former athletes from TWHS whose family was not "rich", but yet, they succeeded in their time there. They work their tails off, and it's a great program.

So true, there are those poor unfortunate families in The Woodlands who only make $150k a year. Those families only have used Beamers, their children have to drive 5 year old Hondas. I once met a family at the high school whose household income was $98k. I was in shock, we quickly railed around them and paid for their children's lunches that year. It was the least we could do. It takes a village.

A couple tens of thousands of HS's in the nation. In order to consistently be in the say the top 50 or so schools year in and year out, you kinda need most or all of the following:

a large school - very few public schools consistently make NXN/RunningLane/whatever without large enrollment. Sure, some schools have a run of a year or two, but the ones that keep showing up over the span of a decade or more generally have a large athlete pool.

a large team - can't have this without a large pool to draw from. When I say large, I'm talking 75+ kids per gender large.

a strong culture - Freshman Dance above is a perfect example. a coaching staff and upperclassmen who drink the Kool-Aid. There have been PLENTY of professional/private coaches and former Olympians who have had success with world class athletes but simply have not been able to translate that success to the HS level. Much of this ties into understanding and fostering "culture" at the HS level, as even elite HSers are different beasts than post-collegiates.

training that takes advantage of large numbers - look closely at York, Great Oak, Wayzata, etc and you'll see that they have all found ways to leverage their large numbers in a way other schools haven't. If you've only got 12 kids on your team and one of them is an 8:59 guy, it's hard to give everyone what they need in workouts. However, if you've got another 12 sub-10:00 guys, you can get creative and make sure even your best kids are getting what they need by using the next tier of guys creatively.

competent training - doesn't have to be world class but needs to have some thought behind it. this component is not as important as we all want it to be.

Coach Watts

Doug Soles coaches Herriman UT now. This school has 3000+ students

They are gonna become a national powerhouse someday.

I'm 20 years out from TWHS (old) and ran track not xc, but I ran for Coach Green and was part of the program. Team culture makes this work. You have underclassmen watching state medalists (and alums) show up day after day over the summer at 530am to put in miles (then follow it with evening sessions too) with no coaches in sight. Having a great system of bike trails in the woodlands (many of which are shaded) helps too.

There's no alchemy. Those kids just WORK.

that video does not work, but this one does

Dan Green still coaches kids outside the school system (as well as adults). Teamgreenrunning.com

The 2017 one is the best of them all. Too bad it was taken down

woodlands used to be mccullough. you look that name up you find their old state titles before the millenium. they would have most of their JV under 17.

woodlands is in the old part of a wealthy master planned community, some of which is an old PGA course. there aren't m/any starter homes or apartments, or RV parks. you live in that you go to some neighboring poorer/weaker school like oak ridge. so it's a distance emphasizing program like southlake carroll in a wealthy well fed area with a deep bench.

the other thing that impacted woodlands is what used to be one school for the whole town is now several. so there's college park and something else. so the success may have splintered.

but then i would no longer go to my HS either, the lines were redone.

re splintered, both woodlands and college park were top 10 at TX state. mccullough would have melded the best kids of both.

also, if you compare them to someone like southlake, their program is more well-rounded and thus competitive as a team outside of XC. southlake gets drubbed in TF at their district, because everything else is atrophied. 1 kid in a sprint final. 1 hurdler in a final. 1 good thrower. they mop up 800-3200 but that's it. woodlands has sprinters, hurdlers, relays, field event guys, all going to regionals, not just the distance corps.

Do the track and cross country athletes at Woodlands have an athletic period during the day, or do they train before or after regular school hours?

Also, does the cross country team train on soft surfaces (grass and dirt trails) or on the concrete bike paths?