Sunday, August 30, 2009

York HS coach Joe Newton

My first high school coaching job was in 1992 when I took over the San Mateo HS cross country team. I was following legendary SM coach Don Dooley (his star runner, Matt Guisto, was the '83 Kinney National Cross Country champion-when it was sponsored by Kinney shoes) who had sadly passed away the previous spring following a heart attack. I was 21 years old, suddenly in charge of 60 athletes devastated by the death of their beloved coach.

I applied for the job with the sole intention of gaining experience by going through the interview process. I was shocked when they offered me the job following my interview. In those days (the pre-internet era), if you wanted to find information about coaching, your choices were books and fellow coaches. Since I was just starting out in the coaching field, I did not know too many coaches. Fortunately for me, Don was quite a student of the sport and in the PE office, he had a great library of running books that included biographies (Peter Snell, Frank Shorter, Jim Ryan etc.) and many training books. The books that really caught my eyes were written by a not famous yet high school coach in Illinois named Joe Newton.

The three Newton books in the library were in chronological order "The Long Green Line", "Motivation...The Name of the Game" and "Running to the Top of the Mountain". I devoured all three books and still quote from them quite frequently to my current runners. You can see links below to all three books from Amazon.com.

Newton's fame has grown even further since that time with the explosion of information on the internet. He is currently in this 50th year (50 years!!! how many people are at the same company for 50 years?) at York HS. He has won an amazing 26 state cross country titles. His '04 York team was the first Nike Team National champions and his team is the only team to qualify for every race since. He was the first high school coach to be named as a member of the Olympic coaching staff (In the 1988 Olympics, he was an assistant manager in charge of the marathon runners.) Just an unbelievable record for an amazing man who still attracts over 200 boys each year to his team. The man is 80 years old now!

He has also written another book, "Coaching Cross Country Successfully" which many of you have in your libraries. If you don't, link below. The Long Green Line, the documentary about Newton's '05 xc team made was released last year and if your team has not seen it, I would highly recommend you purchase the DVD.

Finally, if you haven't seen it already, check out the following interview with Mr. Newton which was posted on www.dyestat.com.
http://www.dyestat.com/?pg=us-Misc-Features-McCue-Features-Things-Ive-Learned-Newton



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