XC National Powerhouses Scouting Report: Naperville North Girls (IL)

How many years have you been coaching high school cross country (and at your current school)? 

This will be my 21^st year overall and 19^th as head coach.

What do you attribute as the main reasons for the success of your program? 

We get a lot of girls willing to buy into a culture where everyone’s hard work matters and raises the level of hard work of those around them.  It becomes a symbiotic situation, and it has made for some lasting success for us.

What would be the best way to describe your style and philosophy of coaching and working with high school runners? 

Yikes.  I’ve not been asked that.  I believe that all runners possess some (and varying) degrees of talent. I also believe that running is an excellent metaphor for life, in that there are significant variables that cannot be controlled and that stand in the way of achieving things we want.  As a result, our mission is to help each athlete to achieve her fullest potential no matter how fast she ever runs or what place on the team she might be.  Everything we do is designed to help our 17:00 kids and our 30:00 kids do that exact same thing.  Whether it be form drills or help with balancing social lives and studying, we want each athlete to be able to grow and improve as runners.  We try to build a culture where they are supported to the maximum degree possible in doing that. 

What are your core beliefs in your training plan and workouts for your cross country squads? 

Well, I graduated from North Central College, and Al Carius there is a Lydiard guy.  That’s where my basic beliefs start.  But I have added over the years elements from coaches like Mihaly Igloi, Jack Daniels, Joe Vigil, Vern Gambetta, Jay Johnson and Scott Simmons.  At the high school level, Scott Christensen has been an enormous help.   If you take small elements from all of those guys, you’ll get a sense of what we go after in ourprogram.  The people I’ve mentioned have different strengths, of course, but we basically build towards four years of significant aerobic development through doing as much quality distance training as we can.  We have become more sophisticated over time at this, as we have evolved to a program that is both focused on aerobic development through quality miles, but also through biomechanical development to allow us to perform more quality workouts without risking injury.

What kind of mileage and summer training have your varsity level runners put in over the last 2-3 months? 

Volume is a tough one for us.  The base of everything we do is running, of course, but we do many of our workouts with strength work embedded, so in a two-hour workout session, we may get 6-8 miles of running in, but with more than 30 minutes of strength work and form work sprinkled into the distance running.  And we do a lot of extra cross-training, especially during the summer. But if you’re just looking for mileage, we probably do 40-50 mpw for our top kids plus maybe an additional 3-4 hours each week of cross-training and then 4+ hours of strength training and yoga each week. 

How many runners do you return from your top 7 from a year ago? 

Six.

Who are your team captains or leaders and what stands out about them as examples for the rest of their teammates? 

We have six captains.  Elly DeTurris, Jenny Smith, Abby Sikorcin, Monica Sun, Anna Mandarino and Emily Hamilton.  They were voted by their teammates last year, and I rely on them to set the tone for the year.  They organize many of our activities and set the theme for the year.  They are a big factor in creating the proper culture each year.  They need to be somewhat assertive in this respect.

What will be the biggest obstacle or challenge facing your team this season? 

Well, there are a lot of good teams, both in the Midwest and in Illinois specifically.  Of course, we also work very hard to stay healthy.  But overall, there is not a particular obstacle outside of the other good teams that want the same things we do.