York is but one of a small and very special group of high schools that seem to have discovered the secret to building consistently winning athletic teams (see Appendix A).  Carmel High in Indiana has a streak of 23 consecutive state swimming championship titles, in a state where every school competes in a single division. Reading Memorial High in Reading, Massachusetts, , had a dual meet track & field winning streak that lasted 29 years.  Long Beach Polytechnic in California has sent more players to the NFL than any other school in the country and is nationally lauded year after year for its athletic achievements. 

        How do they do it?  What is the secret to success for these dominant athletics programs?  What has allowed an otherwise ordinary high school in Elmhurst, Illinois, , to field the finest cross-country team in the nation year after year?  And can other high schools utilize the same formula that has succeeded at York and other high-performing schools to build their own dominant athletic teams?

        A significant number of the dominant sports teams have come from private preparatory or religious affiliated schools.  Blair Academy in New Jersey has won 28 consecutive national titles in wrestling.  Mount Hebron’s girls’ lacrosse team has squashed its competition over the last twenty years, winning fifteen state championships.  But there is no secret to the success of these teams.  Private schools have the ability to recruit top athletes in, and therefore they can build winning teams in ways that public schools cannot.  Their success is based on bringing in talent, not developing talent as public schools must.

 
        What I really want to understand is how a “typical” public school like York manages to build a lasting sports dynasty.  To try to answer that question, I spoke with current and past York runners as well as runners who had competed with them.  I also spoke with Hinsdale’s cross-country coach, himself a veteran of the York Cross-Country program.  And most importantly, I spoke with York’s head coach Joe Newton who has led this dynasty for so many years.
       
        What I learned is that schools like York do not have stronger or more talented athletes than other schools; as our own coach tells us regularly, “York boys put on their pants one leg at a time.”  It is also not that they are drawing families to Elmhurst simply to participate in the York running program.  And as far as I can tell there isn’t something in the Elmhurst water that supercharges its athletes.  Instead I have learned that three factors-location, coaching, and tradition, together contribute to the success of a dominant sports team. 
         
        Location is a necessary but not sufficient basis for building a consistently winning team for several reasons.  First, a school has to be adequately large so that it has a significant pool of students to draw into its athletic programs.  York has over 2,500 students and Long Beach Poly has almost twice that number.  Second, local competition from neighboring schools is key.  In Washington State, a team from among the 11 schools in the Greater Spokane League has won the state cross-country championship for twenty-one years in a row.  Likewise, the seven-team West Suburban Conference (WSC) in which York competes sent four of the 25 teams qualified for the 2008 Illinois championship.  Finally, for “non-economic sports” like cross-country, lacrosse, or swimming-sports where few athletes can ever hope to earn a living, middle and upper-middle class high schools are able to attract athletes who at less affluent schools would automatically be drawn to potential career sports like football and basketball.  Combining these three factors, it is clear that the majority of sports dynasties are located in non-rural middle/upper-middle class communities.

 
        The real core ingredient to a successful high school athletics program is the coach, and the most important role that a coach plays is in creating expectations and finding ways to motivate his athletes.  Coach Joe Newton speaks of a highly personal relationship that develops between himself and the athletes of his teams:

“Our program is predicated on a relationship between myself and the kids.  I try to call out each of the 220 kids names at least once at every practice, and I make them check-in and checkout with me every day.  The first day of each season I ask them the same three questions: Can I trust you?  Are you committed to excellence?  Do you care about me?  I know that I can answer those three questions about myself and I hope each one of them can as well” (Joe Newton).

One unique part of Newton’s coaching philosophy is that he will not give any athlete a uniform to compete in until he has completed a full race without walking.  This motivates his athletes to work hard and feel like they earned the uniform so much, that as Newton says, “when they graduate and leave the program they will want to take that uniform with them” (Long Green Line).  The resulting pride that Newton’s coaching style gives his athletes makes them feel like they are performing for him as much as for themselves.  Jordan Hebert, York’s 3^rd place finisher at the 2008 state championships, explains it well:

“He has a really unique way of coaching because he will tell you when you are being a jackass, but he'll just as easily tell you when you’re being the best man he could have hoped for, and you live for those moments, so when you feel like you’re not living up to your potential and letting him down, you just have to work that much harder. And everything he says--everyone can uniquely take something different out of it for motivation and inspiration.”

But coaching isn’t all inspiration and motivation.  Equally important is the training regimen that a coach designs for his athletes.  Top coaches develop formal training plans, stick to these workouts year after year, and as a result produce athletes in much better physical condition than their competitors.  Noah Lawrence, a cross-country coach at Hinsdale Central and a former York runner himself, believes that the success at York is very much linked to the more challenging training of their athletes:

“York gets their kids to run 90 to 100 miles a week and this is what makes them great.  Every member of the team is completely dedicated and does not try to split cross-country with other activities.”

Not only do they run high mileage, but the workouts themselves can also be much more challenging.  York’s program is notorious for its infamous “five by mile” and “100 X 100 meter” workouts.  At Hinsdale Central, someone would only propose workouts like these with a smile, because no one would take such a proposal very seriously.  

Finally, consistency is an important element of successful high school coaching.  The top performing schools tend to retain the top coach or coaches for long periods of time.  Most of the coaches at Burroughs High School in Missouri (combined 5 state titles since 2001) have been on staff for over 20 years.  Says athletic director Jim Leman: “That stability, in the sense of knowing where you are and where you fit, is important to kids.  If you change coaches every few years, you have a team - you don't have a program”  (Wheatley).

The final compononent in building a successful team is closely related to consistency in coaching:  a winning tradition.  This statement is not simply a tautology.  “Success breeds success,” explains Tom Wheatley in his article “Successful Schools Use Successful Systems.”  In other words, once a program has shown it is capable of winning, the program takes on a momentum that fosters further wins.  It does this in two ways.  The first way is that it creates a sort of hurdle for new students entering the program to live up to the athletes of the past.  York runner Jordan Hebert explains this sentiment well: “As a freshman, the upperclassmen really make you respect the program, and so you feel like you must work hard to become a good representative of the program yourself.”

But even more importantly, a winning tradition creates a much stronger platform on which a coach can build his team. Every year, York’s successful running program is able to attract and retain the school’s top athletes, including many who would have participated in football, soccer, or basketball at other schools.  Joe Newton’s athletes actively recruit incoming freshmen, reeling them in by explaining the success the program has had, and telling them that they can be part of the newest championship.  Joe Newton himself challenges every freshman to join the cross-country program for just three days to see how he likes it.  In total, Newton draws anywhere between 50 and 100 freshman each year, far more than any other school in the state – which is why York’s team is far larger than any of its competitors’.

In short, Joe Newton’s combination of hard training and inspiration, combined with winning tradition that brings an extraordinarily number of strong athletes to his team, has allowed him to build a cross-country dynasty at York.  Chris Derrick, the 2007 Illinoi state cross-counry Champion and record-setter, and 5^th place 2008 NCAA finisher at Stanford University , sums up this approach perfectly: