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[Music] but we just want kids that come to us and have a very very positive influence so I would say ninety-nine out of a hundred times the middle school kids that we tend to get from our program are ones that are usually not very highly trained now when we do start to train them and we have to make decisions on what runs are going to look like there’s a few things we looked at so I do want to know their background what have they done we’ll get kids that have never been a part of our middle school program probably about 80% of what we do get they have been a part of that middle school program a few kids every now and again will have that really big background on or have actually been running at some point our philosophy is no matter where they come from we are really conservative with them eat like even when they’re ready to go if they’re like give us more give us more I’m okay with that I want them moving forward wanting more and we do try to explain to them to those kids that are really eager about it that you know we’ve got a plan for you and we’re gonna send you somewhere in four years from now that hopefully that you’re gonna be better off than when you started you know if I take this is Josh Romine that was him as a freshman he’s running at a Duke University right now he was well everybody got our team refers to him as the goat because I guess he’s our greatest of all time the this is him after getting I think like 13th place in a frosh soft race ended up second in state cross country for us at one point we could have taken Josh he showed some potential right away and I could have said Josh would start running 50 miles a week right now as a freshman but I don’t know where I’m gonna send him after that even if he would have been healthy where do I go after that do I run him you know 70 80 90 100 miles like going forward I wanted to give him some room to grow or kids room to grow and I I well in terms of I don’t really count mileage but in terms of I think what kids do mileage wise is really sort of insignificant and I think you find what’s appropriate for your program and you make it work but I also want to be very mindful of am I going to give these kids in our program whether they run in college or not a chance to develop each year a little bit more so we really focus on what does that look like the process and we try to teach them best we can one of the ways that we do that is we’re constantly talking IWI’s that blog or will post training for them we really try to teach them fundamental stuff just basic stuff that you take for granted the sleep the nutrition all those things but a lot of times it’s the older kids in the program that teach that and like I said previously one of the best gifts you can give a kid and I’m totally stealing this I think from Jerry Schumacher who said this out at the Nike clinic this last year one of the best gifts you can give somebody an athlete is consistent consistency just be there all the time with them go all in with them and if you’re consistent with them they’re much more likely to to be consistent one more thing I want to talk about with training on this slide should you specialize a freshman so during the track season do you look at a freshman and say this kids an 800-meter runner or this kids a two miler we don’t specialize a lot of kids for this read well even our older kids we rarely do it for this reason kind of going back to that idea of a blank canvas and what do you want to paint on your canvas if I have kids that have trained as cross-country runners throughout the entire fall I’m gonna be more likely for them or for me personally to want to train them more maybe middle-distance like to give them some different stimulus to give them some different experiences and things with a freshman I’m always going to do that our freshmen and the track probably if I was to call it like a type of workout that they’re training at is I mean it’s kind of to get them ready for the mile so they can run everything from the 400 even the 200 up to the two-mile when they get a little bit older and if they have very specific goals like I want to qualify for the state meet in the two-mile or I want to go to New Balance outdoor in the 800 or something like that we might look at them and say okay this is someone we really know we’ve known this kid for a couple of years we might decide to specialize them at that point but for the most part we we try not to and we do try to add some variety into what we’ve done in the past and train them a little bit more middle distance like during that part of the season some specific tricks that we’ve used with some success at Vista when they come out you’re gonna get kids that are all over the place with their ability and what they can do so the young kids when they come out we’ll ask them to pick a distance so we’ll give you options so like you can run today of twenty or thirty minutes or fifteen to thirty minutes or whatever it is just give them some choice a lot of young kids will come out and they’re going to be intimidated by the idea of I have to do a thirty minute run I mean that might as well be a marathon when the first time we tell kids they have to go to Starbucks and back Starbucks and back is three miles from our school the first time they’ve if they’ve never done that that’s intimidating for some of those kids they don’t want anything to do with it a lot of times you know they don’t a lot of them don’t wear watches so we’ll just have them make you get some kids that are like thirty minutes a big deal or Starbucks big deal I’ve done that since I was in the third grade they might come back and as soon as they’re coming back as soon as the fastest kid on the way back gets to them I’ll just have them turn around come back it’s a way to manage it for them so that they’re not overwhelmed by it we let the kids walk when they start now I don’t I don’t want a group of walkers out there I don’t want that at all and if the older kids were out walking it would drive me insane I would lose it but for a young kid who is new to your program and wants to be a part of it the first goal that we set for them is one 15-minute run without stopping and if you can’t do that yet that is okay we will take you where you’re at because we want that kid to be on our team I don’t know how that kids going to develop eventually so they might do like go run for two minutes walk a minute the next time go three minutes and walk a minute till they can get to 15 our second goal with them is all right you’ve done fifteen minutes can you do 15 minutes for at least five runs in one week without stopping and that’s where we focus on it and some kids can do it pretty quick other kids can’t and when they can finally do it we’ll celebrate it and we’ll make them feel like they’ve really accomplished something because they have they’ve gone somewhere they haven’t gone before they’re doing something they haven’t done before we won’t do much of anything with any sort of like intensity of any kind until a freshman can run at least five days a week 30 minutes without having to stop that’s really where we try to get them initially you