There is not much room for higher praise and the two biggest weekends of the season, state and nationals, remain to be run. “I would have to say one of the greatest days ever by one high school, regardless of the sport,” said Ventura County Hall of Fame running coach Ken Reeves, who coached Nordhoff High to 11 state championships. Recent alums Nico Young and Fiona Hawkins also led their colleges, Northern Arizona University and Adams State University, to Division I men’s and Division II women’s NCAA championships, respectively. On top of the boys team’s performance, individual champion Sam McDonnell, a senior, led the Newbury Park to the Division 1 girls title. Last Saturday was more than a perfect day for the program. “It is unprecedented nationally,” Rich Gonzalez of said. More: Leo Young has record-setting run at Woodbridge Classic In doing so, the Panthers lived up to the hype they began generating in September, when their top four runners finished in the first four places in the sweepstakes race at the Woodbridge Cross Country Classic, helping them break their national record for a team time. Last Saturday, the boys made history by becoming the first team to achieve a perfect score at the CIF-Southern Section finals, sweeping to victory in Division 1. The Newbury Park boys team earned a perfect score of 15 - meaning its first five runners finished ahead of the rest of the field - at the Marmonte League finals on Nov. In cross country, it’s usually just out of the question, rather than out of reach. Perfection is typically unattainable in sports. “They were setting barriers.” ‘A new stratosphere’ “I wanted them to realize they can run faster than they think,” Brosnan said. ![]() “I feel like that’s long,” said junior Lex Young after completing the elongated mile.Īfter the workout, he let his runners in on the ruse, explaining they had all just run three seconds faster than they had thought. More: Newbury Park produce perfect performance at CIF-SS cross country finalsīefore one particularly difficult workout in October, during the team’s four-week span without a race, Brosnan added a few extra meters after marking out the distance. “There’s better ways to train to get the results that we’re trying to get.” “There are a lot of programs who run more than that,” Tanya Brosnan said. The total barely eclipses 60 miles per week, typically. The Panthers typically only have one “hard” workout a week, as well as one “long” run, a “tempo” run and a few easier training runs. On Tuesday, he told one runner to warm down in the middle of the workout. He adjusts in the moment, depending on what he sees. ![]() Just because he wrestled with the day’s plan the previous night, it doesn’t mean Brosnan will stick with it. “He realized he couldn’t watch them if he’s running with them.” ![]() “This is what he does,” said Brosnan’s wife, Tanya, who is an assistant coach. ![]() But as they gained speed over the past five years, Brosnan began riding an electric scooter to keep his ever-watchful eye on his athletes as they trained, shouting out times to keep the runners on pace. The 44-year-old former Division 2 runner used to run with his teams. Which, on this day, involved both teams taking turns running specific distances at a specific split, pacing themselves as they would in a race. Sean Brosnan arrived an hour before his team on Tuesday morning.įour days before the Newbury Park High cross country team attempted to become the second cross country program to successfully defend both a boys and a girls CIF-State championship simultaneously - despite the year-long interruption of the pandemic - the head coach marked out the exact distance he wanted his teams to run on the forgivingly soft grass at Conejo Creek South Park in Thousand Oaks.īrosnan was up late, as usual, coming up with his workout plan. View Gallery: Newbury Park High School cross country team
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