SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
When Sean Brosnan started coaching the Newbury Park High School cross-country team, he made a vow that sounds, well, overblown, even for a coach. He said, give me total commitment and we'll win a state championship in four years. Newbury hadn't even qualified for a state championship in 25 years. But within just three years, Newbury cross-country runners were state champions. The team would go on to win three consecutive national championships and send scholar-athletes off to Division I colleges and the Olympic Games. Sean Brosnan has written a memoir with Chris Lear and Andrew Greif - "Beyond Fast: How A Renegade Coach And His Unlikely High School Team Revolutionized Distance Running." Sean Brosnan joins us now from our studios in Culver City, California. Thanks so much for being with us.
SEAN BROSNAN: Yeah, I'm excited to be here.
SIMON: Tell us about Newbury Park. Is it kind of easy to blend into the Southern California landscape of highways and subdivisions?
BROSNAN: Yeah, Newbury Park is kind of like southern Ventura County. You know, it's kind of at the base of the mountains, I guess, the Santa Monica Mountains, on the other side of the hill from, like, Malibu. It's a pretty affluent area, great school and great administration and everything. And I was able to fit in pretty quickly there. They just didn't have a big tradition for cross-country and track at the time. And I just set my goals high and said, hey, I'm going to make this team the best ever, and things worked out in the long run, and we were able to do some pretty amazing things.
SIMON: I mean, what on Earth possessed you to promise a state championship in four years?
BROSNAN: Well, I've been around running my whole life, and I was very lucky and fortunate to put myself in the situation where I was around some of the best coaches in the country and in the world, you know, around mostly post-collegiate athletes. And then when the opportunity arose to coach high school, which was almost by accident, I knew, just from being around all these, like, summer camps that I would go speak at and work at these high school running camps, there was something missing from a lot of programs that I felt like I could bring to the program. And I thought if we can get these high school kids to 100% commit to something, and I mean 100% commit, that, you know, the sky is the limit.
SIMON: Well, what are some of the shibboleths about cross-country running, some of the old-style beliefs you thought needed to be revised?
BROSNAN: Well, OK, like, from a training standpoint, I think a lot of the old coaches, you know, they just put miles in the summer. All the kids, they would just tell them to run 6, 7, 8 miles a day, and there was no real workouts. And it's kind of the - in the running world, the old-school mentality, like more miles the faster you run. You know, we just added all different elements in our training from speed year-round, anaerobic stuff all the time and we progressed it throughout the season. From a technical standpoint, I think we went into it pretty good. And I always thought if we do all these little things right, and then we focused on even things outside the box, like make sure iron levels were good. We made sure everyone got sleep and hydration and all the little things you think you forget about. And yeah, we just took it to the next level and we just kept going forward with that.
SIMON: I have to ask, could you have done the same thing anywhere?
BROSNAN: It's funny because I was talking at this clinic once - this running clinic, and this young girl asked me a question, and she said, hey, Coach Sean - that's what everyone calls me - and she said, do you think if you were at my high school, would you win a national title here? And then I asked her. I said, how many students do you have in your high school? And I forget the exact answer, but it was somewhere 15 and 1,800. And I said, yes, absolutely. My belief is if you have a thousand or more students, the talent is there. And if you really want to put in the work, I think anyone could be state champions or, you know, even national champions. And I believe that. I truly, truly believe that.
SIMON: There's a sequence in the book when, in the course of the story, your grandfather dies.
BROSNAN: Yeah.
SIMON: Tell us about what he meant in your life, and the race that you kind of impulsively decided to run to honor him.
BROSNAN: My grandfather was a big part of my running, a big part of my life. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather in my junior and senior year of high school, and we would go out to dinner all the time, and we would talk training. And that was when I really started getting interested in wanting to coach. And then when my grandfather passed away, he was 87 years old. It was the day before his funeral, and it was literally the night before. And I said, you know, I'm going to go to my high school track tomorrow, and I'm going to run 87 laps in his honor. I started out with about me, my two cousins and my brother. And then we got up to about, like, a hundred people showed up, and they ran some laps with me. And then I told everyone with a mile to go, with four laps to go, I want to do it by myself. And yeah, it was something I did in honor of them, and, you know, it's still pretty close to my heart today.
SIMON: At one point in your story, you have a heart episode.
BROSNAN: Yeah, I did. I had a - in 2019, before our national championships that we won for the first time, I went for a run. I had a fibrillation, and I didn't know what it was at the time. And I came back from a run, and my whole left arm went numb, and I ended up getting rushed to the hospital. I was OK, ultimately, but I spent two nights in the hospital. And I had a small heart attack. And I remember sitting in the hospital, and, you know, we were supposed to go away and train at altitude for a month with my high school boys for the summer. And I told the doctor. I said, hey, I'm going to - I have to go to Big Bear in, like, a week. And he goes, you're not going anywhere. We ended up going, and I was - I ended up coming out of the hospital, and two or three days later, going up there and had some parents come with me and help. But it was a kind of a big moment to me and a little bit of a scary moment at the same time.
SIMON: Were you driving yourself too hard? Was it worth it?
BROSNAN: Yeah, I mean, that's what some people say that, you know, 'cause I don't stop, I don't stop, and I wasn't the best on getting sleep, but I told the kids that, if you give me total commitment, I'll give you total commitment. And that's what I did. And, you know, it worked out in the long run. You know, maybe I've learned to take a step back sometimes and relax a little bit, but I really think that never missing a beat and always staying on top of everything really helped, you know, have these kids reach their goals.
SIMON: What do you think all the work - and not just the winning, but all the work, all the being together gave to your team?
BROSNAN: Well, I think it echoes what they do in life outside of running. You know, some were going to move on and go to college and be all-American. Some are going to run in college and not be all-American. And some now are running professionally, and you know, made Olympic teams. And I think that's great, too. But I always tell the kids when I was a high school coach, and I would say the same when I was a college coach, it's like, give me four years. You have four years in your life to do something great that you never thought you can do, and this is - part of it is going to be individual because we have individual goals and achievements that we could all reach and capabilities. But, you know, the hard work we put in and, you know, not doing some of the typical things high school kids do. And I think that commitment will echo what they do in life and bigger and better things beyond running, maybe.
SIMON: Coach Sean Brosnan. His new book, "Beyond Fast." Thank you so much for being with us.
BROSNAN: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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