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DyeStatCal California
Coach of the Week 10/27-11/1 - George Ramos (Chadwick, Palos Verdes)
Chadwick is another of those schools with a tremendous tradition of success
in Cross-Country. A small, private school located in the Palos Verdes
area of the Southern Section. Coach George Ramos is one of those who takes
a group of athletes from a less than huge setting and has a tradition
of building a championship team, with this year no exception. With a limited
number of athletes to draw from it is amazing the tradition some of the
small schools in the state continue! With his League Finals just under
the belt in the last day or so, we are proud to honor him as one of our
DyeStatCal Coaches of the Week this time around.
Congrats - Best of continued luck George - Doug Speck - DyeStatCal
1) Briefly describe your school's successes in Cross-Country in the past
few years?
I took over a team of boys in 1998 that had finished sixth in the Prep
League the year before and a girls team that had been runner-up to Pasadena
Poly in league and in CIF and finished third in State behind University
High of San Francisco in 1997. Since then the boys have qualified for
CIF Finals in 1999. 2000, and 2001. The girls team has been undefeated
in league since I took over (we’ll see if we still are after our
League Finals on Oct. 31st). The girls won CIF in 1998, 1999, and 2000,
finishing second in 2001. We won State in 1999 and 2000, finishing second
in 1998 and 2001.
2) Briefly, what is your personal history with athletics and coaching?
I ran Cross Country for Daniel Murphy High School in L.A. under Mike Sheehan;
I was no good! While I was away at college, Coach Sheehan had moved on
to his alma mater, Loyola Marymount University, and when I graduated,
he asked me to coach with him. I assisted him with Cross Country at LMU
for two years while teaching English and coaching Track at Murphy. I first
came to Chadwick as an assistant Track coach in 1997 and inherited the
head coaching job when Scott Guerrero left to take over at LMU (small
world).
3) Briefly, how has the season gone so far for your team?
This has been the nicest group of kids that I have coached to date. The
athletes support each other and generally have a great time being together
without exception, all of which makes them easier to be around. Athletically
we have had many great successes. This year the boys have set school team
time records on every course that we run regularly; they have also set
gap records at Bell-Jeff, our home course Peninsula, and at Crescenta
Valley Park. The girls have gone undefeated in league heading into League
Finals and won the Division V race at the Bell-Jeff Invitational. We have
held two of our scorers who have battled long-standing injuries out of
meets to save them for when we really need them, and they have been training
relatively healthy for the last month.
4) Did you do anything different with this group in preparation during
the summer than past teams? Explain briefly
We run a low mileage program, especially during the summer, when my students
go on lavish vacations and internships to foreign lands. We meet four
days out of the week with a fifth day optional run that we do not plan
until we get there. This summer we created a planned optional long run
for that optional day; anyone on the team (other than freshmen) regardless
of training group could do the long run, and they were the longest runs
in our repertoire (5 miles in week #1, 10.7 in the final week, all runs
majorly hilly). We used this new wrinkle as a way for kids who wanted
higher mileage to get it. I also had four seniors doing double days twice
a week, up from one senior last year. On the first double day the morning
run was 15-45 minutes easy, with an afternoon sprint workout for turnover
(starting with 50s early and ending with 200s late). On the second double
day the morning run was 15-45 minutes easy, with an afternoon tempo workout
of 20-45 minutes. We lifted our double day concept from the Run With the
Best program.
5) How do you look at the competition at your level as we go into Championship
time of the year?
On the boys side we hope to be the first Cross Country team in school
history to make the State meet. This will be no easy task, since the teams
ranked ahead of us have enormous talent, State experience, and great coaching,
and the teams ranked behind us have enormous talent, sharp hunger, and
great coaching! The girls have winning bred in them; that is what they
have known and that is what they expect. Easier said than done! Southern
Section Division V teams have been working hard to close the gap on us,
and I expect the CIF Championship to come down to single digits. I got
a peak at results from University High’s girls team up North, and
I cringed. Their program has everything it takes to succeed; they are
the favorites to win State in my eyes, but we won’t roll over and
let them have it. Great competitors inspire great competition. We can’t
wait!
6) What workout is the core of your fall cross-country "during the
season" Mondays?
We do 800m intervals at goal pace with shorter rest in September, hill
fartlek/hill repeats in October, and 400m repeats all out in November.
7) What are some of the good and some of the maybe not so good items
about working with a smaller, private school in the area of athletics?
Well, there were some office politics when I first took over the program.
Chadwick School has students K-12, and our coaches teach P.E. to the younger
students. When Scott Guerrero and I began selling Cross Country to the
masses (the sport had died here until 1995), other coaches at the school
felt that we were stealing “their” athletes, the ones that
they had been working with for years. This continued when some of our
kids became full-time runners, to the detriment of other sports. Chadwick
has fewer than eighty students per grade level but seven Fall Varsity
sports, so kids are precious resources around here! The tensions have
improved a great deal since those early years thanks to greater communication.
We have a Middle School Cross Country team now, and kids now run for us
more because of the social component then because of anything the coaches
do. We have forty-two kids on the team, and they are the best recruiters
we have!
There are probably too many good aspects to coaching at Chadwick to mention
here! I get to teach both seventh and eleventh grade English, so I get
to teach/coach/know a wide variety of kids. Our kids are very bright,
so I have very few academic casualties. Our athletes all come from good
homes and good backgrounds; they generally have good family support and
good ethics. Best of all they are achievement oriented. Our athletes work
hard at everything they do in their lives, which makes for strong athletics.
8) Some particulars about the area that your school is at that make it
especially good for training, or maybe a challenge in some ways?
We have a huge advantage in that we do 90% of our running on horse trails.
Our trails are pretty soft, not so great for speed but great for strength.
Speaking of which, as Joe Kelly so eloquently put it, “we have to
drive to get away from the hills!” We can’t escape them! We
use the uphills to our advantage every day, but again they make us strong
and not necessarily fast. And what comes up must come down; we have to
mind our shins and knees constantly. All in all we love our training area.
We remind the kids that few teams have to run a mile uphill to get back
to school after they complete their workout. The hills help give us mental
strength.
9) Who has influenced you along the way in your coaching philosophy?
My high school coach Mike Sheehan taught me that less can be more (in
terms of training) and that a team should be a family.
Scott Guerrero and Drew Wartenburg (Charles Wright Academy in Tacoma
now) helped me understand the human elements of working with teens.
Joe Newton of York High in Illinois wrote a book called The Long Green
Line (out of print now?), which taught me much of the science of coaching
distance runners.
Ken Reeves, formerly of Nordhoff High, helped me understand everything,
‘nuff said.
Joe Kelly, formerly of Peninsula High, taught me to embrace and support
other coaches, especially new ones.
All of the coaches who take the time to speak at the AAF clinics have
influenced our program. I have taken at least one thing from all of you
to the benefit of our athletes.
10) What advice would you have for rookie coaches out there in the sport
of Cross-Country?
#1: Set yourself up to get your B.S. degree (Borrow and
Steal). Go to every AAF clinic. Attend a commercial camp with your athletes
and talk to clinicians and other coaches. None of us know it all, but
the more coaches expose themselves to other coaches, the better our coaching
becomes.
#2: Spend time with and get to know your athletes, and not just in terms
of running. Coaches have an amazing power to help today’s youth,
but it takes putting in time. Just talking to an athlete can make a difference
in their lives on that day, in that week, or in their lives.
#3: Plan. Coaching is both an art and a science. To help the athletes
get the most out of themselves takes knowledge and planning. Again, put
in the time.
#4: Hire assistants. Our assistant coaches over the years, Drew, Will
Bernaldo (currently at Nordhoff), and now Cambria D’Amico, have
been more like co-coaches than assistants. Head coaches shouldn’t
have to go it alone, and different kids benefit from different leadership
styles that assistants can bring.
Thanks a ton for honoring me and for honoring our team! Good luck to
everyone out there in league competition, at CIF, and at State! Go ‘Wick!!!
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