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Week of October 8th-13th,
2007 This past weekend’s Orange County Championships brought together one of the nation’s hotbed of distance running. There are always a great number of top teams and individuals coming from this very competitive area, with this title meet annually looked forward to as a mid-season sorting out of local bragging rights. A little moisture during the evening and morning prior upset the turn from Summer to Fall a bit, with the water on the course resulting in the subtraction of a muddy hill loop from the regularly run course at Irvine Regional Park this day. With a big ‘head-to-head’ gathering of powers in a Sweepstakes race, months of work and how the personality of the many talented teams present would literally wash out was highly anticipated. The Girls’ event had a very interesting twist, with a steadily improving program recently emerging the winners in a point contest that had the first three at 81-84 and 92. The steps a coach and team members have taken to move up and past others on the way to such a win are worth paying attention to. Our DyeStatCal Coach of the Week, from the winning Trabuco Hills Girls squad from Mission Viejo is Dennis Kelly, and we had a chance to talk with him about his outwardly appeariing upset win, and he later answered a couple more questions for us summarized below. Thanks DyeStatCal - Coach Kelly why don’t you talk about this day for your team, certainly a special one. Coach Kelly - Yes it was special. It started out withe a little uneasiness as they took the hill out of the course. We had run here last week in the Sea View League Cluster Meet, and our girls they really enjoy the course. We like hills, but I told the girls it was going to be a flat, fast course, and we ran well at Woodbridge. There could be no excuses no matter what happened and at the end of the day we wanted no excuses because they took the hills out of the course. So that is how it started and we are obviously very happy with the results. DSC - Trabuco Hills has had a great Boys program, and the Girls team has built steadily over the last couple of years to success like this. Why don’t you talk a bit about the group on the Varsity right now. CK - Our first finisher today was senior Kristin Arkin who ran huge for us today. She was our third, fourth, and fifth girl in our early races, and all of a sudden now she is number one. I do not have the exact placings yet, but Sophomore Makenna Smith, Junior Sabrina Rathor, and sophomore Ximena Cruz, those two, three, and four runners I think were all in the top sixteen, and that was huge for us. Junior Lori Hoffman finished in the low thirties, she hung on for us as she has had a tough start to her season, but she hung on for us and our team victory. So I think we had five girls finish in the top thirty-five. DSC - What has been the attitude of this group over the last couple of years that can result in this kind of success? CK - The attitude has been great. There has been a consistent day to day work ethic year round. These girls hardly ever miss practice, and they are willing to put the work in to have success at this level. We are kind of stunned right now. We thought we had an outside chance to maybe do this. I do not know, but to beat teams like Corona del Mar, Esperanza, Fountain Valley, and Rex Hall’s great Dana Hills group we are sort of speechless right now. DSC - What is the personality of this group as a varsity squad? There are usually some characteristics that sets a special group aside– CK - They are very much individualistic. We do not really talk about running together during the race, because they are all focused on their own goals, but it does result in great packing of our 1-2-3 and 4. I am not going to tell you that they have the best of comaraderie, they are good friends obviously. They are all good students. Six of the seven varsity are honor roll students and they push themselves inside and outside the classroom. And that kind of motivation translates into the success we have out here in cross-country. DSC - A great job, huge upset, Trabuco Hills as the Orange County Champs, congratulations. CK - Thank you–go blue! We asked Coach Kelly a couple more questions that he replied to us via e-mail that are added following: DSC - Who has influenced you most in your coaching style? CK - Four people come to mind...from childhood to the present. My dad, who taught me during my high school running days that a predominant factor of success in cross country is a steadfast, year-round, day to day work ethic, and he devoured books detailing Arthur Lydiard's training regimen and educated me on his principles. My cross country coach at St. John Bosco High School, Gary Gaudet, who was a meticulously organized, hard-nosed, no-nonsense coach, who demanded a commitment and that you work up to your ability, and was a master motivator and extremely knowledgeable coach who pushed his athletes beyond their limits. Four years ago (my first year as girls' head coach at Trabuco Hills High School) at the Stanford Invitational I approached Steve Chavez of Murrieta Valley High School and inquired about his success coaching cross country. He stopped what he was doing and spoke to me for forty-five minutes about his coaching principles that are rooted in Dr. Joe Vigil's training methods. I subsequently attended two of his January distance running clinics, which takes Dr. Vigil's methods and are adopted to high school...much of my foundation is embedded in those teachings. Last June, I listened to Rene Paragas of Saugus High School speak at an AAF clinic at Mt. San Antonio College. There are certain nuances to his training methods that I adopted because I believed our program was ready for it. His devotion to appropriate high mileage, Coach Paragas's commitment to aerobic conditioning and aerobic power, that is Lydiard-based, and his training variances, made sense to me. DSC - How has the success enjoyed by the Boys' program at Trabuco Hills had an effect on the Girls' squad at the school? Explain-- CK - The success of the boys' team the last two years can not help but motivate someone, including myself and the girls, to keep striving. We are separate programs, yet we compete at all of the same invitationals, we socialize and organize pasta parties together, and our summer running camp in Idyllwild is coed (105 last summer). All coaches and athletes are competitors, and it's a natural reaction for myself and the girls to desire to replicate the success that head coach Liam Clemons and his boys have achieved. I do not view our recent successes, nor do the girls, as having closed the gap on the boys; rather, I delight in his successes, as I know he delights in ours. Liam was the first to congratulate me after our Sweepstake's victory at the Orange County Cross Country Championships, as I have been with him on his recent accolades, and will in the future, hopefully at C.I.F. and State Finals. GO BLUE!!! Dennis Kelly-Trabuco Hills High School Girls' Cross Country GO BLUE!!! Thanks Dennis - continued good
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