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The top three high school boys’ coaches of all time

The criteria for making this list are as follows: an impressive list of hits, no recruiting athletes, the ability to develop a complete roster, ahead of his time (an innovator), and helping boys become better men for the rest of the world. his life. their lives (aka leaving a mark on everyone you trained). Without any more preambles:

1) Harry Johnson, Head Boy track and field coach, South Eugene High School, Eugene, Oregon 1971-1977- Seven state championships.

When Coach Johnson (who was soon known throughout the state simply as “Harry”) took over the track program at SEHS, they had never won a state championship in track in school history. Only one high school in Eugene had won a state title in track, its rival North Eugene High School ten years earlier. Harry’s teams won the state title his first year and every year after winning seven straight state championships. His athletes set national records in the decathlon, steeplechase, 6-mile 10,000-meter dash, distance medley relay, and four-mile relay (the last of which still stands to this day).

Despite the fact that there were few Division 1 scholarships available in the sport of track and field, Harry’s athletes earned more full scholarships to major universities than any other school in the state, every year. This included all the major sports (football, basketball, and baseball) which had many more scholarships available.

As impressive as the stats listed above are, most of what made Harry great was not that easy to quantify. How did you manage to create such close bonds between the various team members in an individuals sport? How did you make each team member feel important to the overall success of the show? How did he keep seniors trying to break the five-minute mile mark motivated on a team that had multiple runners trying to break the four-minute mile mark?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I do know that he possessed the trait that I have seen time and time again in coaches/leaders who excel at the highest levels. Somehow he got you to accept his process and surrender to something bigger than yourself. In doing so, he also found a way to make hard work fun. He didn’t always have the best athletes, but he never pushed his athletes.

He was also way ahead of his time mentally. He rarely talked about winning and focused on preparation, knowing that if you prepared well, you would be relaxed and confident when the matches came around. You rarely saw the tense or nervous athletes from him. While athletes from other teams were “mentally preparing” to run/compete, Harry’s were loose and having fun. They saw everything as an opportunity, which kept the idea of ​​possible failure a million miles away.

I don’t know if the following was by design or not (and I asked Harry and he wouldn’t admit it if it was), but Harry’s teams wore different colored sweaters (except for the school name on the back that was at school colors: purple and white). So while his athletes were preparing for their events (with no mental handicap), most of his competitors were preoccupied with figuring out what the different colors of sweat meant.

Some of the best players wore blue sweatshirts, others wore orange, black, red, green or burgundy. Some of each color were seniors, but others were juniors and sophomores. It was confusing to outsiders and seemed to have no rhyme or reason, but that didn’t stop athletes from other schools from coming up with a multitude of plausible reasons. The reality was quite simple; everyone could choose any color they wanted, starting with the seniors, until one color ran out.

Although Harry was undefeated at the state championships during his tenure, his teams lost a couple of duels over the years. Harry could easily have won them all as well, but he would rest many athletes to give the less successful athletes a chance to go through, and they usually did. This also helped in the development of him in the future.

However, there was an exception to this strategy. Harry despised cheating and there was one school in particular with a reputation for recruiting athletes from other schools. When his team faced that school, Harry would take down all of his best athletes and nearly prevent that school from scoring every time. I think that’s called sending a message.

2) Harry Johnson, Head Boy Gymnastics Coach, South Eugene High School, Eugene, Oregon 1963-1972- Ten State Championships.

Harry started working at South Eugene High School right out of college as an assistant coach on the football team. Soon after, he was asked if he wanted to coach his new gymnastics team. Having no prior gymnastics experience at any level, but not one to back down from a new challenge, he said yes.

The rest is history, as this is where Harry developed his coaching style and leadership qualities, leading the team to the state title every year before stepping down.

3) Harry Johnson, Head Boy Cross Country Coach, South Eugene High School, Eugene, Oregon 1970-1977- Eight state championships.

This could easily have been Harry’s number one spot, as this former soccer star and coach took a liking to a bunch of gangly long-distance runners and turned them into men. The only reason I gave him the job as number one athletic trainer was the sheer number of diverse people he was able to bring together as one.

That said, he was probably best known for the work he did developing middle and distance runners, and he did it without burdening them with destructive high mileage like many successful high school coaches did at the time. However, most high school teams in America do not have an all-time record in the mile as fast as 4:12. Harry coached five of his milers to bests under 4:10, two running under 4:05 in his very short time as head coach there.

Harry turned down numerous opportunities to coach major collegiate track and field programs, but finally an opportunity too good to pass up came along. The new sports company known as Nike decided to start the first track team of its kind to help post-college athletes train for the Olympics and Nike co-founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman agreed that Harry Johnson was the man to lead. that team, which became known as the Athletics West.

Who knows how many more championships Harry would have won and how many lives he would have touched had he stayed longer? What is known is that the culture and some of the athletes he left behind went on to win another eight state titles in the five years after he left.

For anyone wondering why I made it top 1, 2 and 3 on this list. The answer is twofold: 1) Just giving it first place didn’t seem like enough for its extraordinary and 2) I have an aversion to lists and awards in general, since they are always subjective, so I thought why not?

“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” •Jimmy Johnson

You can follow Sam on Twitter @SuperTaoInc