Top 3 High School Boy Coaches of All Time

The criteria for making this list are as follows: an impressive list of hits, no draft athletes, the ability to develop a full roster, be ahead of his time (an innovator), and help boys become better men for the rest of the world. his life. their lives (aka leaving a mark on all those he 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 athletics program at SEHS, they had never won a state championship in athletics in the school’s history. Only one high school in Eugene had ever won a state title in track and field, its rival North Eugene High School ten years earlier. Harry’s teams won the state title his freshman 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, medley relay, and four-mile relay (the last of which still stands to this day).

Despite the fact that few Division 1 scholarships were available in the sport of track and field, Harry’s athletes earned more full scholarships to top 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 wasn’t that easy to quantify. How did you manage to create such close ties between the various team members in an individual sport? How did you make each team member feel important to the overall success of the program? How did he keep seniors trying to break the five-minute mile motivated on a team that had several runners struggling to break the four-minute mile?

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 give yourself over 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 games came around. You rarely saw athletes tense or nervous about him. While other teams’ athletes were “mentally preparing” to run/compete, Harry’s were loose and having fun. They saw everything as an opportunity, which kept the idea of ​​potential 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 which was in school colors: purple and white). So while his athletes were preparing for their events (with no mental hindrance), most of his competitors were preoccupied with figuring out what the different colors of sweat meant.

Some of the top players wore blue hoodies, 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 in the state championships during his tenure, his teams lost a couple of duels over the years. Harry could have easily won them all too, but he would rest many athletes to give less successful athletes a chance to get through, and they usually did. This also helped in developing him in the future.

However, there was one 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 took on that school, Harry would take down all of his best athletes and nearly stop that school from scoring every single 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. Shortly after, he was asked if he wanted to coach his new gymnastics team. Having no prior experience with gymnastics 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 resigning.

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

This could easily have been the number one spot for Harry, as this former football star and coach took a liking to a group of gangly long-distance runners and turned them into men. The only reason I gave him his job as number one athletic trainer was because of 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 in developing middle-distance and long-distance runners, and he did it without overloading 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 mile runners 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 varsity track and cross country programs, but finally came an opportunity too good to pass up. The sports startup known as Nike decided to start the first-of-its-kind track team to help post-collegiate athletes train for the Olympics and Nike co-founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman agreed Harry Johnson was the man to lead. that team, which became known as 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 for his successors won another eight state titles in the five years following his departure.

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 dislike lists and awards in general, as 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