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There is no doubt this summer’s AAF Cross Country Coaches’ Clinic Series will be one of the best ever offering three great coaching clinics covering a wide variety of topics and featuring at the Super Summer Clinic on July 16, the man who many recognize as our country’s greatest distance coach, Dr. Joe Vigil.

All three clinics will feature both a full Advanced Track--which will be completely different at each one of the three clinics--and a full Beginning Track—which will present the AAF Beginning Cross Country Coaching Curriculum that is a must for any coach just starting out in the sport.

Thanks due to the tremendous support of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, all three clinics, which will all be held on June 11, July 16 and August 13, at Mt. SAC college in Walnut, will be free to all coaches and interested adults who would like to attend; furthermore, all coaches who pre-register at http://www.aafla.org will receive a free gift on the day of the clinic compliments of VSAthletics.

The Advanced Track Sessions at the June 11th clinic will focus on designing and implementing a summer cross country program. That will include dealing with all aspects of summer training including summer camps, building a base with your experienced runners, integrating new runners into your program, improving your strengths, ameliorating your weaknesses, and motivating your athletes.

The presenters will include the coaches from the two best teams in the state in 2004: Ventura and Fountain Valley. Both of these programs and their coaches—Bill Tokar and Ken Reeves of Ventura and Barry Migliorini of Fountain Valley—have developed incredibly productive summer programs, and they will share their thoughts and ideas in a seminar type approach with other great coaches offering their ideas.

You know you must have a strong summer program to be successful during the season, and these two programs are the Gold Standard—you need to be there on June 11!

The Advanced Track on July 16 will feature Dr. Joe Vigil, regarded universally as one of our nation’s top distance coaches. His teams were legendary at Adams State for many years—once scoring 15 points in the National Championship meet--and he continues to guide the careers of many of our nation’s top distance stars including 2004 Olympic Bronze medalist, Deena Kastor.

Dr. Vigil is an expert in the physiology of training the distance runner as well as the steps necessary to build a great cross country team and program. He will spend the morning discussing both of those components.

In the afternoon, we will follow that up with Steve Chavez, the outstanding coach of the powerhouse Murrietta Valley boys and girls programs. Steve is a disciple of Dr. Vigil, and he will outline how he has taken Dr. Vigil’s concepts and approaches and made them work so successfully on the high school level.

The third clinic this summer will be held on August 13, and it promises to be one of the most informative and enjoyable clinics ever as it will feature the greatest cross country coaches in California history.

If you ask anyone who is familiar with our sport, “Name the greatest boys and girls teams ever in the history of the state,” you would probably get these answers…

On the girls side, you certainly would hear of University High School (Irvine)—in the 70s and 80s it was an unbelievable program that produced some of the greatest teams and athletes in the nation, including Polly Plummer, who in 1982 set a national record in the mile running an incredible 4:35.24. The coach was Bob Messina, who went on to further success at Cal State Fullerton and UCLA.

Certainly, the 2002 Sultana team belongs in that group. The Sultans recorded the fastest team time ever on the Woodward Park course in winning the state championship in 2002. The coach was John Mahr.

Just last year, Ventura erased everyone from the Mt. Sac record books recording the fastest team time ever run on that course. The Cougars also went on to win their second straight State title. The head coach was Bill Tokar, and he was assisted by Ken Reeves. (Reeves also led Nordhoff High School to 11 state championships before he came to Ventura).

On the boys side, Thousand Oaks ran the fastest time ever by a California boys team on the Woodward Park course in winning the state title in 1994. The coach of that squad was Jack Farrell. The same Jack Farrell who also coached Kim Mortensen, who set the national high school record of 9:48 for 3200 meters in 1996.

No discussion of the greatest teams ever can be complete without including the Lompoc boys team of 1972 that included Terry Williams—state champion at two miles (8:54), Alvin Gilmore-state champion in the mile (4:08), and Jim Shankel (8:57 for two miles). Jim Warrick was a 9:20 two miler and the FIFTH man on that team. He is now the coach at Lompoc.

All of these great coaches: Messina, Farrell, Warrick, Mahr, Tokar, and Reeves will be speaking in the Advanced Clinic on August 13th. They first will individually outline the training plans they used that worked so well in their programs, and then they will participate in a panel question and answer session.

In addition to these great Advanced Clinic Sessions, there will be a full Beginning Level clinic offered on each date. The AAF Beginning Level Curriculum has been honed over more than a decade and has been proven to be a “must” for any new coach.

Beginning Clinic Sessions focus on recruiting and building a team; understanding the CIF, school and NFHS regulations; instituting an effective warm-up and cool down including drills and stretching; understanding the basic physiology of training a high school distance runner; and, finally, how to develop a season long training plan—in fact, you will leave at the end of the clinic with your own season training plan created by you.

You may attend one, two or all three of these great clinics. All coaches and interested adults are invited to attend for free. Once again, you can pre-register for any one or all three of the clinics at our web site: www.aafla.org.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our clinic director, Tim O’Rourke, at 626-258-5330 or by e-mail at torourke@emuhsd.k12.ca.us.