Arizona Champions Adapting And Finding Success With Different Approach Under Second-Year Coach

By Mary Albl of DyeStat

Ethan Buck photos

Six months ago, the Hamilton High boys cross country team of Chandler, Ariz. made a list of goals. It's a living document, meaning that it gets updated from time to time. And it lives in coach Mike Scannell’s car.

Scannell can list all of the goals off the top of his head. 

“They wanted to win the Division 1 state meet; number two, they wanted to to support each other in each other's goals;  they wanted to achieve solid academics all year long; they wanted to make sure practice was a priority; and this summer they wanted to make sure we had consistent training,” he said. “(And) they wanted to win Woodbridge. They were pretty aggressive across the board.” 

WATCH THE NXR SOUTHWEST REGIONAL LIVE ON RUNNERSPACE (+PLUS required)

Whether aggressive or within grasp, the goals were created with a shared belief they could accomplished. All of them.

A year ago, the team finished second at the Arizona state meet by 11 points and ended the season wanting more.

This fall Hamilton took fourth at the prestigious Woodbridge Cross Country Classic in California. On Nov. 2 the Huskies conquered the state meet in record-setting fashion, winning the program’s first state championship with 26 points. That score broke Desert Vista’s 2018 team score record. They also broke the overall time record of 1:19.12, held by Corona del Sol since 2013.

Junior Zarian Rodriguez has usually led the team, but the order of finish among the top seven has been different ever race this season. 

“He (Scannell) never lets us make a goal or tells us to do something that he knows we can’t do,” senior Dominick Muller said. “I think just having that support and knowing he's there in our corner and he tries his hardest to get us to where we want to be and make us the best we want to and can be. I think that’s really beneficial to us and the team, and really helps us achieve great things.”

And there’s more. Hamilton also has a goal to do well at the Nike Cross Regionals Southwest meet this Saturday, Nov. 23 at Toka Sticks Golf Club in Mesa, AZ – one of the most competitive regions in the entire country. 

“Under my control is the way my guys run and I want them to run the best race they can at NXR,” Scannell said. “I put my best foot forward and I made sure the guys are most prepared for the line and we will do very well there. I’m telling you,  we will compete well at NXR.”

The Scannell Way has taken some time, but not much. He is in his second year at Hamilton but didn’t need an introduction to the program. A native of the area, and a former walk-on at Arizona State University, Scannell has experienced success as an athlete and coached at multiple levels. He’s most known nationally as the mastermind behind Olympic double medalist Grant Fisher.

Scannell guided Fisher to the heights of high school running, and back-to-back Foot Locker Cross Country championships, when they were in Michigan. Fisher went on to success at Stanford and his early pro career before returning to his high school coach.

Scannell brings a holistic approach to the sport is atypical to most high school programs. 

“The easiest way to describe the difference in a workout is that we don't train really, really hard. That’s probably the biggest change,” Scannell said. “I like to tell people I coach the breath, the blood and the brain – you can’t see any of them, by the way.” 

Physically, the goal of his training is to stay healthy and focus on injury prevention. The baseline is having each runner learn how to do a workout properly. Sounds simple, right? 

“It’s just not easy, it's a difficult thing, honestly. Training them how to do the right work, and then how to do the right workouts. A lot of times, it takes a while to get used to.”

By time, that means years. For Hamilton, one year is a good start. Scannell said having all of the guys on the team return from 2023 was a game-changer in terms of familiarity of the training cycle.

“I would describe his coaching philosophy as something that me and all of my other teammates were obviously not used to,” Muller said. “It was all very surreal at first and the level that he trained us at was way higher than we had been training before.”

Beside the physical nature of the sport, the other big focus on training is the mental aspect – the brain part Scannell talks about. He talks about the athletes not buying into the program, but rather buying into their own fitness. 

“When you get an athlete to believe in themselves and believe in their fitness, good things happen,” he said. “Brain health is a very slow gradual growth process and something very important in this phase of their life. You learn from success and failure. My goal is to allow them to believe in themselves.”

Muller said coming out of the spring track season he felt like he didn’t have a great year, and was doubting his abilities.

He met with Scannell and they mapped out a plan of what he wanted and wanted to accomplish. Scannell also serves up motivational reading material for the team to consume and help train their minds to be more confident in their own abilities. 

“He’s given me a lot of confidence to know that he has faith in me and I can go out there and achieve that sort of thing,” Muller said. 

This fall the team has developed with the goal of unleashing its confidence at the state meet, NXR, and possibly NXN.

In October, the team cruised to wins at the Chandler City Championships (18 points) and  Division I Southeast Sectional (17 points) and then the Division 1 state meet in November. In all three, different individuals won for Hamilton, including an impressive first-place finish from Rodriguez in 15:20.5 at state.

Wins aside, Scannell points to the camaraderie and goal-setting of the team as its superpower. 

“The synergy of the goal-setting was the most powerful thing that we had,” Scannell said. “What that does is it drives accountability for the boys to come to practice, to train when it’s hot, to train when they don’t want to, to show up to practice at 5 a.m. If all of your boys have the same goals and are driving toward the same outcome, their goals are consistent and they will be on each other. That's really what drove our success this year.”

And it’s not just the boys. The girls have experienced success, too, winning the sectional and then finishing second at the state meet. 

“All of us have improved so much,” freshman Heidi Zornik said. “I feel the improvement every day.” 

On Saturday the boys team will toe the line at NXR with hopes of running their best race and qualifying for NXN in Portland, Ore. Hamilton will face teams from Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Nevada. The list includes No. 1 ranked Herriman of Utah, No. 3 Niwot of Colorado and No. 4 American Fork UT.

The top two teams automatically qualify for NXN.

Hamilton, ranked No. 9, doesn’t focus on the rankings, but rather the belief they are the best they can be. 

“I think that we all believe that we stack up against the best of them,” Muller said. “We all believe we can go out there and compete against anybody and beat anybody on any day and I think what’s so great about our team is that we have that confidence and killer mentality that we can go out there and compete and beat anybody no matter where they are ranked, or where they are from, or what they’ve done. I just think that's a really great quality about our team.”