Cross Country Coach: We Want Self Improvement

Cross Country Coach: We Want Self Improvement

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This in an interview with Tom Fritzius, Cross Country Head Coach at Culver City High)

I went to Ohio University and was a track athlete. Stan Huntsman, the school’s track coach who became the head USA coach for the 1988 Olympic Games, convinced me instead of being an active participant to be an undergraduate assistant coach for him.

After that I went into banking for 40 years and have been living in Culver City since 1976. When I retired, Culver City High asked my wife who had been working at the school if I would be interested in coming out and helping with track and cross country. In 2004 I started working with the kids.

Our direction for the cross country team isn’t so much to go out and win championships. Our direction is self-improvement. If you can look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I did the best I could do today,” we’re happy with that. We want you to be able to take what you did yesterday and improve on it today, and tomorrow a little better.

We’ve had a lot of success individually. In our league we have Beverly Hills and Santa Monica who generally take the team titles in League every year and we usually place third.

Inglewood, Morningside, Hawthorne, Hawthorne Math and Science, and Environmental Charter are the other teams in the league.

Our first meet this year is on September 7 at the Don Bosco Tech Invitational at Santa Fe Dam. What we do is start a summer program as soon as we can after a three week break in June. The normal season starts in September and ends in October.

The first week of November is when the CIF Prelims take place. The next week is the Finals, then the Masters and the week after that is the State. Then the track season begins which all the cross country athletes also compete in.

We ordinarily have between 35 and 40 runners starting off the season and it is almost balanced between the number of girls and boys. Everybody makes the team. That’s another advantage with this sport. You can be the worst runner in the world and you’re still on the team. We don’t cut anybody.

This year my girls are going to be very good because they are experienced and I have two new girls, both freshmen. With the boys it’s a little different because I don’t know who we have yet. The best runner we had last year has decided not to run cross country this year.

For us, the object of the game would be for our runners to medal. The invitationals give out medals usually for the top 30, the top 50 finishers. So after every race we’ll take the kids who medaled and do a group photo. You should see the smiles on their faces.

We have great assistant coaches. Steven Heyl, a parent of two students who ran in the program and graduated, has been involved for eight years, decided to help coach last year and is returning this year. We also have an amazing man, Rayfield Beaton, who ran for USC in the 70’s and now trains professional athletes. He loves to work with kids so we convinced him to come out and train our better runners.

Ideally we run 40 or 60 minutes each training session at tempo pace or T-Pace. Each week we have to a day of hills and a day of speed. We’ll do speed drills on the track but the kids really don’t like to do track drills. They like to get out and run.

The parents are very supportive. I have one parent who contacts the other parents and informs them about what we need, who’s going to bring what food to what meet and arranges the transportation. We have to carpool to the meets on Saturdays because of bus and transportation costs.

Cross country develops character, social communication, health and education. It’s been easy, especially for girls, to get their education paid for because of Title 9. So if you dedicate yourself to training you can go run at the next level and have your education paid for.

When I first started coaching at Culver High I was more track than cross country but as I got to know these kids and saw the work that they were willing to put in and how much dedication they had and how their careers after this progressed, you get to a point where you consider them your own kids. It’s an awesome group.