Mark Stenbeck is the head coach at Dakota Ridge High School in Colorado who recently finished 3rd at Nike Cross Nationals.

High School Harrier: Your boys program is coming off a 3rd place finish at Nike Cross Nationals a few weeks back. What did it mean to your program to finish that high?

Mark Stenbeck: I think there are two angles here. First, the meaning and context for us who lived the experience and were fortunate enough to succeed together and second being the long term effect on the program. For the first, it was an incredible, memorable ride. It meant a great deal to the guys and our staff and school. Winning State was a big deal and that was amazing to us, then to win NXR Southwest and ultimately have the NXN experience like we did, it was really really special moments for all of us involved. Like any team that gets there it was a ton of hard work so to reap the rewards was really special. Long term we hope it galvanized our program across the board. I am eagerly awaiting track season to see how the stimulus of the NXN racing experience will impact those who ran it. For those that didn’t run I am hopeful they will find the needed inspiration to put in the work and race with the intelligence and passion necessary to improve.   

HSH: While many expected you program to be a national caliber team this year, very few expected for the boys to be just 38 points out of first place when it was all said and done. What was the driving force this year that propelled your team to achieve these heights?

MS: We knew we could be special this year if we just stayed with our process. The outcome would take care of itself. So we made “Process over Outcome” our mantra. September 21, 2018 at Dave Sanders Invite was a massive day for us. We went in wanting to finally prove ourselves against Mountain Vista. Jon Dalby and Eric Selle and I are super close friends and we have been chasing them for a few years now. We finally had the talent and passion to get them and yet going into that race we were down Ben Morin from our lineup. So we had some nerves, but yet we had tremendous resolve. We had to have 5 guys get the job done that day and they did so big time. To beat Mountain Vista that day was immense. You have to understand how great they have been for years now in Colorado to appreciate that moment. They hadn’t lost by more then 10 points in a meet where they ran their top kids in six years and only had been beaten by 2 points on two occasions the last 4 years. They were 3rd in the nation at NXN in 2017. They are…”the bar”. Mountain Vista has made everyone in this state better by showing us the way to get there. So we owe them a ton in terms of inspiration and setting themselves up as the “mountain top”. We were able to ascend to the top this year because we had them as muse. Beating them by as much as we did and really just keeping our foot on the gas pedal when we faced them was key all year.

There was a moment this year when we finally cracked the top ten on Flo50 at #7. I came to practice that afternoon and said to the boys…”if you can be 7...you can be 1”. We knew we had an outside shot at Loundon Valley and Great Oak. We had been watching them all year and on our best day we felt we had the right mix to have a shot at winning the whole thing. Jacob White’s ascension to super sophomore and Ben Piegat’s rise this season was integral in that thinking. I honestly wonder if Ben Morin had been able to be healthy all year if we could have pulled it off. Ben was capable of finishing ahead of Jacob White and being our three. So we will always wonder what could have been if he had been healthy all year. He missed about 6 weeks at the worst time late August to Early October. At the time he got hurt he was fitter and had more experience then Jacob so we have every reason to believe he was going to be our number 3 this year. In the end we are very happy with what transpired. Our season was so special.   

HSH: What was the race strategy coming into the race and how well did the boys follow it?

MS: There was no “strategy” other than to be ourselves and race like we had all year. We knew we had to have 2 guys in the top 10 of the team score, and Jacob and Ben Piegat be close together and we felt like Ben Morrin and Riley Abrashoff were capable of being special enough to give us a chance to get on the podium or win. After NXR, we did a few things to get ready. I had the boys watch a few past races on the current course. They had input, based on what they saw, in what we thought it might take to succeed in the race. It wasn’t so much strategy as it was looking for common themes in successful races there. Races are never the same and they are random. I strive to have our kids ready for anything. In so doing you never box them in with a specific strategy. When you tell a kid to do this or that they get in their head that that has to take place to be successful that day. So while we talk about basics of racing, we also talk about not freaking out if those things don’t happen like you expected. Keeping things simple is best for high school kids under immense pressure to perform at the levels we get them to nowadays. Probably the best “strategy” we talked about was having fun, enjoying the moment and running for each other. We spent some time talking about our inexperience as being our strength going in. When you’re “experienced” that can mean a couple of things. If your experience is frustrating or bad in previous contests, your worried about the outcome being the same. So you take measures to reassure yourself that it won’t be the same again. Be it psychological or physical you're trying to eliminate the bad experience from your mindset. If you had a great experience and you “know what to do”, you tend to try and recreate that again. So your mental models good or bad better or worse are based on the previous experience.  When you’re a blank slate with no experience your a bit more “anti-fragile” in my opinion. It’s basically the “we have nothing to lose” mentality mixed with the “I have no idea what to do here so let’s keep it simple...and race your guts out and see what happens” strategy. I told the guys a bunch of times that inexperience is our friend here and in fact told them that it was an “advantage” in many ways. It eliminated any detailed “strategy”. About the only thing we settled on doing was to get out fast like everyone else. We had a great conversation over Thanksgiving break with our alumni Danny Carney who is now at BYU and ran a different course but talked about the overall “experience” of NXN. He helped our guys a ton with little tidbits here and there on racing well there. Essentially he gave us some “process” type thoughts on handing the experience. Our guys got a ton out of that for sure.

HSH: Coming from Littleton Colorado, how much do you think training at over a mile at altitude helped the boys when coming to Portland to run at sea level?

MS: No question we have a great thing in Colorado. So much of success in High School Cross Country is based on simple things like environment. When you can run out your back door and run on trails at 6000 feet, it gets pretty simple after that. No doubt we are a product of our environment as is Mountain Vista, Battle Mountain, Broomfield, Niwot, etc etc who have competed well at NXN in recent years.

HSH: What is the weather generally like during the summer and fall for your team?

MS: Our weather is perfect. Truly hard to beat honestly. Certainly helps in training. Don’t tell anyone. We have enough people moving here now as it is.

HSH: Do you think any boys had a breakout year for you that allowed your team to be as competitive as they were?

MS: Jacob White and Ben Piegat for sure. Ben gave up Lacrosse his sophomore year going into track/field season. He ran his first full spring track/field season with us in spring of 2018. I knew when he gave up lacrosse that was a huge piece of the puzzle for us. He answered the bell right away this fall. He was a different animal coming into the season for sure all because he had about 12 weeks more specific training with us. Jacob White was the big breakout. Once he started going off we started thinking about not just making NXN, but possibly going there to podium and or win the whole thing. He was super special starting at Dave Sanders meet September 21st.  

HSH: You had one senior in the top 5 at NXN. What type of program can we expect to see in 2019?

MS: Certainly this is a huge challenge for us. Can we go on a NXN run here and be competitive for a few years nationally? You just never know. Life is random and we are not that deep to survive injuries and sickness. For our program we just need to be us. Stick to what we do, follow the process and have fun. It’s high school cross country. You run, you bond over team dinners and hard workouts and long runs. Keep it simple, get better everyday and enjoy the ride.

HSH: What is a typical week of fall training for your team?

MS: We go easy on Monday 98% of the time. We try to workout based on when the race is during the week, Saturday race means workout on Wednesday usually and Friday race means Tuesday Workout usually. Long run on Saturday if we don’t race. Outside of that I don’t adhere to any one way of business.  

HSH: What amount of mileage does the typical varsity runner max out at?

MS: Good question...not even sure honestly. You read that right. I go by minutes for our training. Top level varsity guys run about 50-60 minutes 5 days a week and 70-90 minute long run based on time of year. For the ladies it’s about 40-50 minutes daily and 60-70 for long run.

HSH: Does your team do any ancillary work and if so, what do you do?

MS: We do a bunch of stuff I use from Jay Dicharry books and other physical therapy stuff. Not a ton of lifting usually but that is something we will add in here this winter. Jay Johnson is a friend of mine from a way back and we have done his stuff for years and years in our program.

HSH: How do you help to build the sense of culture in your program?

MS: Talk about the past, discuss the future, preach about caring for one another. We do this big at Team Camp over the summer. We also have as much practice as we can get. Doing fun things outside of running helps for sure. Team Dinners are essential.

Culture is built over time and it’s a never a finished product because you rotate kids out every four years right? So it’s always ongoing. Creating situations and building the capacity for culture to take hold is something coaches forget to consider I believe. Asking small logistics questions are the first step.  A small thing is considering where you meet for practice everyday. How does that impact your visibility and your impact in the school? What are your daily conversations like? Are you standing in front of your kids talking for 20 minutes everyday? Are you talking just to hear yourself talk? We had a coach do that here at Dakota Ridge years ago. He just dragged practice on and on. Kids hated it. They want to get to work and talk to each other. They have homework and lives outside they need to be responsible for. You can’t waste their time with your bloviating if you’re a coach. That being said, I probably talk too much myself. Amazingly enough... small logistical things set culture as much as anything.      

HSH: What was your biggest learning moment as a coach?

MS: Easy….2013 5A  State Qualifying Regional here in Colorado. We show up and our team is off the wall at our team camp. Throwing frisbees, tackling each other, making weird noises. Kids were in sleeping bags doing worms in the grass and wrestling. It was more middle school then high school then anything. So here we are State qualifying on the line and racing some tough teams and we acting like it doesn’t matter.  I was livid. They looked like a bunch of undisciplined immature student-athletes. I was so upset I had to walk away from the team camp. I couldn’t watch it. I could have easily blew my lid and started yelling at them and frankly I wanted to. But I walked away and went to walk the back part of the course.

Gun goes off ...those kids did the job. Girls won, first meet victory for me as head coach in my career. Boys were second. Go figure.

So the lessons I took from are:   

1.Let the kids be themselves. They blow off steam and pressure in various ways. They are teenagers so sometimes the will act a fool and then go set a PR.

2. When and where and how you interject your coaching is key. Instead of yelling and creating a different scene in front of everyone I just walked away and let them be. I wonder if I had gone off if they would have been thrown off mentally? Hard to say. Sometimes what we think is right may not be right.

3. Life and coaching...it never looks the way you think it should. You can try to write the script all you want and in the end you have far less control in your life and in your coaching then you think. We search for control all the time and think things have to look this way or that because “we won’t succeed if it doesn’t look this way”. BS. Take care of the small things, be foundational at the micro level. Be adaptable, flexible, and roll with the punches. Let go of your sense of control. I figured that out that day in 2013. Been relearning it over and over.  

HSH: How much parent involvement do you have in your program?

MS: We have a tremendous booster club and parent involvement. Over the years we have had such a solid family foundation because of our parents being involved. It’s a hallmark of our program if you ask me. I also talk to parents and leave my door open to them. Over the years I have learned that parents are allies. Very few are against you as coach. Open up your door to them and talk about their child and what makes them tick. If you “collaborate” instead of “wall off” with parents your going to find it a tremendous asset. You want parents at home supporting you. They will do that more when you talk with them and include them in the right way.  

HSH: What advice would you give to other aspiring national level coaches?

MS: If your goal or intention as a coach is to become a “national level coach” so that you can feel good about who you are, then your in a lot of trouble as a leader of young people.

Don’t worry about become a “national level coach”. The essence of the job is creating better runners and people. Stick to reality. The large majority of coaches won’t even win a state title in their state let alone have a chance at going national. Does that make them “bad” or “unsuccessful” coaches? No way. My friend Karen Smidt who does Camp Isaiah with me, she is one of the most incredible coaches I know. She coaches in a place at Brighton High School that has immense challenges to create even a State qualifying team. Yet she dutifully and passionately does the job for her kids. She loves running, loves coaching kids to being better people and runners. She inspires me as much as anyone I know. But the real kick is when you meet her team. Every year I meet kids she coaches and they are as passionate and hungry to get better as any kids I ever meet. They mirror Karen’s passion and energy all the time. That’s what you want as a coach. That is the essence of coaching in my opinion and coaches should strive to be great in their own context. Winning awards is overrated. Winning hearts is underrated.