Joe Newton

(This piece is for my book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from November 1996.)

KING OF COACHES. The highest calling of an experienced runner is to pass the baton of knowledge to later generations of runners. The most coachable are the young who are new to the sport and ready to make sudden leaps in performance with the right guidance. Joe Newton confirmed both of these long-held beliefs of mine as we began the interviewing for the book that would become Coaching Cross-Country Successfully.

When asked to outline his long career, this king of high school coaches noted that “1960 was a very good year for me.” Me too. That was my senior year in high school, and I was publishing my first sports articles in a local newspaper.

But writing wasn’t in my career plans at the time. Coaching was, and I acted as a student coach that fall while the real one busied himself with football.         

I planned to study for coaching in college but settled for second best and became a writer.   Whatever “coaching” I do now is second-hand, by way of the printed page instead of direct instruction-giving, mistake-correcting and encouragement-shouting.

While loving my job, I envy what the coaches get to do. And none has done more than Joe Newton.        

His head-coaching career at York High School began in 1960. He has stayed at the same school ever since.

Joe took over a woeful team. “York started cross-country in 1939 and had never even won a conference championship,” he said by phone from Illinois. “They’d recently ranked near the bottom and had only eight or 10 guys on the team. There was no enthusiasm.”        

The new coach’s strength was his rah-rah spirit. He doubled the turnout  of runners his first year but kept their ambitions modest.

“Our goal was to win one dual meet and not to finish last in the eight-team conference meet,” he said. “We were 4-3 in duals and finished fifth in the conference.”       

Turnarounds can come quickly on a well-coached high school team. York qualified for the state meet the next year and placed seventh there.

“I remember sitting in the stands when the awards were presented,” Joe recalled. “The winning team from Highland Park was ecstatic.

“Its coach, Dick Ault [a former Olympic hurdler], was screaming and hugging his athletes. I thought: man, what I’d give to do that someday!”

He did it the very next year when York won its first state championship. Another 18 followed by the time we started work on Joe’s book.

His latest team settled out at 135 runners, Joe coaching them all without assistant coaches. The 135^th and slowest runner is as important to him as the first and fastest. He communicates this to each one each day in three ways:     

“First I take roll every single day and let that guy know that I know he’s at practice every day. Then I call everyone’s name out at least once during practice every day to let the kid know that I know he is running.

“Finally I make every guy come over at the end of practice so I can shake his hand to let him know that I appreciate his effort. I want to show the kids that I care about them as individuals.

“It’s not an act. If it were, they would see through me in a minute.”       

He added, unnecessarily, “I love my job and love the kids.” They know it without being told.

UPDATE. In the mid-1990s, as we worked together on a book of his, Joe Newton promised to retire when “we win our 20^th state cross-country title or I turn 70, whichever comes first.” Both came and went, and by 2004 he had retired only from teaching at York and from coaching track.

At 75 he still guided the cross-country team, which won its 24^th Illinois state title that fall. The count is up to 28 now, and Joe still coaches that team in his 85^th year.

Since working with him on the book, I have become a running coach myself. I try to greet everyone by name at least once every time the team comes together.

The slowest runner is no less deserving of that attention than the fastest. Joe Newton taught me that, and more.

 

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Miles to Go. Other titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]