MORGANTOWN – Impressive is an understatement when describing the success of the runners at Morgantown High School in the last few years. Not only have multiple school and state records been broken and a few state title been won, but MHS had runners nationally represented in multiple running meets throughout the 2021-2022 school year. Coming into 2022, Coach Mike Ryan and his runners are looking to continue to raise the bar.
“The goals pretty much stay the same from year to year. That is to Create a safe and supportive environment where the runners can challenge themselves, develop self-confidence, and grow as athletes and people,” Coach Ryan said. “During the three week period in June each athlete worked on developing process and performance oriented goals for the upcoming season. If I can get each of them to understand that those are areas they can control and that’s where they should invest their energy, we will be successful. We can’t control how fast other runners are, so creating outcome oriented goals such as winning can backfire. However, we all can work on making us better.”
When it came to Morgantown last year, state titles were earned for the girls in both cross-country and track and field. Coach Ryan says MHS has been lucky to have such great athletes in recent years that have set a positive example for those that have followed.
“Over the last five years the MHS cross-country team has averaged three seniors a year having an opportunity to run in college and two a year at the D1 level,” he said. “This year’s group of kids have watched the ones before succeed and they have the confidence that if they follow the lead of the previous alumni, they can replicate their success.”
One thing that for sure is the repetition of winning for MHS, but Ryan says staying focused on the goals he and his team has set for themselves remain the same.
“I measure success by seeing growth and improvement so I try to talk to my kids about having a growth mindset. Looking at everyday as an opportunity learn and get a little better,” said Ryan about keeping his kids motivated. “As a coach my role is to continually challenge the athletes and give them the feedback needed to grow. If we can create that environment within the team, the kids will be motivated to continue to improve.”
Ryan is the distance coach for the MHS track and field team as well. When asked about the difference between the two types of running he said that cross-country allows him to help his athletes achieve their goals as an individual, while at the same time giving the team a tighter atmosphere to compete in with everyone running in the same event.
“The athletes I coach during track (distance runners) are there to be distance runners. For those athletes cross country training is part of a yearly periodization plan,” he said. “The two sports flow into each other. Furthermore, cross-country has a stronger team atmosphere than track mainly because all the athletes compete in the same race. Track is much more specialized towards individual events. I split the XC team into three groups based a current fitness level, training age, and development age but everyone is doing a variation of the same workout. During track I may have 3-5 completely different individual workouts going on at the same time.”
With so much being accomplished already, and with so many talented runners returning this season, MHS could see one of its best seasons ever in running.
“I will leave that for others to discuss. What I do know is this year’s team has a lot of kids that have been working hard at getting faster,” said coach Ryan.
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