Tom Nohilly, John Jay-Cross River NY XC: NSAF Coach of the Week

Week ending Nov. 17, 2013

Since the middle of the last decade, breaking into the elite teams in New York girls’ cross country has become exceedingly difficult.  There’s Fayetteville-Manlius, the 7-time national champions; there’s Saratoga, which has a national title of their own and multiple runner-up finishes; then there’s a small handful of other consistent powers.  Getting into that sub-group, much less into the big two, is a huge challenge.

But now there’s John Jay-Cross River.  Maybe what it takes is a former 8:16.92 steeplechaser, who not only missed by a single spot two Olympic teams but also is open-minded enough to take the best of what he learned at that level and tailor things to developing XC programs.  University of Florida exercise sciences grad (1989) Tom Nohilly, who spent a dozen or so years as an elite steepler – with two World Championship Team USA appearances (1995-97) and those 1992 and 1996 4th-place Olympic Trials 3k steeple finishes among his career landmarks – has invested at least as much time studying the sport at the deepest levels and honing his coaching approach at multiple levels.

Having moved with his family back to his home state, a situation naturally evolved (see below) where Nohilly found himself guiding the Westchester County school.  Coach Nohilly didn’t take the job to rule the world, but what he’s been doing with the athletes of both genders started paying serious dividends with the girls this fall.  After several invitational victories, then a tough Section 1 loss to Pearl River that kept them out of the Class B state meet, they bounced back in the Federations at Bowdoin for the big 1-point, program victory over Saratoga.

A few thoughts from Coach Nohilly:

On getting back to New York and getting involved in high school coaching after his career as an elite:  I’m from Queens originally, My wife, Kim, and I moved back to New York in 1996 when she started law school and I continued to train for the 2000 Olympic Team. We moved to Katonah-Lewisboro, NY in 2003 when our kids were getting ready to start school.
I started coaching at John Jay High School in Cross River three years ago because it’s where my three kids attend and they needed help developing a cross country and track program.  It’s always been something I was interested in doing, but my other work and family commitments didn’t allow me to get involved until then. 

On coaching experiences he’s had and making the transition to working with HS kids:  Coaching is something that I’ve been doing at many different levels, working with high school, college and elite level track and field athletes as a neuromuscular therapist at Wharton Performance in NYC.  Currently, I am also an assistant coach with the NJ-NY Track Club, which is a elite post-collegiate club.  I also work regularly with the Columbia University cross country and track teams.
The transition from an elite to a high school level has been successful, I think, due to my educational background from University of Florida in Exercise Sciences, which gave me a good foundation in coaching at different levels.  With that said, each individual, regardless of level, has to be coached differently.  Knowing that I had to do things differently than other athletes who I trained with made me realize this.

On what has guided his training philosophy and getting involved with rope stretching:  My experience over the last 30 years in this sport has shaped my philosophy. This is really about training each athlete specific to their individual needs and strengths. We do incorporate active isolated stretching (with the ropes) daily, as well as running drills.

On pre-season expectations and how this team has developed:  Considering that 4 of our 7 varsity runners didn’t run on the HS XC team last year,  I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I knew they were good and had talent, but I was surprised at how well they came together as a team this year.  Two of our varsity runners are freshman, my daughters Brooke and Kathyrn.  And Gemma (sophomore) was a former soccer player who we recruited hard, but she didn’t decide to run until the first day of practice.

On what it’s been like coaching his own kids:  I actually have three kids running.  My son, Eion, is a sophomore and All-County for the past 2 years. At practice, my kids fall in with the rest of the kids and I’m just coach. At the end of practice, we all get to ride home together.

On going from a team that had missed qualifying for state to winning Feds, and what were the keys to victory:  The Sectional meet was a big disappointment to our team, but we knew that we could bounce back and have a good showing at Feds.  I knew we had the potential to be in the top 3, but I think the advantage of knowing the course, and the strategy we put in place on that day, helped our girls tremendously.  I told my girls not to worry too much about the first 1.5 miles since it’s so crowded (260 girls in the race).  We just wanted to get in good position and then try to pass as many runners as possible in the last half of the race.
This outlook allowed the girls to stay relaxed and wait until things opened up, then they were able to start moving up. For instance, Kathryn was 74th at 1.5 miles and finished 52nd.  I estimate that our top 5 girls passed close to 50 other runners in the last mile.

On the afterglow from Feds and getting ready for NXN NY:  The last week has been amazing. There has been a lot of excitement on the team, and in our community.  Now I’m just trying to keep the girls focused on the next race and just reassuring them that they don’t need to do anything more than what they’ve been doing to run well at NXN New York.

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