When Joe Newton attended Chicago Parker High School, he
earned 12 letters in five sports, none in cross country. "I didn't know
what cross country was," he admitted. "I thought a marathon was a
quarter of a mile," he laughed.
So, on the surface, Newton would
seem an odd fit when York High (Elmhurst, Ill.) made him its head cross
country coach in 1960. But 20 national and 25 state cross country
championships later, Newton presides over what probably is the greatest
dynasty the sport has seen at the preps level. "That job changed my
life," the 77-year-old marvel said. "Everybody knows my name. It's
wonderful."
Among some of Newton's many accomplishments in more than 40 decades of coaching:
•
He was the first high school coach named to the U.S. Olympic track
staff for the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea. He was an assistant
manager in charge of marathon runners.
• He is enshrined in 12
halls of fame, reaching the pinnacle in 2004 when he was tabbed for the
National High School Hall of Fame.
• Named National Cross Country Coach of the Year four times.
• He has written four books, concentrating on training and motivation.
• He has a 1,024-58 dual-meet record -- including a string of 72 consecutive victories -- in cross country.
•
Before retiring in '00 with his first state track title, he compiled a
41-year record of 1,025-159 record in dual meets. "I went out on top,
like Michael Jordan," he quipped.
• He has sent 130
athletes to colleges on either track or cross country scholarships.
Thirteen of them were competing at colleges across the country in the
same year.
• He ran every day (20 miles per week) for 21 years
and 24 days before a stress fracture under his knee ended the streak at
age 65. The world record is 25 years.
"Joe Newton's amazing success is not based on any magic training formula, but on his character," said Marc Bloom,
the nation's top authority on high school cross country. "He gets
teenaged boys -- many of them modest natural talents -- to trust him,
because Joe is the genuine article: honest, hard-working, with high
standards on and off the race course."
It's an approach born of the hard work Newton needed to build a
program from the ground up. A sprinter in high school and at
Northwestern University, he had little knowledge about distance
running.
"I went to clinics and interviewed famous people,"
Newton said. "I just applied myself and learned. I learned that the
mental is much more important than the physical. I consider myself an
expert on the mental part. I really pride myself on that. I call it
PMA: Positive Mental Attitude. That's 85 percent of success in life.
[W]hen you go to a meet, just worry about doing your best. I never talk
about winning. My guys just [run] free. The secret is to take all the
pressure off."
 Joe Newton has presided over a cross-country program that has captured more than 40 titles on the national and state levels. Photo courtesy of Tom Rizzo |
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On
the first day of practice, Newton asks his runners three questions:
"You can trust me. Can I trust you? I'm committed to cross country. Are
you? Do you care about me because I care about you? I learned that from
Lou Holtz."
Part of Newton's success over the years has
been a product of looking for talent in unconventional, but logical,
places. Newton has regularly achieved great success in scouting York
gym classes and convincing non-athletes to give his sport a try. He
sells them on being part of a family. So many buy into it that he often
starts tryouts with more than 200 candidates, even though only seven
can run in the big meets. In some meets, he is allowed to use an
unlimited number of runners, earning York the nickname of the "Long,
Green Line," a play off of the school's green and white color
scheme. In bringing out the school band and cheerleaders, Newton does
everything in his power to make running three miles as enjoyable as
possible.
Newton needed just three years to give the Dukes their
first state championship (in 1962). The impression he's made with many
of his athletes, though, has lasted decades.
Jim Nash --
one of those kids recruited from a gym class -- was the No. 3 runner on
that '62 team and remembers Newton as being "very fair, but also very
strict. If you missed two unexcused practices or were late twice, you
were off the team. He was very energetic and a 'rah-rah' coach. If it
was raining, that was 'liquid sunshine.' In cold weather, he'd say it
was 'beautiful in Elmhurst, because it's 20 below zero in Kodak,
Alaska.' He's one of the most positive people I know."
Don Sage, who won five state titles (four in track), said
Newton "taught us to be competitive and tough. He gets you in a good
mental state so you don't beat yourself. He teaches how to prepare
yourself mentally. Physically, he prepared me to run in college
(where Sage won the NCAA 1500 meters for Stanford in '02). Some people
accuse him of training too hard, but I don't agree with that at all."
Jim Hedman,
who ran on the 1978 state championship team, has seen Newton from both
sides because he now is a volunteer assistant coach at York. He was
having academic problems as a freshman, so his counselor recommended
that he run cross country "to help me as a person. Nine out of 10 guys
will tell you that [Newton] was a second father to them."
The
affection runs in both directions. Years ago Newton began giving every
runner a nickname, which Newton uses to call over each squad member
after practice, said Hedman. Newton then shakes each runner's hand and
chats briefly with him. It takes about an hour every day to make
contact with more than 200 runners. Hedman's nickname at York was
"Heds." He has twin boys in eighth grade and Newton already has
nicknamed them "Heds 1 and 2."
Ironically, if Newton had not
been so small (5-foot-7, 145), he may have excelled in basketball and
wound up coaching that sport all of his life. "Basketball was my
favorite sport," he says today. "I started thinking about being a coach
because I idolized my basketball coach (Eddie O'Farrell). He was a great coach. He just could motivate you. Anything he would say, I would just jump."
Newton
graduated early from Parker (now part of Robeson High) in January of
'47 and went to Northwestern. That spring -- when he still should have
been in high school -- he ran the 100-yard dash in a swift 9.8 seconds,
the 220 in 21.4 and long jumped 22-9. He also pulled down straight A's
his junior and senior years to graduate "with distinction" from
Northwestern in '51. He moved on to serve in the U.S. Army, where he
started coaching, before briefly delving deeper into his passion at
Waterman (Ill.) High before coming to York in '56. As a teacher he
missed only one day in 45 years due to illness.
As steadfast as
Newton has been in and out of the classroom, he says he has changed his
coaching philosophy -- a bit. "I listen more to the kids now. They're
more inquisitive and want to know why." He added that parents want to
be much more involved today than in the past, when the coach's word
always was law.
Despite the trials associated with aging
-- Newton had a back operation a year-and-a-half ago and will have a
hip replacement in January -- he has his sights set on winning 30 state
championships. He's five short, which means the Long Green Line will be
casting its shadow across Illinois for years to come.
It's a given that each fall in Elmhurst, Ill., Joe Newton can turn high school freshmen into first-class runners.
By Bill Beuttler (
Sports Illustrated, Oct. 4, 1993)
DON'T EXPECT SUBTLETY FROM coach Joe Newton when a new school year
rolls around in Elmhurst, Ill., and it's time for him to gather fresh
bodies for his York Community High School cross-country team. Newton
has been many things over the years -- one of the nation's winningest
high school cross-country coaches, one of only two high school coaches
ever named to a U.S. Olympic track team staff, a demanding second
father to several hundred York runners -- but subtle, never.
On the first day of school the tightly muscled Newton, who is on the
small side himself at 5 ft. 8 in., drops by each freshman gym class.
Boys huddle nervously on bleacher seats, the smaller ones especially,
because they're not yet sure they're ready for the brave new world of
high school. They are just the sort of kids Newton is looking for.
"I'll find the scrawniest guy in each gym class," says Newton, "and
I'll yell, `Shorty!' Everybody jumps! And I'll say, `You come with me,
and four years from now I'll make you an all-state runner.
"So I'll get Shorty, and then other guys are thinking, Well, if he can
make Shorty an all-state runner, what can he do with me? So then I get
a couple more. Then I'm grabbing guys by the shirts -- my goal every
year is to get 50 freshmen."
Of those 50, he'll try to keep 25 around as sophomores, and then 15 to
20 of them as juniors and seniors. Winning at cross-country is almost
that easy, he suggests. "Most schools don't have two seniors on their
whole team."
For 34 years Newton, 64, has been following this basic formula in
assembling teams of unlikely athletes and transforming them into
champions. Yes, there's some truth in his pitch to Shorty: Newton has
coached more than 150 all-state track and field athletes at York; nine
went on to become collegiate All-Americas.
But the sport at which Newton and his mighty mites really excel is
cross-country. Beginning with his first state title, in 1962, Newton
has led York to the championship meet 30 times in 31 years; the school
has finished third or higher 27 times, winning 17 times. This season
Newton is looking for York's fifth straight state title, a feat that
would equal the Illinois record, set by his teams of 1980 to '84.
Newton's success comes from inspiring ordinary guys to work hard for
four years at becoming extraordinary as a team, especially on the day
it counts most. His system of pack running, in which York competitors
calmly bunch together toward the front of the field rather than charge
off every man for himself, plays down individual stars in favor of
cooperation. Each year a hundred or so teenage boys are running
outdoors six days a week for Newton, preparing for the championship
meet in November in Peoria, which only seven of them can enter.
The payoff is that when those seven get to the meet and face off
against 200 runners from 26 other teams, all of Newton's athletes know
they have helped forge a team that will run a smart race, win or lose.
"We never beat ourselves," says Newton. "We always run up to our
potential."
"He's certainly the best motivator I've ever been around in sports --
at all levels, from the pros on down," says George Andrews, who was one
of Newton's student managers from 1963 to '67 and is now a
Chicago-based sports lawyer whose clients have included Isiah Thomas
and Magic Johnson.
And how does the master motivator bring about such stunning success?
Partly with gimmicks. Each year, Newton's team rides to the state
championship awards presentation in stretch limos (rented for the
occasion by the runners' parents), and the guys get to wear tuxedos
(donated by a local store) if the team finishes third or better. For
the past couple of years Peter Coe -- the father and lifelong trainer
of two-time Olympic gold medalist Sebastian Coe -- has flown in from
England to deliver pep talks to York's runners just before the state
meet. (Shortly before the 1984 Olympics, Newton and his wife, Joan, put
Sebastian up at their Oak Brook home while he trained at the York track
for 10 days en route to Los Angeles, where he won the gold medal in the
1,500 meters.)
Yet another gimmick was added last fall, not long after the Games in
Barcelona. Several York runners -- inspired by the U.S. Olympic
volleyball team -- turned up at practice with their heads shaved. Asked
by his athletes what it would take to get him to do likewise, Newton
replied, "Get me another state title." They did so, and Newton gladly
honored his promise a few days later when his head was shaved during an
assembly in front of the whole school.
Most important, however, is the daily contact between the coach and his
runners. Everybody has a nickname, and everybody knows exactly how
Newton thinks he's doing at any given moment. ("If a guy does good, I
hug him," says Newton. "If he does bad, I chew his butt out.") And
every day, Newton employs a three-part program to make sure he stays in
touch with each and every runner. First he checks in the runners
himself at the beginning of every practice, taking care to make eye
contact with each one as he does so. The same goes for checking out,
when each boy is required to shake Newton's hand. Between check-in and
check-out, Newton says, he makes a point of trying to call out each
boy's name at least once while he's on the practice field.
"Here's how I learned that that was important," says Newton. "I had a
guy named Malinka, about 1963-64. He was terrible. He ran like a duck.
He was about 6 ft. 3 in., burly. Ran the mile in about 12 minutes.
Every day he'd run by me in practice, and I'd say -- his nickname was
Malinkoff -- I'd say, `Malinkoff, you're lookin' great!
"I didn't think anything about it. I was just flipping that out.
"The kid moved to Florida after his freshman season, and he wrote me a
letter a year later that said, `You know, I really miss York. I know I
was a rotten runner, but I could hardly wait to get to practice every
day because I knew that every day I'd hear you yell that about me
looking great. Nobody does that for me down here.' "
Newton hadn't realized what a strong effect a little attention could
have on a teenager. Since then he has made sure that every runner gets
some notice every day, "so that he knows that I know what he's doing. I
know he's working hard."
No one appreciates hard work more than Newton, who scratched and clawed
his way to 12 letters in five sports at Parker High School on Chicago's
South Side. He ran for four years (1947-51) as a sprinter for
Northwestern, then spent two years in Missouri coaching basketball and
track for the Army at Fort Leonard Wood. He arrived at York in 1956 and
took over the track and cross-country teams four years later.
Today Newton drives himself as hard as he ever has. Each morning he
rises at 4:30 and runs two to six miles. He runs seven days a week,
straight through Chicago's winters, in sickness or in health -- on Aug.
3, 1993, he celebrated his 20th anniversary without missing a run, a
streak that has survived such nuisances as a pair of stress fractures
and a bout with pneumonia. He gets to school well before his first
class, often to lift weights, teaches five gym classes between 7:45
a.m. and 2:15 p.m. and spends much of the afternoon coaching until
about 6 p.m.
As hard as his runners practice, they can hardly help noticing that
their coach beats them to school every morning and that he is still
there when they go home at night.
Nor can they help being impressed with Newton's Olympic coaching stint
at the 1988 games in Seoul. Every member of the track staff there had a
number of assignments. Newton helped coach the marathoners as well as
the 800- and 1,500-meter runners. His managerial duties included
keeping people motivated (motivation is the subject of one of three
books he has written), taking charge of the track team's many
bulletin-board directives and -- by far the most important -- making
sure the runners got to the starting lines on time. That last detail
Newton got because no one else wanted it, and it had him "sweating
bullets."
Coaching in the Olympics fulfilled a lifelong ambition for Newton. But
that onetime deal, as thrilling as it was, didn't measure up to his
regular day job. It certainly didn't afford him freshmen like Shorty.
"You put a little pressure on a vacillating teenager," he says, "give
him a little discipline, a little motivation, and all of a sudden he
grows from a nothing into a something. That's the most satisfying thing
in the world."
© Bill Beuttler
CAPTION: Newton enlists about 50 freshmen, with the idea that 15 or 20 will be with him as seniors.