Daniel Boone's Len Jeffers on the Team Concept in Cross Country

When I talked with Sam Roberts about winning back in July I knew that I wanted to follow up with Daniel Boone's Len Jeffers about Sam's cardinal rule about winning: creating a team culture that values winning. So on September 5, Len and I talked a couple of hours before the inaugural Hoka OneOne Postal Nationals Local 3200 at Daniel Boone. Both of us were a little nervous, I think, for the season to really start and wanted our kids to run well, so we could only manage to sit still for about fifteen minutes. Plus, he was a busy guy: we'd set up the timing system and timing tent and pretty much everybody wanted to stop and talk to Len for a second--Dobyns-Bennett's Bob Bingham and Catholic's Sean O'Neill among a bunch of different athletes, coaches, and parents. That's the kind of guy Len is: a talker who everyone really likes to talk with. I've not met a coach yet who didn't have something great to say about him and his program.

He's also an accomplished coach whose boys' teams have placed 2nd, 2nd, and 1st in AAA in Tennessee over the past three years and who made it to Portland for NXN last year, finishing 14th. Current Georgetown Hoya Adam Barnard ran an epic race to stagger across the line in 5th that day. I was in the car watching that race on my phone, remembering a cold day at former NXN venue Portland Meadows in 2007 and wishing, wishing, wishing for the shot to get back there. And that's one of the things Len and I talk about in this short podcast: as Sam has always said, once you've been to a place like that--the stage at State or NXN or Footlocker--all you can think of is getting back. I have struggled with that overwhelming motivator and burden as a coach, but I have the sense that Len has a much better and more realistic perspective. (Plus, as we saw at 9:49 PM last night, he has a 9:09 guy who could go places again.)

We talked at length about team, about how he went about designing and implementing the strategies that led them to the dream season of 2014, because it just kept coming back to team. And leadership--more than anything else, leadership. How did a couple of all-star seniors grab onto this team mission when they could have gone for themselves? How did he and Ray and the boys manage the hopes of September and the expectations of October and November? What's it like to dream it up, work toward it, and actually achieve it? For many of us that's the reason to keep coaching year after year and to keep working with kids who have these dreams: it's fun to have the chance to dream it up and try to do it. Again and again and again! Thanks for listening.