Coach Andy Capellan enters his 29th year at NRHS after spending 5 years beginning in 1975 at Stuyvesant HS in NYC. While at New Rochelle HS he compiled an outstanding record as the head girls coach. His girls teams won the 39 League titles, 33 Westchester County championships and 29 Section 1 champinships both indoor and outdoors.
Coach Cap has produced a number of national class hurdlers, most recently Elizabeth Mott won the 400-meters hurdles at the Nike Nationals in
Cap is also a recipient of the prestigious Frank Maguire Foundation Award and was elected to the New Rochelle Sports Hall of Fame. It was our pleasure to catch up with Coach Cap for this edition of the Coaches' Corner.
AT: Briefly describe your coaching philosophy.
AC: Track and Field is one of the few sports where you can see measurable results, whether it’s on the clock or the measuring tape. If you put forth the effort to improve your performances a person will learn many virtues and develop the tools for a successful life whether they win or lose. By accepting the principles of the Athletic Code, whose basis of HARD WORK, DEDICATION, COMMITMENT and SACRIFICE have fostered a way for many youngsters to make it to colleges and a way out of the cycle of failure. Additionally I preach about team achievement over individual goals.
Most important is the impact that a coach has on their athletes. When newcomers come on my teams I ask these questions. “Why did you join this team?” Do you want to be good or great?” Most of them all respond with a positive, and my response is, “then get on the COACH bus, and I’ll get you there!!” Once they develop trust with their coach there are few stronger bonds. That is the relationship that I try to develop with my athletes. We communicate and trust each other. If they do not see “eye to eye” it will not work. It will end up with the two parties battling each other. To this day the athletes I coached decades ago remember the process we had towards setting goals and reaching for them. Lessons they learned and employed throughout their lives.
AT: What’s one of your staple workouts and why do you do it?
AC: The hurdlers really understand and run this workout with gusto because they recognize the benefits. We usually don’t have a set day as which workout we do, and we also take into account what time of season it is. Am I loading up their workout? Am I peaking them? So we employ LADDERS usually pre-season to early season and then some variation of the workout later on.
3 x to #1 then sprint to #6,7,8,9,10 ( we find this give them the strength to maintain their stride patterns to the end of the 100/110 and,
3 x 1,2,3,4,5 sprint to #10. (focus is on maintaining their stride patterns. If they miss their strides they must start all over again. The benefit is strength which is needed in abundance after #5. As they master the strength part we turn to developing speed and the proper chop steps in order to maintain speed at the end. Out athletes take pride in not breaking down at the end of their races.
Another variation we do indoors is 3 x 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1 or 3 x 5,4,3,2,1,2,3,4,5
As the season progresses and we get to the Championship part of the schedule 1 set is done for time.
AT: What would you say your biggest challenge is as a head coach?
AC: All the paperwork can be a drag, entering meet, scheduling busses, scheduling practices with all the coaches on the same page, keeping up with grades, teachers complaints, and parents ( on occasion parents want to punish by taking them off the team) Playing the role of counselor, father, tutor, advisor, psychologist, etc. The biggest challenge is really managing the career of your best athletes. Which meets and events to enter? Am I racing them to much? Are they going to peak at the right time? How much rest do they need? Injury prevention? Which workouts can I employ to correct mistakes in technique?
AT: Coach, what can we expect from your team this season?
AC: We at New Rochelle HS expect to win the Triple Crown each season. That is the league, County and Sectional title. This past winter we lost each one by narrow margins. We don’t have the depth of talent that we had in the past but there are a few talented performers, particularly in the Hurdles and Throws. We set high goals, but are not unrealistic. Sometimes goals have to be reset, which we did indoors. For the first time in ages we didn’t have a medalist at the state meet, but we reset the goals and earned All-American medals at both Indoor national meets in the Shuttle Hurdle Relays.
AT: How important is tradition at
AC: They have heard of all of our success, and many come out because of COMMUNITY pressure. The school and the town expects us to win and produce elite athletes all the time. What many fail to understand is that there is WORK and more HARD WORK behind every successful graduating track athlete that came through this program. So they come with unrealistic views and attitudes, which are quickly corrected by the veterans. They provide the guidance and take pride in their accomplishments. However, it does come with a lot of pressure. Last spring when we won the Triple Crown the seniors let out a sigh of relief because they hadn’t won a Triple Crown since when they were 9th graders. Now they have one of their own. This years’ 9th graders are under the same pressure. They know the alumni, their families, the school is waiting for that Triple Crown. They don’t want to be without one.
AT: What’s changed most about your coaching or training style through the years?
AC: I used to be a hard liner with workouts. I have learned to listen to my athletes more and here them out especially if they are sluggish and hurting. So I must trust them more. For many years I made the Sprinters run XC. Believing it would make them stronger which it did, but not faster. One year Shenae Dawkins was invited to the Olympic Training Center in
AT: Two of your former athletes, Lynne Layne (
AC: No, I didn’t. Quite often when have witnessed our athletes going off to college and never better the careers they had in high school nor better their results. Did we burn them out? Was there a good COACH-ATHLETE relationship developed? So I was happy to see that they had something left in their tanks, and they had room for improvement. It was a question of talent in their cases, but can the colleges manage their careers.
AT: What do you think are the most important things in keeping consistency in young female athletes as they begin to mature and their bodies start changing?
I’ve learned the hard way never to question a girl and their changing bodies, particularly their weight. Yes, they come to you as mid-schoolers, which means in some cases pre-adolescents. They can run for days, then the body evolves and they gain weight. I leave to the parents. If their performances suffer I sometimes, with some success, change their events, such was the case with one of our girls. She started with us in the seventh grade running sub 11:00 in the 3000, and headed to STARDOM. She almost beat Shelby Greany at the Class A Champs that spring. By the time she got to the ninth grade she experienced changes in her body and her performances suffered. It took awhile, and with a lot of TLC, and she switched to the racewalk. That is what she will focus on in college.