(Photo by Beth Scheid)
Hello, my name is David Behm and I am the Head Cross Country Coach at The High School of St. Thomas More in Champaign, Illinois. I coach both the men’s and women’s teams. STM is small Class A catholic school that is only 13 years old. We have an enrollment of roughly 290 students.
I have been coaching on and off for 23 years. I have coached at the collegiate, middle school, and high school levels. I was a class A high school runner at Georgetown Illinois, coached by Tom Kulbarts. I graduated in 1982 and ran cross country and track at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. I was coached there by Bill Cornell and Lou Hertzog. As far as my coaching philosophy, I have picked a bit from each of these coaches and stolen most of what I know from them. I have also had the pleasure of coaching with David Severance back in the 90’s when we were at Waukegan High School. I have learned a lot from other coaches too, Chrisman’s Roger Beals, Elvis Forde, Jeff Bovee, Wendel McRaven, Roger Bush, Dike Stirrett, Gary Wieneke, Tom Razo and the Bradley coaches Marc Burns, Josh Stubbs and Matt Esche to name a few.
My running philosophy is pretty simple. My workouts are basic and repetitive throughout the season. We are not high mileage, 50-60 miles per week. The girls are 40-45. I believe in rest days and proper recovery periods. We do strength, agilities and core two to three times a week. Many of the runners have one day of low impact workout; swimming, elliptical or cycling. Most have one day off a week. I remember Lou Hertzog telling one of the runners at SIU, “It’s not what you run darnit, its how you run it!” Coach Hertzog was a marine sergeant, or at least that’s what they told me. I tended not to argue with him. He is in the U. S. Track and Field Hall of Fame. My favorite quote of running came from Connor Schake an 8th grader I was coaching at Urbana, “If you want to improve your time, run faster”. I couldn’t sum it up any better that Connor.
I am starting my 4th year at STM. Before taking the coaching position there I had taken a year off from coaching. I spent that year reading and studying everything I could get my hands on that had to do with running, coaching, team building and character building. Having that year off changed my coaching philosophy considerably. Since 2010 the STM boys team has qualified for state each year. In 2010, we placed 14th. In 2011, we placed 4th. In 2012, we won the state championship. Our girl’s team qualified last year for the first time in school history and placed 19th. Since 2010,we have had Nick Hess earn All-state honors twice and Jacob Helfrich earned All-State honors as a senior in 2012. Our Boys 4 x 800 relay team were state champs in 2013 and out girls team was 2nd. Both the boy’s and girl’s teams look pretty good for this year. The boys team lost two of the top five and our girls team has lost three of our top sven from last year. Both teams have some new faces that should more than make up for the losses. Both teams should be competitive.
I look forward to sharing this season in this blog. I am honored to be asked to have my thoughts and ideas about running and coaching shared with so many readers. Please feel to ask questions and post comments. It should be a fun year.