Personal Profile: Tell us about yourself. Don’t be afraid to brag.
My name is Garrett Daugherty. I am currently the Coaching at Meade Junior High and High School. I started at Meade straight out of college and currently am in my 12th year. I began as an assistant my first year here and then took over as head coach the last 11 years after the 25+ year leadership of Glenn McFall. In my 12 years I have brought back some success to our program after long droughts on both the men's and women's sides, to not only get teams to state, but also individuals.
The guys side returned to state in 2017 for the first time in 10 years and the girls side returned to state in 2019 for the first time in 8 years. The 2020 season was the most successful we had in school history as our guys were State Champions and our girls had the highest ever girls team finish in school history placing 4th. We repeated as State Champs in 2021 on the guys side and have been on the podium for six straight years dating back to that 2020 season. I have had four State Individual Runner-ups and 22 total state Medalists.
I currently teach PreK-8th Grade PE at Meade Elementary and Junior High which is what are started at here at Meade when I first moved here in 2015. Along with teaching PE and being head cross country, I am in my 12th year coaching track and field as well, with this being my 10th year as head coach for that. I also am the head girls basketball coach for the high school with this being my 4th year in that after two seasons as the boys assistant and six seasons as head Junior High boys as well.
I also am currently serving as the KCA Track and Field Chairperson, and work with a lot of coaches about what we can try to do to better our sport. I truly enjoy sports and coaching. It has helped shape me into the person I am and given so much to me.I have had so many coaches in my lifetime that fit on the spectrum of ones I have enjoyed, and some not so much, that it was something, the more I went through college, I realized I wanted to be a part of. Because of this I feel like I’ve had great success trying to bring others to feel the same passion and to get into coaching. I currently have a few former athletes of mine coaching around the state and back here where they grew up and that is always exciting to see. Being a coach year round can definitely wear on you throughout the year, but I love it.
During the summer I really try to sit back and enjoy my family and get out of town as much as we can. My wife Michaela and I have three kids of our own, Kaiden (5), Brooks (3), and Reagan (1). We thoroughly enjoy the summers as we all get to spend as much time together as possible. Besides that I love growing in our faith and watching our kids continue to grow a strong Christian foundation that will last eternity.
What is your high school/college athletic background?
I grew up in Minneapolis, Kansas, my whole life, where I attended Minneapolis Elementary School and Minneapolis Junior/Senior High School. I played a variety of sports in my youth and we had a really solid group of guys in my grade and those around which helped foster my love of sports even more. I ran cross country, played basketball, and ran in track as well throughout high school. The success I had in all three sports on a top end state level will be something I will never forget and hope to continue to build that within my athletes.
After high school I ran cross country and track at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas. Our cross country teams had a lot of success at the KCAC level during my time there. I viewed myself more as a track athlete though, where I specialized in the 1000 in indoors and the 800 outdoors. I also ran the 1500/mile along with 4x800 and 4x400 very often. I had a lot of success on the national level of the NAIA in those and learned a lot of different skills and aspects of running and field from six different coaches during my time at Tabor.
How do you feel about the current state of cross country here in Kansas? What is something you’d change about cross country in Kansas? In the U.S.?
Cross country is a bit of a mixed bag across Kansas right now I feel like. There are a ton of great things happening and athletes are pushing the bar and target farther and farther for the next group that follows them to try to reach. It is exciting to see that our athletes are becoming more and more competitive on a national level.
My biggest concern though has been numbers. Being in a smaller school, but having a multitude of coaching friends in each classification across the state, I feel like I have been privileged to make great relationships and see the sport through the widest lens of probably any coach out there at times. I have had a lot of great conversations and gotten a ton of viewpoints because of this and my role with the KCA.
I find more often than not it has become very hard to get girls to come out across a lot of the state. For a lot of areas we don’t have a great ability to start kids into running at a young age. You have kids playing football, basketball, baseball, and volleyball from even the 1st grade at times, but cross country isn’t as prevalent in probably 70% of the state's land mass. I’m not sure how that can change outside of the major cities or areas like Kansas City or Wichita. You see more youth track and field teams coming together, which is amazing and helps, but it isn’t always correlating over to the cross country side.
I would love it if there was the ability to get more people to step up and get youth running involved. I know a lot of meets out in our area will do a 1 mile fun run before the meets to get kids and parents more involved in the experience.
What is/are your top XC coaching/athletic memory(ies)?
The seasons we’ve had recently have been great and the 2020 season to really kick start it all was probably one where I felt like as a coach we had something special developing. The best coaching memories though are the small moments for me. The little interactions with the athletes and the ability to let their own personalities show and grow men and women of the future. My goal has always been to try and let people be themselves and help smooth out the rough spots of their life. We want practice to be the best part of the day where they can forget about anything outside of our sport for the couple of hours we are together a day. I also enjoy watching those moments where the athletes have something click and you know some big days are coming soon.
What is your favorite meet that your team goes to and why?
State Cross Country and State Track and Field have always been my favorite. Even when I was running or coaching at those meets, I always wanted to go watch and be a part of an amazing environment. I have always made it to Wamego for State, but the Rim Rock Classic is always fun and I do miss experiencing KU Relays. For us as a team out here I’m not sure if I have a favorite. I always enjoy hosting on our home course as it’s one of the few that really challenges us with the hills we have on it since most courses out here don’t have that ability. The Lakin Invitational is always a fun one too because it’s our last regular season meet and we get to see how we fair in our best shape to that point and against a lot of schools much larger than us and from Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado some years.
My favorite course though had to be the years when 1A and 2A had the State Meet at Sand Plum Course, where Fort Hays State used to run. It was a true cross country course and had that feel similar to Rim Rock. I know everyone who had experienced a meet there was devastated to hear it would no longer be a site for races at any level.
What’s your go-to workout for your team?
I wouldn’t say I have a go-to workout off the top of my head. I feel like we really focus on what we think we need to improve whether that's hitting speed, VO2, lactic work. Our most common workout with my cross group and those that focus more on the 3200 in track is probably 3 minute runs and we alter that between rhythm and change of pace. In track, our mid-distance bread and butter is probably our 300 workout.
What’s the best high school race you ever saw/were a part of?
Personally as a coach it probably came in track. In the 2020 season when they had condensed everything into one day for each class we started the meet off strong because we were fresh, but I was on the track coaching my high jumper and cheering on our 4x800 relay team. I hadn’t had an individual champion that I personally was hands on coaching, but both our high jumper and 4x800 relay team won a few minutes apart on that day.
Races that I have gotten to witness in cross country is a little bit harder. I have seen some crazy scenarios play out at State in Wamego. I remember back in 2018, I believe, that Hadley Splechter of Yates Center was knocked over by a fan in the first 800m of the race and then went on to win and run 15:57 that day. I also remember seeing some pretty amazing showdowns at Hugoton and Lakin Meets out here between 2015-2020.
Describe/explain a fun tradition your team does or maybe even one you’ve witnessed another team do that promotes a positive team culture.
We always do some team get-togethers and BBQs early in the year. One of my first years as head coach I had a group that wanted to do some fun fantasy football draft and we combined those events together. I don’t remember where I got it from, but we also do Jolly Ranchers for PRs and course PRs to help everyone know when people are making improvements and let each other get excited for their teammates' success. I know when I was running in college, we would always have a girls vs boys prank run where we’d always meet in the middle of a route and or somewhere on our route and we’d do some pretty fun and crazy things back in the day.
20 years from now, describe high school XC. What changes do you think will be made different from today? Faster Times? Different Distances? Rule changes? Anything else?
This is definitely a tough question. I feel like kids are so dedicated to their craft nowadays, and in distance running specifically, when they chose to fully buy in, we’ve seen some crazy improvements at the high school level. Everyone obviously talks about “super shoes” but the dedication to the sport has increased even if the numbers haven’t been as much. I know my kids are talking about all these things they’ve heard that can help you get better and faster that they see the pros or top collegiate athletes doing. I’m curious when all of that starts to bring a long plateau to what the kids will be able to do. And for how long.
The other aspect about our sport that I have always been curious about is why we have boys and girls in high school both competing at 5k, but when they get to college women run 6k and men run 8k except towards the end NCAA D1 and D2 run 10k. I guess to me I’ve always wondered why our girls are mirroring boys in high school but they're not mirroring what the women are doing when it comes to less distance for college. I wonder if that will change at any point.
Who has been influential in your running/coaching career?
I’ve had a lot of coaches in my lifetime. And I think each influenced me in a different way. I will never forget what my high school coach at Minneapolis, Dina Giles, did to step up and build our program and give us our first cross-country team my freshman year. We had a great run in the first 4 years of its existence while I was there and she continues to do a great job to this day! This definitely helped me when I was first becoming a coach and trying to bring a tradition of success.
In college I had a great experience even though I had a multitude of different coaches in charge of my training program. Our head track and field coach, Dave Kroeker, at Tabor was probably one who really helped me understand how to be yourself and try to outwardly wear your faith as much as possible and try to connect with your athletes on a deeper level.
On a training program level, I would have to lean towards Brocaw Blazers founder Dave Ramsey. He helped me understand the ins and outs of a training program and helped me out a ton when I was first trying to find a consistent way to improve on my athletes. He is always there for a phone call when needed and answers any questions I’ve ever had come up and truly cares about my athletes even if he’s never met them.
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