February 2, 2015 was not only the day of the first track and field practice of the spring season, but also the first day for the new distance coach, Paul Lawryk, who replaced Dan Oren.

During his high school years in Bell High School in Los Angeles, Lawryk was a talented basketball player and ran track and field.  After his graduation, Lawryk continued to play basketball as he attended Occidental College.

After moving to Los Gatos 22 years ago, Lawryk began Masters running, races for people over 40, in the large running community that Los Gatos had.  Also, Lawryk began coaching privately for road racing while at Los Gatos.

With his extensive coaching experience at Fisher Middle School, Lawryk plans to use his experience with coaching soccer, basketball, cross country and track and field to lead the Los Altos team to a higher level of running skill.

Along with Lawryk’s coaching and athletic experience, he has attended every United States Olympic Track and Field Trial since 1996 as well as multiple NCAA track and field meets. During the five Olympic Trials he has been to, he has witnessed world records being broken for the 100 meter sprint, 200 meter sprint, 400 meter sprint, decathlon and women’s pole vault. These experiences with broken world records have led Lawryk to meet and talk to more than 100 Olympic athletes and coaches about their experiences with sports.

Over his time of coaching runners, Lawryk has looked up to influential coaches as role models.

“My coaching [heroes are] Bill Bowerman, [a] long time track and field coach at the University of Oregon and the co-founder of Nike and Arthur Lydiard, a legendary New Zealand coach who popularized the concept of jogging for health and tempo training techniques,” Lawryk said.

Lawryk will introduce new training strategies in order to improve the strength and skill of the athletes by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the athletes as well as helping them identify why they want to run. By doing this, Lawryk can play to the runners’ strengths, help students train beyond their weaknesses and help them find motivation.

“As a young person, I improved my ability to overcome obstacles from my past coaches and teachers,” Lawryk said. “I am hoping to help student athletes improve those abilities by using track and field as one of many learning vehicles.”

So far, Lawryk is enjoying the Los Altos High School community and the track and field team. He is looking forward to the opportunity to work with high school athletes and hopes to make a difference on the team.

“I enjoy applying my knowledge and experience [with] a sport and teaching those concepts  to student athletes,” Lawryk said. “I wanted to coach at a school with a strong student athlete academic focus and track and field history. [Los Altos High has] great track and field facilities, [a] great natural setting for long distance running and [a] supportive school administration.”

Students have noticed the differences that Lawryk has made as well as his ample knowledge on coaching and training strategies. According to several students, he is incorporating drills and workouts used by college teams. To go a step further and create new drills and workouts, Lawryk is working with track coaches from Stanford and San Jose State University.

“He is a little bit ambitious and expects a lot from us,” sophomore Britt DeVisser said. “The workouts are really hard, but I’m sure it will pay off once we start to compete.”

Despite the difficult practices, athletes enjoy the new coach.

“Everyone on the team likes him and he has fit in well with the team dynamic,” junior Lauren Jacob said.

With Lawryk behind the team, the distance part of the track and field team aspires to finish strong in the league tournaments this season.