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Dulin calls it quits
Rob Dulin gave about as honest an answer as possible for why he's leaving the Brentsville District cross country program: he doesn't have the time for it anymore."Toward the middle of the year, I really felt like, whoever's with the kids, the cross country team, they need somebody who's there year round, not somebody who's there 3-4 months and then there next fall," said Dulin on Sunday.
He announced in a letter to his team's runners last month that he would be stepping down after 19 seasons. His reasons are two-fold. First, he wants to spend more time with his family and second, he wants to dedicate himself full-time to operating the Running Store in Gainesville, which he co-owns with former BDHS coach Jason Grant.
"It's not like these kids just do it for a season and take 6-8 months off," Dulin said of his runners. "They do it all year round."
Principal Robert Scott announced Dulin's departure in in his monthly Internet column earlier this month and the school newspaper, “The Roar,” featured a front-page article dedicated to Dulin in last Friday's edition.
The paper reported Dulin was at the helm of 14 state championships, 21 regional titles, 22 district wins and five state runner-up finishes.
"I was told once a few years ago that I have more state titles than any other high school coach in the state of Virginia," said Dulin.
The Virginia High School League record book online does not track which coaches led each team to state titles.
However, a look at the numbers shows that Brentsville's eight state wins by the girls and six by the boys is the best cross country record for any school since 1991, Dulin's first year as coach.
The next closest is Clarke County, which earned five boys titles and four girls titles at the Group A level. Clarke only claimed one state win, however, before Brentsville moved up from Group A to Group AA.
Dulin said that what mattered to him the most was the phone calls and “thank yous” he received years after some of his runners graduated.
"I'll take that over any state title any day," he said.
Neither the boys nor the girls team has won states in the last two seasons, however. When asked when asked what role, if any, his focus on his business has had on the team, Dulin insisted that it's not that Brentsville has performed poorly, it's that other schools like Blacksburg and Hidden Valley are so good, they've become national contenders.
"I think people just take for granted that you go out there and win state titles," he said.
Despite his departure, Brentsville's boys team is shaping up to be a top-contender for the 2010 season, according to Dulin.
The crop of rising seniors in Andrew Hull, Zach Morrow, Chris Cunningham, Matt Earman and Josh Wojtysiak has "a more cohesive, concentrated" focus than any other group Dulin has coached, he said.
"Boy, they're going to be tough," he said, noting that while they do not have "one superstar in that group," they perform consistently and run as a pack.
"Those guys are kind of on autopilot. If I was out there, I would just make sure I didn't get in their way. I think the biggest thing to do sometimes is just to rein them in," he said. "You got to know when to push and when to back off and I think that's what those guys really need."
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