American men’s throwing has struggled to win medals at the World Championship and Olympic stage. The throws aren’t usually on television, and there is minimal to no money in the sport, and most people couldn’t describe a “hammer.” Go figure we struggle in the throws.

You can nearly go anywhere and find a “track” club or a group of runners that train and feed off each other; yet the throwers are a secretive bunch that is spread across the nation.

The trouble is there aren’t that many coaches in America that know our extremely technical sport (please don’t take offense if you are a throws coach). But in a sport where there is no money for the athletes it leaves even less money for the coaches. And thus only a small group of passionate coaches are left.

Many of these coaches are in the NCAA system. And because of NCAA rules, coaches cannot coach post collegiate athletes unless they too are assistant coaches or train at completely different hours of the day.

So for many of us we look for answers alone.

The USOC created a training center in Chula Vista California (near San Diego) for potential Olympic athletes to train after college. The training center is mostly for field athletes, without big contracts, or who can’t afford to make athletics their full time job.

The training center has been running for the last 20 years and is the closest thing to an athletic club where throwers and jumpers are actually welcomed.

The last few years have been incredibly successful for some of the groups at the center. We have some of the best long jumpers in the world training here. Art Venegas coaches some of the best throwers in the world as well. But the javelin group hasn’t particularly taken off.

The training center hasn’t invested much into the javelin. There are no coaches at the training center that coach the javelin. Many of the javelin throwers that have been residents have left after a few short years, for unknown reasons, or been told to leave. But things are really changing, and it’s all because the javelin throwers have banned together.

Sean Furey (83.08m PB) has been training at the center for years. He was joined by Craig Kinsley (82.31m PB) and Ryan Young (79.89m PB) in 2012, and myself in 2015. And we just added our newest member to the group, Sam Crouser (83.33m PB).

That’s right five male javelin throwers, that have thrown 80m, all working together in the same place! What other location in the world can boast this?

We still don’t have a coach, but we work together. We throw together. We help each other.