Nugent’s Philosophy Keeps Peninsula Running Forward

When Tyler Nugent joined Peninsula High School’s cross country team as a freshman in 1997, he wasn’t chasing a state championship or looking for college scholarships. In fact, he wasn’t even sure running would last beyond the fall. Basketball was the priority.

An older teammate suggested cross country as a way to get in shape before basketball season, so Nugent gave it a try. It didn’t go well. “I was the second slowest on my team,” he said.

He played basketball that winter, but it wasn’t the experience he hoped for. Playing time was scarce, with a lot of time spent watching from the bench. Cross country was different. Every runner competed, and every runner had a way to measure progress regardless of where they finished.

Somewhere during that first year of running, Nugent developed a simple equation that has stayed with him ever since.

“Eventually I figured out there was a pattern with my running,” he said. “The harder I worked, the faster I got.”

It wasn’t a dramatic revelation, nor did he suddenly become a star runner.

It was simply the first time he realized improvement wasn’t random.

Nearly three decades later, Nugent is still testing that theory.

Now 43, the Peninsula High School psychology and civics teacher — a former school psychologist who later moved into the classroom — still trains and races at a level that surprises him. While most people were grilling to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday, Nugent finished sixth out of 450 men at the Flat Half Marathon July 4, winning his age group with a 5:34 average mile. He regularly finishes full marathons in under three hours. Nugent still pores over training data, still studies heart-rate charts, and still wonders how a small adjustment might make him a little faster.

“The opportunity to progress is really addictive,” he said.

That fascination with continuous improvement has carried Nugent far beyond anything he imagined as a freshman who could barely keep pace with his own team.

After graduating from Peninsula in 2001, he enrolled in Pacific Lutheran University to study psychology. Running wasn’t part of the plan. He did not contact the coaching staff before arriving on campus and didn’t consider himself a college runner until a chance encounter with members of the team led him to the track squad and later the cross country team.

“I didn’t see myself as someone who could run in college,” he said.

The same thing happened a few years later.

After completing graduate work at the University of Washington and beginning his career as a school psychologist, Nugent volunteered as an assistant cross country coach at Auburn Mountainview High School. After one season, the head coach announced he was leaving and asked the 25-year-old if he wanted to take over the program.

“I didn’t see myself being a head coach yet,” Nugent recalled, but accepted anyway.

Again and again, opportunities arrived before Nugent believed he was ready for them. Soon he learned what running taught him years earlier: the work comes first, and confidence has a way of catching up.

Today, entering his 11th season as Peninsula’s head coach and his 17th year coaching overall, Nugent finds himself trying to help teenagers discover what took him years to learn: they’re capable of more than they believe.

“If a kid came to me and said they wanted to win state, I’d be stoked,” he said. “Nine out of 10 kids don’t set their goals high enough.”

But lofty goals are only the beginning.

“I’ll lay out the roadmap,” he said. “But your behavior is going to tell me whether you actually want to pursue this.”

His vocabulary rarely centers on winning. Instead, he talks about what he calls delayed gratification — the willingness to put in miles during the summer for races that won’t happen until October, trusting that today’s ordinary workout will become tomorrow’s breakthrough.

Over time, that mindset has become part of Peninsula’s running culture.

When Hannah Lee, now a senior runner at Eastern Washington University, emerged as one of Peninsula’s top runners, she gave a young Elektra Higgins someone to chase. Higgins became one of the best runners in school history before continuing her career at Southern Methodist University. Now Higgins has become that same example for Seahawks junior Ascher Lascheck, who first trained alongside Higgins as a middle schooler.

For the Peninsula program, progress has a way of becoming contagious.

The Seahawks boys return the core of the team that finished third at districts last fall — the program’s best finish since 2010 — and 16th at the Class 3A state championships. Juniors Wyatt Harding and Palmer Schumacher, sophomore Nolan Winderl, and the rest of the returning group have Nugent optimistic about what’s possible.

“Being able to bring back that group of guys is huge,” he said. “It’s hard for me to put limits on what they’re capable of.”

Lascheck is the top runner returning for the girls team. She placed ninth at the Puget Sound League championship last season, and both she and junior Megan Dyer have competed at state. Lascheck took fifth place in the 3,200-meter race at the state track and field championship in May.

For Nugent, though, a season has never been measured only by medals or team trophies. Long after the races are run, he hopes his runners leave with something far more lasting than a faster time.

It’s the same lesson he stumbled into as a slow, unremarkable freshman nearly 30 years ago — keep showing up, and you’ll become someone you didn’t imagine.