Anon "bad" teams vs. "good" teams

[Anonymous (2eda)]

Everytime I go to meets there's usually two or three teams that you know will always win the team awards. Usually they're the giant teams who train a lot more hours than the smaller teams (like mine, which is all Xcel btw), but there's 1-2 small, low hour, Xcel teams that DO consistently have 1st place individuals and teams.
My question is, what makes the "good" teams better than the other teams? Is it coaches? Equipment? What are the factors other than training hours?
I'm xcel gold and often place/score the best of my team with low 36 AA. What's the differences that make my team score lower?

 

[Anonymous (2eda)]

Also, I forgot to add, are there any things I can be doing myself to help improve my scores? I really want to get better but I'm not sure how.

 

[Coach Kate]

Speaking from a low hours team that won team titles at 5-9 hours a week Xcel bronze-diamond, it starts with a strong feeder program. They trained coaches and developed our rec curriculum so everyone coming through it was well conditioned with strong basics. Then you get into making the most out of practices, routine construction, and attention to detail.