Thoughts From Three: A Coach's Journal - 5

Camillus NY - Hot on the heels of cross country, Winter Track is back.  After the success of Jim Vermeulen's XC Journal in the fall, we've asked again for him to provide some news and notes once a month this winter.  Think of these as the thoughts that cross the mind of your average coach.  Up from Section 3, we present you with "Thoughts From Three."

 

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The Long Hello

March 4:

          That time of year again. They’ve filled the cafeteria tables and are bent to the easy task of completing their requisite athlete information sheets. It’s the usual mix at our girls outdoor track pre-season meeting. Expectant freshmen squeeze together comparing notes, blasé veterans casually converse while checking off answers automatically.  Coach Delsole wanders through the chatter, conducting an informal head count and silently noting a few notable MIA’s.   

          “Let me tell you what I want,” I announce after they’ve finished. That brings them to attention because everyone knows it’s not supposed to be about the coach. It’s about the athletes, the sport. “This is what I want,” I reiterate. Then I rattle off a list of athletes and relays, all with legitimate aspirations this coming season to become sectional champions, state championship qualifiers, even state champions and national championship qualifiers. “And I want you to win the team sectional championship,” I throw in for good measure.

          The freshmen have no sense of my list’s import, but some of the veterans are staring at me cross-eyed. After a long pause, I add, “But what I want doesn’t really matter. It’s what you want that’s most important.”

          So we begin. The remainder of the meeting moves quickly because my boring Power-Point has been intentionally left home. I deliver quick slants on the competitive season, the team and individual expectations the girls will confront, the work ahead that is, well, the work.  Coach Delsole warns them of the lousy training weather they can expect for the next weeks and the predictable muscle soreness, but he also adds that he’s excited to see so many freshmen because “you haven’t heard all my old jokes yet.” Pre-season, I tell them, all boils down to two dictums: show up; give full efforts. Rah-rah is in short supply at this meeting, but 83 of the 98 sign-ups have attended or are accounted for, so we’re already above predicted attrition--and I might be ordering additional uniforms. All in all, a great start.

          Not so fast.

          Driving home, I watch snowflakes drift down. Every day or so we collect a few more inches of the white stuff, relentless spates of new snow smoothing over the dirty old mounds and growing those imposing banks that now resemble layer cakes. Last year on this day the average snow depth was one inch. We have another storm due the first week of team practices, so the date our track emerges from winter hibernation is anyone’s guess. We do know, however, that 160+ boys and girls who hope to be sweating through intervals in late May will soon have no choice but to use their imaginations. Spring track—who are we kidding? In reality, our indoor season just got three weeks longer—and a lot more crowded.

 

March 11:

T.S. Elliot had it wrong. March is the cruelest month. Day 2 of team practices is the second outdoor T-shirt day for the hearty young. All four of our squads—distance, throws, boys/girls sprinters—are out on the residential roads or in the parking lot, continuing the steady accumulation of work intended to build, not break. The slightest whiff of a breeze ripples through luxurious fifty degree sunshine, but we’re all talking storm, not sun. 8-12 inches of snow will bury upstate in the next two days and sink any hopeful grass back down to periscope depth. The city skunks, already on their mating prowls through the spring-like mornings, are in for a rude awakening.

Description: 031014-Distance-Strides.jpg“Are you ready?” Coach Delsole had asked over the phone the Sunday before spring practices began. My initial reaction had been: ready for what? Then I remembered--the expected anticipation, the excitement of the opening day masses, the temporary gift to coaches of un-tested potential. But like many other coaches, with indoor athletes still building toward nationals, Monday would signal not simply start-up but overlap, an annual rite. A neighbor once asked, as I dragged from my car following a cold February practice, when my season was ending.  I told him mid-June. He looked at me oddly.

Opening day, however, had been surprisingly smooth. I moved the girls from the too-small lower gym we shared with the boys’ squad into the lobby and then separated them into grade levels. I took attendance for each as the others had license to chat to their hearts content. Circulating through the groups, I expected several things. Some who’d signed up--and maybe even attended the pre-season meeting--had already, as they say in Britain, buggered off. The team had lowered itself into the 80’s. A few of the athletes, of course, had still not turned in the required paperwork, so they would sit out the practice. And I did not, once again, get to greet a surprise Kenyan exchange student.

The opening days and weeks of outdoor require a certain attitude adjustment. All the smooth competence so hard-earned by indoor track athletes through the long winter months is now mixed--or swallowed up by—the neophytes to rhythm and core exercises. “There are those walking amongst you,” I announce ominously to both teams lined up in the gym for drills, “who cannot skip.” It’s true. Some manage to render our drills unrecognizable. At the same time, during the pop-and-float drill, I notice my coaching colleagues on the far side of the gym, smiling. They’ve spotted a new member with exceptional ‘bong’ who may be destined for greatness in the long or high jump. There’s always a silver lining.

 

March 13:

          Early rain changes to snow, and the upstate schools cancel en masse. It’s a smart call because all morning long snow accumulates relentlessly. By noon, most roads are buried and officials are announcing “No unnecessary travel.” Watching the trees groan under loads of the heavy white stuff, I cannot imagine May.

         

March 17:

          Harley and I get in an early 5:00am walk. It’s a brittle 14o, but the full moon’s hanging up there, shining like a light-bulb, and nothing white is coming down. We’ll take it.

          That afternoon, watching the girls on their warm-ups, I asked Coach Delsole about a prospective new runner in his sprint group. He’s learned the dangers of early season prognostications. “I’m saying nothing,” he says. Later, during gym drills I look for the new guy with bong, the potential jumper. “He quit to lift weights,” Coach tells me deadpan. Point taken.

 

March 18:

          Islands of grass have begun to poke up through the playing-field snowpack outside my middle school window. At the high school, Coach Corley spies one corner of the track emerging from hibernation, and though Coach Delsole declares his track clearing days are over, Coach C. envisions his burley throwers forcing spring with snow shovels. Let ‘em at it.

 

March 20:

The distance crew sets out on a fartlek run while I quickly check out the sprinters conducting a hallway workout. During a recovery, the conversation with a promising new freshman goes in this direction:

          “Coach says you’ve run 5k road races before.”

          “Yes.”

          “Do you do any fall sport?”

          “I tried soccer this year, but I don’t think I will again.”

          Coach Delsole is standing nearby, smiling. “She wants to try cross-country this fall coach,” he says wryly. Can’t imagine where she got that idea.

         

March 21:

Description: G:PhotosOT-2014�32114-MonteVistaPractice�32114-MonteVista-GirlsGroup.jpg          The islands of grass have been submerged under a gentle assault of snow—again. The blocked melt-water that created a small pond over the back straight of the track has frozen. Maybe we can invite the hockey team out for skate-sprints.  

          Fortunately, it is the time of year when conditions can be short-lived. By noon, the cloud cover has thinned, the temperature has risen above freezing and skate-sprints are no longer an option. Shortly after three, the distance squad is joined by the sprinters, both bound for Monte Vista Drive. Hill sprints for the fast-twitchers; longer grunt work for distance. They labor up the steep rise as Coach and I monitor and encourage. No race for daylight here--and a slight softening of the afternoon breeze suggests that maybe, just maybe…..

         

March 22:

The athletes are on their own this Saturday with a regeneration run. They’ve left the watches home. I head out on a run of my own with Harley, ever the enthusiast for road miles. Dipping down along the woods bordering Glenwood Avenue, I pass shrinking snow banks finally revealing their snow-plowed dirt and dank rolls of leaves. The soggy detritus of a long, cold winter litters the lawns and fills the street gutters. Clusters of dog poop are emerging from the retreating snow pack.

          It is a beautiful sight.

 

March 24, 2014:

          This morning it’s 16o, another record low for the long list. At eleven, my school view across the playing fields to Ike Dixon Road disappears behind the heavy flakes of a squall that smooths yet another new layer to our winter snow cake. We’ll alter training plans again.

          I get it. This is about endurance.