Camillus NY - After the success of Jim Vermeulen's XC Journal in the many falls of Cross Country, we've asked again for him to provide some news and notes once a month this summer. 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."
Out Riding Horses
Another one quit this past week. The girls team got smaller. Not necessarily less competitive or less motivated, just smaller. Someone once asked me what our cross-country teams would look like if we held try-outs. I replied that we already do. It's called summer, a time when the hopeful on our June sign-up list confront the first demand of all distance runners who expect to be distance runners: run a lot of miles. Most did, but for personal reasons a few declined, and so in the hot months of Queen Ann's Lace and thunder-boomers, our team self-selected and shrank to achieve its most durable size. By the same process, grapes become nutritious raisins. Both transformations take about two months.
A few days later--another.
Coach V.
I'm sorry to say I have decided to no longer continue this cross country season. I have other plans this fall which will conflict in this season.
Hannah
You would think that with time this process gets easier. But it doesn't. The reaction merely becomes familiar, like greeting the unwelcomed relative or cursing the squeaking kitchen drawer you can never seem to fix.
Exits are a fact of life for everyone's cross-country teams. June is goodbye month for the seniors who were talented, who were dependable, who were pains in the butt except in an endearing sort of way. Their spaces will, as always, be taken by others--though sometimes the fit doesn't immediately seem right, like new puzzle pieces with mismatched edges. That, though, you learn to live with. Actually, it's part of the allure, this annual serving up of fresh starts for athletes and coaches--should they need them.
Repetition, however, fails to soften the exits of those others, the ones who could not--or would not--in the end make the sport their home. Nothing personal, most of them insist. They all have their reasons for vanishing, though none are wholly satisfactory--nor probably entirely true.
Soon enough came still another.
Coach V.
…. I just wanted to let you know I won't be able to do cross country this year. It's not because I don't enjoy the sport, it's just I have an incredible opportunity in horseback riding this fall and I just can't pass it up. I don't want you to think I'm quitting because it's hard or I'm not willing to work. If that was the case, I would have quit four years ago. I just can't get what I want out of either sport if I'm trying to do both. I'll always wish I was somewhere else. And it wouldn't be fair to the team or me if I wasn't totally committed to the cross country season. So thank you for understanding….
Carrie
And I do. You can't, after all, idle your way through a cross-country season. You don't dabble with long-distance training and expect to create anything of consequence. You can't 'balance' the sport against other major interests. For athletes old and new, cross-country always forces the issue. How Bad Do You Want It? is the title and central question of Matt Fitzgerald's new book due out this fall. Not badly enough, my gone runners have already answered. After all, in this sport desire is the driver for everyone, not just the front runners. And when desire's gone, there's simply nothing to take its place.
So those who've lost that desire step off the trail and leave it to others. Good for them. In the end, they had the courage of their choices which, ironically, become affirmations of those who stay as well as refreshing refutations of the culture today that declares, oh yes, you never have to choose, you can have it all--as long as you spread yourself thin enough and make a value of mediocrity.
I'll miss those runners, talented or not so much, athletes who could have been contributors in one way or another. They would have added personality and character and memories to the team. But I wouldn't have wanted them there disgruntled or constantly disillusioned by the work and time required. Drudgery is just not what the sport was meant to be.
So it's Tuesday, week two.
Dear Coach Vermeulen,
My daughter [Sara] had been planning on participating in Cross Country this year, however I am writing to let you know that we have decided that it is not in [her] best interest to pursue running at this time…..
This circumstance was more understandable, a pre-existing medical condition that precluded the typical stresses of distance training. Still, it did not diminish the loss.
"Somewhere between the start and the finish are the reasons you run," someone once wrote.
And so, we are reminded each summer, are the reasons you don't.