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. 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."
Here We Go...
On the drive south to Camillus for our final summer team run, the season's full chorus line swayed by the roadsides in the afternoon breeeze: Cornflower, Purple Loosestrife, Queen Ann's Lace. For the first part of my summer cottage commute, I was taking what back roads I could find, threading the macadam corridors between head-high field corn, angling around aromatic pitches of second-cut hay already raked into curving rows. Summer, thankfully, still had a month for itself. Our runners didn't. We were only days from the start of official team practices.
I arrived first, backing the Subaru into our informal open-air 'locker room' beneath the middle school's elevated connective bridges. Shortly, Coach Gangemi arrived as groups of runners began to wander in and strike up conversations. Within minutes, the boys were clustered and arguing vehemently. Their subject of the day didn't matter. It was just good to be arguing again. The girls, meanwhile, quietly created their dyads. "O.K.!" I announced at six, and the troops reflexively muffled themselves and gathered. I told them that some this evening would end their first season of the 2017-18 running year--that unofficial summer running season which would foreshadow the next three--and that a bunch of them had done a really good job with it. Others, I added, had not. And then I took the time to explain again why summer preparations were important and about the differing plans we had for the ready and the not-so-ready groups. They'd heard it before, but with young adults, I'm a big fan of redundancy. "And when do the actual team practices for cross country start?" Cary had e-mailed only the day before. She was in the not-so-ready group.
8:00am on Day 1 a mass of faces were aimed toward the opened end of my Forester where I sat. The welcomes were perfunctory. Hands went up during attendance so everyone could start acquainting themselves. A few didn't answer the attendance call, but there were no surprises, just confirmation of what summer had already signaled. Summer did its work. For Cross-Country participants, the dusty months are one long tryout. Summer tests desire. It tests commitment. It puts the ultimate decision to train and race where it belongs. Some prospective team members had been MIA from the get-go, failing to show for team runs and maintaining e-mail silence with my requests for weekly training mileages. "Who?" my former assistant, Coach Delsole, used to respond in early August to names that never acquired faces. Some, bless them, had at least given the sport a shot, plugging out limited sultry summer miles before thinking better: [Tommy] has decided not to run cross country this Fall. Good luck this season. Thank you, [Mr/Mrs Slade]. And a certain percentage sitting before me would soon realize they were wanting in the commitment category. But they were presently willing.
Our first day was simply shake-out miles and gaining familiarity with--or remembering--drills and sequences, ending with the dreaded Power Point talk in the school's LGI room where I outlined what was going to matter for the next 3-4 months. Day 2 we required them to put the pedal to the metal with a time trial that confirmed the intensity of their summer work--or lack thereof. From that came the training groups arranged so the diligent and the motivated would not be held back by those we would now try to protect from themselves. Day 3 we officially lost four team members.
Come Day 4 Coach Gangemi, on a hunch, found a vantage point overlooking the back loops of our training center and waited. The hard work of the day complete, the runners were completing their cool-down. They would emerge from the Woods Loop to circle up around the Ike Dixon trail before veering toward the school's back playing field for core drills in found shade. I was still monitoring sprints with our front-runners on the soccer fields. Coach stood and counted as walkers blithely emerged from the woods--all eight of them. A short while later, before core drills, I told the assembled teams that some among them would be receiving e-mails about not following team rules and expectations. That was simply protocol mixed with wide-net reinforcement. In this day and age, we are not supposed to single anyone out for criticism lest we run the risk of dinged emotions and indignant parents.
By Day 5, four of the walkers had responded. Two personally apologized; another did so by e-mail, and a fourth obliquely acknowledged receipt of his warning. So we made it half way.
In her book, Grit, Angela Duckworth writes that people mature into their commitments, that it's a condition or ability not only genetically influenced but shaped by time as well as circumstance. I've always assumed as much--and I know that's what my one-season contract expects me to believe. So the perspective was this: the majority will always come out of the woods running, propelled by higher ambitions than merely enduring a workout. And then there will be those others.
For a moment, I allowed the thought: vive la différence.