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."
Our Waterfall 400:Toward a Unifying Principle of Scholastic Track & Field
Before our first dual meet this April, my new assistant, Coach Mercado, handed me a meet sheet of all the girls track team members he'd placed in the 100 and 200 meter events. I mentally sighed as I glanced over the long lists and then gave it back. "There's a limit of twelve per event," I told him.
"Really?" he asked, looking puzzled.
"Really," I assured him. Seasons and a multitude of endlessly drawn out dual meets with five to seven non-scoring heats of each sprint had taught the necessity of that parameter. Still, I could almost see the bubble thought-box rising from his head and the question materializing within: how am I supposed to fit 45 'sprinters' into 24 spots? I'm glad he didn't actually ask because I would not have been able to provide a satisfying solution to that annually vexing problem: where to race sprinters whose hopes and aspirations exceed their abilities--sometimes significantly.
The answer, however, came from Coach Corley. He had the same issue on the boys' side because track and field remains, to its credit, one of the few no-cut scholastic sports that extend opportunities to all. More than a few of those 'all' each year have limited talent, and you can bet the house that 99% of them firmly believe the shortest distance between two points is always a sprint distance.
One afternoon, Coach Corley was brainstorming his own over-sized sprint squad. "You know what I might do?" he said, a half-smile forming. "I might put about a third of them in the 1600." Imagining ambulances, angry parent phone calls and lawsuits, we talked him out of it. "Well, how about a waterfall 400?" he then suggested, knowing that one lap fell within the sprint definition, and if we dispensed with lanes and lined them up against the fence for their times afterward, time is exactly what we'd get in return--saved time for the other athletes and for the fans either shivering or baking in the stands, depending on the upstate spring day. An idea was born. We'd always selected some sprinters each meet to 'move up' to the 400 meter in a second or third heat, but this would be different. One big curved line. The gun. A scramble for turn 1. Two parts track, one part cross-country.
Coach Corley's idea had merit for several reasons. The logistical benefit of moving things more quickly in a track meet is hard to argue against. The only coaches who enjoy slow meets are those who either have small teams or key athletes, both of whom benefit from longer rest-backs between their usual workhorse schedule of events. And yes, some disingenuous coaches have been known to enter really slow runners in the longer events to achieve the same purpose; those sacrificial team members are typically forced to race a lap or two alone and then receive the requisite crowd applause I've never understood. But quicker is always better. Recently, I watched our school's baseball team, with one of my cross-country runners on the roster, compete in the sectional championship. After the last pitch I checked my watch and realized that went faster than a typical track meet. Short of cheerleaders or skydivers angling onto the infield between the high hurdles and the 800 meter events, speed is one of the best attractions for any track meet.
The other reason for our Waterfall 400 was less evident, but ultimately more important. I'm not sure how many coaches share this notion, but I've often thought that endless heats of our slower sprinters is a suspect spectacle. Sure, we're doing a grand thing in providing opportunities, but on our teams those athletes typically rotate from the 100 to the 200 meter sprints each dual meet, accumulating their seconds of competition until the season simply runs out on them. And because such a high percentage of those drop out by their junior year (over 50% on my teams), the blunt question has to be this: to what end? The answer to that question, I would think, is obvious. It's not merely the opportunity to compete that counts. That's valuable, but opportunity is only what you make of it. It's the ability to use opportunities to improve that ultimately matters just as much - if not more. For too many, the 100/200 rotation of events simply did not generate the improvements we wanted our slower racers to experience. So we enlarged the rotation. We expanded the opportunity--and thus our expectations for successful improvement.
In the third dual meet, we ran twelve girls in our first waterfall 400. Off they flew, gapping out nicely around turn two and coming home spaced like a 1500m finish. My assistant clicked off times as an official lined them up against the fence. Besides the near-death experience of several, we noticed others were stronger and faster than either we (or they) expected. More than a few were quite pleased with their performances.
We ran it again in our next dual meet against Cicero-North Syracuse--thirteen girls this time - with two of them meeting the team standard for that event. And in our final dual meet, fourteen sprinters toed the mark and raced their unseeded Waterfall 400. Four of them met the team standard. It was, of course, hard. For some, our new Boston Marathon of sprinting took them to their limits, and it was clear they weren't having the best time of their young lives. But for enough, the effect of lining shoulder to shoulder with teammates and jostling like distance runners down the backstretch proved more rewarding than their nondescript, non-scoring meters along insular lanes. Over the course of our season, five girls wound up either further below the 400 meter team standard than the 200 meter standard or closer to the team standard in the 400 than the 200. Along the way, we 'discovered' several team members who clearly showed more aptitude for the longer sprint distance and would almost definitely show more improvements in future seasons racing the 400.
The real prize, however, was simply getting an opportunity to drive improvement through. Effort's the key - the effort of showing up every day and completing the workouts; the effort of staying healthy and motivated; the effort of mentally/physical managing the temporary pain of training and racing; the effort of embracing those competitive challenges the sport presents. Our waterfall 400's - and the training required to execute them-were 'suggesting' to those athletes that we expected from them a particular form of excellence. It's a form that can be expected of any team athlete, regardless of talent level. That form is an excellence in one's effort. Effort-excellence we call it, and though difficult to quantify, you know it when you see it.
Not everyone, however, wants to step up to that kind of enigmatic challenge. And some, because we've become so obsessed with winners and winning at the scholastic level, some who could do very well in the effort department won't even bother. They've been taught to see nothing, ultimately, in the glory of effort unless it includes winning. Near the top of my sad-story list is the girl who won modified cross-country invitationals right and left but decided against moving up to varsity because, as she explained to me in a letter, she wouldn't be able to win those races and winning was the only thing about running that really satisfied her. The satisfactions of effort - and what value it can add regardless of results - is lost on some. "Labor Omnia Vincit" (hard work conquers all) is an incomprehensible notion for others. But for those destined to win seldom or never in the competitive sense but who nevertheless want to achieve and improve, we should do a better job of promoting excellence in effort. This spring, our Waterfall 400 simply became one small tool for making that concept more visible, more appreciated. Quite honestly, not all our sprinters think it's a great idea. They can think what they want. Our Waterfall 400 is here to stay.