Thoughts From Three: Don’t Forget the Why

"Unless young people have the opportunities to emotionally bond with particular physical activities, claim them as their own, and identify what they want to learn, excellence is rarely achieved."

                                                Jay Coakley

"You can always be better than yourself." 

                                       Anonymous

The mid-afternoon cloud cover resembles a rumpled blanket that threatens to drip rain. Our athletes pile into the team bus. Today, we're heading north, close to where 'upstate' halts at the lapping waters of Lake Ontario. The hourly forecast is favorable for our final league meet in Fulton, but we have a small EZE-up in the cargo bay -- just in case.  Where Rt. 48 angles north-northwest, I finally spy it in the distance over the lake plain: patches of blue sky, the far edge of our grey weather. Arriving shortly after, and with just enough latitude, we leave the tent on the bus. It's October sunny at the site, we're racing a cross-over meet that won't show on anyone's record, and the athletes are dropping packs behind the start line in relaxed moods. 

This is that time of the season when teammates consider different endings. A percentage know they are staring down their final meets. Time, as defined by an arbitrary sports schedule, is running out. Soon enough, they will pack up memories and emotions about a summer and a Fall on the trails amid friends and strangers who became friends. Another group will persevere to the sectional championship still a month off --  and then maybe beyond. Adeline is unlikely to join the latter group and is probably not pondering that seasonal incongruity where the more gifted are rewarded with even more work. She's a late-decider, a young team member I successfully cajoled in July, one with undeveloped skills and potential. We'll see what comes of things. What we do know is that summer training was sketchy at best, and she wears her feelings on her sleeve. Coach and I had smiled as she pained her way through the initial adjusted workouts, expressively astonished at the varsity demands but generally unscathed. Days had stretched into weeks until we were confident she was going to make it. 

In the world of sports, there are many categories. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of sports worldwide, and they take various forms. There are organized competitive sports, adventure sports, alternative sports, recreational sports, cooperative sports and others. Adeline has tackled one that's considered an organized competitive sport, a "power and performance" sport which means athletes or teams striving for physical dominance over competitors. It also typically means a selection process to determine who is worthy of the sport and who is not. In Adeline's case,  she is fortunate. Our running sports are no-cut. Unlike other classmates, she does not have to meet someone's athletic standards during try-outs to even get the opportunity to train, let alone compete. 

Earlier, my assistant offered finish line duties, so I have hoofed down across the playing fields to a vantage point for multiple passings by the racers. The sun is already lowering, and the west side of the school grounds course, ringed by trees, has crept into shadows. Minutes ago, the boys teams charged by, with our runners notching multiple strong efforts and a win. A faint whistle sounds from the start line several hundred meters away, and now the girls are off. Our front pack soon passes, with the Fulton girls interspersed and giving it their Senior Day best. Adeline curves into view near the end, moving resolutely and looking far more determined than the early-season team member who pulled out of several workouts, heaving and ready to sob. This Adeline has her eyes ahead and narrowed. She's racing for all she's worth. 

Summer is a long way back now, but the lessons of summer continue for everyone on the teams, and there are multiple lessons. For middle distance runners, two enormous gifts offered summer can be achieved or lost, depending. The first lesson -- if the targeted miles pass properly beneath the feet -- is obvious to anyone paying attention. Fundamental fitness gained through the easier miles of the hot months makes all that comes next in the official seasons better and with fewer -- or no - injuries. That is proven every season. The second possible benefit requires some restraint and a little faith by coaches. To gain it, they need to be willing to relinquish accountability for a chunk of those necessary summer miles to the athletes, a thought contrary to many. Let them run alone, or run with teammates, or with the family dog. Voluntary team runs, where the pressure is on to show up and give good efforts, should be kept minimal, with just enough of them to build comradery and to complete the faster work that works better when shared with teammates. The athletes, many after years of sports that are organized, monitored and defined by omnipresent adults, may finally have the freedom to engage in a sport on their own terms and of their own volition. There are, of course, risks. Athletes unable to unwilling to self-motivate may drop out or arrive unprepared, but there are likely to be more who learn, as John Jerome described, "to run for the running." The gamble is worth it. Those self-motivators become dependable athletes who know how to run not just for themselves, but for others. They are the ones that teams require, win or lose, for successful seasons. 

Thanks to Jay Oakley and the theories of other sports sociologists, we know there are multiple new ways of looking at sport participation, though most of us don't get - or take -- the time to study them. Mostly, the populations concerned with our sport - athletes, administrators, spectators, parents, officials -- think things are simply the way they are, and they embrace the prevailing ethics of our power and performance sport.  But it's a socially constructed ethic, one whose widespread acceptance relies on, oddly enough, stories. One of the assertions of those theorists is that sports beliefs are simply the current (and changeable) "stories" that are told and adopted by people to add meaning and sense to their worlds. The question then becomes: whose sports stories do we pay attention to and whose do we ignore? As Oakley asserts: "The dominate or most widely told stories are culturally important because they are based on ideological assumptions of what is natural, normal and legitimate in social worlds; therefore they promote ideas and beliefs that often privilege some people more than others." We see that in the promotional favoritism of most of our stories about scholastic sports: talent praised instead of effort illuminated; a reverence for winning over learning how to perform athletically; individuals highlighted instead of groups or teams. As a result, we devote much time to describing the benefits of sports participation for the elites and the more talented. And we devote very little time or attention to the rest, a much larger group, content with assumptions of trickle-down-value simply because the stories of 'the others' in our dominate sports culture are considered less important, do not command headlines, and are harder to advertise and monetize. 

There are positive elements in cross-country sporting only obliquely associated with the 5k time on the course. Think about it. The hard-earned match of motion to weather and terrain during a season leaves an indelible stamp on runners. They will recall crisp Fall races with the sun lowering but also regale in memories of muddy messes on waterlogged courses they suffered through. And they enjoy it all the more because it acquires deeper meaning when shared with like-minded teammates. James L. Gibson writes about how the concept of an "ecological niche" is necessary to understand one's total perception of events surrounding an activity of one's choosing. The coach may be preoccupied with wins and peak performances, but a good chunk of his or her runners will adopt a wider perspective on a competitive experience. Is it, in other words, a match for the runner's skills and desire? Does this season seem right for me is the question they answer for themselves, regardless of what we want - or expect - them to think or feel. 

A few days later, Adeline and I are chatting during a workout. It's another gifted October afternoon. A late insect hatch flits through the comfortable air, backlit by sunshine to appear as flying diamonds. I am complimenting Adeline on the progress of the season and suggesting all the progress she can expect with the two track seasons ahead that she now plans to join. She won't have to worry about being cut. I don't tell her how she has managed to adopt the demands of the sport and found a 'fit' within them, that most primary sports achievement for young athletes. What I do tell her with a wink and a nod is how improved her cross-country season next year will be with the targeted summer mileage she missed out on this summer. It's that old substance-of-the-sport speech, the things that, whether you like them or not, are more than mere preferences, but instead demands that actually matter.  "I know, I am going to do it," she resolutely promises. "I want to be...I just want to be better." 

I know what she means.  Her story will prove interesting because she will, thanks to our sport's quietly subversive open-door policy, get the chance to become not necessarily the best, but certainly better.