Coaches’ Blog

Kenya Airways picked a pretty nice time for a strike. I am currently amidst my 12 hour layover in the Nairobi airport courtesy of the strike. To be honest, I really hope it’s only 12 hours. It could easily be more if the strike doesn’t end by morning. I’m not too hopeful since it’s Sunday. How many strikes really end on Sunday? At least the Nairobi airport has wifi. It might be slower than dial-up, but it’s something.

Everybody cross their fingers, tap your ruby slippers, rub your belly or do whatever it is you have to do to make sure your plane takes off. I could use all the help in the world right now.

It is absolutely amazing how far a smile will get you in a situation like this.  I witnessed so many people going berzerk on the Kenya Airways staff and it obviously was having no benefit.  Really, is screaming going to gas up the plane, make the pilot show up, and put your luggage on it.  Don’t get me wrong, today had to be one of the most aggravating days in my life.  Really.  I finally realized what is going to truly unite the world…our mutual hatred for the airline system.  But does screaming and venting your aggravation on someone who has no power to change it actually help?

Two great things happened today tough.  Shining moments in what was all in all a miserable day.  First, on my flight from Boston to Amsterdam, I sat next to another Tufts employee who also happened to be going to Africa for a mountain gorilla trek.  She’s doing her’s in Uganda though, but what are the odds.  We hung out for a few hours in Amsterdam with a shared layover.

Second, and probably even cooler, I’m watching ‘300’ right now with about 7 other Nairobi airport workers.  This place is a ghost town.  No one is here.  It’s unlike any American airport that always has stragglers sleeping all over the place.  There are a few, but not many.  I was one of the few who decided to stick around the airport to make sure I actually got on a flight tomorrow.  And now, I’m watching ‘300’ in HD with some coffeeshop workers.  Good way to vent some aggravation.

It’s official.  My favorite part of summer is the books.  I actually get to read and have energy to do so.  It just happens without effort.  My reading has hit the full range of genres from Harry Potter to Kafka, from incredibly sappy books that the wife recommends to education theory books, from mind-numbing sci fi to The Catcher in the Rye.  I’ve gone from a bibliophob to someone who gets energized by a good book.

One of my latest books got me thinking about how I see myself as a coach.  The Essential Conversation by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot turned out to only be moderately engaging on the whole; however, she takes an excerpt from philosopher Maxine Greene that really struck home for me.

The teacher is frequently addressed as if he had no life of his own, no body, an no inwardness.  Lecturers seem to presuppose a “man within a man” when they describe a good teacher as infinitely controlled and accommodating, technically efficient, impervious to moods.  They are likely to define him by the role he is expected to play in the classroom, with all of the loose ends gathered up and all his doubts resolved.  The numerous realities in which he exists as a living person are overlooked.  his personal biography is overlooked, so are the many ways in which he expresses his private self in language, the horizons he perceives, the perspectives through which he looks at the world.  ~ Greene, 1973

It isn’t that I think other people view me or other coaches that way (although most athletes feel this way about their coaches).  It’s more that I sometimes see myself this way or feel that this is what I should strive for.  “Infinitely controlled and accommodating, technically efficient, impervious to moods.” When you say it like that it almost sounds robotic.  Like the best coach/teacher is so detached from themselves that they almost forgo their humanity – their own identity or personality.

I find this incredibly odd because as teachers and coaches we’re supposed to draw from our own experiences, our own successes and failures, in order to better serve those that we work with.  Somehow there is this semipermeable membrane between the coach as a person and the coach as a coach that is only supposed to let certain aspects through.  Only those parts of the coach’s self that are beneficial to the student or athlete should be permitted to pass through.  Everything else should be bottled up and locked away.

To be honest, I still believe all this and I still believe that it should be this way.  This is what a coach should strive for.  The child, student, or athlete will have the best chance for success in an environment that is somewhat predictable, almost always rational and logical, and always safe and trustworthy.  But at what cost to the coach is this environment formed?  Potentially at a great cost to the coach.  I think this is in part why there is an high burn-out rate amongst teachers and coaches.

I believe that the power rests in the hands of those that surround the coach, both the administration that supervise him and the athletes that he serves.  When these robotic, emotionless, mistake-free expectations are demanded then they become harder and harder to produce.  They become suffocating.  However, when the coach is seen as a person with his own individual quirks, personal demons, and given the right to potentially err.  That is when these traits can truly surface of their own accord.

It’s like trying to hold onto a bar of soap.  The harder you fight with it and the harder you squeeze, the more it slips out of your hand.  But if you just passively hold out your hand and let it rest on your palm, then it will never move.  When you go actively searching for and demanding these personality traits of yourself, then they become harder and harder to hold onto.  But if you sit back and just try to be the best coach you can, then they just sit there, inside you and never move.

I was having dinner with some good friends last night and we got to talking about dreams.  First let me give them both a huge congratulations on an incredible meal.  However, as we were enjoying said amazing food, I mentioned that I was one of those people who rarely, if ever, remembers his dreams.  We all agreed that I was guaranteed to remember my dreams last night, just out of sheer irony.  We were right.

Typically, I feel in control in my dreams.  I can always manage to make things happen or change the environment in some way that keeps me comfortable in my dreams.  This I’m aware of.  However, last night was easily not the case.  I felt completely powerless.  I was running around my dream in complete chaos trying to solve a problem that I knew had absolutely no solution.

Our scene opens with our heroes (five Tufts athletes and myself) trying to get through a huge desert.  Dune after dune, we keep walking and can’t seem to get anywhere.  We go through the typical ‘walk in circles’ routine that happens in most desert movies, but eventually we get through.  Now we’re driving in an unknown city looking for a track meet that we’re supposed to be at.  There’s no stress about this beyond us not knowing our way around the city.  We have a general idea of where to go, but don’t know for sure how to get there.  Eventually we get to the track and start walking up to it.

Here’s where the wheels fall off my dream.  As we approach the track, I become aware that we’re entering the national championships.  Then I realize that I forgot to enter one of our athletes.  Then I realize that I forgot to enter all of athletes.  This is when the control is gone.  Oddly, in my dream, I know that the NCAA never budges on the entry deadlines for the national championships (this is true for the most part) and that the five athletes with me cannot compete.  After some frantic phone calls, to see what we could do, I woke up with more anxiety than I’ve ever woken up with.

I’ve heard horror stories of this happening in reality.  Well, not the desert or the actually traveling to nationals without entering, but I’ve heard about coaches forgetting their NCAA entries.  It happens.  We’re human.  We make mistakes.  I’m not judging in any way, but it is easily one of my greatest fears.

Here are these athletes, who march through the desert with me.  They spend years fighting and clawing to get to this point, the national championships.  They’ve gone without water in the scorching sun and just when they get up to the end goal, it gets ripped away.  All because of one little mistake.  I actually think Rick Rielly wrote an article about this situation a few years ago.

Hopefully, the anxiety that I felt this morning.  The anxiety that has since melted away, will be something that stays in the back of my mind.  It will be something that keeps me aware of the magnitude of the situation that we’re in.  I hope that I never have to truly experience anything like that in reality.  The dream was bad enough.  I look forward to not remembering my dreams tonight.  Or did I just curse myself again.

So I just found out the real reason for why their is a 5k line painted on the track.  It isn’t because we actually use it for a 5k.  No, the real reason is because there are some meets that use a waterfall start for the 200m.  When you’re 3-years-old and can’t even stay in your lane for the 50m or 100m dash, you definitely don’t use the staggered start for the 200m.

Every Thursday at Tewksbury HS in the summer, the Track coach and her athletes are gracious enough to put on a “track meet” for the surrounding area.  Everyone gets a ribbon for finishing the race and it is a great time for everyone.

The rarely, if ever, seen 200m with a waterfall start.

More parents should look into some local track meets.  Trust me, after a 50m, 100m, and 200m, there is a pretty good chance that your kid will be ready for a nap.  I know that my niece and nephew are.  He’s 3 and she’s 4.  Maybe I’ll break out the hurdles next time.

Well, I guess it’s about time to start talking about track again.  I’ve been chatting up Rwanda and the wedding for a while, maybe I should start treating this blog like it actually belongs to a track coach.  It has been incredibly rainy in Medford and if this summer has taught me anything, it is the fact that I never want to move to Seattle.  I feel bad for all the future Jumbos that come to visit campus on some of the dreary days that we’re having.

Along those lines, I had a good conversation with a rising senior hurdler that helped restart my thoughts as I prepare to tweak our hurdle progressions for next year.  He impressed me with his sense of his strengths and weaknesses as a hurdler.  Far better than I had at his age.  As he rattled off a bunch of adjustments that he could make to his technique, it made me remember how it is so easy for many seemingly unrelated problems to have one root cause.

This is can be the case for so many things in life.  Stress, sickness, and lack of patience can all be the result of a lack of sleep or a struggling relationship (3 problems/1 cause).  Why should hurdling be any different?  Possibly unrelated problems like lack of lean, being too high over a hurdle, improper lead leg drive, or clipping a hurdle with your trail leg can all be the result of one foundational problem.  They can all be caused by improper take off positioning.  Bear in mind, poor take off mechanics isn’t the only cause of a crumby lead leg or clipping a trail, but it can be.  Just think about it, what if you could clear up 4 or 5 problems by only making 1 adjustment?  Wouldn’t that be great?

How much time would you save and how much differently would you think about your hurdling if you didn’t have to fix your lean, lead leg, and trail leg, but you only had to adjust your take off mechanics.  Sign me up.

Easier said than done.

I remember my freshman year.  I just didn’t get it.  I knew a fair amount about LL and TL mechanics, but hadn’t ever thought about my take off.  I remember cursing my college coach under my breath because I just couldn’t ‘feel’ my cut step.  As much as he kept telling me to ‘claw back,’ ‘shorten up the last step,’ and ‘get it down quick,’ I just couldn’t feel anything.  But eventually it got there and 15 became 14.8 and 14.8 became 14.5 and so on.  Since, I’ve joined the school of thought that the Take Off is everything.  Sure you can run a good hurdle race with an iffy take off, but you won’t run your best.

Solid picture. Basic, entertaining, and informative. What more can you ask for?

A good take off at hurdle 1 puts you in the right position to attack hurdle 2 and so on.  With that in mind, isn’t it a great, consistent start that puts you in a good take off for hurdle 1.  YES.  Work on starts.  Get them consistent.  Get them comfortable.  However, bear in mind that you’ll never be able to fully mimic meet intensity and explosiveness in practice.  A good hurdler will always have to be able to adjust on game day.  There is no replacement for the feel and instinct that a veteran or natural hurdler will be able to bring to the table.

Long story short, hurdlers should work their Cut Step.  The average male HHer has to shorten his stride by 1-2 feet running between the hurdles.  Get used to it.  Just watch how much Dayron Robles has to shuffle his steps when he sets the world record.  Now you don’t run 12.88 seconds so you probably won’t shuffle all 3 steps, but almost all hurdlers need to have a cut step to attack the hurdle for take off.  Something as simple as just trying to have your take off foot reverse directions as you attack the hurdle can go a long way. Don’t reach out for the take off, this isn’t the HJ.   Bring it back underneath you.

If you can attack each hurdle 0.01 seconds faster then your race over 10 hurdles will be a full tenth faster.  Let me repeat that…0.10 faster.  A tenth is a lifetime in the hurdles.  Coming from someone who tied to the thousandths at the biggest meet of my life, I would have killed for another 0.001 let alone a full tenth.  Finally, there is no such thing as perfect hurdling technique.  We strive for it, but we’ll never get there.  If you can’t enjoy the work of trying to perfect hurdling technique then you should probably look into something else…the process is everything.

Okay, so I’ve decided that I don’t think I’ll be able to do the wedding weekend justice.  I’m just not the wordsmith that I’d need to be.  I hope to let a few pictures tell the story of my weekend for me and hit on a few more memorable, favorite moments of the evening. 

The first thing to mention is that I am unbelievably happy to be a man.  There are a lot of reasons for this, but right now its because of how fast we can get cleaned up.  It took me approximately 10 mins to get fully prepared for my own wedding.  I can’t express enough how amazing that is.  

I clean up pretty well, don’t I.  Ultimately though, the suit didn’t feel totally comfortable until I had Marion at my side.  With a few last words of wisdom from the Old Man, we got everything started.  After the ceremony, Marion and I chatted and realized that we had two totally different experiences with the whole thing.  She had to wait until everyone was seated before she could come out and see everything, while I got to hang out at the site and welcome everyone.  It was so great to see all the family and friends that made the trip.  

We asked some of our good friends to be our music.  We used an Ipod for the reception (thanks to Trevor Donadt for ensuring we had enough quality tunes), but we had some friends play a few select songs which was an amazing addition.  According to my nephew, Cade, once the boredom of the ceremony was done with, it was time to start the party. 

And it was an amazing reception.  Some of Marion’s family made it all the way from Korea which was amazing.  Her 91-year-old grandmother made the trip and she is one amazing women.  She doesn’t say much, but when she chooses to say something, everyone listens.  Oh, did I mention that she does 10 push ups every morning.  I think that there are a few athletes on the team who can’t do 10 push ups.  

From there, everything just kept getting better.  The food was amazing.  I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sushi that came out of a backwoods VT caterer.  Also, Marion’s Maid of Honor ventured to a small island off the coast of Africa to pick up her wedding gift.  It’s quite a story, remind me to tell it to you sometime.  

Oh, and if you thought that was it, you obviously don’t know Marion and I very well.  This 8-year-old ruled the dance floor.  And I mean ruled the dance floor.  She rocked house when she broke out the worm…no one could match her skills.    

And now, I’ve returned to Medford and am back in Gantcher.  Nothing changed except my left, ring finger is a little heavier.  I’m not much of a ring wearer and I need my finger to start forgetting about it.  It has totally thrown off my basketball shot.  But regardless of my basketball shot, I’d have to say I’m much happier wearing the ring than not. And p.s. – Marion looked amazing that day.  Absolutely amazing.   

She went through with it.

I don’t really know where to start.  Perfect weekend.  I can’t really put it into words yet, but I couldn’t have asked for more.  I’ll be sure to put a little more up once I process the whole experience myself.  Until then, here are a couple of my favorites.  There are so many great pics, but I won’t bore you with too many.  Really, just a great weekend. 

Everything was perfect.

Shhhh, don’t tell Marion that I just used this metaphor to describe my life.  Yes the season just ended, but if you think that a 5 week championship season and the national championships are a source of many “To Do” lists, then you’ve never planned a wedding.  To be honest, she’s doing about 10x the work that I’m doing, which is a little scary about the amount of work that you can do for a wedding.  

Needless to say, I’m really excited for the whole weekend to get here.  There are a number of really close friends that I haven’t seen in way too long.  The food is going to be amazing.  I can’t wait to put on my first suit ever.  Oh…and, yeah…I’m getting married too.  I guess that should be a big part of the weekend. 

However, I’ll be completely honest with you, what I’m really excited for doesn’t come until the end of the summer.   I’ve got three words for you, Ra, wan, da.  Actually, that’s just one word isn’t it.  Rwanda.  

If you thought last summer was great (engagement, Olympic Trials, Denali, Kenya), then you haven’t gotten a look at this summer’s schedule yet. Wedding, Denaliesque hike, classes in CD, Rwanda, coaching clinics, and a great outlook for XC2010.  Game on.  

Need I say more.

With less than a week until graduation I can’t help but look back on the last four years of my life.  This is the end of my fourth year as head coach at Tufts so this graduating class will represent the first class to spend all four years of their college career with me.  That’s a little bit overwhelming, but something that I should probably get used to because it’s probably going to happen another 30-40 times.  

I’ve changed immensely over these past four years as my mindset has evolved from that of a young assistant coach to that of a still-pretty-young head coach.  Ultimately though, this class of graduating seniors really impresses me in terms of their ability to work, fight, and improve as athletes over their four years here.  

From freshmen to seniors…

Colin Fitzgerald – 11.37, 23.48  became 11.18, 22.30

Phil Rotella – 11.48, 23.08, became 10.90, 22.23

James Bradley – 51.24, 6-4, became 50.67, 6-9

Skip Pagel – 11.88, 51.70, 5-6, 19-5, 5907 became 11.23, 50.30, 6-2, 21-11, 6871  

Maybe some pictures would put it better…

These jokers didn’t give up when it got hard.  They kept at it and battled.  It’s just like chopping down a tree.  One swing might not make a big difference, but eventually if you keep at it – it all pays off in the end.  These guys ended up becoming…

Four years is a long time.  I imagine that these graduating seniors would say that it went by in a flash, but in the end, they all made the most of it.  They could have given up when it got hard.  And trust me, it got hard on many, many occasions.  In the end, I want to say thank you to these seniors for battling through tough injuries, class conflicts, long weekends on busses and in hotel rooms.  But most of all, thanks for being flexible and understanding when you showed up for your freshman year and there was a whole new coach sitting in the Track/XC office.  It was a good four years, wasn’t it…and it’s not even over yet.

So I think that this should officially go down in history as the low point of this blog.  It will be the first (and hopefully only) time that I will draw a parallel between my life and a Shaquille O’Neal movie.  No, I’m not talking about Kazaam or Steel.  I wish I was, that would be a much more eventful post.  I’m actually referring to the one and only Blue Chips featuring Nick Nolte, Penny Hardaway, and the lesser known Bob Cousy.

  I don’t know how many of you out there actually saw this movie.  Judging by it’s grossing numbers, not many of you did.  And those of you who did probably blacked it out of your memory.  Well, I’m from VT and there’s not much for a 15-year-old to do in VT besides watching horrible Shaq movies.  

Basic premise:  A coach sells out to win.  He lets his boosters buy a recruit to come to his school.  They win, but in the end…they lose.  

What I really remember about the movie is the end scene when a heated Nick Nolte flips out on the press a la Bobby Knight.  He rants about how the press judged the previous year’s team as a failure because they had a losing record.  But yet he enjoyed coaching that team more than any other.  They battled for every win and earned everything they got.  

It was a very Woodenesque outlook on success.  

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you are capable.

I can easily say without the slightest hesitation that I have an intense peace of mind coming out of this years NESCAC Championships.  We had a big uphill battle in front of us going into the meet.  From there, we lost All American James Bradley and James Wheeler early in the meet.  A lot of other teams may have shut down either before or throughout the meet.  I was very proud to see our guys dig in even deeper and bring the best they had.

We always talk about giving everything you have and letting the points shake out however they may.  Sometimes they line up in your favor, sometimes they don’t.  In 2006 we snuck by MIT by 1/2 a point.  This year, Bates edged us out by 1/2 a point.  What goes around comes around.  However, on both occasions, each Jumbo fought to the bone.  Something that lets us all sleep well at night having no regrets for a lost opportunity.  

And in the end, that’s what it’s all about – getting a good nights sleep.