May 21, 2014
So at our state meet last weekend the girl I coach won the 100m hurdles in a new personal best of 13.52, and it would’ve been a state meet record except the wind was over the allowable legal limit. It was a great race in which she looked very fast between the hurdles and very fast over them. The only glaring flaw in the whole race was that she popped up at the start.
So all the other coaches were congratulating me later on and remarking on how wonderfully she ran. But my mind was still on the boys’ 110 prelims, where my guy was on his way to finishing in the top two and automatically qualifying for the final before the speed of the race finally caught up to him and he clobbered the ninth hurdle with the foot of his lead leg, falling back to fifth or sixth place and out of a spot in the finals.
All I could think about – as soon as it happened and for the rest of the day – was, I should have jammed him. I should’ve jammed him in practice. This state championship meet was his first race on a mondo surface after running on slower rubber surfaces all season long. I knew the faster surface would cause crowding issues. When practicing block starts, I should’ve moved the hurdles in three feet to mimic the crowded feeling he’d have in the race. But I’d only moved them in the usual one foot, which wasn’t enough to prepare him for those hurdles rushing up at him.
This kid was a senior who had never run the high hurdles until this year. Through relentless hard work and a fiery competitive spirit, he had gotten his personal best all the way down to 14.31 prior to the state meet, putting himself in position to be a contender for the state title. But then I essentially set him up for failure by not jamming him in practice.
Some people think it strange that someone like me – who has coached very good hurdlers for a long period of time – could still suffer from pangs of self-doubt. Even with my girl who won, I’m trying to figure out what I have to do to fix her start, especially heading into nationals where she’s going to be facing some high rollers.
I suffer from self-doubt all the time. To me, there is such a thing as healthy self-doubt. When it comes to mistakes I make, I can’t beat myself up over them, but I do have to own them. Self-doubt can a means to self-growth, to becoming a better coach, as long as I don’t let it get to the point where I doubt my abilities.
The same holds true for athletes. As my male hurdler said a little while ago, “I love flaws, because it means there’s always something you can do to get better.”
