July 31, 2018
Trusting the Athlete
For coaches, the temptation to be too hands-on on race day is very real. It’s a temptation I’ve learned to avoid over the years. At USATF Junior Olympic Nationals this past weekend in Greensboro, NC, a younger coach asked me if, after all these years, I still get nervous when my athletes compete. I laughed and answered “I sure do. The day I no longer get nervous prior to an athlete’s big race is the day I need to stop coaching.” But at the same time, I don’t want to pass on any nervous energy to my athlete. I want my athlete to know that I care, that I’m in it to win it as much as he or she is, but I don’t want him or her feeling that I doubt his or her abilities to come through on the big stage. I want to exude confidence, and I want that confidence to be real.
At this year’s nationals, I had four hurdlers competing – all of whom I coach privately. And because so much of coaching is about relationship building, a coach’s emotional investment in an athlete’s success can be very intense. The more we get to know these athletes as people, and the more we find ourselves growing as individuals as a result of our relationships with our athletes, the more we care about them, and the more we want to see them succeed.
Such was the case for me this past weekend in regards to one of my athletes in particular – 14-year-old Falon Spearman. I just started working with Falon this past winter, and from day one I was impressed by her work ethic, her genuinely pleasant personality, her coach-ability, and her extremely high maturity level. Not to mention, she was a heck of an athlete. As someone who despises inefficiency and lack of focus in workouts, I found Falon to be a coach’s dream. Throughout the entire six or seven months that I coached her this year, she might have had a total of three bad reps – hurdling and sprinting – and one of them was my fault because I didn’t give her proper instructions beforehand.
Posing for a picture with Falon after her finals victory at Junior Olympic Nationals.
Throughout the spring and summer, as her times dropped and her speed between the hurdles gradually improved, it became apparent that she had a real shot at winning nationals. When I first started with her, her dad told me that she had gotten a lot of seconds and thirds and fourths last year, and she needed to get over the hump. And she was. Heading into nationals, she hadn’t lost a race all year. At the AAU Club Nationals in mid-July, she had won the 100m hurdles in a meet record time, and she had also won the 200m hurdles and the high jump.
Throughout the summer, I gave her minimal instructions on race day. Despite her pleasant demeanor, Falon is fiercely competitive. I’m the same way. But most meets are about growth and development and progression, so my nerves weren’t really high anyway. I knew she was going to run personal bests because she was running so much faster each week in practice.
But Nationals is Nationals. It’s the last meet of a long season. It’s the culminating event that can define a season. And in such a meet, tensions run high, including mine. The biggest thing I was worried about was Falon re-adapting to the USATF spacing. In the 13-14 age group for girls, the hurdles are spaced 8.5 meters apart in AAU meets (which is the same distance as the older girls), whereas the hurdles are spaced only 8 meters apart for USATF spacing. Falon hadn’t run a race at the USATF spacing for a month, so she had grown used to opening up her stride and really sprinting between the hurdles. Now she would have to go back to the tighter spacing. She had looked good in practice, when I jammed her by moving the hurdles in two feet from race distance, but I still worried about how things would go on the fast mondo surface at North Carolina A&T University. Would she get too crowded?
In the first round, she won her heat easily but didn’t have the fastest qualifying time heading into the semis. Afterward, she was saying that her glutes and upper hamstrings felt tight. A thousand thoughts raced through my mind when she told me that. Maybe I had jammed her too much in the jamming workout. Maybe I should’ve been more forceful in warning her against going to the volleyball camp a week earlier. Maybe the workout in which I had her clear the first five hurdles and continue sprinting to the finish line should have been pushed back a day or two so she could have more time to recover from it.
Despite all the success she had had up to that point in the season, I was as nervous as any coach out there.
But I didn’t express any of those thoughts or fears to Falon. Heading into the semis, the only thing I told her was to get a good gauge of the wind once she walked onto the track. “It’s kind of all over the place,” I said. “So if you feel it’s behind you, be sure to be super-quick between the hurdles. If you feel it’s coming at you, remember to stay forward and keep driving.”
She went out and won a very good race – 14.03 – good enough for the fastest time heading into the finals, but with plenty of tough competition right behind, with the closest being another girl from North Carolina whom she had been running against for two years.
After the race, I spoke to her again, explaining that in the final she would need to get out in front early, and I reminded her of our mantra: “They can’t do what we do for ten hurdles.”
On the day of the final, I again expressed my confidence in her. I didn’t talk about anything having to do with technique or race strategy. I didn’t hit her with a pep talk or a speech about a back-in-the-day athlete or anything like that. When I left the warm-up area to head to the bleachers to watch the race, I gave her a hug and said simply, “Let’s do this girl. I believe in you.”
And she went out and won in a personal best of 13.97, maintaining her composure and her rhythm the entire race despite the fact that the other girl from NC was breathing fire down her neck the whole time.
From a personal perspective, the thing I’m most proud of in regards to my own behavior is that I didn’t over-coach. When it was time to sit back and trust the athlete, I sat back and trusted the athlete. I didn’t hover over her during her warm-up. I didn’t fill up her mind with things to think about. I made sure that, in her presence, I kept my energy level at medium intensity. I wanted her to see that I was 100% invested in her success, but that I wasn’t worried or concerned. Athletes feed off of their coaches’ energy more than their words. I wanted to be sure that she wasn’t going into the race trying to remember specific cues or details. I also wanted to be sure that I didn’t amp her up too much, because I knew she’d be amped up already. When she entered the starting blocks, she was able to focus on simply running fast and sprinting to the finish line. And that’s a big deal because, as close as that race was, if she had made one mistake, she would have lost.
The video above is of the Junior Olympic final. Falon is in lane 4.
