From Scrub to Legend
by Steve McGill
When I ran track in college, I was a scrub. My freshman year, after winning my conference with a hand-timed 14.9 in my senior year of high school, I was the fourth-best hurdler on a team with four good hurdlers. We were a DIII school, so I had thought that I would step in and lead the way. But no such thing was happening. Not only was the competition tough on our team, but at every meet we went to. There were plenty of good hurdlers throughout our conference, and we also ran against DII schools and even DI schools at many of the weekend invitationals. I felt demoralized in realizing how mediocre I actually was.
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I remember, one day my sophomore year, talking to one of my friends who was on the wrestling team. Though our track team was DIII, our wrestling team was DI. In our conversation, we were exchanging sob stories, and encouraging each other through our difficulties. My friend, Joe, had gone undefeated in the state of Pennsylvania in his weight division as a senior in high school. He had been dominant, and had been celebrated with all kinds of awards and records. But in college, he couldn’t get on the mat. In team trials prior to the start of the season, he had lost to an older wrestler in his weight division, which meant he would either have to hope for an injury or try to compete at a different weight division. The former option wasn’t likely; nor was it the kind of thing it’s cool to wish for. The latter option wasn’t really much of an option, as anyone who knows how difficult it can be to switch weight divisions in wrestling can appreciate.
When the conversation came around to my woes, I explained my frustrations, and he said to me emphatically, “You can rule DIII, you can be king of DIII. And a part of me believed him, because I had done so well in high school after coming back from a battle with a nearly fatal blood disease that had caused me to miss a lot of training time. I still believed that with more training time I could easily surpass my personal best of 14.9. But that had time had been run over 39-inch hurdles, and the 42’s were proving to kick my ass. At my height–5’11 ½, the extra three inches on the barriers was proving to be a very challenging transition. Most of my races were in the low-16’s or high-15’s–nowhere near my personal best in high school, and nowhere near the qualifying time for nationals–14.90, fully automatic.
So I was average, even for DIII. My sophomore year, through hard work and much studying of the event, I surpassed all my teammates and became the number one hurdler on our team, but I barely made it to the finals at conference championships, and finished last in the final. I was 20 years old and my dreams of being an Olympian were already a verifiable joke. When I ran my last race, I thought I was done with the hurdles for life.
When I started coaching seven years later, at the age of 27, it was just something to do in the afternoons after a long day of teaching. I saw myself as an English teacher first and foremost, but enjoyed ending a long day in the classroom by going outside and spending time on the track, where I had always felt at home. But somehow I got to be pretty good at coaching, so, in 2004, I started a website sharing the methods I used in coaching my hurdlers. I figured, I can’t find anything on the internet, so if there are other coaches out there looking for stuff, at least they’ll find my stuff; at least they won’t find nothing.
Fast forward to two weekends ago, when I went to a meet about an hour from where I live. A few of the athletes I coach privately were competing there, and one is home-schooled, so I wanted to be there for her so I could monitor her warmup and monitor her nerves. In the warm-up area, a coach from out of state walked up to me and introduced himself. We exchanged pleasantries, and he thanked me for website and all the information I share on my social media posts. A little while later, he introduced one of his athletes to me, saying to her, “This is Steve McGill, he’s a legend.”
My immediate reaction was to laugh. But then I realized that was rude, so I thanked him, and then said, “No, I’m not a legend. I’m just a coach, same as you.” And to prove how true that was, I watched, about an hour later, as his male hurdler beat my male hurdler in the finals of the 55m hurdles. And the highlight of the day for me was when my female home-schooled hurdler three-stepped a whole race for the first time. So yeah, I’m just a coach.
But still, just to be called a legend was enough to take me back to those college days, when I was struggling to figure out how to clear 42-inch hurdles without smacking them with my foot and knee and ankle. Last week, I published my eBook, The Art of Hurdling–a book designed to teach hurdle coaches how to teach hurdlers how to hurdle efficiently and effortlessly. The book is the apotheosis of 25 years of coaching, putting together all the knowledge and wisdom that I’ve acquired in my dedication to the hurdling events. People know my name now. People seek me out for knowledge now–for advice, for training tips. People travel from far to train with me, to attend my camps. Yet a very real part of me feels like I’m still that 20-year-old who finished last at conference finals and realized he would never be as great as had hoped he would someday be. That young man still lives in my head.
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