Give me back my Life
by Steve McGill
In last month’s issue of The Hurdle Magazine, I mentioned in one of the articles that I will no longer be coaching for my school team, after three years as head coach. In this article, I want to elaborate on that decision and how it allows me to dedicate myself to what I love most: coaching hurdlers.
Despite having coached track since 1995, I had never been a head coach until three years ago. Prior to that, I’d always been an assistant in charge of sprints/hurdles/relays, a youth club coach who worked exclusively with hurdlers, and, in more recent years, a private hurdles coach.
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One of the biggest positives that came with being a head coach was the fact that it forced me to learn events besides the sprints and hurdles, and to thereby gain a greater appreciation for the work that athletes in other events put in. I discovered that coaching middle-distance and distance runners isn’t that much different from coaching athletes in the shorter races. Putting a training schedule together isn’t all that hard, but implementing it is the bigger challenge, as race performances provide an indication of what’s working and what’s not, and how we need to re-examine and re-adjust our training methods. I had a lot of success with the athletes I coached; they all improved significantly, and one girl who just graduated earned a DI scholarship for cross country and track.
Another positive that came with being a head coach is that it allowed me to shape the identity and personality of the team. “There are no miracles in track and field; you do what you train to do” is a mantra of mine, and I said it so many times to our team that it became our team’s mantra, and I often heard athletes on our team repeating it to each other. Our team members formed close bonds with each other, and when it came time to compete, they competed well. We trained to peak at the state meet, and it worked. Almost everybody’s personal best took place at the state meet. Our girls team finished third at the state meet with only eight girls. Quite an accomplishment, and I have to admit that although I don’t really care about team points, I was proud of our group.
The fact that I don’t care about team points is why my role as head coach wasn’t built to last. My only reason for becoming head coach in the first place was because the previous head coach had retired, and the athletic director was scrounging for someone to replace him. A true head coach is constantly trying to figure out how to earn the most points possible at the state meet, moving people around in different events, adding people to events they don’t normally do, in order to gain a few points here or there. That’s just not how my mind works. I’m looking for individuals to peak. If I had really cared about team points, we probably could have gotten second place overall, or at least scored a few more points.
Being head coach also means being in charge of all the administrative stuff. Our team was small, so it wasn’t that much of a headache. But in the context of also being the English Department chair, teaching five classes a day, being faculty sponsor of the school newspaper and the school’s Student Diversity Council, the administrative stuff proved to be a heavy load, as I often had to sacrifice planning periods to putting entries together for the upcoming meet. And every time I sent out an informational email to team parents, there’d always be follow-up questions from parents that I’d need to spend time addressing. Then there were all the little details, like making sure the parent in charge of drinks and snacks for the day’s meet was bringing those items, making sure I knew which athletes would be riding on the bus vs. those who would be driving themselves, etc.
The worst part about being a head coach is that it took time away from my private coaching. Last year, for the first time in ten years, I found a track that was open to the public, where I could go after school to do my private coaching. But because I was coaching my school team, I didn’t have the time to work with those athletes. So my private coaching dwindled down to next to nothing. The coach of a very successful local track club contacted me in early May asking if I’d be available to work with his youth hurdlers; he had about ten hurdlers, all with significant talent. I had to turn him down because I didn’t have time; I had to focus on getting my school team ready for their state meet.
Meanwhile, our school doesn’t have a track, so we were training on a sidewalk loop most of the time, and we were able to get on a track once a week. The limitations that came with having no track wore on me over time. My assistant and I did a great job of being creative with workouts and listening to our athletes who were having knee, ankle, shin problems, etc., but still, competing against schools that had 8-lane rubber tracks meant we were always competing from a disadvantaged position.
When the school year ended and the summer began in late May, I vowed to myself that I would take my life back. I needed to get back to being me, the hurdle guru. As a hurdle coach, I wasn’t growing. I was stagnating. I wasn’t coming up with new ideas. I wasn’t having any dreams where I saw something new to try. I had settled into a routine. I had lost my creativity. I was a very annoyed, grumpy individual when the school year ended. I didn’t really like who I was, and I knew that something needed to change.
So, long story short, I decided to drop the head coaching gig. In June, I started working with the hurdlers of the youth club once a week, and took on a few of them as private coaching clients. Meanwhile, Malik Mixon – a former athlete of mine who is returning from a ruptured achilles – came up from Georgia two separate weekends for some hurdle training as he begins to ramp up toward a return to competition. Another athlete, Micah Cooney, who attended my hurdling academy this past March, came for four days of training. And then there was Avery Miller, from Maryland, who attended my hurdling academy last summer in Frostburg, MD. After winning the heptathlon at New Balance Nationals in June, she came down last week for two days of intensive hurdle training. I’ve also started working with a girl who is a rising junior at a local high school. Raelle Brown, who you’ll see featured in the workout article in this issue, has a personal best in the mid-15’s, and I feel like we can get down to the mid-14’s, and that we can make similar progress in her 300h.
To say that working with Malik, Micah, Avery, Raelle, and the youth club hurdlers this summer has been invigorating would be a huge understatement. I feel like I have my life back. I feel like I’m me again. These are high-IQ, highly self-motivated athletes who, just by their desire to get better, force me to bring out the best in myself as a coach. I constantly find myself questioning my own theories, pulling out drills that I had previously decried as useless, evaluating film and planning what will be our point of emphasis for the next workout based on my analysis of the film.
What I’ve learned about myself over the last six weeks, and, to a larger degree, over the past three years, is that any conversation that’s not about the hurdles isn’t an interesting conversation for me. I mean that figuratively more than literally, but the spirit of the statement is true. It’s good to be home again.
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