April 2, 2014

Yesterday after practice I was talking with two of my hurdlers, Lamar and Arthur. We were talking about hurdles and hurdlers, about some of the guys I coached back in the day, about professional hurdlers Lamar had been studying on YouTube, about what we think we’ll be able to accomplish this year.

We ended up talking for close to an hour and I didn’t even notice the time go by. Not until some kids who ran for a youth club team that trained on our track started trickling in did I realize it was time to go and that everyone else on our team had left.

At one point during our conversation three blue jays flew past us, temporarily jolting me out of my reverie, but also heightening my awareness of how special this simple moment was. I thought back to past athletes on past tracks through past years, and how this seemingly ordinary ritual of hanging out after practice has always been a common thing among hurdlers I’ve coached. They don’t want to leave the track, and neither do I. So many faces and so many names crossed my mind as I stood there talking to Lamar and Arthur. read more

March 24, 2014

While I admit that I’m not a big fan of college basketball, I can’t help but get caught up in the spirit of March Madness. I never fill out a bracket or enter a pool for the simple reason that I don’t want to put myself in the position of cheering against my favorite teams, but I did watch a lot of the games this past weekend. To me, what is unique to the NCAA Division I basketball tournament is not the madness, but the sadness.

The end of every game means the end of a season, the end of a dream, for the losing team. So at the end of every game you see players and fans crying, weeping, wailing, sobbing, moaning, or just gazing into nowhere with a glazed-over look in their eyes.

The enormity of the sadness became clear to me toward the end of the Kansas vs. Stanford game on Sunday March 23^rd. Stanford was in the midst of pulling off the big upset when the CBS cameras zeroed in on a little boy all geared up in Kansas blue. The boy was crying, in an extreme state of distress. Kansas made a brief comeback, and then the boy looked hopeful. But Stanford won at the end and the boy was bawling again. read more

March 22, 2014

Count me among those who are very happy to see the outdoor season arrive. My school had its first outdoor meet this past week (actually its second, but most of our best runners weren’t there because they were at high school nationals), and it went very well.

As a hurdle coach, I find the indoor season to be the source of much personal frustration and confusion. One of the hurdle events (300h) doesn’t even exist indoors, and the other hurdle race (100h/110h) is chopped in half.

Constantly, throughout the indoor season, I find myself trying to find the balance between preparing for outdoors and preparing to compete indoors. For hurdlers who run both hurdling events, I have to make sure they maintain the speed-endurance needed to succeed in the long hurdles while at the same time keeping them sharp for their indoor races.

And then there’s the tricky situation of training for the 100/110m hurdles vs. training for the 55/60m hurdles. The indoor race is all about the start, whereas in the outdoor race hurdle endurance and the ability to maintain one’s form become equally important. read more

March 18, 2014

Got back from New Balance High School Indoor Nationals early Monday morning. It was an exciting meet at an excellent track and field venue – the Armory in New York City. I had one female hurdler who competed in the 60m hurdles. She finished seventh overall and set a huge personal best in the finals. I was happy with that, and am honestly not too disappointed that she didn’t finish higher. We’ll work on things and see if we can’t finish higher by the time outdoor nationals rolls around.

I don’t know how other coaches feel, but I find meets like this one to be so emotionally exhausting. I constantly find myself poring over every little detail regarding warm-ups, mental focus, and the logistical things like check-in, hip numbers, bib numbers, lane assignments. In the back of my mind I’m always remembering that fiasco in the 1972 Olympics when two American sprinters missed their race because the schedule had changed but their coach was still going by the old one. read more

Sunday February 23, 2014

There are moments when sports goes beyond winning and losing and has a huge emotional impact. For me, one of the most memorable of such moments occurred on January 3, 1999, in the NFL wildcard playoff game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers. The moment I’m referring to is what is now referred to as “The Catch 2,” when 49er quarterback Steve Young threw a game-winning touchdown to receiver Terrell Owens.

After making the catch, Owens lie down in the field, swept up in emotion, as his teammates surrounded him to celebrate. Walking off the field to the sideline, Owens was in tears. He hugged teammates and coaches with one arm as he clutched the ball in his other hand, almost as if he hadn’t believed he had caught it.

Earlier in the game, Owens had dropped three balls. As an up and coming star at the time, he wasn’t supposed to drop three balls. And as the clock was winding down, it was looking like Owens’ drops would go down in history as a huge reason why the 49ers lost that game. There was no reason to believe that Young would go to him with the game on the line. Not with the legendary Jerry Rice on the field. read more

Wednesday February 19, 2014

As a lifelong lover of reading and writing, I’ve written my fair share of poems, and a lot of them are either about hurdling or include something hurdle-related. Yeah that’s me; everybody else is writing poems about flowers and trees and I’m writing about hurdles.

I find that writing poetry is a good medium by which to probe into the deeper layers of ordinary life, so that the ordinary is appreciated for how extraordinary it actually is. Earlier this week I wrote a poem that was inspired by one of my many distance runs in my neighborhood. It’s entitled “Hurdles on my Mind.” Here it is:

Hurdles in my Mind                        2/15/14

I run down a road that doesn’t end.
Past construction sites,
bus stops,
family barbecues,
growling dogs,
children drawing suns on the sidewalk,
teenagers hanging out on the corner.

I run up hills,
I run down hills,
I run on winding turns,
past street lights,
stop signs.

I run past office buildings,
banks,
shopping centers,
single-family homes. read more