Head Coaching Blues
by Steve McGill
In last month’s issue of The Hurdle Magazine, I wrote an article about my decision to accept the head coaching position for the track team at my school. This month I want to follow up by explaining how things have been going so far. Long story short, it’s been a struggle. For the more detailed explanation, keep reading.
The biggest issue I’ve faced has been with trying to find a suitable practice facility. Our school doesn’t have a track, so, in past years, the track team has practiced at a middle school about five miles from our campus. I tried to stick with that, but lasted only two days before I said the hell with it. There’s a pond down the road from our school that is surrounded by a sidewalk loop that is almost exactly 600 meters, and we’ve been practicing there ever since. So yes, we’re practicing on the sidewalk. Let me explain why.
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The middle school track we were using has a concrete surface as well. So the sidewalk we’re running on now is literally softer than that track. The other problem at the middle school was that the kids who attended the school would flood down to the track area to participate in their sports. There is a very nice turf field surrounding the track, and I was hoping we’d be able to use that at least some of the time. Hell no. The middle soccer teams — the boys team and the girls team — take up the entire field, and in the two days we were there, plenty of parents and friends would wander around aimlessly on the track on their way to watching practice. To make matters worse, the kids on the baseball team would walk across the track on their way to baseball practice on one of the fields up the hill. It was total mayhem. We were doing 5×200 and after the second rep, all these middle schoolers came pouring out of the building and down to the turf field, crossing the track and pretty much ruining our workout. I was just bewildered and bewuthered. Then one of the seniors on our team told me that “it’ll get a whole lot worse once their track starts practicing. They don’t start till next week.” And according to this senior, the middle school track team took up most of the lanes and had zero understanding of track etiquette. That’s when I made the executive decision to move practice to the pond.
There, at least, we have more space and don’t have to worry about practice constantly being interrupted. And there were plenty of trees to provide shade on hot days. And the only people we were competing with for space were the occasional dog walkers, which hasn’t proven to be a big deal at all.
But the fact remains, we are limited in what we can do. I got one girl who, according to our athletic director, has the potential to be a state champion shot putter and discus thrower, but we’ve got nowhere to practice shot or disc. We’ve got nowhere to practice long jump or triple jump or high jump or pole vault. So, all field events are basically out. And when it comes to my beloved hurdling events, forget about it. It’s hard enough justifying having the kids run on the sidewalk, but to have them hurdle on such a surface would be criminal. I’m not ruling out the hurdles though. But it would mean joining me on weekends when I do my private coaching at a high school track which is about a 45-minute drive from our school. The surface there is a soft rubber that is perfect for training on, but I can’t require anyone to make that drive. But there are a couple athletes I’m hoping I can convince. One girl is a star in our basketball team, and she’s about 5-10. So I know I could get her to 3-step, which would instantly make her a contender in our hurdler-deprived conference.
Fortunately, the mother of one of the athletes is a yoga instructor, and she has been kind enough to meet with us once a week for an hour-long yoga session. These sessions, which we do on Fridays, have helped tremendously in helping the kids to recover from damage done on the sidewalk, and it has also served as an ideal way for them to strengthen their muscles while learning to become more disciplined athletes.
In terms of talent, I really don’t have a lot to work with. But I knew that going in, and it doesn’t really bother me because they’re all good kids who are willing to work hard. On my end, I’m learning a lot about how to coach more events, like the 800, the 1600, and the 3200, all of which I have never coached before. I have one girl who ran 6:27 in the 1600 in our first meet, and another who ran 6:48. I think both of them can go sub-6:00, which I know isn’t breaking any national records, but would quite the accomplishment based on where they’re starting from. I have two guys who ran sub-54 in the 400, so I’d like to get both of them down around 50-flat by the end of the season. So I’ll do what I can with what I have, even if it does mean practicing block starts on the uneven patch of grass where we do our warmups.
My whole thing is, if the kids need me, I can’t let them down. That’s why I’m doing this. It’s funny, the things I thought I’d have to be concerned about haven’t been that much of a concern. I’m under no pressure to win, and I don’t have to figure out how to optimize our points because we don’t have enough athletes to win anything anyway.
The whole experience has been humbling, I must admit. In my private coaching, I’m used to coaching super-motivated athletes, I have plenty of opportunities to work with them one-on-one, I can be a teacher and a creative artist, I can be a scientist in a lab. Now I’m teaching kids who’ve never run track before the absolute basics — how to do a dynamic warmup, which kinds of shoes to wear for practice and which kinds of shoes to wear for meets, how to dress properly to minimize the potential for injury. I’m also teaching work ethic. Some of these kids think they’re working hard but they’re really not. So I’m teaching habits. I’m teaching when it’s appropriate to be lighthearted vs. when it’s time to focus and lock in. With most of these kids, I’m starting from scritchety-scratch.
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