This past Sunday I had the opportunity to run at Apalachee Regional Park in Tallahassee, a.k.a. the state course for Florida high school cross country the last several years. The last time I was at this course was fall of 2020 when the high school girls’ team I was coaching made it to state. We had also gone up the year prior when our first individual girl made it. I have both some fun, and some bittersweet memories here.
When our first individual girl qualified we were super excited for her, but also a little let down that the team didn’t also qualify. We missed the spot by 1 point! Brooke, the girl who qualified, was sad not to have made it as a team and each girl owned a part of that responsibility by saying, “If I had just passed one more competitor…” The girls, the parents, and the coaches decided there was no reason we couldn’t still make the trip as a team to support Brooke, so that’s what we did. Most of the team piled in a passenger van and trekked up the state bonding along the way. They all ran the course preview together and we vision planned for the next season when we would make it as a whole team. I was challenged with having to get a tattoo and our male coach agreed to wear a tutu if that happened.
True to their words, we qualified the next season, 2020. It was so hard fought. COVID threatened whether we would have a season at all; then it threatened us week by week. If one team member came down with the virus at the wrong time, we might be done through no fault of our own. Add to that the Florida athletics association narrowing the pool of teams in each district, and how many could qualify, in order to keep the numbers down, and it wasn’t looking like our year. Still we struggled and dug in and secured our first district championship, and a state qualification, for the first time in school history. We should’ve been ecstatic, and I think the girls were, but it also wrecked us a bit.
This weekend I noticed this sign in a newly redesigned portion of the park. It kind of got me thinking. Did our focus shift between seasons from being team driven, relationship driven, all for one and one for all driven, and become performance driven? I think we may have. Late in the season I faced a direct conflict with a set of parents about this very subject. If the team made it to state, I wanted to run a roster that reflected the previous couple years of commitment and hard work and camaraderie that I believed was getting us there. The parents in question just wanted their daughters to run because they were fast, despite them missing several team commitments in both the pre-season and regular season; despite it being one girl’s very first season on the team, first year running period. I had a senior who had dedicated four full seasons, worked her ass off arguably harder than anyone else there, and served as captain for three seasons. She served her coaches and teammates in multiple capacities, but she wasn’t “fast.” She had PRed almost every race in her last season, but was sitting in the 8th or 9th spot and I could only run 7 at the regional and state meets. I wanted to give her what I had started calling an “honor” spot. I had begun letting the team know that I would be considering more than just race performance when it came down to those last few races believing in my head that it would be an honor to run that state course for the first time ever with their team. In the end the conflict prevailed, not because I caved into the pressure, I fought against it as best I could, but because the season had cost us too much and in the end instead of it being an honor to run, it became a burden. I failed too because I misjudged what both the training and focus change, and the conflict, would take from us. It changed me as a coach and how I related to the team.
I came back for the 2021 season with a shell of a team. My top girl was returning as a senior and I just didn’t feel like I could leave her if she wanted me to stay on through the end with her. I lost four seniors off the previous season, the girls whose parents couldn’t get on board with us, and there was some collateral damage caused in part by my actions, and in part by the vocal dissenters. We ran and tried to have fun, but it just wasn’t the same and we weren’t completely able to recapture the team spirit that had driven us in the past.
So why would I go and run that course knowing it would be a mix of both positive and negative emotions and thoughts and memories? Because ultimately we learn from our experiences and if we don’t let ourselves get bogged down in the negatives, we can take what we learned and move forward. Ripping off a bandaid hurts, but it certainly can’t stay on the wound forever. There might be a scar, but even that will fade over time and can be filled in by new experiences and challenges. It’s time to close this chapter and begin a new one.
Girl with Dog 