Cross Country Season Finale

While I was sitting at the piano playing a tricky song with five flats on Friday, I had two thoughts:

• ·      Playing five flats (D-flat major?) is HARD!
• ·      Music with five flats is beautiful.

Five flats are both hard to play and beautiful to hear. There is beauty in difficulty. Just like a pianist stumbling through a song with five flats, the difficulty of tackling a challenge can sometimes obscure the beauty for a while. But eventually, somewhere along the journey the beauty emerges!

This reminds me of the agonies and joys of running...and coaching runners...

We finished cross country season on Thursday night (October 25th). My first season as an assistant coach is done. My learning curve was steep, and I still have plenty to learn. By the last few weeks of the season, however, I finally started to feel more comfortable and less terrified of the teenagers on the team. It was definitely a relief to find that [most] teenagers improve upon further acquaintance.

For the entire season, we battled all kinds of barriers on our team, from simple soreness and injury all the way to maddening attitude and apathy. Lots of practices and races left us as coaches feeling exasperated at the attitude, the lack of effort, the walking, etc. On too many of the days I found myself wondering why on earth half of these kids signed up for cross country if they didn't want to RUN. Then an unexpected runner would surprise and please us with an excellent workout or a cheery attitude. High school coaching is an endless cycle of mountaintop-high ups and ocean-trench lows. Thank goodness for the solid hard workers that pulled us through the rough patches. A few weeks into the season, Jeff made some much-needed cuts to the team roster to keep the team heading in the right direction, and we finished the season with about 30 runners, 24 of whom were eligible and able to race at the district meet on Thursday.

What about our own three children? Grama to the rescue! Jeff's mom, Leslie, earned her sainthood and beyond during this cross country season. She watched Jay, Rose, and Amber three times late into the night while Jeff and I were at our far-away weeknight meets. She came regularly each week to help keep track of our kids, and even brought after school snacks for them. I can't express the peace of mind it gave me to have my sweet kids with their loving grama while I was doing a Job Away From Home for the first time in my journey through motherhood. Our kids are so lucky to live so close to their grandparents. Ok, back to cross country...

The district meet was in Wenatchee, a 2.5 hour bus ride from Sunnyside. It was our third trip to Wenatchee in five weeks. The bus hit the road at 11:30am (Amber was with Grama Leslie). The road to Wenatchee is not a smooth straight interstate; it's a curvy bouncy skinny road through the rugged brown hills of central Washington. School buses are not  made for journeys lasting above half an hour, and they really are not made for people over five feet tall. It was cloudy, gloomy, and rainy while we drove and I was on the verge of plunging into motion sickness as the bus rocketed along the bumpy country road. We stopped at a gas station in George, WA (love that place). A brief walk out in the cold drizzly-mizzly rain settled my stomach somewhat. It also about froze me! Brrr, 48 degrees and rainy is bone-chilling. I braced myself for a few hours of teeth chattering at the meet. When we arrived in Wenatchee a little after 2pm, however, the drizzle eased up within the hour and we enjoyed ideal running conditions: 50 degrees and cloudy.

First, four of our girls ran the JV race, with spectacular improvement all around. They each cut an entire MINUTE off their previous best times. Jeff and I were jumping for joy as we sprinted around the course cheering them on. The boys JV race brought similar vast improvements. I love the whole team (boys and girls), but I have done the most actual coaching with the girls, so I felt especially like a plump, proud mother hen watching her chicks fly during the girls' races at the district meet.

One of the things we struggled with on our girls team throughout the season was doing our team cheer with gusto at the start line. Jeff has enough vocal volume and personality to make any cheer loud and proud (and to give confidence/amusement to reluctant teenagers), but he was always elsewhere doing other coachy things when it was time to do the team cheer with the girls. I have zero ability to shout, so our girls' team cheer was always rather feeble and/or abbreviated. We are a tiny little team of new runners. The big established teams gather at the start line in massive circles and shout loud chants together. After we had warmed up and arrived at the starting line on Thursday, I noticed that our tiny group of 6 girls was super intimidated by those big loud teams crowding them out at the line with their noise and energy. Inspiration struck me suddenly, out of nowhere, and I acted upon it.

At the starting line, I had our girls do their strides (from the starting line, sprint out 30-ish meters and walk back; repeat three times--it preps the legs for the rigors of race pace). I followed them on their last stride and gathered them together out in front of the starting line before they walked back to toe the line. It was much quieter and less chaotic out there. I got the team to huddle up together, arms around shoulders, in a circle. In the process, I realized that we hadn't ever even done a shoulder-hug-huddle! What? It is tricky to unearth these useful girl-team-unity details from my memory.

So there we were, huddled in a circle. All of the girls looked at me and I felt simultaneously thrust OUT of my element, and INTO my element. I can't describe it any other way. Impromptu speeches are so not my forte, but the team was waiting for their coach (me!) to SAY something, so without any preparation, I started talking. I gave my first inspirational speech! It was nothing unique or exceptional, but it was full of things that the girls needed to hear:

"Ok, this is it. You are in the best shape of the season right now. You are ready for this race. You have worked so hard for two months for TODAY. Make it count. Your entire season only has 3.1 miles left in it--that's nothing compared to all of the miles we've already run together! You can do this. Now, let's do our cheer. Hands in!"

I quickly reviewed the words to our cheer since lots of the girls have a hard time remembering it (Jeff wrote it and it does take some getting used to), then the team captain led the chant:

TOGETHER WE WILL

Run as one!

TOGETHER WE WILL

Beat the pain!

TOGETHER WE WILL

Win the day!

1-2-3, GRIZZ!

It was our best, loudest, most unified cheer of the season and it set the tone for the entire race. (or maybe it was my inspirational speech? hah) Jeff wanted our team cheer to SAY something, so it's our team motto. Context: Sunnyside High School's mascot is the Grizzlies. One of Sunnyside High School's main tag lines is "together we will" (it's written on the walls at the school). So Jeff filled in the blanks with three important team mantras. The captain shouts out "together we will" and the team shouts the answers. It's great when everyone remembers the words!

Every single one of our ten girls ran the fastest 5k of their lives during the district race (minus one asthma attack). Miraculously, "it clicked" and they finally ALL ran brave, really dug deep for what felt like the first time all season (usually it's only 2 or 3 girls who really go for it at each meet). We have had a lot of lackluster  effort on our girls' team, so their obvious effort at the district meet was inspiring. I felt like all of the ups and downs of our season were worth it for that one race. Jeff and I wore ourselves out running all over the course, and then sprinting over to the chute to congratulate each girl when she finished. It was THE BEST! They did so well. I got all choked up watching them work so hard.

Here are five anecdotes from our girls' races at the district meet:

About half a mile into the JV race, one of our girls stopped with an asthma attack. Luckily I was standing there. She could not draw breath, and it was a tad freaky, but I told her to take slow breaths and try to walk. She gasped and dry heaved a few times but eventually was able to keep walking. She wasn't sure if she wanted to keep running the race. I walked with her and said, "let's walk for now. Just remember, this is the last race of the season. If you can run, then run. If you can't breathe, stop and walk till you can run again." Suddenly her teammates who weren't in her race saw her and started cheering her on and she took off running faster than I've seen her run all year. One of her teammates caught up to her and gave her an inhaler. She used it several times through the race, passed six girls to avoid last place, and finished the race stronger than she started. Even though she didn't get her best time due to the asthma pause, she has never worked that hard through her asthma all year. It was so good.

We had another JV girl whose big goal for the season was to break 30 minutes in the 5k. She was such a sweet sunshine of a girl who always gave good effort at meets and practices, and always had such a happy positive attitude. She had come within 3 seconds of her sub-30 minute goal, but never broke that barrier. Then at this race she busted through, finishing in 29:12. Cue sobby gasps from deep inside my coachy-heart.

In the varsity race, our girls team captain looked strong the entire way through and cut ten seconds off of her PR. Our number two girl had been limping with a calf injury for half of the season, and had to bike most of our workouts for a month to heal. She ran with grit and determination and finished the race an entire minute and fourteen seconds faster than her previous 5k best.

Our number six varsity girl was in last place and her knee was hurting. Whenever she ran past me, she'd slow down or stop and say "my knee is hurting, what should I do?" The first time I said "I don't know what to tell you...KEEP RUNNING?" Eventually I got the hang of telling her to run even though it hurt, and I just said "beat the pain! Keep running!" even though it felt kind of harsh. She kept running, so it couldn't have been too terrible of an injury...right? It's so weird to tell kids to keep running when they say they're hurt, but why stop during the last meet of the year? Distance running grit is a work in progress with our girls team, as is my ability as a coach to know when to say "beat the pain and run anyways" vs. "stop before you pass out."

I'll write one anecdote about a member of our guys' team. As a sophomore, he took over the number one spot on the team early in the season, and methodically improved in every single race, from beginning to end. His workouts were like clockwork. Even when some teammates were slacking or not following the coach's instructions, he gave honest, consistent effort at every single practice. It is so gratifying to watch such a hard worker be rewarded with faster times every single week. At the district meet, he ran his heart out and clocked the fastest 5k of his life, finishing in 15th place overall. CHILLS.

Both our girls and boys teams finished 7th out of 7 teams in the district, and nobody made it to state, but that's the beauty of running: you don't have to beat the competition to succeed! 85% of our runners ran the fastest 5k of their life in this single race, proving yet again the powerhouse pairing of hard work and a smart head coach. I felt a little guilty for basking in the victory of their PR's because I did not help Jeff dream up and write the enormous spreadsheet of a carefully crafted training plan for the team. But I helped implement the magical training plan and saw it in action every day. The victories were still sweet because I was there for the ups and downs of the journey.

The difficulty of tackling a challenge can sometimes obscure its beauty for a while, but eventually, somewhere along the journey, the beauty (and awesomeness) emerges. 

Yay cross country!

Thursday happened to be "favorite sports team" day at Jay and Rose's school, and these two firmly declared that they only have ONE team they like: Sunnyside High School cross country. Since Jeff and I were coaching at the district meet that day, our cross country apparel was in high demand. Rose settled for a track t-shirt while Jay borrowed one of Jeff's Sunnyside coaching polos.

Smiling through their nerves at the varsity starting line.

They all wore their matching hair bows. :)

Heading towards the first mile, my heart leapt when I saw 5/6 of our team running TOGETHER. A cross country coach's dream, right here! They strung out as the race progressed, but this was an excellent start!

The girls: Jeff copied their pose and pulled it off nicely. Somehow in the chaos, we never managed to get a big group picture or a boys only team picture. But these girls! Happy day.