District Meet & Year Five

Our district cross country meet was on Thursday, October 27th, at Franklin Park in Yakima (a 50 minute bus ride away). I left home a little before noon and was gone for 10 hours doing the necessary coach work. Jay, Rose, and Amber got a ride home from school with their Grama Leslie, and then they lived it up watching many cartoons and videogames all afternoon, with Eggo waffles and sausage patties for dinner. I didn't like leaving my kids behind, but I did like not splitting my brain between mom-mode and coach-mode at the meet. However, the older my three kids get, coach-mode and mom-mode seem to merge closer and closer together.

Jeff and I both have loved our high school cross country team this year. They were such a great group of kids. Of course we had a sub-group or two on the team with attitudes and behaviors that were less than ideal, but overall our team was like a big loud loving familia. The kids genuinely cared about each other. The minute one Sunnyside runner crossed the finish line, they were immediately looking for their teammates and walking back along the course to cheer the rest of them in to the finish. When I look back to my first season as a coach five years ago, I can hardly believe how far we've come with team culture. 

And then there was the race performances themselves! This season our league was one of the most competitive 4A leagues in the state, with blazing fast boys and girls races. Our girls team was not fast, finishing in the last five places of the varsity race at the district meet. But speed was pretty much the only thing they lacked. They were positive and fun and willing to put in effort. They worked hard and improved drastically over the season, with every one of the eight girls who ran in the district meet getting either a season best time or a lifetime personal best time. It was fun and inspiring and sometimes tear-jerking to be a part of their season! 

Our boys! What a great group of team-brothers. They bonded in such a happy family way throughout the season. Shared suffering through hard sweaty workouts tends to either isolate runners into moody silence or bond them into a joyful supportive group of brothers. This team became brothers. This was the first year that I wasn't terrified of coaching teenage boys. If that doesn't show how excellent this team was, I don't know how else I can say it! 

Luke, our fastest guy, was relegated to JV all season because he transferred to Sunnyside High School without moving to Sunnyside. He completed his undefeated JV season at the district meet with an impressive sprint to the finish. We had four varsity guys with the potential to qualify for state. One was a little sick at the district meet and finished farther back than usual. Another was still learning how to race cross country and didn't run quite as fast as he could have. One finished three spots away from qualifying for the state meet, and one--Andrew Garcia-- did qualify for state, finishing in a definitive 5th place in the district meet. Andrew is a former soccer player sophomore who started running for the first time three months ago at the beginning of the season. 

The whole team was ecstatic when Andrew qualified for state. They jumped around shouting "STATE! STATE! STATE!" and group-hugged Andrew in a mosh pit-like swirl of joy, with many back pats and kind words. My heart about burst with happiness at our sweet team family. 

Ok, that's my sentimental coach summary of the season and district meet. This coaching gig is a constant push and pull between exhaustion and exhilaration, with a heavy dose of skeletal trauma from long hours riding school buses (for our nine away meets this season, we spent a cumulative total of 40 hours traveling on school buses). As an assistant coach, I am contracted for 90 hours of work, which equals 10 hours per week for the 9 week regular season, or 2 hours of practice per day, 5 days per week. Sounds fair until you factor in the 126-ish hours we spent either preparing for meets, coaching at meets or traveling to meets, haha. Suffice it to say, coaching wore me out, and I'm ready to start recovering. But first, one more week of practices and then the state meet will cap it all off. 

Our three JV girls on the starting line. Sniff, two of them are seniors. Sniff sniff sniff. I tell the seniors every year, the worst part about coaching is when kids graduate and leave.

Our varsity girls team on the starting line. After this my photo-taking kind of broke down and I have limited pictures from the rest of the day. We didn't even take a team picture after the district meet! Where was my brain? I think part of it is I associate photography with my role as mom, not with my role as coach, so when I'm in full-on coach mode, photography gets left behind. Plus, there's so much to do at a meet as a coach, taking pictures always gets pushed further down the list.

I did get this gem of a picture of the team celebrating Andrew making it to state. Andrew! We had to work for weeks to get him to think before he spoke and stop dropping F-bombs right and left, but his language habits improved right along with his running--correlation or causation?? Love this kid and his big hug from teammate Alex who barely missed qualifying for state by 3 places and 14 seconds. Hello, big-hearted brotherly love, congratulating a teammate's success right after barely missing qualifying for state himself.

Team snuggle-fest during the awards ceremony after the meet. These kids.

Luke, our stellar JV champion on the #1 podium spot!

Andrew, on the 5th place stair step. It was getting pretty cold, but Andrew wore his sleeveless uniform singlet up to the podium to represent Sunnyside. Next year we WILL figure out how to get funds to buy team gear beyond uniforms. (We have a plan. Last year's plan failed, so hopefully this new plan will succeed.)

We went to Red Robin for a sit-down hamburger dinner after the district meet, per team tradition. I always feel a little bad requiring kids to bring $15-$20 for a meal, but miraculously everyone had money this time around. (When kids forget/don't have money, coaches cover their meal.) Our 30 kids crammed into the waiting area while the hostess slowly siphoned them off to different tables. Two kids volunteered to sit with the coaches, and we had a fun 2 hour meal with them.

When Jeff and I got home close to 10pm after the district meet, Rose had written us a note. Whenever I'm not going to be home, I write the kids a note on this board, giving them instructions for chores to do or reminders of where to find different foods. I wrote a note for them before I left for the meet, and they returned the favor for when I got home. It made me smile.

The growing season is over and canal is slowly being drained. Or maybe they stopped putting water in it. I think that's actually what happens.

Friday, October 28th: first cross country practice after the district meet: waiting for the varsity boys to show up and run with Andrew. I realized while we were waiting that I hadn't taken any pictures of our family this entire week. The week after I set the goal to take two pictures per kid per week, and I failed! Hence this selfie.

Jay does a lot of waiting for his coach parents, especially now that middle school cross country season is over.

Friday night family movie night, with pizza for the dairy-capable! We watched the new Hocus Pocus 2 movie.

Other end-of-season thoughts:

My fifth season as a coach was my best-balanced season yet. Even though I was busy working/coaching between 3-5:30pm most weekdays, we had homemade dinners most nights AND our three kids didn't get left behind or lost. With trial and some definite errors, I figured out how to make many of our family favorite filling healthy dinners in large batches using the extra large instant pot (on slow cooker setting). Being away from home during prime dinner prep time has been a huge strain in past cross country seasons, with much freezer-section improvisation. Is meal prep the only job I have as a full-time parent? Not in the slightest, but with almost two teenagers and a ridiculous sensitive stomach and fast metabolism of my own, food is a huge consideration and burden. It felt good to get it mostly right this year.

I am growing into this new phase as a full-time parent with all of my kids in school for six hours a day.  Each day while my family is at school, I prioritize my own needs and then fill in housework, grocery shopping, food prep, and other errands around myself, rather than fitting that boring-but-important work around young children. What a revelation, to have time to truly, fully take care of myself! Gone are the days of fighting uphill for eight hours just to squeeze in a run and a shower, and maybe a scripture verse or two around the noise, interruptions, and messes. Don't get me wrong, I loved having my sweet sweet young kids under my exclusive care for those important years of growth (and I do miss my babies), but since those days are over, I have decided to love this new time too. 

My six solo hours per weekday make me a better wife, mom, friend, housekeeper, coach, and human being. I spent my first year with all three kids in school stressing and stewing about How To Spend My Time. I'm not sure exactly when I let go of that notion of self-imposed productivity, but sometime last year I was able to move past it and into this amazing realm of Shaina caring for Shaina First for the first time in over a decade. 

"So, what do you do all day?" HAH, the dread question for any full time parent whose babies are all in school. Let me tell you: I go running all by myself, as far and as fast as I want to. I read interesting books and learn cool songs on the piano. I work on learning new languages on Duolingo (currently: French and Mandarin). I watch Asian dramas. I talk on the phone with my mom, sisters, and friends. I do yoga. I do Relief Society stuff for church. I also do all of the other work that I have always done, like laundry and cleaning and meal planning and shopping and cooking and appointment-making and chauffeuring. 

Life is full and challenging and dull and interesting and stressful and relaxing and sad and happy. In other words, life is GOOD.