Educating and Coaching has long been my passion. I've spent the last 12.5 years with college level student athletes. Before that I was a college athlete for five years. While times have changed and brought new technology, unique personalities, and varying ideas of work ethic one thing has never changed with this group. They all have high expectations. Sometimes these expectations match their ability and potential, sometimes they do not. Our goal as coaches is to first help our student athletes align their goals and expectations with their ability and potential. This alignment includes academic, athletic, and life goals. The second goal is to provide them with the technical/physical expertise and support they need to improve in those areas. Finally, as coaches, it is imperative that we provide great communication and motivation in the way of our own expectations and direction. This communication is ongoing and must never stop. It must also display a degree of flexibility. Humans are not robots. They get ill, they have injuries, and they have personal issues...especially college age student athletes.
As a coach you live the successes, failures, last one in and first one out moments with the student athletes. You own those moments the same way they do. This past weekend was a perfect example. Our distance medley relay was looking to qualify for the NCAA indoor championships by competing at a Last Chance Qualifying meet at Notre Dame. They wanted to join our high jumper, Langley Iverson, who had already automatically qualified weeks earlier. We flew half way across the country to run 4,000 meters as fast as we could. We knew they would have to run a near perfect race. This same group smashed our school record a year ago, but missed the NCAA meet by three seconds. We were the second team out despite our great effort.
About the only difference this year is that we switched the lead off and anchor legs. There approach was one of a championship team. Regardless of the outcome, they were together in this endeavor. Our fifth year senior, Alyssa Abbott (who was 15 weeks removed from arthoscopic knee surgery) led us off as well as we could have hoped for. The middle two legs (sophomore Alyssa Johnson and junior Lucy Yates) did their part and got the stick around to sophomore Amanda Mergaert for the final 1600 meter leg. Amanda ran a life time best for 1600 and our time of 11:11.71 was a new school record again. However, once again we came up a few seconds short. We beat Texas, we beat Indiana. We ran faster than Florida, Minnesota, Boston College, and Michigan State. But this time we were the first team not selected to the championships. Thirteenth when we had to be twelfth. There's not much worse as a coach than having to explain to a group of high achieving athletes, who poured their hearts and souls on the track for each other and our program, that they will be excluded from the NCAA championships again...by mere seconds. The NCAA indoor meet is the toughest to qualify for of the 89 championships that the NCAA conducts. Only about 3% of the total Division I track athletes are selected to compete each year. (i.e. over 20% of the Division I basketball teams make the NCAA tournament).
Ultimately though, you have to look at the successes that allowed us to even put the relay together. Alyssa recovering from surgery in time to compete during the indoor season. Alyssa and Lucy both recovered from injury and illness this year. Amanda had a huge breakthrough in cross country as a NCAA individual qualifier and has been able to carry that over to the track. She dropped her 1600/mile time by 10 seconds during the indoor season. We overcame a lot of obstacles to put ourselves in the conversation. Somebody ultimately had to look at our time and draw a line. We weren't in that conversation in early February. We weren't in that conversation three years ago. Now we're becoming a regular at that table and that is good company to be keeping. These women, like all of the young women on our team and those who came before them, always expect more. They push themselves on a daily basis to be the best they can be physically, mentally, and emotionally. Some days are better than others based on the standards that we all set. However, I still wouldn't trade the worst days for another career. If I don't know anything else, I know the following about the young people I have coached and will continue to educate. Give them 24 hours to deal with their greatest of acheivements or worst of disappointments and the next day they will reset their goals and begin working to achieve those goals all over again. Which then brings out the questions: Who's teaching who? Who's motivating who? It really doesn't get any better than that.
No comments:
Post a Comment