Three months have gone by since my last entry. As I prepare this new update, I realize that ten months ago I started this blog to document the happenings of coaching a cross country team. It has been anything but. It has been more of a tale of the frustration in trying to get just one good program to last a whole season. Maybe I should have done a softball blog because this past season on the diamond was more satisfying than the entire past 10 months of X-C.
My E-City plan (as mentioned in the previous entry) was to keep flyers for Cross Country up on the walls for two full months, March and April. With only three positive responses, I pulled them down about 2/3 of the way thru April. At that point I figured it wasn’t going to happen. With the amount of freshman girls who tried out for both the basketball and softball teams, I had hopes that there would be a sizable interest in a Cross Country team.
So with that being said, I decided that I would return to the N-City program and coach there for another year. The money was good even though the commitment of the runners wasn’t. I figured it would be a good-paying baby-sitting job that would help pay off my mortgage. One of the E-City girls who had wanted to run kept after me about it. I asked her if she would be interested in running for N-City since students can play sports for another high school if theirs does not offer that sport. She said she would and I sent off an e-mail to the AD in N-City. It was also an e-mail to touch base with him for the upcoming season since I hadn’t heard from him in a while.
Now I’m not sure of the date of that e-mail (because my Comcast e-mail service only saves sent notes for so many days) but it must have been sometime in early April. For a couple of weeks I heard nothing from him. I then sent an e-mail to the Dean of Students there who used to be a teacher at E-City asking him about the AD who was not answering my e-mail. It turns out that the AD’s son is a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants and was hit by a pitch in early April. He had a concussion and was put on the disabled list. Apparently the AD had gone out to California to be with his son. My teacher friend said the AD would be answering my e-mail when he got back.
Well, it is now early June and I still haven’t heard from him. Did he send an e-mail and did I accidentally delete it? Is the recession affecting the N-City school and are they cutting back on some of the sports programs? I don’t know. And I didn’t follow up on it because for most of April and May my time was totally devoted to the E-City softball team. We still didn’t get a win (although we did get an official forfeit) but we did have a productive offensive season. We scored 53 runs which was more than the two previous seasons combined. But the poor defense is what kept us from getting a win.
And now it is early June. And that one girl is still asking about whether she can run at N-City. I told her again how unfortunate it is that we couldn’t have a team at E-City. Well, she decided to do something about it. An eleventh hour attempt for a fall team was begun. She came up with eight girls—7 freshmen and 1 sophomore. Maybe only 2 are from the “athletic” group that I had hoped would produce a team back in March.
But I wanted more than just names. I didn't want the debacle of last year repeating itself. I typed a whole list of things that they would have to do, what to expect, and other pieces of info to make them aware of what they were getting into. Well, the reality of what X-C is and what I would expect from them during the summer and the fall must have scared them off. Because I never heard back from them this week.
And now school is over at E-City. I'll hold off on contacting N-City in the hope that a position at another school will show up on the NJSIAA website. And if nothing does show up in the next two months, then I'll see what's going on at N-City. Worst case scenario is that in the fall I'll be a spectator over at W-Park watching X-C races.
On a personal note, my individual running has been making progress. I am now running anywhere from 2 to 3 miles everytime I go out. I have missed only two days this month and have a current streak of 7 days in a row. And all the aches and pains have subsided. Maybe they were just kinks that had to be worked out for an old man who was trying to do young things with his body.
Anyway, it will be nice to start the summer vacation with an established base of miles rather than having to start up from scratch like I have had to do the past two years. The only other problem is that the stamina and endurance in my legs hasn't come around yet. I wonder if it is taking longer because of my advanced age or maybe this is as good as I will get at this age. I wonder.
Or maybe it has to do with the extra baggage I am carrying. Maybe if I slim down I could build up the endurance. So on the way home, I stopped at the market and bought two boxes of cereal (kinds that I would never have bought before) and three vegetables and one fruit (another first for me). I also was able to walk past the ice cream that was on sale!!
