Over the winter I had to again resort to sending letters to the N-City school treasurer to find out when they would be sending my coaching fee. It took only two letters this time to get the check in the mail. I was very surprised to find out that they were paying me the same amount as in the first season. Even though I coached about one month instead of two. Even though we didn’t enter any races. And even though the students again showed up when they wanted to.
Meanwhile back at E-City, I decided to try again for the third year to start a cross country team. Flyers and announcements produced six female underclassmen who expressed some interest. After talking to them and letting them know what cross country involved, the list shrunk down to three. These three gave me the impression that they were very serious about running in the fall, but when, in the last few days of the school year, we couldn’t all get together for one single meeting to discuss the summer program, I decided to pull the plug again.
As summer recess started, I scoured the web for available cross country positions at other schools. There have been six. The first three, Gill St. Bernard, Ranney Prep, and the Bergen County Tech schools were too far of a distance to travel. The fourth one proved to be very interesting. It was not a high school, but a college, Caldwell College. It’s a co-ed college but it only has X-C for girls. Examining their website and race results on the web, I learned that over the past few years the team has had little success. There wasn’t going to be a large number of runners coming back either, maybe 5 or 6, not counting the incoming freshman. A plus for the job was that the school was close to home; a minus was that I would have to do some recruiting for future teams. I got as far as the HR department calling me to ask some basic questions and to let me know that I might be called again for an interview. Well, the call never came and I found out that they hired a young runner out of Ramapo College.
The fifth job was for Mount St. Dominic Academy, an all-girls school that shares the same campus with Caldwell College. This had lots of pluses: close to home again, lots of runners (they had over 20 the previous year), and a successful season the previous year. The minus was that it was for an assistant coach. Since I was in my third year of looking for a coaching job, and maybe I could always learn something new, I applied for the position. I got a little farther this time. The head coach called and set up an interview at the school. Two hours before I was to drive over for the interview, he called to postpone the meeting due to a family emergency. He said he would call the next day and set up another meeting. I’m still waiting for his call. Very strange. Their website is not updated regularly so I don’t know what they did regarding the position.
The sixth was for another assistant’s job at another all-girls school—Oak Knoll Academy. They had about 10 runners the previous year and were a middle-of-the-pack team in most races. I did get an interview this time and found out that five others were also vying for the spot. No need to go into any specifics—I didn’t get this one either.
And finally the new Athletic Director (the fifth in the last three years) at N-City called me to ask about myself and the two seasons I have coached there. We met today and talked about what has been going on there in terms of X-C. He wants to see if there is enough interest for Cross Country to move ahead and have another season there. He will be meeting the students on 9/1 and 9/2 and then get back to me on Friday 9/3.
On the personal side, this has been a very good summer for running. Unlike past summers, I have been running a lot and without pain. No pulled muscles. No bursitis. Nothing. I do about 25 miles a week and can hope this will keep up once school starts. I run almost every day—I had a streak of 30 straight days early in the summer and currently am on a 12 day streak. I entered a 5K race on July 4th when I was just starting to get back into running shape and had a decent time. I will be running in a second race on Labor Day in a nearby town’s 5K.
