Day One

The alarm went off and as I dragged myself out of bed, I realized that THE DAY had finally come. After five years of thinking about it and eight months of actually creating it, the first day of practice for the S M H S Cross Country Team had finally arrived.


As I drove to the school in the early morning I was expecting the worst. The previous May I had a tentative roster of 17 runners along with two female managers who also wanted to work out with the team. 19 members. Not bad for the first year of a team. And so in May I gave them a challenging and somewhat demanding summer program to follow and I would see them in late August.

Now starting a cross country team at an inner city school is not the easiest thing in the world. It's like going to a Bronx high school and starting a golf team. In both programs the students are weary of trying a new sport they are familiar with and also the environment that they live in does not provide a good training facility.

If an inner city student doesn't live near a park it proves difficult and perhaps a little dangerous to go running around their neighborhood by themselves. So I think the demanding summer program along with the lack of good training facilities, not to mention that some kids might not want to train that hard during the summer months, may have led to the surprise that awaited me at the school this morning.

During the past week I've been getting hints that the turnout today would be small. One student had not re-registered with the school and another had told me that he wouldn't be joining the team. Last night I got an e-mail from another student saying he too would be dropping out. Friday night, I got a call from the mother of a runner (and an aunt of another) saying that the two boys would be in Cape May today but would be at practice on Thursday. My two managers had told me that they would definitely be there. So 2 mangers and a possible 12 other runners awaited me at the school.

I arrived at the school and started getting the van ready. A big water jug and the first aid kit were placed in the van. My plan was to go to the park instead of the original plan for a first day run of 6 miles through Roselle. Since it was becoming apparent that no one had done the summer program, I decided to just take the team to the park and have a workout designed to see where everyone was shape wise.

And so I then waited for 9 o'clock to roll around. Finally around 8:50 two sophomores (one is a basketball player) came through the front door. I welcomed them, told them the locker rooms were open if they needed them, and we would meet in the downstairs caf for a pre-practice meeting. And then I waited some more. 9 o'clock came. 9:05. I told the girl in the office to send any late runners to the caf or to the park if we had already left. After the meeting downstairs, the three of us headed out to the van. The two female runners caught us just as we were pulling out of the lot. So the five of us headed over to the park.

We arrived at the park, did some stretching and exercises and then we began our first workout. I had a strong feeling that my runners were not in good running shape. I had already set a small course in the park that was approximately 6/10 mile. I ran with them for the first time and told them that if they got tired to walk and then try to start up again. Sure enough, one of the managers had to stop several times. The other three made it all the way back with me to the end. My bursitis was killing me at that point so I was glad that that was all the running I had planned for the day. We took a slow walk (to let them recover) back to the start and they did it again. This time three of the four had to stop for breaks during the run. The sophomore basketball player (we'll call him "S") made a wrong turn and I saw him slowly jogging to the other side of the park. The other sophomore (we'll call him "A") finally made it the finish line and I congratulated him for beating S. He was ecstatic at the news. Finally S figured out what he had done and he finally came back as well as the two girls.

Another slow walk back to the start and off they went for the third and final run. This time I timed them even though the distance was only a guess on my part. S finished at 4:59, and A finished at 7:26. We then went back to the van for a water break. Then we went over to the track.

I knew I couldn't push them too much on this first day especially since they didn't seem to be in the best running shape. I had decided to do times on the very first day so that they wouldn't view these practices as boring and with the times they would have some way to measure their improvement. A goal to which they could shoot for.

I had the group jog a 400, then walk a 400. Then they repeated that. Then I had them run a timed 400. Not hard, but not a slow jog. I asked them to just kick it up a little higher than a jog. Both S and A came in at the same time (I'm going to have to instill some competitiveness) at 1:33.93. Then back to the van and then to the school.

So the bottom line is that I have two runners and two more coming on Thursday. I just need one more to have the minimum 5. I realize that I may need to do some damage control over any missing runners who gave up and quit because of the demanding summer program. Hopefully if I can do that, then I may have 1 or 2 more on the team.

But somehow in the future I need to get the team to buy into the need for the summer program. At the park today there was a high school (not sure which one) that was training. And they were running laps around the park with little effort. I hope my two guys took notice. And maybe at the end of this season, when the members who will be retuning next year see how well the other teams do in the meets, they will realize the importance of the summer program. Because as long as our runners don't complete their summer running, success will never come to E City.

One other plan that I have for filling out the team is by talking at next week's Freshmen Orientation. I'll give them a sales pitch and hopefully get a few more potential runners.

So that's where we stand now. Tomorrow and Wednesday are "run on your own" days. Whether they will or not, I don't know. But those two days all the students have to come in for their books and uniforms and stuff, so I thought I would put practices off to Thursday.

So I hope whoever is reading this, you enjoyed it. I'll try to keep this up to date more than my other blog. So until next time, so long.