Mid-October Update

My third season at N-City is more than half over and nothing has changed from the previous two years. The runners are still out of shape, they come to practice sporadically, and the amount of time we have to practice isn't enough to form any kind of respectable team. The AD and myself scheduled 3 races for the year. The first is an Invitational meet this Saturday in Morris County for the boys on the team. But I found out from the meet director that the N-City AD did not send in the entry form nor the fee. Just as well. Our runners would have been embarrassed in the meet. The second meet is on October 22 for the girls against another N-City school (all girls). One of our girls quit due to poor grades so racing with only four runners will definitely shift any advantage to the opponent. And while this school is not a great team, I've been monitoring their results in their weekly races, and we will have our hands full with them. The third and final race (if everyone is in shape by then) is the CTC Championships on November 6. This is the Catholic Track Conference meet held at W-Park in E-City. This is the same race that one of our runners entered back in year 1. He's about the only one who is dying to get back there and have a good race.

So again, nothing has changed at N-City. I'm just baby-sitting a few runners who show up once in awhile. And getting paid less this year than the past two years. So I have slowly realized that I can't have a decent X-C team at N-City. And I have found out in the past three years that nothing will probably happen at E-City either. My three failed attempts to land a position at other schools this past summer (because of my age?) seems to seal my fate. I finally realized that my dream of coaching a decent X-C team was never going to come true.

So I decided to make some changes. I decided that the E-City school, especially the girls, needed another sport. Preferably in the fall since I'm busy in the winter and spring with other sports. In the fall, there are five major female sports in NJ. One is X-C. Another is Tennis, and E-City already has a team. Field hockey and soccer are two others but equipment and field locations present real obstacles. The fifth is volleyball. Practices and games would take place in our gym. And it seemed like the easiest of the three sports that I could learn quickly.

So I wrote up a proposal for the E-City AD and Principal. The principal liked the idea because we need to attract more females to the school. The AD said he would think about it since it would mean more work for him (he's not an energetic AD). So I left both meetings with the plan to forever give up X-C and to try volleyball in the fall of 2011.

Enter Mr. Murphy. The man who wrote the famous Law. That very same night, just eight hours after my volleyball proposal meetings, I'm at the Freshman Parents Orientation Meeting at the school. Two females who were in attendance with their parents came up to me and wanted to know why we don't have a Cross Country team. Yes, unbelievable. Murphy works in such strange and mysterious ways. Well, I was cautious and knew that fool me three times I'm an idiot. Fool me a fourth time, and I'm a bigger idiot. But they seemed so sincere and passionate. I told them that if they could get a list of girls who were SERIOUS about running next year, and give it to me by Columbus Day, I would think about it.

Well, today they brought me a list. Seven names, five females and two males. Only the five females were definite. The boys were maybes. So I decided my next step would be to have a meeting with the definite females. I may have two other females (two Juniors) who may be interested. But for my next step, I decided to try something new. I would empower these two freshman who seemed passionate about running. I told them it was too early to name captains, but they would be my "leaders". They would need to talk to the other runners and come up with a date when we could have a team meeting. By giving them this responsibility, I'm hoping that they will try to get the others to be as serious about the team as they are.

So hopefully, next week, we'll have a meeting and I'll have a better idea if this is going to happen.

Year 3 - Cautiously excited

N-City called me back last week. There are 11 students who are interested in running. A good sign. Seven boys and four girls. Two of the Seniors were on the team in Year 1 and are very good runners. One junior has been with me both years and is very dedicated. If a couple of the other new male runners step up, the boys team could show something this year. The girls on the team are all new and probably will have an average year. The AD at N-City is trying to get 2 or 3 dual meets with other private schools in the northern NJ area.

That's the exciting part. It has to be cautious because none of the runners ran during the summer and all are out of shape. N-City has an even later dismissal time for the students this year which translates into a shorter practice session each day. And the Seniors will be taking special SAT Prep classes after school and missing more practices than the others on the team.

We had our first practice today and the runners who showed up (not a work day) were all enthusiastic and worked hard.

Stay tuned.

Summer's Over

Today was the last day of the summer vacation, i.e. the last day I could get up early and run in the morning. Tomorrow, classes start at school and running will be taking place in the afternoon or early evening.

Final numbers for the summer:

218.8 total miles

80.5 % of the days were running

Had a streak of 30 consecutive days running at one point during the summer

Current streak - 14 days and 26 out of the last 27

Still no word from N-City on whether or not they will be having a X-C team this fall.

My second race of the year was on Labor Day. I had run Verona before in the early 90s. The course had changed a little bit but there was still a modest hill in the first mile. Nonetheless, I was able to knock about 50 seconds off of the July 4th time, if you concede that the courses are the same (same distance, different contour).

Not a Steeplechase

But an obstacle nonetheless. During my morning run thru Caldwell, it looked like I would not be able to get thru on Bloomfield Avenue. Police cars and firetrucks had the road blocked off and were detouring the traffic. As I got closer I saw that they were in the late stages of putting out a fire that had destroyed the Caldwell Diner. Well, runners can't just detour around obstacles like cars can, so I ran to the opposite side of the street and hoped that the sidewalk would be clear. It was and after passing some firemen who were resting and attending to their equipment, I passed the last police car and went on my merry way.

I had never been in the Caldwell Diner but had always wanted too. Maybe if it gets rebuilt I'll go there for breakfast some day. (Photo courtesy of The Caldwells Patch)

Summer Re-Cap

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 4^th 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.

Season Over

The attendance during the final week of the season surprised me. This week there were 4 runners on Monday, 3 on Tuesday, 1 on Wednesday, and 3 today for the season finale. It was a cold and windy day in the park today, but the three runners all wanted to close out the season with a 3.1 run on the park's X-C course. Most of them had finally gotten up to running 3 miles during practice so they had a chance to beat their personal bests. And they did. All of them. It was a fitting end to an abbreviated five week season at N-City.

Tomorrow is the Sectional Meets for the states public schools. The North Jersey Section 2 meet will take place in W-Park. That will then be followed by the CTC's (the non-public school state championships). This was the race me and the one runner from N-City went to last year. It's a full day of racing and for a X-C junkie, it's heaven.

So this ends another season of X-C blogging. I'll occasionally enter a personal note about my own running, and hopefully a good coaching position will open up somewhere next summer.

Four Down and One to go

Today finished the fourth week of N-City X-C with no one showing up. No one showed up on Wednesday either. This is worse than last year. I feel like I'm stealing their money. Oh, well.

Week 1 - 2.67 runners showed up for each practice.

Week 2 - The highlight of the season - 3.67

Week 3 - 1.75 getting worse

Week 4 - .625

Week 5 - will I be alone next week?

Exposure

Over the past year, the NJSIAA has realigned most of the high school athletic conferences in northern New Jersey. One of the new conferences is the Super Essex Conference which is comprised entirely of schools in the county. Gone are the gamesmeets against schools far away and new rivalries are now in place. The new alignment was met with some criticism as well as with praise. Anyway, the new SEC (Super Essex Conference) has been holding their dual meets at B-B-Park on Tuesdays and Wednesday. Last week, during the first week of training for N-City, the team got to see some races and today was the conference championships. They saw all of the teams in the conference as well as some of the top runners in the state.

Today we had 6 runners show up, 5 boys and 1 girl. Four of the boys showed some decent talent. A couple of them were impressed with the races and the quality of runners that they saw. They wished that we were a lot closer to entering a race. It was a good sign from this team.

The best case scenario would be that for the next 3 1/2 weeks, we get a few more runners and are able to take a nice group of runners to the CTC Championships on November 7.

Week One

This past week was the first week of training for the N-City runners in Year 2. Because of some cancellations, the team met only three times. The original sign-up sheet that was outside of the AD's office produced 50+ names. Nineteen runners of both genders have gone out of their way to get physicals, fill out forms, and turn them into the AD. Of the three days of practice, 4, 0, and 4 runners showed up. Nothing has changed at N-City!!

Of the runners who have shown up, two are veterans from last year. One ran at the CTC Championships in November '08. He is looking forward to going back. Whether we do or not depends on how much practice we get in during the next four weeks.

One Week Later

It has been one week since I was at N-City meeting with 25+ runners and the Athletic Director was handing out physical forms. At that time I told him to call me as soon as he had four runners who had completed and turned in their physicals. So far, no call.

In the meantime while I wait, I have continued to have fall practices with members of the E-City Softball team. More new sophomores have shown up and a couple of them show some minor talent. There are now 21 names on our "40-man roster" and 12 of them are sophomores.

I mentioned that during the summer there were a few X-C jobs posted on the Internet. There was one school, an all-girls one over in nearby C-City, which I presumed had a team but I never saw them entered in the Catholic Schools Championships in November. This same school hosts a softball tournament which we (E-City) have been invited to for the past two years. I took a chance and sent an e-mail to the AD that was listed on their website offering my services if they needed any help with their X-C team. I never heard back from her one way or the other.

Now one of the teachers at E-City asked me to tutor her daughter (in Math) for the upcoming SATs in October. Today was our first session. When we were finished I asked her and her mother what the status was at her school regarding X-C. I found out that the AD has been out for a while due to a pregnancy which is probably why I never heard back. I then asked this student to find out what she could about the team's status and who the current AD is. Once I find that out, I'll send another letter offering my services for next year. It's a good school and I think it would be a nice place to coach X-C.

And finally, I'm still running slow 2 mile workouts (today was 6 days in a row) with an occasional hard run. The pains are still there but they are milder.