Assistant Coaches – Tomas Palermo, one of the best

SHC Coaches always in sync.

I’ve had plenty of great moments as the head coach of the Sacred Heart Cathedral (SHC) cross country and track & field teams. I’m now in my fourteenth year of being the head coach and my list of successes on the track, in the field, on the race course, and most importantly in the development of young men and women is endless. I am smart enough to know that I owe much of the program’s success to the athletes out there training and competing, and to the assistant coaches.

Assistant coaches work behind the scenes teaching techniques, offering encouraging words, providing motivation, and being a good listener; they make or break a program. I would love to be able to teach every athlete on the team techniques, offer them all encouraging words, provide them all with personalized motivation, and have time to talk to and listen to each athlete one-on-one every day. But there is just one of me and forty-five athletes in cross country and ninety-five athletes in track & field. I can’t be everywhere and I can’t be everything for every athlete everyday. This is where strong assistant coaches are vital.

I’ve been fortunate to surround myself with good assistants. My main criteria when looking at potential assistant coaches is passion for the sport, patience, and a sense of how the high school athletic experience fits into the life of a high school student. I’m not looking for tons of technical training experience. It’s nice if they know the sport, but if not I can teach it to them. First they have to be passionate about the sport. Their enthusiasm will rub off on the kids. Also, with passion comes a willingness to learn coaching and training techniques. Patience is a virtue, and it certainly is necessary when working with high school kids. You have to be willing to sacrifice your time for the kids. You have to be able to cajole them into doing things. You have to not judge the book by its cover, but instead take the time to find the hidden gem inside each of the kids. High school athletics is a co-curricular experience. There are rules that need to be enforced, and the goal is to train hard and to be as successful as possible. But this needs to fit into the framework of the activity being only a high school sport, not life and death. Coaches are educators and the top priority is to teach life lessons. Kids won’t remember in ten years what place they came in at the league finals but they’ll remember the bus ride to the meet with their friends. That’s how it works and there’s nothing wrong with that. I want assistant coaches who can make sure the athlete is challenged and having fun at the same time. If the kids get both, then being on the SHC cross country or track & field team will be one of the highlights of their high school days.

Coach Tomas in his first season in 2004.

On Monday, January 30, the 2012 track & field season will officially begin. It will be the first season since 2004 that Tomas Palermo isn’t on my SHC coaching staff. I first recruited Tomas to coach with me in 2004. He ran with the adult track workout group that I coach and he clearly possessed the traits described above that I look for in an assistant coach. He didn’t have previous coaching experience but that didn’t matter to me. The fact that he ran at St. Francis High School, one of our league rivals, counted neither for him or against him. For the last fifteen seasons, eight in cross country and seven in track & field, Tomas has been there. We’ve celebrated school records, Central Coast Section (CCS) and State Meet qualifiers, as well as kids just developing into fine young men and women. We’ve mulled over meet line-ups, training plans, and disciplinary issues. What’s best for the program? What’s best for the kid in the big picture?

Over the years Tomas has developed great coaching skills. His familiarity with my style allows him to echo my thoughts to kids and tweak workouts as necessary. He’s been a mentor for numerous SHC kids. Ironically, seven girls from Tomas’ first cross country season in 2004 have been or are going to come back and be an assistant coach at SHC. At meets he meticulously records splits with the exacting detail that I like (first leg of the 4X4 splits at the 800 start line and the rest of the legs are split at the finish line). At practice he helps come up with the assistant coach assignments so that all the assistants get to interact with different kids and still perform the necessary assigned training duties. He has an uncanny sense of when something memorable is about to take place and he grabs the camera to photograph the moment.

His relationships with the kids are, however, what make him special. He can talk Giants baseball during a long run with Nate W., sit in the stands with Izzy A. before practice, start a pull-up competition with Geoffrey Y. and Dominic R., discuss music with James M. and Bryan F., video games with Daniel K., and writing and movies with Sophie C-B. “DJ Tomas,” “Tommy,” and “Coach T” are just some of his nicknames, and we coaches all know that getting a nickname from the kids is basically their stamp of approval. In our end of season evaluations kids always reference the good advice and inspiration that he provides. One student thanked him for staying with him for a long run, both to help him not get lost and also for motivating him to run the whole way. Another evaluation red, “Coach Tomas is the bomb diggity” (Urban Dictionary translation: totally the awesomest, no lie).

I will always remember Tomas’s first season in 2004. It had been an emotional season. In September the top returning girl, Melanie S. broke her leg on a freak fall at the end of practice. The girls were devastated and it took a lot of energy to keep them from falling apart emotionally. Our chances of the girls team qualifying for State Meet went down significantly without Melanie S. At the same time we had a good young boys team but no one that was expected to make it to State. That was the team dynamic as we headed to Toro Park in Salinas for the CCS Championships. Melanie S. came with us and gave a great speech the night before the race. As a first year coach, Tomas came to me the morning of the race and commented that the kids were all going to really “leave it all out there” and we coaches should be ready at the finish line to help carry some of them through the finish chute. Tomas couldn’t have been more right. He read the mood of the team and the look in their eyes and thus we were ready with extra water and staff at the finish line. “Leaving it all out there” is now pretty much a hallmark of the SHC teams. I often associate the beginning of this tradition to that day back in 2004 and Tomas’ first CCS meet as a coach.    

At the 2004 CCS Championships - we left it all out there on this day!

It’s been a great run of eight years with Tomas as a SHC assistant coach. I’m sure he’ll still come around and cheer on the team because not only is he passionate about the sport, he’s passionate about seeing the SHC teams compete. Life takes many turns and I suspect someday he may wear the SHC coach hat again because his heart is definitely in education. But for now, I must face the 2012 season without my trusted friend and fellow coach. Tomas, that evaluation had it right, you are the bomb diggity!

Coach Tomas is the bomb diggity!

The Twelve Days of Christmas

I’ve seen various “12 Days of Christmas” lists so I thought I would put together my own. Re-capping my year in running and coaching, I give you They Chanman’s 12 Days of Christmas:

 

12 – Twelve dogs (and two Eskimos) in a Bay to Breakers Pamapede Iditarod centipede.

11 – Eleven (and a half) miles, the least number of miles I ran every week this year.

10 – Ten (and a half) miles from Wunderlich to Huddardt and back. I finally made it all the way to both ends. This was one of many long trail runs this summer that got me into great shape.

9 – Ninth row at the finish line, our seats at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu.

8 – Eighth master runner at the Zippy 5K, a race where I achieved a major goal of mine, breaking 17 minutes for a 5K as a master.

 

Racing at the 2011 Zippy 5K

7 – Seven events at CCS Finals, in which the Irish Track & Field team had an individual qualify. We had someone place in the top five in all seven events.

6 – Six Irish athletes qualified and competed at the State Track & Field meet. First time we’ve had someone qualify since 2003.

5 – Five dollars, the new price for Thursday night track workouts. After seventeen years at the original $4 price, I raised my rates effective July 1, 2011.

4 – Fourth place overall in the Pacific Association Grand Prix (Short) Road Series in the masters division.

3 – Three cherry picker race first place overall finishes: Run For Recess 5K, July Fourth Rocket Run, Miles for Migraine 10K.

2 – Two years in a row the Irish qualified both the boys and girls teams for the State Cross Country Meet.

1 – One hundredth of a second, the amount of time by which Shannon Rowbury beat the fourth place woman in the 1500 meters at the USA Championships to qualify for the World Championships in Daegu.  

Shannon Rowbury battles Christin Wurth-Thomas at the finish of the women's 1500 meters at the 2011 USA Championships

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. And to all, Happy Running!

Confidence

The shirt says it all. It's up to the coach to "Believe" and then the team will have Confidence.

In cross country running, as in all sports, confidence is a key factor to success. This has been readily evident this past season coaching the Sacred Heart Cathedral (SHC) cross country team.

In 2010, both the boys and girls teams qualified for the state meet. Leading up to the meet we were quite nervous. It had been nine years since the girls last qualified and five years since the boys last qualified. Never in school history had both teams qualified the same year. After so many near-misses I almost expected something to derail our dream of both teams qualifying. Every time I thought about the meet, my mind would come up with possible obstacles to our goal. When both teams did in fact qualify, it felt like a dream had come true.

This year, the team really believed that both teams would qualify for state. There was a lot less hoping it would happen and a lot more confidence that it would happen. “Calm and confident” was our mantra the week of the qualifying race. The 2010 team’s accomplishment was monumental because it proved to us that it could happen. This year every time I thought about the meet, I came back to the same conclusion, despite the strong competition, we would qualify. Negative thinking did not enter my mind the same way it had last year.

Breaking through the barrier last year made this year a whole lot easier in qualifying for state. Last year there was doubt in our minds whether or not we could qualify (“oh, qualifying both teams for state, that’s something that happens for other schools”). This year there was no doubt in our minds that it could be done and we had confidence in ourselves that we would do it. Success can become habitual and when one does something habitually, they develop confidence it will keep happening.

Confidence is an essential key to success, especially in high school cross country. As the coach, I feel it is my job to instill confidence in the runners. It starts with giving the team good training. Knowing that one has run enough miles, done enough hill workouts, run the proper combination of tempo runs and intervals, and done enough drills, striders, and strength exercises gives the runners confidence that they are physically prepared for the challenges of championship races. It’s the coach’s job to structure the training and to remind the athletes of all the good work they’ve put in.

It’s also important to have the right competition schedule leading up to the championship meets. You want challenging meets that push the runners but also some lower key meets where your athletes do real well to boost everyone’s ego a little bit. Having enough recovery time between meets towards the end of the season is also key because you want the runners to feel sharp and that they are “peaking,” not falling apart as the season comes to an end.

I add to the athletes’ confidence by giving them the sense that they are well prepared mentally. Leading up to championship races, we study the course, simulate race conditions and scenarios at practice, study race splits, and review race plans. I believe that when the SHC runners toe the starting line, they feel an extra boost of confidence because they know I have studied every tactical detail to give us the best possible chance for success during the race.

Being confident does not mean thinking the race will be easy. Confident runners know that the race, just like always, will be challenging and that there will be difficult moments, especially late in the race. The confident runner is confident that when they reach this point of the race, they will summon the courage to run through the discomfort in pursuit of their goal. I think this is what separates the good from the great runners. When I watch the less experienced SHC runners race, I never know what’s going to happen over the last mile. I hope they can push through and keep competing but I’m not sure. When I watch our varsity race, there is no doubt what’s going to happen in the last mile – they’re going to be fearless!

This past season I went to great lengths to point out that our team’s success did not require anyone to run out of the ordinary. If everyone ran like they had before, we would make it to state. All season long we had run hard against tough competition and each time we had done fine. There was no reason to expect anything different at the Central Coast Section (CCS) Championships, as long as everyone approached this race like they had the previous ones.

Standing at the starting line of a championship meet like CCS can be nerve wracking. As a coach, you can’t make that element go away. What I can do is remind the runners to think about things they can control. They can’t control how fast their opponents run. They can’t guarantee a particular time or a particular place. Those elements are what tend to make you nervous at the starting line. Instead, I get the team to focus on things they can control – which primarily is their effort. I told them, “You’ve done this before. It’s no different. The gun goes off, you start running. You start breathing harder. You hear cheering. You start to get tired. You push through. You sprint to the finish line. You know the drill. It’s the same formula you’ve done many times this season already. CCS is no different.”

Confidence. It can make all the difference in a race.

How I Became A Coach

One of my first meets as a head coach, the 1998 Lowell Invitational

The theme for the academic year at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory (SHCP) is “Connect.” At the opening day meeting Principal Gary Cannon asked us to think about how we came to work in education and to be a member of the faculty or staff at the school and to share their story with colleagues as way for us co-workers to “connect” with one another.

It didn’t take much thinking for me to figure out my story.

Me during my podiatry days.

After graduating from UCLA I enrolled in podiatry school. My plan was to be a doctor of podiatric medicine and specialize in sports medicine. In 1996, during my third year of the four year program, I realized that podiatry wasn’t for me. I found myself studying the same material over and over for board exams and interviews. I just couldn’t seem to commit the information to memory. It made for some stressful and un-enjoyable times. I noticed that some of my podiatry colleagues seemed to have no trouble remembering the information for exams and interviews. One night, I thought to myself, “If tomorrow’s interview was about coaching running, I wouldn’t have to stay up late to study because I just know that stuff.” That was my enlightenment moment.

My podiatry classmates felt the same way about podiatry that I felt about coaching. They were meant to be podiatrists. I was not. I was meant to be a coach.

I finished my four years of podiatry school and did a one-year residency, but after my enlightenment things were different. I was quite certain that I wasn’t going to pursue a career in the podiatry field. I finished school to get my degree (Yes, that’s Dr. Coach Chan to you) and completed a residency just in case I had a change of heart later on. During that time, however, I was looking into ways to have a career that included coaching.

Right after my residency ended, I began a master’s program in Sports Management at the University of San Francisco (USF). I wasn’t sure where this would lead but it seemed promising. The sports management program was a two year program with one nightly class a week. Since I had no job and nothing else going on, I decided to condense this down to one year – so I took two classes a week. In addition to the classes and the associated work load, I also started an internship with Special Olympics Northern California (SONC). Three days a week I drove out to Pleasant Hill to volunteer at SONC as the sports program intern. My job was to assist with the 1998 SONC Fall Classic, a multi-sport competition in Sacramento. This internship was required to earn my master’s degree but it was also an opportunity to see if I liked running competitions from the management side of things.

That same summer that I began the master’s program and the SONC internship, my mom saw an advertisement in the San Francisco Independent that said Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory was looking for a head cross country coach. I had wanted to be a head high school cross country coach since high school so I applied. I interviewed with Ms. Jo Ann Momono and gave her my resume. Before I even got home I got a call from one of my references at UCLA; Ms. Momono had already called to check my references. The next day I got a call and was invited to be the SHCP head cross country coach. A few months later I accepted the additional position of head track & field coach at SHCP.

Working for Special Olympics.

At the same time my internship with SONC was taking off. Kimberly Kellett and Roger Slingerman were giving me more and more responsibilities. At first I was only supposed to be an intern for the Fall Classic in November. But I stayed on after that to help prepare for the next year’s Special Olympics World Games in North Carolina. Before I knew it was getting a small stipend from SONC and was invited to be part of the SONC delegation to the World Games in the summer of 1999.

At the start of the summer of 1998, I had very little on my plate. For the first time in five years I had no podiatry obligations. I also had no job. But 1998-99 turned into the busiest academic year of my life. I spent two nights a week at class at USF. Three days a week I worked at SONC. Plus I had daily head coaching responsibilities at SHC. By the time the summer of 1999 rolled around, I had completed my master’s degree in sports management, gone to North Carolina for the Special Olympics World Games, been offered a full-time job with SONC as the Sports Manager for the San Francisco program, and coached a then freshman named Shannon Rowbury, who would go on to some great achievements in the sport of running.

It just goes to show that you never know where life will take you. I spent five years working for SONC. During those five years I continued as the SHCP head coach, juggling the two jobs as best I could. It wasn’t easy being an off-campus coach but I loved both jobs even thought it was quite hectic at times.

In the summer of 2003 there were some changes at SONC and I was not going to be able to continue to work there and coach at SHC. The decision was really quite easy. I was not going to give up coaching. I left the job at SONC with the idea of coaching one more season while looking for a job that would allow me to continue to coach. There were no guarantees I would find such a job but coaching meant enough to me that I was going to give this a try.

That same summer of 2003, SHCP was about to open the Sister Teresa Piro, DC Student Life Center and they were looking for a Facilities Coordinator. I interviewed for that job and was hired. Due to some fortuitous timing, I never had any interruption in medical insurance. I never really even had time to go looking for another job. All I had to deal with was a two week summer vacation between the end of one job and the start of the other.

I started as a full-time staff member the first week of September 2003, eight years ago this week. I am now embarking on my fourteenth year as the head cross country coach, my ninth as an on-campus coach.

Life may have a change or surprise or two left for me. Maybe another Olympic caliber athlete will come my way? Maybe another job change? Who knows? But what I do know is that I love coaching runners. The sports of cross country and track & field have been good to me. They’ve opened doors to opportunities to meet and interact with wonderful people – athletes, assistant coaches, fellow coaches, and opposing runners. Coaching high school runners is especially rewarding because they are young and impressionable. It’s a privilege to teach life lessons and my passion for the sport to the next generation of runners.

One of my favorite things about coaching - talking to the team.

The stages of developing a high school cross country program, Part 3

 

Coach Andy Chan and the Sacred Heart Cathedral Team

 

Part 3 – This is part three of a three part series on the stages of developing a high school cross country program.

Just after our meeting when I told the boys my timeline of goals

In hindsight, I now believe that the SHCP team reached the midpoint of building a cross country program in the summer of 2004. We had a lot of frosh-soph runners in the 2004 track season and a big core group of them were from a talented freshmen class of boys. We lined up twenty boys in the mile in our dual meet against St. Ignatius just to show off our strong and large group. After that race I sat the boys down on the grass and told them my timeline of goals: 2004-make it to CCS (the section championship meet), 2005-contend at CCS, 2006-make it to State Meet. Making it to the State Meet was my realistic but big goal that would have seemed impossible to fathom back in my first years. It had been four years since SHC had qualified a boys team to CCS. Qualifying for CCS could have been seen as a big goal. I was talking about the State Meet. This talented freshmen group would be seniors in 2006 and I wanted to put the goal out there early.

We ended the track season with many of our frosh-soph runners breaking five minutes in the mile. In fact, I wrote a story about the significance of this for the SHCP website in August 2004. The 2004 season went better than expected and not only did we qualify for CCS, we were contenders, coming in sixth. We had achieved the 2005 goal a year early. The question became, could we achieve the 2006 State Meet goal in 2005? I was unrelenting in my desire for the boys to strive for this seemingly impossible goal. When we qualified for the State Meet in 2005 I was beside myself with pride. The SHCP team had moved past the midpoint stage of development into the final phase – we were not just a cross country team, but a cross country program.

The same things that are important in the beginning and middle stages are still important at the end. The kids still need to have fun and there needs to be sound training principles in place. But now that SHCP is in this final phase I don’t have to go out of my way to make it fun or make sure we are following sound training principles. It’s pretty natural and normal for us to have all that; I just need to not forget to schedule non-running social events for the team, to make practice both challenging and interesting, and to find ways to recognize all the kids for their hard efforts!

A hallmark of the final phase is consistency. Both our boys and girls teams of the past few years have been very consistent. The varsity, the junior varsity, and the frosh-soph are competitive in league competition and the varsity usually places in the top six at CCS. All of this seems to happen regardless of the talent pool. Sure, some years will be better than others, but a hallmark of a program in this final stage is the ability to be consistently competitive year in and year out.

This past fall I realized that I was in a really good place with the program. We were training at a high level and as we prepared for the final championship meets I had very few things that I wanted to tweak from our usual training. We started having the boys and girls warm-up separately and without the coaches being present because that’s what they did on race day. We also had the kids practice running the last 1000 meters of the race. We tried to simulate everything – making them tired like they would feel in the race, matching the terrain and elevation change, and even having the kids run alone because often they may not have a teammate nearby to help push through the pain during a race. After we qualified for the State Meet we started as many practices as we could at 8:30 A.M. because that’s what time the first race at the State Meet would be, and I wanted them to get their bodies used to working hard in the morning.

I absolutely love coaching cross country. I think Anna, Steve, Jimi, Paul, Tomas, and Mark would tell you the same thing. Steve may have described it best when he said, “My guys give me their trust and 100% effort day in and day out. This in turn, gives me my drive to provide a program that is fun and challenging. There is nothing like watching your athletes toe the line, nervously waiting for the gun to go off. All the training, speeches and preparation come down to the next 16 minutes. And it is those 16 minutes of sprinting around a cross country course yelling encouragement and instructions to my team, when I know I love coaching.”

The SHC Coaching Staff

The stages of developing a high school cross country program, Part 1

Coach Anna Kurtz and the Bay School Team

Part 1 – This is part one of a three part series on the stages of developing a high school cross country program.

There are a number of Pamakid Runners who are coaches. Anna Kurtz is the head coach at Bay School in San Francisco. Anna is assisted by Pamakids, Jimi Smith and Paul Zager. Steve Holcombe is the head coach at San Leandro High School. I am the head coach at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory (SHCP), assisted by Pamakids, Tomas Palermo and Mark Hermano.

As I reflected back on the recently completed fall 2010 high school cross country season, I noticed that all three teams are in different stages of development. As a first year coach, Anna was just starting to put her team in place. Steve, in his fifth year, after a few years of building, has his team in the middle stage of development. Me, in my thirteenth year, realized that for the last few years, I have had my team in the final stage. That doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement. It just means that my program is in place, something I was striving for since my first year and a place I hope to keep us for many many years.

When I got the job as head coach at SHCP in the summer of 1998, I inherited a fairly decent girls’ team and a pretty mediocre boys’ team. I had 28 returning runners from the previous year. This group was not used to running everyday. They weren’t even used to the idea of coming to practice everyday. I had work to do. I was lucky to get an incoming freshmen group of seventeen that included two future star varsity girls and a pack of pretty talented and hard working boys. There were definitely runners to start building the team around. I remember Neil McDonagh, the top runner from our rival school St. Ignatius, talking to me at a meet. He prophetically told me that I had some good young runners who had potential, and that I also had some lazy veterans who didn’t work hard. He advised me to keep doing what I was doing. Eventually the lazy ones would “buy in” or quit and I would be left with a solid team. 

I was helped that first year by my assistant coach, Nydia Rivera, who ran at Lowell High School when I was an assistant coach there. Nydia and I were able to bring many of the things that made us successful at Lowell to SHCP. It didn’t take much to make the team faster; any form of structured training would be an improvement. My main goals for that first team were to make the kids like the competition, challenges, and social nature of cross country. I wanted them to make coming to practice and doing challenging workouts part of their normal routine. Let’s face it, on a high school campus the cross country team isn’t typically seen as very cool. I needed to create intrinsic rewards so that the kids would want to be part of the cross country team family. I made sure to make it fun, hoping that many would come back the next year. One thing that is always fun for kids is doing well and feeling that they belong. I strategically scheduled some low-key meets that gave us opportunities to have team success. I worked hard to welcome everyone and to instill pride in being part of the Irish cross country team.

Anna interviewed for an assistant coach position at the Bay School in July 2010. When the head coach quit, all of a sudden Anna was a head coach!

The Bay School had seventeen runners, five girls and twelve boys. Only six runners were returning members of the cross country team. Four had never run competitively before. One sophomore boy started as a complete novice. “He was the only kid to show up for the first week of the pre-season, and he never missed a single practice after that,” said Anna, “On that first day, I asked him whether he had done any running before, and he asked ‘does running for the bus count?’”

A big part of laying the foundation for a new cross country program is often changing the existing culture and expectations. At Bay School, before Anna, things were pretty casual: practice was four days a week and the team raced at league meets only (no weekend invitationals). The team mentality was that the team was not good enough to run in varsity races. Anna needed to come in with a vision of what makes a successful program. “I also really encouraged and relied on parental involvement to get a culture going. With a small team and a non-spectator sport, having parents come to the meets and bring food for afterwards helped make the meets more of an event.”

“Since our team was so new, both to running and to each other, a big part of the season was helping them figure out how to be a team – how to stretch together, train together, race together, and cheer together,” said Anna, “All of it was new to them. Just how new it was came home to me at our first track workout at Kezar Stadium. To me, lining up to do intervals is automatic – you go to the line; if there isn’t a clear line to toe, you judge where to be based on the guy next to you; everyone bunches together in a few lanes, and if you’re going to be running in the back, you start in the back. Each of my small group of runners took their own lane. Convincing them that they could bunch up in lanes two and three actually took some work. Teaching things like this, that I take for granted, took more time than I anticipated.”

“Their daily stretching routine served as a good window both for how they were developing as athletes and socially as a team,” said Anna, “For the first week or so, I led the stretches. Then, I asked for volunteers to lead stretches. After a few weeks, and once we had captains, they took over.”

From humble beginnings, Anna began the process of building up Bay School’s team. Her successes include having a runner place in three invitationals (frosh or frosh-soph races) and taking a boys team of five (three freshmen, a sophomore, and a junior) to the North Coast Section (NCS) Championship meet where they placed fifteenth out of twenty teams.

The Bay School coaches: Jimi Smith, Paul Zager, and Anna Kurtz

Award Presentations

Presenting Awards at the Pamakid Gala

One of my duties as the head coach at Sacred Heart Cathedral and as the President of the Pamakid Runners, is to present awards at year-end type celebrations. This is something I really look forward to every year. I love trying to put into words a memorable message so that not only is the recipient receiving a trophy, medal, plaque, or varsity letter but they are also hearing heartfelt words that they will remember forever.

One reason this is so important to me is that I still remember winning awards in high school and going home and replaying the introductory words from Coach Wilson in my head over and over. It sure made me feel good. That’s why, even though it’s a lot of work, I always spend a lot of time writing my award presentation speeches. Over the years I’ve found that it gets deathly quiet when I present awards as everyone in the room is listening intently on what I am saying…all the more reason to get it right.

In my opening comments, I always try to paint a picture for the audience about what the atmosphere was like on the team during the season. My goals are to both get the audience to realize how important the sport is to us on the team and to also praise the team for a job well done. This is usually done by re-counting a story about something that happened during the season that was praiseworthy.

A proper award presentation includes many elements. I like to state the facts using numbers (time, place) so that people understand what a great accomplishment this person has achieved. To do this I often will include how many people were in the race (“they were fifth out of eighty total runners”) or how big a personal record (PR) it was (“their time was 16:02, which was a :39 PR”). I also try to insert some sort of humor into the speech. I think this keeps the speech interesting and while the audience laughs, I can take a breath. Finally, I like to tell some story about the award recipient that most people probably don’t know. It usually tells more about the award winner’s character than their running achievement. This is often the most emotional part of the speech. It lets the person know that they are more than just a number and a stat. They are a person that has touched my life as an athlete and this is my way of giving thanks.

Last week was award presentation week. The SHC Cross Country Awards banquet was on Wednesday and the Pamakid Runners Holiday Gala was on Friday. I found myself busy at the computer typing up scripts all week and then I found myself at the podium, speaking into the microphone presenting awards.

What follows are snippets of some of my favorite lines of last week.

On having everyone attend WCAL Finals, with no one cutting for the SF Giants Parade

A measure of how important cross country ranks to the members of this team was exemplified when every single person came to WCAL Finals even though we had a special schedule at school so students could attend the SF Giants Parade. I heard stories from almost every other WCAL team about how they were missing at least one person because of the parade. But the team that was less than a mile from the action, our team, had everyone in attendance at their first priority of the day – the WCAL Finals.

The Varsity Boys at CCS

At CCS the Varsity Boys were in a battle with North Monterey County (NMC) for the last spot to go to the State Meet. Our mantra was to have six solid races and one hero. No one was supposed to try to be a hero in the first mile. Everyone was supposed to try to be a hero in the last mile. NMC was ahead of us at the mile mark, but just as we had planned, we worked the middle and came away with the coveted State Meet qualifying spot.

On the historic event of both teams qualifying for the State Meet

It was the dream scenario – both teams to State Meet! The quote of the week was, “You didn’t have to make history. On Saturday, history found you.”

On the Senior Class

These seniors have shown that you can enjoy and contribute to this program regardless of your varsity status. Only two of these seniors have extensive varsity experience. The rest have run mostly Frosh/Soph (F/S) and Junior Varsity (JV) races during their time at SHC. But they have brought a varsity mentality to our JV and F/S teams – they take their training and their racing seriously and they bring positive energy to the team. I love that, and I thank them for that. Because on this team, you don’t earn respect based on how fast you are. You earn respect based on how hard you work. We have eight hard working seniors.

The Most Dedicated to the Team Award

I’ve been impressed with how he welcomes newcomers to the team and how he mentors teammates to help them improve – whether it’s helping with race plans, pushing people to run fast striders, or just general motivating. Honestly, he has all the makings of a great coach, so maybe someday he’ll come back and be on my coaching staff. I don’t think you could ask for a better teammate; he’s someone who goes out of his way to help you and as the saying goes, “would give you the shirt off his back.”

The Most Inspirational Award

At State I kept cheering her on, reminding her there was only a mile left in her high school cross country career, and then 1200 meters left, and then 400 left.  Sometimes an inspirational athlete comes along whose story will not only highlight a season but whose story will live on in team history. Life is about being tough and always battling to the end. When you do that, sometimes you surprise yourself with what you can achieve. Realistically she should have run 22:40 at State. An ambitious goal was 22-flat. Thanks for saving a 21:12 for your last race, Juliana.

Recounting the Pamakid Runners club history:

That club would be named PaMaKids and the mascot would be a bird named Soonar, part eagle and part sea gull, that would fly overhead to protect the children during a run.

A toast to the people who brought us together:

In fact, I think it’s appropriate to take a moment and think of more people that are responsible for who you are and how you ended up a Pamakid Runner. Your parents, your loved ones, the hundreds of Pamakids who have kept the club vibrant for 40 years, maybe the coach that got you started in running, or the friend who told you that you looked good in green and did they have a club for you. To all those people, who helped bring all of us to be together in this room tonight, I say CHEERS!

Pamakids Online Contributor of the Year:

As Pamakids celebrates its fortieth year, like many middle-aged adults reaching their fortieth, it was time to change with the times. This crazy thing they call the internet looks like it’s going to be here to stay. And so as to not miss the boat and seem like old foggies, the Pamakids needed to update our web presence. That’s where this guy came in…

Ah, the Google document and Facebook! How did the club function without them?! Or better yet, how could the club function without the human element behind the Google documents and Facebook.

A special award this year for Online Contributor of the Year – Anders Ryerson.

The introductory comments for Pamakid of the Year

My wife likes to say I can’t keep a secret. Well, this time, I did…but it wasn’t easy. If this introductory speech for the 2010 Pamakid of the Year doesn’t sound as eloquent as usual…if the witty remarks aren’t as plentiful…if the jokes aren’t as funny…if it’s a little long winded…well, my usual editor was unavailable to edit this particular speech.

Pamakid of the Year, helping with the mascot costume:

She spent the weekend before the XC Championships helping Yvonne and her sister with the Soonar mascot costume that made its debut at the XC Champs. If you didn’t hear, at the XC Champs, the men came in tenth, the women came in seventh, and the mascot came in first!

Ain’t this the truth:

And maybe why Pamakids thanks her the most: she is the sounding board for all ideas that come from the Pamakid President and Coach. It usually goes like this:

Andy: “I was thinking.” Malinda: “Don’t do that.”

Some ideas are good. Some ideas are not so good. Some ideas come to fruition. Others die a quick death, seconds after they are suggested. But believe me, ALL ideas…ALL ideas are verbalized at our house.

Pamakid of the Year

And we haven’t even talked about her running yet. A steady training schedule that included two days swimming, one track workout, one HOHD run, and either a race or long run on the weekend, got her into the best running shape of her life. Plus, I think she really figured out how to race this year – to have a plan, follow-it, and push through the pain in the late stages of the race.

• While most of us are happy with age-graded PR’s, she is setting both age-graded PR’s and overall PR’s.
• PR’s fell in the road mile (6:16) and just last week in the 5K (20:27)
• She ran her fastest half marathon in 10 years.
• She was the only Pamakid woman to run at all 10 cross country races.
• Included in that was a 4:32 PR at Shoreline and her first sub-30 on the traditional GG Park cross country course.

 Yes, what a year 2010 has been.

I cleared some space on the mantle for this one, honey. I give you the 2010 Pamakid of the Year – Malinda Walker.

 

The Dream Goal

The dream goal for Sacred Heart Cathedral’s (SHC) cross country team has always been to qualify both the boys’ and the girls’ teams to the California State Meet in the same year. Given some of the circumstances this was a tall task:

-          In the twelve seasons that I have been the head coach I have only had one boys’ team qualify (2005).

-          I have qualified three girls’ teams, but the last time was in 2001 and all three qualifying teams had a future Olympian leading the way.

-          Three of the four state meet teams qualified in Division IV, which traditionally has easier competition than Division III, the division that we currently compete in.

-          I wouldn’t say that we are cursed, but the list of state meet near-misses had reached (San Francisco) Giant proportions. The top three teams at the section meet qualify for the state meet. We finished fourth (one place away) in six of the last eight years (the other two years we were fifth). We have missed state meet by as little as 24 points, 23 points, 11 points, 10 points, and 1 point.

Despite the long odds, my dream goal has remained the same: to someday qualify both teams to the State Meet in the same year.

The 2010 cross country season started off like so many before, with the hope that this would be the year. The first day of summer conditioning was 153 days before the Central Coast Section (CCS) Championships. We had 153 days to be ready for a run at the dream.

Like all teams we had our share of good races and bad races, and good workouts and not so good workouts along the way. We battled injuries, illnesses, and assorted other inconveniences that threatened to derail our dream goal. Our coaching staff worked tirelessly, teaching the nuances of the sport, motivating the athletes at practice, trying to be inspiring as well as understanding and forgiving.

As the CCS Championships approached, nervousness and excitement started to build. Assistant coach Rachel Giovannetti, who ran on three CCS teams that missed state meet, and I independently studied the statistics and made our projections for the meet. The top three teams at CCS would advance to the State Meet. We both projected our girls’ team to be a solid second place with a decent 20-30 point margin for error. We both projected our boys’ team to be pretty much in a dead heat with North Monterey County (NMC). We had a front runner in Jarrett Moore but NMC could pack five runners in around our second and third runner. It would be very very close.

I felt very good about our team’s chances. As a coach all you can do is prepare the team, get them to the starting line, and let them race. If you get them to the starting line and they have a chance to make it to state, then you’ve done a good job. Well, I’ve done a good job plenty of times. This year I wanted to do a great job! We added a couple twists to our workouts during the final week. I had the boys and girls simulate the small pre-race details. For one of our final hard interval runs I had the kids practice for the conditions at the end of the race.

I made two conscious decisions regarding my coaching  approach for the week leading up to CCS. Unlike past years, I was a lot less sentimental. I wanted the week to seem almost like any other week. I also decided to outwardly demonstrate my confidence that both teams would qualify. I picked my words and said things like “when we qualify” and “at practice next week” to subtly hint that I expected both teams to qualify. At our team dinner the Friday before the race, completely out of character, I told the team we had one more thing to practice. “When both teams qualify for state tomorrow, I think an appropriate celebration would be for you guys to pick me up and put me on your shoulders.” The kids looked at me rather dumbfounded. They weren’t sure what to do. Finally Jarrett picked me up and put me on his shoulders. Not exactly what I had in mind, but my point was made.

I was believing it myself. I stayed up late on Friday night to make a video that would commemorate both teams qualifying for State Meet. I burned it onto a DVD and placed it in my meet day backpack. This DVD would only see a DVD player if both teams qualified. I sure was hoping to get to show my video the next day.

I feel like we had the perfect race plan. The CCS Championships are held at Toro Park in Salinas in even numbered years. The SHC team has struggled on this course, mostly because it’s so far away and we don’t get enough practice on it to become familiar with the course. Perhaps one of the key days of the entire season was Saturday, July 10, when we drove down to Salinas to run at Toro Park. We ran the course twice, stopped constantly to ask the kids what they thought about various race plan options. By the end of the day, I had come up with a new race plan for the team. The coaching staff and I decided to develop two different race plans that played to the individual strengths of our kids. We also realized where on the course our kids were losing focus. We decided to put a coach at that spot during the races to remind them to keep going strong. At another spot we instituted a new team policy. Here every Irish runner would be required to make eye contact with our coach at the spot (usually Tomas Palermo) and to give a nod or some other sign that indicated they were ready to “leave it all out there.”

We reviewed our race plan at the team dinner on Friday night. I wanted to make sure we didn’t go out too fast because I believe the key to success is feeling that you are stronger than the runners around you in the middle of the race. The middle mile of the race is usually a runner’s best chance to move up. We instructed all our athletes to aim only for a one second personal record (PR). I learned of this strategy at a coaches clinic. The best way to get a thirty second PR is to try for a one second PR, because if you try for a thirty second PR you often go out too fast and end up running thirty seconds slower than your PR. I wanted our kids to run the first mile like we’d been practicing. If they all tried for a one second PR, they were not likely to change their first mile. If they all tried for a thirty second PR, they were likely to start the race too fast, in an attempt to “pick-up time.” I reminded the kids that they would get a PR by running the middle and end of the race faster, not by running the first mile faster. 

The Irish Girls at the starting line

The girls were given place goals. We felt that if we had one in the top five, one in the top ten, two in the top 20, and one in the top 40, we would qualify for the State Meet. They didn’t have to worry about any teams, they just needed to run their usual race and place where we were projecting them. In our team huddle I showed my confidence again. I told them, “It’s time to go to Fresno. Run the first mile smart, attack in the middle, and have some fun in that last 1000 because those are the final meters you’re running before we qualify for the State Meet.”

The boys knew they had to battle NMC. I printed pictures of the NMC team so the boys would know what the NMC uniform looked like. We prepared for a potential uniform switch by showing them pictures of alternate NMC uniforms that we had seen before. The boys were in for a battle; but all they had to do was look around, the people they needed to beat to get to the State Meet were likely to be all near them. Coach Rachel gave me a great theme for the boys race, which I shared with them at dinner. We needed six solid races and one hero. We didn’t know who the hero would be. No one should try to be the hero in the first mile, and everyone should try to be the hero in the last mile. I wanted them to know that we didn’t need seven amazing off-the-charts races, just one of them. In our team huddle I reminded them of this: “In 2005 I asked the boys’ team to make history. Today, if we run six solid races and have one hero, history will find you.”

The Irish Boys huddle up before the race

Watching the races was both wonderful and torture at the same time. The girls did exactly what we asked them to do. Between the mile mark and the 1000 meters to go mark, they all attacked and moved up. They got into the places that we needed to qualify. As they crossed the finish line I felt confident but not certain that we had done it. There were too many other teams with a couple of runners in the mix that it was impossible to keep track of everyone. We would have to wait, but it sure looked good.

The boys’ race started and we still didn’t know the girls’ results. The boys came past me just after the mile mark and it was just as we had predicted, NMC was slightly ahead of our guys but our guys could see them and were close enough to have a chance. When I next saw the boys a half mile later a lot had changed. We had clearly moved up and passed a lot of NMC runners. It was looking very good. We just needed to hold on for the last mile.

I ran down to the 1000 meter to go mark, stopping briefly at the results board to see that the girls were officially second. One team going to state. One team to go. I bumped into our seven girls as I ran to cheer on the boys. We had a group hug and I thanked them before we dispersed to cheer on the boys. Four years ago I felt that our boys had the lead for the last state meet spot with a 1000 meters to go, but San Lorenzo Valley rallied to pass us in the final half mile. I didn’t want that to happen again. I cheered on the boys and almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We were beating NMC at every match-up (our first runner was beating their first runner, our second runner was beating their second runner, etc.). I ran to the finish line and saw several of our other coaches. We all agreed that we had done it.

It was amazing. Four weeks earlier at Toro Park I had to lecture the boys about stepping up their game if they even wanted to make it to CCS. Two weeks earlier at WCAL Finals we didn’t run the qualifying time and thought we had missed CCS – only to realize later that we had placed fourth and qualified on place. Now here we were, going to the State Meet.

When I finally got a good look at the girls’ results I realized that we edged out Aptos for second place (and thus a trophy) by just one point. That key point was won by our senior Juliana Flynn. Juliana was up and down all season. I never gave up on her and thankfully she was running well in time for the final meets. Her job was to beat other teams’ fifth runner. As it turned out, she and Aptos’ fifth runner came down the final stretch together. They crossed the finish line so close that they were given the same time. But Juliana out-leaned her to place fifty-second. That made the Aptos girl fifty-third. That was the one point! 

The next hour was a blur. There were lots of hugs, lots of handshakes, and some tears of joy. When it became official that both teams had qualified Jarrett picked me up just like we had practiced the night before. Many coaches from other teams, knowing what an amazing accomplishment this was for our program, came over to congratulate our team. After the awards ceremony we went back to our tent and something familiar but a long time coming, started happening. The girls ran towards the cooler of water bottles. Rachel came to get my hat, camera, and anything else on me that we didn’t want getting wet…it was time for a celebratory shower!

On the bus ride home I had so many emotional thoughts. I thought about all the runners who have worn the Irish uniform, especially the ones who ran at CCS trying to qualify for State Meet but came up short. This day was for them. I thought about the long hours I spend coaching this team in hopes of having a day like this.   

To borrow some words from assistant coach Natalie Martinez, who herself ran on two teams that came up short of state meet, “It’s been a long journey to this moment.” But it was a great journey and a great moment.         

 

Uniform Switching

One of the little things that sometimes happens at a cross country championship meet is uniform switching. I’ve always enjoyed watching it unfold or reading about it afterward and as a coach, have thought about psychological advantage of such a ploy.

One reason to do the uniform switch is to hide from another team. In 1992, the top two boys teams in California were Hart High School and Thousand Oaks High School (TOHS). They had met head-to-head twice during the season with Thousand Oaks coming out on top both times. The week before the state meet, Thousand Oaks beat Hart, 53-104, running a 79:29 team time to Hart’s 80:49. But Hart was the two-time defending champions and they would not go down without a fight. At the State Meet, they changed from their traditional white, black, and red uniform to a very non-descript grey uniform. I believe they did this to throw TOHS off. TOHS was used to looking for the usual Hart uniforms and probably had a race plan to match-up and beat Hart. But since Hart came out wearing something different, TOHS may have been thrown off just a bit and may have had a hard time identifying their top competitor among the hundreds of runners in the pack. The end result was an upset win for Hart, 53-80. Hart ran 79:29 to TO’s 80:13. It was Hart’s third straight state championship and a terrific send-off for Hart coach Gene Blankenship who would move to Washington after the season.

I’ve never had the opportunity to ask anyone from Hart or TOHS if the uniform change affected the race strategies but in my mind the element of surprise played a roll in Hart’s win. Not seeing the uniform you are expecting can throw you off. In 2008, at the Central Coast Section (CCS) Championships, the Sacred Heart Cathedral (SHC) boys team was hoping to sneak up and beat Monterey High School. It would take a tremendous effort but we were going to go for it – everyone knew to go after the yellow and green uniform. After our team cheer I jogged to the side of the course and right in front of me, I saw Monterey taking off their usual yellow and green uniform and putting on a solid green uniform. AHH! It was too late for me to go warn the boys. Monterey had pulled a fast one on us. They also ran really really well and beat us. I don’t think the uniform switch changed the outcome of the meet.

The team I most associate with the uniform switch is Nordhoff High School. I remember watching them at the start line of the state meet. They took a strider, went back to the start line and took off their uniform and had a different one underneath. But they weren’t done. They took another strider, went back to the start line, and peeled off their uniform again, where they had another uniform underneath. I learned some years later at a coaches’ clinic from their coach Ken Reeves that the whole idea started when he was cleaning out their storage shed and the team saw some of the old uniforms from years gone by. It’s now one of their team traditions to wear a uniform from the past at the state meet. He considers it a way to pay homage to their past teams and their history (Nordhoff has won a state record eleven state championships). Coach Reeves also smiled at the thought that other teams were getting psyched out by this uniform change.

Psychologically, a team may feel they are getting an “advantage” by doing this…and if that’s how they feel, then why tell them there is no advantage? With the Monterey uniform switch fresh in our minds, the SHC team decided to participate in what one of my seniors called “trickery” at the 2009 CCS Championships. My rationale: it would be fun and memorable and it gave us something else to focus on in the moments right before the race, rather than be nervous about the race. We planned it out all week. The team took their final striders in their usual uniform but underneath they had the uniform we had used in previous years. When the team came in for our huddle, all the supporters gathered around the team forming a “wall” so no one could see what we were doing. What were we doing? Stripping down to our old uniform. When the team emerged after our “Irish Pride” cheer to toe the line, we had a different look. Now it’s true that both new and old uniforms brazenly displayed “IRISH” across the front and the “old” uniforms were only one year old so we weren’t exactly hiding or fooling anyone. But it was fun nonetheless.

There certainly is no substitute for training if you want to do well at a championship meet. But if you‘ve done all the preparation and you are looking for one last thing to do to be ready for the meet then maybe consider the ol’ uniform swticheroo!

The Irish Girls' team heads to the final team huddle...

Then we huddled. What's going on in the middle of the huddle?

And this is what we looked like when we toed the line...TRICKERY!

The Three Course Challenge

I first heard of the Three Course Challenge in the fall of 1999. I read the article that appears below in a magazine. This cross country meet in Seaside, Oregon with muddy fields, overgrown fields, tall grass, and waist deep murky water sounded both challenging and interesting. The fact that a team’s varsity seven would have to draw poker chips to see on which course they would run (two on the easy course, two on the medium course, and three on the difficult course) added to the uniqueness of the meet.

 

Four years later I saw the magazine cover below and I was reminded of this meet. This time I did more than say it looked interesting; I started making plans to take the Sacred Heart Cathedral team to this meet, whose motto is, “Celebrating the sport of cross country.”

 

In the fall of 2004 we went! The experience lived up to my expectations.

Seaside High School Coach Neil Branson has been the meet director since its inception in 1990. There’s a pasta dinner at the high school the night before and then teams can stay overnight in the barracks at Camp Rilea (where the meet takes place). Camp Rilea is an active national guard training area, thus it features a variety of terrain that provides the challenging courses that make up the Three Course Challenge special.

For me, one of the meet’s coolest things is to wake up, get out of bed, walk outside and already be at the meet. For the kids, the course is what is memorable.  “Camp Rilea is a setting that screams CROSS COUNTRY,” says the welcome letter, “We are not talking a golf course, this is the REAL thing with dirt roads, animal trails, open grassy fields, sand hills, and with luck a good stretch of water for thrills and spills. The courses are NOT measured for two reasons. One, I change them often due to adjusting to new “obstacles.” Two, I want kids to just run, have fun, compete, and forget the clock.” The energy at the meet is palpable, with music and a drum corps creating a festive atmosphere. 

What makes the course most memorable, however, is the mud pit that is usually in the middle of the moderate and difficult course. I spotted a national guard officer filling a big hole with water to create said mud pit. Over the years, and thanks to YouTube, the mud pit is the main attraction. Kids have been known to lose shoes and fall face first into the water. So of course everyone wants to see and capture the action on video! A crowd gathers around the mud pit early, with spectators hanging off of trees to get the best vantage point.

From humble beginnings (90 runners in 1990) the meet has grown. There were 1,778 runners at the 2004 meet. When I went to the meet a second time in 2007 there were 2,298 runners. This year, it seems even bigger with 90-95 teams registered to race. I seem to be going with my team every third year. At this rate I should be Oregon-bound again in 2013. To date, assistant coaches Tomas Palmero, Sherie Lo Giudice, and I are the only ones to have been on all three trips (me and Tomas as coaches, Sherie as an athlete in 2004 and as a coach in 2007 and this year). Another interesting note is that four of my current assistants who are going this year (Sherie, Rhiannon Cadelinia, Rachel Giovannetti, and Natalie Martinez) all raced at the 2004 meet where we came in fourth.

When we went in 2004 and 2007 we flew on Southwest Airlines from Oakland to Portland, took a bus to Seaside, and stayed Friday night at Camp Rilea. The meet was on Saturday and then we spent Saturday night at a hotel in the resort town of Seaside. Sunday morning we went to the beach, and then it was back to Portland on the bus, and from there we flew home.

This year, the cost of duplicating that itinerary would have been over $400 per athlete. Due to the economy I couldn’t justify charging our parents that much and I also feared that we would not get our usual traveling party of 36 (2004) to 45 (2007) at that price. Fortunately we came up with an alternative. More correctly, senior Geoffrey Yep came up with the idea. We are taking the train!

We leave on Thursday evening on the 10:12 P.M. Amtrak train. We arrive in Portland on Friday afternoon and will do our usual: bus to Seaside, dinner, overnight at Camp Rilea, run the meet, overnight in Seaside, go to the beach Sunday morning, and take the bus back to Portland. Then we’ll get on Amtrak again for a seventeen and a half hour ride back home, arriving at the Emeryville station Monday morning.

We leave on our five day, four night, eighty-four hour epic trip tomorrow. I can’t wait!