In the first post in our series about coaches, Josh Magill talks about the coach who showed him that he was holding himself back.
High school cross country is not for everyone. It is a sport for the mentally tough, the physically fit, and those who know how to pace themselves. During competitions you will run 3.1 miles, but during practice you will double or triple that, running 6-10 miles each day of the week—the increasing pain in your legs begging you to stop, but you don’t, even though the agony cutting your gut sends tears down your face to blend with the sweat.
You don’t want to quit, but you feel you might need to or your body will fall apart. Everything hurts, but you have another mile before reaching the finish line. The taste of vomit hangs in the back of your throat and you know that if you stop that taste will move forward, evacuating itself from your body, so you keep going.
With half a mile left, your mind starts to wander like an out-of-body experience at Death’s door. You can no longer concentrate as your thoughts try to escape the sting of each hammering step. It is just before your spirit leaves your body that you hear the voice, the encouragement from your coach to “push through the pain” on to victory, and you know that if you do so victory will be yours, no matter how you finish. You have been taught by your coach that “victory is in finishing.”
♦◊♦
This year marks 20 years since my high school graduation and my last season as a cross country and track athlete. I did not have the typical build of a runner—tall, thin and long-legged—but I had the desire, competitiveness and deep-down guts to give everything I had to win despite my short stature and thick legs. So it was with pleasure and some nostalgia that I took a reporting assignment last year to write about a Washington State cross country athlete and his coach.
“It is the root sport,” said Graham-Kapowsin (WA) senior Jonathan Jackson to me during an interview I conducted with him for an online publication. The sounds of the track, covered with students of multiple sports—cross country, football, and soccer—were music to my ears. I breathed in the wonderful smell of the grass, wishing I was 60-pounds lighter so I could join the group for the off-campus run. Head coach, Ryan Zakula, like all long-distance running coaches, called it a “leisurely four mile jog.”
Jackson further explained, “There are no frills, there is no padding. It depends on you and no one else. It doesn’t matter what another person runs, but what you run and how you train. It doesn’t matter if a defensive tackle next to you messes up, just how you run, how you pace yourself, how you mentally get past those barriers.”
An outspoken leader for the G-K boys’ cross country team, Jackson was working to make a return visit to the Washington State Invitational Track Meet, but this year he had a bit more confidence than in previous years and it encouraged me to look back at my own high school cross country career in Georgia.
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Though I was a tad better than a mediocre runner, I was not great. Yet, my coach—Coach Hall—in his own way, made me feel like I could run forever. Each day, I would run during afternoon practices and then the five miles home, wearing my backpack full of books, as I lumbered up and down the hills of Lindale and Silver Creek, GA, the smell of the denim mill choking my throat, burning my nose, but I pushed harder at each step. I wanted to prove to Coach Hall I had guts, not the guts of a runner, but the guts—the never-give-up attitude—of a champion. And so does Jonathan Jackson.
“I’m getting there,” Jackson said with a smile that easily made me believe he would. “I have a love for it. I’ve been running since eighth grade now and I love it. I read books on it. I watch movies about it. It feels like it’s ingrained in me now. I never want to stop running.”
His excitement was unmistakable as he talked about the legendary Oregon runner, Steve Prefontaine, or Roger Bannister, the British runner that broke the four minute mile. I studied them both too, but I remember that I became a better runner—a better athlete—when I began doing more than just listening to Coach Hall. I had to trust him, believe in what he was telling me and that the pain was worth it.
♦◊♦
In competition, when you have a person in front of you and you can taste it, you’re so close you just dig in and go for it. During the interview, a memory played across my mind of a cross country meet in which I saw two runners in front of me that had beat me the year before with 400 meters to go. I wasn’t going to allow them to beat me again. It just wasn’t going to happen. So I dug in. I didn’t want to be second or third-best anymore. I heard Coach Hall’s prodding voice: “No excuses now. Fight for it! Don’t quit, push yourself.”
I smiled as Jackson shared his love of running, knowing that few enjoy the grueling pain that does come from running long distances. Short distances or sprinting, that might be fun, but when running long distances you are alone, without anyone else to cheer you on for extensive stretches. Distance runners need a guide to help them, a coach—and usually this coach becomes your friend because they understand the loneliness that comes with such a sport.
And then he—Jackson—said what I was thinking.
“I think you really do have to learn this sport from a mentor. Some good people that have been there before that can teach you mental discipline. That switch has to turn on in somebody’s head before they want to put their body through this type of punishment. That switch turned on for me when I began to trust my coach.”
♦◊♦
Coach Hall was that friend to me during four exhausting years of cross country, and I was lucky enough to have him as my long distance coach on the track team as well. Ironically, he was also my coach for the pole vault, which was an event I had to struggle with even more than running to reach success. I had never been higher than 10-feet, but my coach changed that.
Once during a track practice in my senior year, as we milled around searching for answers on how to fly higher and higher, I asked Coach Hall what his best height was in a track meet. He simply said he had never had to participate in the pole vault at a meet during his high school career because there were others better than him so he didn’t have to.
I was dumbfounded. What? Why was he coaching us then? I mumbled that we were doomed to be mediocre. At that moment, Coach Hall said: “You can reach any height you want to reach if you put everything you have into it. Josh, I have seen you go from a mediocre runner to a first-place medalist with little talent, just sheer guts. What makes the pole vault any different now? Why does it matter how well I did in high school? What does matter is that you want it bad enough and I’m here to support and guide you the entire way. Do you want it bad enough or should we end practice? It’s your decision.”
♦◊♦
At the last track meet of my senior year, after a vast amount of hard work, pain and guts, I took one last breath, lifted the pole and burst into action. Jamming the pole into the pit box, I kicked for the clouds, straining with everything I could muster as I cleared the crossbar and laid out, falling like an inverted eagle in the wind. I saw nothing but blue skies and I smiled, being content, falling for what felt like miles, but … as soon as I hit the mat my content changed to thrill. I flew off the mat in a run toward Coach Hall, embracing him with a giant hug.
My best height at the pole vault was 11’5” and it was only reached once because of the great words and encouragement of Coach Hall—someone that had the guts to tell me the truth and push me through the pain and agony to greater heights.
Photo: Phil Roeder/Flickr