The difference between being an "accidental" coach and an "intentional coach is the fact that I knew when I left Lovington, New Mexico after eight years coaching there that no matter what I would coach again when I went to work in Colorado Springs. And as soon as I started applying for teaching positions I made it clear that I was available to coach and while my preferences were track and cross country, I would coach whatever I had to in order to get my foot in the door so to speak.
When we first arrived in the Springs I put my application in at all of the school districts in town, and there are many. Additionally I applied at all of the small towns in the area. My interview for Hanover actually took place at the Village Inn on Academy Blvd which was also where teachers met and parked to take the staff bus from the Springs to Hanover and back daily as a perk of the job. I was offered a position teaching junior and senior high school, it was six or seven classes including shop. Additionally I would be coaching volleyball, wrestling and junior and senior high school track. I wanted to teach and coach so I agreed to the job but had to wait to be approved at the next school board meeting.
The same day that I was supposed to attend the meeting to be introduced I was interviewed for and offered a job teaching 8th grade U.S, History, Enrichment Reading and P.E. at a middle school, Carmel, in Harrison School District 2 on the south end of Colorado Springs. While there was no coaching I was told that I would be able to start some intramural programs and that I could possibly coach at one of the two district high schools if something opened up. I called Hanover and declined the job before the meeting and accepted the Carmel Middle School job.
A week or two after I was hired and before the job actually started, Sierra High School in the district advertised an opening for a social studies teacher in addition to a tennis coach. I went to visit the Principal and he informed me that we couldn't just do a simple transfer we would have to go through the whole hiring process again and the closing date passed the previous day. They hired a teacher who had taught in a private school in Denver and who had no coaching experience. The reason that I mention her lack of coaching experience is because she never coached one day the entire time that she worked in our district or after she moved years later to a neighboring district. As a matter of fact she was a member of a small group of teachers who were more anti than pro where the value of athletics were concerned. But it worked for her, she got the teaching job and I stayed with the middle school position.
Both high schools already had cross country coaches and no openings so I had to make the best of coaching intramural volleyball and teaching one PE class. That changed when I saw an ad in the want ads of one of the Colorado Springs newspapers, they had two dailies then, for an assistant cross country coach at UCCS, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. I had to apply, interview, go through the background check with references and all the other steps you would expect for any job and I was offered the job. I would be an assistant with the men's program and head coach of the women's program. And I would get to do this for the sum of $100.00. That's not a typo!
So my first paid coaching experience as in "intentional" coach in Colorado Springs was as a manager more than an actual coach. Our teams were club teams as opposed to Intercollegiate despite the fact that all of the teams on our schedule were varsity or sub varsity teams from other colleges in Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas. I say manager because I coordinated travel for meets and "suggested" workout guidelines. Our athletes had various amounts of experience and all were employed full time in addition to going to school so the idea of a set practice time when we could all get together was out of the question. The only time we really felt like a team was when we were at a meet. And we never knew who would be running until the cars left the parking lot.
I coached at UCCS for three seasons, 1985, 1986 and 1987. The third year was a challenge to schedule simply traveling to meets with the team. The reason for the more challenging schedule is that by the 1987 season I was also the head cross country coach at Sierra High School, something that I will talk more about when I get to the 87-88 coaching year.
Here is a summary that I wrote earlier about my three years coaching at UCCS. It has been edited some for this post. "I checked the classified ads every day hoping that some school somewhere would advertise for a coach and I would be able to work it into my teaching schedule. Ironically a coaching position did come open but it wasn't at a high school it was at one of the local colleges, UCCS, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. I called, applied and was hired as the women's coach. There were times that I worked with the men as well if their coach had schedule conflicts which he did more often than not.
While we were a club team we ran against varsity teams from colleges and universities from Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas. As a matter of fact, one of my athletes from Lovington, New Mexico, was running at Garden City Community College in Kansas and she raced against us at the Air Force Academy Invitational. She stayed with my family while she was in Colorado Springs. Without a doubt a highlight for the team was when the women won the University of Southern Colorado Invitational in Pueblo. There were a total of eight teams competing. Additionally we had two individuals who finished 1st and 4th. Not everyone appreciated a "club" team winning and Colorado College made sure that they told the paper we were a club team when they called the results of the meet into the newspaper.
The funniest memory I have of coaching the team was what happened in September 1985, my first year with the team. We traveled to Alamosa to compete in the Adams State Invitational. Anyone who knows about collegiate cross country for the past several decades knows that Adams State is one of the premier programs in the nation, year after year. At the time their men's coach and the meet director was Dr. Joe Vigil a legendary coach who is still coaching Olympian Brenda Martinez and others. I had met Coach Vigil when he was my TAC Level Two Coaching certification instructor at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
We only had four men show up for the meet but because I was taking a graduate course at the time at UCCS and because we were a club sport I was actually eligible to compete. I borrowed a pair of flowered running shorts that one of the guys had in his car trunk and a tee shirt that said Aruba across the front from another so that I could run; fortunately I had my running shoes on. I wasn't crazy about running but I wanted to give the team an opportunity to have a score. I actually wound up being the fourth runner on our team and finished 72nd of 74. Here's where the "funny" part comes in and as a result here's also where I started questioning the "class" of Coach Vigil.
He came to me after the race and began to chew me out about my lack of respect for the meet because I raced without an official uniform. I'm laughing again as I write this because he was so ridiculous. I can honestly say that I laughed in the face of an Olympic Coach. For the record we were last of the scoring teams so it isn't as if I impacted the outcome of the meet I simply gave our team the chance to have a team score. The final irony is that Coach Vigil had each of his athletes accompanied and paced throughout the race by another athlete on a bike, a blatant violation of the rules."
That's a brief summary of my three years coaching at UCCS. It was a good experience and was another tool in my coaching resume toolkit.
That spring an opening to coach boys track opened at Sierra High School and I applied as soon as I saw the post. I had an interview with the head coach Brent Garretson. I went into the interview feeling very confident and our interview went very well and did nothing to reduce my confidence. Brent and I had very similar philosophies about track and field and the importance of the 400 meters as the heart of a successful team. A couple of days later I had to call back to find out that the job had been given to another teacher in the building, Greg Marinski. I then asked Brent if he would be interested in having me as a volunteer coach. I was determined to coach track somewhere. He told me sure if I wanted to but didn't show much interest.
The next day I thought about it and was pretty pissed really about his lack of interest in my coaching even as a volunteer so I asked around and got the name of the head girl's coach, Gary Montel. That night I got his number from the staff directory, called and explained who I was, what my experience was and asked if he would be interested in letting me be a volunteer coach with his program. He said yes, I called Brent and told him that I would be working with the girl's team instead and that is how I got my foot in the door at Sierra High School, as a volunteer.
It turned out to be the right decision as Gary let me do more than just stand around and watch. I worked mostly with the distance girls and that was fine because of all my prior experience coaching cross country as well as my own experience as a distance runner.
I continued to believe in the importance of newsletters for keeping athletes informed and provided the Sierra girls with a newsletter prior to our first meet. I didn't know at the time how prophetic I was when I wrote, "Although Sierra High School is only in its second year, we have already started a strong track tradition". I then provided a brief summary of the success from the 1985 season including the fact that they finished 2nd in the Metro League (Region) Championship and that they were only 5 points behind the winner, Rampart. Those 5 points became a coaching point all season.
In the newsletter I talked about the importance of time and hard work to be successful and then talked about how to be a winner. "There are many ways to be a winner in track and field, finishing first in an event or meet is only one of them. You can be a winner simply by doing your best everyday in practice and meets. You can be a winner and see it in your improved performances. You can be a winner by being a team person, encouraging and helping your teammates. Most important, you can be a winner simply by finishing what you start. Don't be a quitter!!!!"
We had good and bad performances individually and as a team during the 1986 season and we had athletes that would help me learn and reinforce lessons that would be helpful for the twenty years that I coached the girl's team at Sierra. One very important lesson that I learned was that you could never count on an athlete the next year based on what she did the current year. Another was the importance of getting athletes to believe in you enough to allow you to get them into the events where they have the best chance of being successful. Another that I knew but had reinforced was that an athlete is often happier sitting the bench in a team sport than having to perform with no place to hide.
We had a young lady who had been League Champion in the 800 meters as a freshman and she finished 7th in the same event her sophomore year. Her junior year she joined the newly established soccer team and her senior year she played tennis. We had twins who were both promising distance runners as freshmen who didn't come out the next year because they wanted to play soccer. The girl who was the State Champion in the 300 hurdles as a sophomore at different school in town had been League Champion as a freshman at Sierra the previous year. There are other examples but I think you get the point.
My first year coaching track at Sierra ended well. Remember I said that the 5 points we lost by to Rampart in 1985 was a coaching point of emphasis all season? We won the first League/District Championship in any sport in school history that spring and did it by beating Rampart by 4 1/2 points!
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