For the final section of the paper I wrote about, "Nine things I feel are necessary building blocks for a successful track program"! This is part of what I wrote. The first four elements deal specifically with the head coach, his philosophy, his administrative abilities and his ability to work and learn. The head coach should be responsible for overseeing the entire program, therefore; responsible ultimately for its' success or failure".
First, the coach must believe in what he or she is doing.
Second,...is totally dependant upon the first. A coach must know what he is doing.
The third element important for the head coach is that he be eclectic in his coaching style.
The final element that applies specifically to the head coach is organization.
Next I talked about five additional elements necessary for a program to be successful.
The first has to do with assistant coaches. Assistants can go a long way towards making or breaking a track program. (In a future post I will focus specifically on assistant coaches that I was fortunate enough to work with).
The second of the five elements is recruiting. A successful coach will actively work to draw as many athletes as possible into the program. Once they are in the program, the successful coach will see to it that each athlete has a place to participate and makes the athlete feel that he or she is a vital part of the program. The coach who sells his athletes on his track and field program will be a successful coach, while the coach who makes the mistake of sitting back and waiting for athletes to come to him, will not. This goes back again to the coach who really believes in his program.
Third, to be a successful track program will have as many of its athletes as possible in an off season program.
The fourth element is loyalty. It is necessary throughout the total program. The athletes must be loyal to themselves, their coaches and each other. The coaches must in turn be loyal to each other, their athletes and the program. Without loyalty, a program cannot succeed.
The final element is tradition. Obviously you can't have it until some time has passed and you've developed a program but once you have it, it will help keep your program snowballing and the program will actually feed itself".
While I said that building a tradition takes time, I came into the Sierra Track program in only its second season and immediately started building and selling a tradition based on the success that the team had in it's inaugural 1985 season.
Using these nine elements as the foundation we were able to have varying degrees of success in the track and field, cross country and swimming programs that I coached in during my 20 years at Sierra from 1986 - 2005.
When I came back for the 1988 cross country season I had several advantages over my first season. I was teaching at Sierra now so I had much more interaction with the student body. I had 6 returning boys and 6 returning girls from the previous season and I was also the head girl's track coach now. I started several new things in 1988 that I feel were helpful in strengthening interest in the program and I was still doing two of the three my final season in 2004.
The first thing that I added to the program was setting up a scrimmage with a team that was not one we usually saw during the season. The scrimmage gave the kids a chance to experience a competitive situation before their first actual meet. In that first scrimmage our girls easily won finishing 1-3-4-5-6-9 and while the boys didn't win out top three felt good about finishing 5-7-8. Only two of our girls and none of the boys had ever finished in the top 10 in any kind of cross country competition before.
The second thing I incorporated was a 2000 meter (5 lap) time trial on the track. We did this early and again the reason was that I wanted our athletes to feel what it felt like to compete. The fact that it was on the track made it less likely that an athlete would drop out or not try. I started a top 10 list that first year and it became a top 25 list during my tenure at Sierra. So right from the start, the kids had a goal to shoot for and it helped them to be serious about their effort.
The third thing was in addition to pre and post meet result sheets that I gave the team before and after every meet I wrote a multi page midseason report with team and individual statistics for the season to that point. All of these things served the same purpose, goal setting and motivation.
'88 was a much better season for both teams but particularly the girls. Our goals in '87 were to just have a scoring team every meet and beat at least one other scoring team at each meet. In '88 we wanted to improve individually and be more competitive as a team. The highlight for the boy's team came at the Falcon Invitational where they finished 3rd in the varsity race but also won the open division. They brought home the first boy's cross country team trophy in school history. Our top runner Steve Frandsen finished top 10 individually in Falcon and at Liberty. And Gerald Romero continued to be an example that our program was working by improving his time again at the Pikes Peak Invitational. His times 9th - 22:12, 10th - 20:30 and 11th - 18:49.
The girl's team took major steps toward becoming a more competitive program. Our top girls started the season by winning the scrimmage and ended it by being only the second cross country state qualifier in school history. She was 11th in our first meet and that was the last time she finished out of the top 10 until the state meet. She also established our school record that is still the school record to this day (2015). The girls were 3rd as a team in each of their first two meets then won the Cheyenne Mountain Invitational the first cross country invitational win in school history. They were runner up in each of the next six meets and looked like they were going to have a chance to go from just wanting to score in 1987 to being state qualifiers in 1988.
Sadly the top 3 teams from our Region qualified for state and we finished 4th, 3 points out of 3rd place. Equally unfortunate is that our only senior finished 8th at Region and the top 7 individuals qualified for the state meet. Here is the account that I wrote after the meet:
"Ladies what can I say? Our season ended one week short (3 points short) of our team goal that we set early in the season. But I can tell you with all sincerity, it was through no fault of your own. Lewis Palmer was improving all season and we talked about that possibility before the meet. I honestly believe that had we arrived at the meet in time to jog and walk the course as we always do and had we had time to warm up the way you always do, you would have made up those 3 points. I honestly believe you ran as well or maybe even better than you should have under the circumstances and I'm as proud of you as any team I've ever coached. Don't think for one minute that anything any of you did cost us that trip to state. You did the best you could, each of you know it and I know it and that's all that matters. Thank you for a wonderful season that will be capped off by Kim representing you at the State meet on Saturday. You have started something in the past two seasons that can continue to improve and be the type of program you'll always be proud to have been associated with as I am proud to have been associated with each of you.
What now? First you put Friday's disappointment behind you and think of all the positives that have come out of this season both as a team and individually; you put 7 trophies in the trophy case and every member of the team ran lifetime bests during the season. There were no trophies before this year and a lifetime best is the most you can hope for in any season. Then we have to look ahead to next year and decide what we have to do to continue being the type of quality program you've become.
Next Year: Although we only lose Fatima to graduation, 3 of our top 9 runners are moving this semester. We'll certainly miss Fatima, Kim, Cindy and LaTisha. At least we'll have Fatima for Track season". (Kim moved to PA, Cindy to the north part of Colorado Springs into a different school district and LaTisha whose father was army, to Texas where she wound up being a state medalist in the 800 meters).
So what happened? Why were we late to the meet? Why do I think we could have defeated Lewis Palmer? Our bus driver was a truck driver that did deliveries throughout the school district. He decided that it was more important to finish his deliveries than pick us up on time. It was my policy then and still my personal policy when racing now to be at a meet an hour before the start. This gave us enough time to stretch, warm up, jog and scout the course, use the restroom, have a team briefing and so on. Dale (I remember his name 27 years later) got us to the meet 15 minutes before the start and the girl's race was first. Talk about disrupting the important routine we had established.
What compounded the problem is that the officials had changed the course at Pueblo City Park Golf Course from the course we had run earlier in the season. The girls thought the finish line was a couple of hundred yards short of where it actually was so when they started their finishing kick and came over the small hill expecting the finish it wasn't there. We lost by 3 points to Lewis Palmer and 4 of our girls were passed by Lewis Palmer athletes in the space between where they thought the finish was and where it actually was. Good for them, not so good for us.
It was a tough way to end an outstanding season.
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| Fatima at a winter race between seasons |
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| Fatima years after she graduated at the state XC meet in Denver |
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| Kim at the 1988 State Meet - She still holds the school record in XC |
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| Coach Spell - Kim - Coach Anstey State Championship - 1988 Pueblo, Colorado |
1989 Track
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| 1989 Track |
The 1989 track season was unique in that we started out by going to Adams State College in Alamosa to compete in an indoor meet. It was our first and would be our only indoor meet in all the years that I coached at Sierra. While they didn't keep team scores we had some very good individual and relay performances and it provided a new experience for the girls. It was basically like racing on a rubberized gym floor.
Once again we won all of our midweek triangle and quad meets and our underclassmen did well at the Pueblo Freshman meet and both D&B meets where they finished 2nd in both to the Rye varsity team. Again the importance of these meets was the opportunity to find talent. Competition usually brought out the best in our kids and we would often see things in the small school varsity meets that would never show up in practice.
With one exception we were 1st or 2nd in all of out varsity invitationals. The only exception was Canon City where we finished 4th of 18 teams the week before our Regional Championship meet. In the Canon City newsletter this is what I had to say: "There's not a lot to say about this meet. As I already told you. aside from Cassandra, Fatima, Janie and Olivia, there was a lot to be desired from your performances. We already discussed it on the bus so no more needs to be said. Everyone's entitled to a bad meet and now we've had ours. As I said, the good news is that despite a less than good effort we still beat all of the teams in our District and most of you beat everyone in the District in your events.
Of the four girls who had a good meet three were distance runners who only scored 7 points between them but they all ran good times. The fourth was the young lady who moved from a sprinter to throwing after her freshman year and in this meet she set both school and meet records in the discus and finished 2nd in the shot put accounting for 18 of our 46 points.
We got it back together the next week and won our District Championship by 24 points over the runner up team. 105 - 84. Cassandra won and set District records in the shot put and discus and Michelle another senior who I said to remember when she was a freshman ran the leadoff leg on the 4 x 100 relay that we won, set a District record and qualified for state in. They were both 4 year letter winners and emblematic of the kind of athletes who stuck with the program and helped us be a successful, tradition rich program.
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