Our first meet was the Harrison Invitational and while we were last among scoring teams we at least had scoring teams for both boys and girls. A highlight was that even though two freshmen finished 91st and 92nd out of 111 finishers, they ran well enough to make the all time freshman list at 22nd and 23rd. Something as simple as that made us hopeful for the future. The next meet was Cheyenne Mountain; the boys beat one scoring team and the girls none again and the freshman who had been 22nd all time last week improved to 19th. After the meet I gave the following comments to the team.
"Right now, we, the Sierra Cross Country Program are facing adversity. Inexperience is a big part of that and with more experience you will get better. Some of you though need to grow up fast and overcome adversity yourselves. A lot of the adversity you are seeing is brought about by your lack of commitment to becoming the best you can be. You miss to many practices and even miss meets, you loaf in practice and refuse to push yourself, you don't eat right or get enough rest, all things that hurt your performance.
You are not only the present Sierra Cross Country team, you are the future of the program and only you can determine the direction we are going to go. What some of you do this year and next can determine if you have a chance to be a member of the 2nd All Decade Team in school history. The team won't be chosen until the end of next season. How you contribute the next two years could earn you a spot on the team.
It's not going to happen if you don't break out of the rut so many of you are in where you prearrange your excuses before you even get to practice or a meet. There is potential in you to be a respectable team by the end of the season; it's up to each of you individually and all of you as a team to make it happen".
At the Liberty Bell Invitational the girls were still the last scoring team but the boys beat three scoring teams. Equally important is that our two freshmen improved to 8th and 10th all time and we had a sophomore and a senior each run the 21st best Sierra time in their class. What we didn't know at the time was that neither the sophomore or the senior would finish the season for various reasons. The next meet was a real low point for the girl's season; there were only two girls who competed. The future of the girl's program was looking bleak if we didn't find people in the future who wanted to run. The boys defeated 3 scoring teams again and that was without our senior. The highlight was a freshman new to the team who was our top runner in his first race and became 12th all time freshman. And we had another first time freshman finish as our top runner in the open division. In response to the senior not competing and only two girls racing I wrote the following. "I have been coaching for 27 years, volleyball, basketball boys and girls, track and cross country boys and girls and swimming. This is the worse team I have ever coached as far as teammates not caring about one another and letting each other down week after week, meet after meet".
The remainder of the season was pretty much the same, we only scored twice more with the girl's team, finishing last in both meets. The boys continued to offer hope for the future thanks to a group of freshmen that I was hopeful would stay with the program. After the League meet and before the Regional meet I wrote the following to the team. It stressed my hope for the future of the program,
"Two years ago at the League meet I said that it was the worst performance by a Sierra Cross Country team(s) in my years of coaching here. I still believe that that was the low point and that we are hopefully on our way back up. Whether we get respectability or not is going to be up to you. Go back and read again everything I wrote above and then decide if you are going to make the commitment necessary to get back where we once were.
For many years Sierra had no respect as a cross country program. It was just considered a given that we were a "speed school" but we couldn't run cross country or distance in track. Slowly but surely past teams proved that idea wrong. In 1990 and 1991 both of our teams qualified for state. Our girl's team continued to qualify every year through 1998. In 1999, 2000 and 2001 we were still represented by runners at the state meet. A run of 12 straight years. In 1996 our girls won the 3200 relay state championship. The bottom line is we can be whatever we are willing to work to become at Sierra High School and it is your decision to make as far as how good you want to be".
As I'm sure you realize if you have read any of my coaching blogs, tradition is very important to us. We took a team picture at what was known as the Sierra Tree at Monument Valley Park because we always set up our team camp there. Another thing we were proud of was maintaining a close relationship with the first head coach at Sierra, a long time Sierra assistant and the current Woodland Park head coach, Ron Payton. Finally we were always honored when former athletes came back from school to meet with and encourage the present teams.
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Before the season started the school paper asked to interview me about the upcoming swim season and this is how I responded to the question, "How do you think it's going to go this year?" "Like any sport it all depends on how much the girls are willing to work and improve.If practice so far is any indication we should have a good season. We had almost two full weeks of preseason and a large turnout every day. The girls are swimming almost twice as far in practice as they were at the beginning of the season last year and they are working hard on all four strokes. We should do well".
What I was most excited about was the number of girls that we had on the team. We had only graduated 3 seniors, and one girl move. We also had one other girl who had scored some points for us just not come out. Last year we only had 2 freshmen on the team and we were starting the season with 14. Coming off the first winning girl's swim season in school history we were hopeful.
Our points of emphasis were the same that they had been every season; sportsmanship and character, effort and technique, and most important because if you don't pass your classes you don't graduate, much less swim, grades. Because we had a bigger than usual team we seemed to have more who were struggling to get the job done in the classroom which was ironic because the majority of the girls on the team were all honors students.
We won our first meet before losing the next three in a row entering the holiday break. The low point was the Fountain Fort Carson dual meet right before we broke for break. Looking back through result sheets from our first meets we were working and reinforcing our points of emphasis. I don't know if it was the stress of finals, burnout or just the fact that vacation was started but we stunk it up at FFC and I made it clear how I felt in the result sheet. Here are some of the comments:
Fact: Every swim that was close we were beaten.
Fact: Everyone who came from behind to beat someone was in a Fountain suit.
Fact: Everyone who got passed in a race by someone was wearing a Sierra suit.
Fact: Most of you swam slower in every event than you swam last week.
Fact: The atmosphere and attitudes on the buus was unacceptable for a team that had just lost a meet.
Fact: If anyone ever writes something that ignorant on the bus windows again, it will be their last meet of the season .
Fact: As a team you were not mentally into this meet.
Fact: Final fact for now: We have 5 meets after break, we can win them all if we swim to our potential.
We came back from break and it seemed that the break did us good. We won 3 of the 5 meets and finished 6th of 10 at the Fountain Fort Carson Invitational. Our final dual meet was against St. Mary's and we were hoping to win and salvage a 500 season but we lost 85 - 100. The difference between our two teams was discussed in the newsletter.
"Finishing with a losing season is disappointing to say the least, especially when it looked like we might even go 6-3. But I feel that in this meet the majority of you gave all you had and it just wasn't enough. As a coach we can't ask for more than that. The results speak for themselves. Should it have been closer? We thought so. Was it a 15-point loss because you didn't try? Certainly not; although a few of you left something to be desired in your performances and again, the results speak for themselves.
The bottom line is that once again, you were out-clubbed. Club swimmers won the 200 free, the 200 IM, the fly, the 100 free, the back and the breast. If Grayson is also a club swimmer then they also won the 50 and the 500. Finally they stacked and won 2 of the 3 relays with club swimmers. That's not an excuse it's a fact. And the fact is that's why we lost the meet".
That wasn't a criticism of our kids for not being club swimmers it was simply pointing out that we had the majority of our kids who swam in-season only compared to teams with year round club swimmers including teams like Cheyenne Mountain who had All American Club swimmers every year. To make the point even more clear, at the League meet we finished last with 14 points while Cheyenne Mountain won with 415. As coaches we were extremely proud of how far our kids improved within the season when they were willing to show up and work. Our focus had to be on participating, learning, improving and being student-athletes at all times. From that standpoint even a 4-5 season was a success in our eyes. Our seniors finished their last two years 9-9 after starting their first two years 3-12-1 with the only win their freshman year being a forfeit.
 
TRACK
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We wanted to continue and build on what we had started last year. We wanted our team to be respected no matter where we placed in a meet. We wanted to be looked at as a class organization win or lose. We started developing the new culture last year and were determined to continue developing that culture from day one of season two. Some newsletter comments after both the scrimmage and our first meet, a meet we hosted show where we as a coaching staff were coming from. After the scrimmage we listed things that needed to improve and followed up with this comment: "These are all things that will be fixed by Tuesday's meet at Sierra or for some of you it might be your last meet. We will not take people to meets who do not know how to act appropriately". And after the first meet we made a point to point out and praise the positives but to also remind the team that there were still negatives. "What a great improvement from the scrimmage to this meet...Act with class at all times. Even if we're not the best team at a meet we will be the best acting team".
After our first big meet, the Icicle Relays at Harrison High School where we placed 9th in girls and 14th in boys out of 20 teams the kids were hearing a lot of doubt from students and even staff that were used to our teams being stronger. I was surprised that everyone else was surprised with our performance, after all last year we were 9th in girls and 7th in boys out of 10 teams at the regional championships. But when the first thing you saw when entering the gym at school were walls covered with league, region and state banners and most of them were from track it was understandable that we were expected to do well. The difference was our idea of doing well involved more that just where we finished when team scores were totaled. In the newsletter I wrote:
"Before I get into results, a few comments. All morning I've heard people say, "We didn't do very well Saturday". "I heard you didn't do good Saturday". Someone even said, "What's wrong with the boy's team"? The answer to all those comments is the same; the people making them don't know what they are talking about. You competed hard, you only had one disqualification in an all relay format, your behavior was good for the most part (make sure you read to the end of this though so you know our expectations for future meets. Some things need to be corrected!) and we have a very young team. I am very pleased with your efforts on Saturday". I addressed the youth of the team more fully in the next paragraph. Remember the hope we had for the future because of our freshmen in cross country? We had that same hope for the future of track and field for the same reason. With the exception of one young man who didn't get it done in the classroom between seasons we had all of the freshmen who made the all time lists in cross country out for track in addition to many more freshmen.
"Here are some numbers people questioning you don't know about: Of the 106 performances Saturday, 46 were by freshmen, that's 43%. Another 22 were by people on the team for the first time, that's another 21%. That means 64% of the performances on Saturday were from people who are on the team for the first time. Another 27 or 25% are 2nd year team members, so 89% of the performances were by 1st or 2nd year team members. Trust me you have no excuses to make and nothing to apologize for. You're only going to get better if you stick with it and work hard".
And we did continue to improve as indicated by each athletes individual improvement as well as team performances. We implemented a new program this year where an athlete could earn Performance Awards of bronze, silver and gold based on their time or distance in relation to a scale that we developed based on state qualifier times. Many of our athletes would not have a chance to meet state qualifying marks so we gave them something to shoot for and it was a very successful,although time intensive, program. We were fortunate to have an assistant coach who was willing to print certificates for the appropriate level as soon as I submitted the list to him and athletes received their awards in front of their team at the next full team meeting.
Another indicator of the improvement and the prospect of a bright future was the performance of our teams at the Lewis Palmer Freshman - Sophomore Championship meet. Our boys won the meet and the girls were a respectable 8th out of 15 teams. In the case of the girl's team we didn't enter a couple of sophomores to allow more freshmen to compete.
We continued to compete hard and improve the rest of the season and managed to get a few state qualifiers. More important was the fact that we had a much better regional meet than in 2002. The boy's were 5th and the girls 6th. After a regional meet where we had very tough weather conditions I wrote said the following in our newsletter:
"I told another coach on Friday night, 'I don't think there is another sport where you can be so up one minute and so down literally a minute later". This meet was definitely one with a lot of highs and lows. I don't intend to go into detail about the lows because they are self-explanatory season went as a whole. Some bad, lots of good and the good outweighed the bad.
Last year after the Regional meet I said that the program had hit rock bottom as far as I was concerned. I think after this weekend's efforts and the youth of this team we can honestly say that we are on our way back to the top. Granted youth doesn't mean much in a program if the trend to not come back out continues. But if you work together and care enough about each other to be loyal to your team and your school then the future looks bright. It will look even brighter if you get those who quit this year to come back out next year. I'm speaking mostly about the freshmen. If juniors quit this year they are probably the same people who quit last year and we don't need them out to quit again next year. The freshmen, we can at least blame youth when they quit the first time".
All in all it was a successful season and ended with us being hopeful for the next season.
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