Track Coach
I was a track coach for forty years. I guess “was” may be the wrong tense, I still “consult”, helping coaches and athletes with my hard-gained “wisdom”. And I’m now officiating the sport again, so I keep my hand in. Over that forty years I gained experience in every track and field event contested in high schools, and even some that are not. It’s easier to list what I don’t know much about: the weight and hammer throws, and race walking. I have some understanding of javelin, a lot more about triple jump and steeplechase, and tons on the other “regular” track events we contest.
But the one area of “expertise” that I worked on the most was in the pole vault. It’s exciting: the athlete races towards a big foam mat, holding a long fiberglass pole. He places the pole in a metal “box” in the ground, and then launches up over a crossbar: the higher the better. When all goes right, the athlete clears the crossbar without knocking it off, and lands in the soft mat. When it doesn’t bad things can occur. As a coach, my first job was to make sure those bad things didn’t happen.
Vitaly Petrov
Like any technical event, there are several ways to “skin the cat”. I am an adherent of the “Petrov Method”, developed in Russia in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. They dominated the world for more than two decades, and the physics behind their technique makes the most sense.
In the 90’s I was a “strict interpreter” of Petrov. What he did worked, and anything else was, I thought, just wrong. For the athletes I worked with every day that wasn’t a problem. They learned everything from me, so they only knew my techniques. But when I coached other athletes and coaches, I struggled with those that used different methodologies. In my mind at the time I was doing them a disservice by not changing them to “Petrov”, and anything less wasn’t acceptable. My technical “purity” sometimes made it difficult to help others.
But later I found two factors that changed my mind, even though I still am convinced that Petrov really had the right answers. First, every athlete is physically different, and they will find a way that works for their body. Some are faster, or slower, taller or quicker, patient or in a hurry. It’s difficult to ignore those differences and fit their “square peg” into “round holes”. And second, there is proof that other methods work as well, or at least the “modifications” those athletes (and coaches) made on my “Petrov” model were successful. The World and American men’s record holders are not what I’d call “Petrov” vaulters. Hard to argue with “the best”.
Vaulting and Life
So, I expect there are very few readers who want to learn any more about pole vault today (though I’d be happy to teach you!!). But the point is that technical purity, like ideological purity, does not stand up to the test of use “in the field”. That sometimes we have to compromise to achieve success, and to work with others who have different views than ourselves. Technical or ideologic purity sounds great: but it isn’t how “the sausage is made”. Sometimes you need to allow some flexibility in order to get something done.
Of course, that all depends on what you want to achieve. For many in our politics today, ideologic purity is far more important than achievement. And for some, it’s really not about ideas, but personality. If you’re for a particular former President, then you are against anything and everything that the current President wants to do. That’s about success, not ideas. They don’t want Mr. Biden to have any success, regardless of what’s “good” for America. Maybe that’s not fair – perhaps they don’t believe that anything Mr. Biden would do for America is “good”.
Ain’t That America
It reminds me of a problem I had as a coach back in the 1980’s. Track and Field, and pole vault in particular, is an event that crosses “team” boundaries. Kids who want to vault learn from others – and a lot of schools don’t have the expertise on staff. So I would help kids from all over the County and even beyond. There was talk (mostly behind my back) that I was “hurting” my kids by helping others.
Our vault “squad” had conversations about that. I told my kids that they had me twenty-four/seven. If the few hours I might spend helping someone else who didn’t have a pole vault coach get better meant they lost in competition – that was on us, not on the kid that got better. We OUGHT to be better – we did it full time. If we made some competitor a thirteen-footer, then we better go fourteen. And most of the time, we did go higher. We made the entire event better – for everyone.
“Ain’t that America”? Instead of being a zero-sum, we win – you lose game, shouldn’t we be trying to make everyone better? Whether it’s raising the minimum wage, providing cash to taxpayers to help with COVID losses, or helping small businesses survive the shutdown, their success doesn’t cause our failure.
“They” don’t have to lose so “we” can win. We can all do better.
So let’s get started.
