So this one isn’t about politics. It’s the championship season in high school track and field. I’m a literal bystander now, the official calling “make or miss”. But I see what’s going on, and high school sports are changing, not always for the good. And there’s a larger story here about education, and the twenty-first century.
Forty Years
I was a public school track coach for forty years. For many of those years we had big teams, with sixty or more boys vying to get onto the “varsity” squad. I didn’t “cut” kids from the track team, mostly because I saw the changes that impacted boys from a fourteen year-old freshman to an eighteen year-old senior. The kid that “didn’t have a prayer” of making varsity as a freshman, might be a State Qualifier three years later. It was worth the wait.
I did my best as the Head Coach, to get the most qualified assistants I could find. But my primary criteria for hiring wasn’t necessarily technical knowledge. The most important factor was how did the candidate work with kids. Was he or she, a positive role model, the kind of coach that inspired as well as instructed. I could teach an assistant “technique” but I couldn’t make an assistant inspirational. As time went on, I found that the great assistants not only learned the “nuts and bolts” of their events, but were able to get their athletes to achieve far beyond what they thought possible. Many of them are still doing so today.
Negotiations
Athletics has changed in the past couple of decades. Not to be too cynical, but parents are willing to “buy” improvement for their kids. I guess it one way they show they care and support their child, by putting their “money where their mouth is”. So “private club” coaches are more and more a part of high school track and field. And since parents are paying a lot for their services (as much as $500 a month), that coach has a great deal of influence on what the parents, and the athlete, will do.
The axiom, “You get what you pay for,” still sounds true in the mid-twenty-first century. So, that $500/month coach must know more than that “free coach” at the school, I guess. As I watch my friends coach teams today, I realize that public school coaching is no longer just going out and “teaching” track. It’s also a series of negotiations, with the athlete, with the parent, and with the “club coach” – the one that has to justify the parents’ huge expense. The “my way or the highway” head track coach of my day probably can’t get away with that any more. The parents, the Administrators of the public school, the kids, won’t go for it.
Championship Season
One close friend has coached state and national contenders. She’s highly educated in her events, as well as being a former highly skilled collegiate competitor herself. And, in her own way, she inspires athletes to try new techniques and events that leads to even greater success. But she’s a woman in a “man’s world” in track and field, the “weight” events, shot-put and discus, (and hammer and javelin).
In the final weeks of high school track, the best compete in a series of meets to get to the culmination of the season, the State Championship. Unlike other sports, there aren’t usually fences and security personnel keeping spectators far away from the competitors, especially in the throws. Parents, teammates, friends and just spectators have the same access to the athlete as coaches do. And since “club coaches” want to coach “the best” (success breeds success breeds, more kids at $500/month), some see these competitions as recruiting opportunities.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all club coaches. Many are very ethical, taking kids (and parents) that come to them, and staying out of the way of the school coaches. There were a couple of years when I had both roles, a school coach and a club coach. I worked hard at knowing my place, and being an ethical coach. But there are some that give the whole group a bad name.
Chicken Hawk
They try to “chicken hawk” athletes, right in the middle of competition. As a kid tries to focus on getting their best effort, listening to the coach “that brung ‘em”, all of a sudden there’s another voice pitching their abilities and making suggestions. It’s all about sales, and it tells a lot about what kind of coach the “hawk” is. Maybe they know about the technical event, maybe they took other athletes to higher success. But the kind of coach I want to hire, the kind that inspires kids as well as technically coaching them – that kind of coach would never interfere in competition, never take that most delicate moment and try to interpose their sales pitch.
And in the throws, a definite “male bastion” of track and field, there is a “hawk”, who has no ethical problem interfering with a highly qualified, highly successful coach who happens to be a woman. Sure it’s unethical. It’s also something that wouldn’t go on in other sports. No one comes out of the stands at the basketball game, or onto the sidelines at the football game, and calls another play. But in track and field, it happened.
Preparation
I had the privilege of coaching my team’s pole vaulters for decades. We developed a whole pole vault “culture” and had tremendous success. One of the issues we actually had to deal with was other pole vault coaches “kibitzing” in, making suggestions to my athletes in the middle of the competition. They weren’t trying to steal my kids, or sign them to their “club”. A lot of the time, they really just wanted to help, to be a part of the success. I prepped my kids for it – be polite, nod affirmatively, then walk away. It wasn’t that “we were right and they were wrong”. It’s that our “process” included making corrections, and we usually were right. Other folks didn’t know our “process”, and might literally be fixing the wrong thing.
Of course, my friend has established rapport with her increasingly successful student. He knows who to listen to in a meet. But the focus required for maximum athletic performance is fragile, and easily disrupted. The “chicken hawk” is just one more factor to “prepare” for. It shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t have to make that part of her “regional prep”, the last meet before the State Finals. But in “modern” track and field, it’s just another cost of success.
