Ladies,
I told you before the meet; no matter what, no matter how the day went, I was already proud of you. I haven't changed my mind at all on that point. I am.
You were asked to go out and give it your all. You did. Perhaps one or two didn't stick to plan, but it wasn't through lack of desire to compete or a lack of effort.
A couple were sick. One was up late last night nauseous, another had an asthma attack on the course. These things happen, and often at the most inopportune times.
Look, the reality was we needed a perfect day, and we needed Salem to have a bad day. Salem had a somewhat bad day, ours was simply worse. If we were to run the race again tomorrow it could easily reverse. Nothing we can do about that.
The thing that is not mitigated by any other circumstance is how hard you tried. Ladies, that's all you had. I know it, I believe it. And I'm proud, win or lose, you threw it out there.
Those aren't empty words. I live by them. Almost to an event, and I mean both athletic and non-athletic, my life's successes are often preceded by a failure. I may not fully understand what it takes to do a particular thing, and when I fail, I examine what happened, what I did right, what I did wrong, and I resolve to fix the things that went wrong. I stare right into the face of my own weakness, face it, and conquer it.
This was not a failure today. This was falling short of a goal. Please, please do not look at it as a failing. Some of you are too young in running to realize this is not the way it goes normally. You don't see this many people on ice, on bikes, cutting miles, etc. No! This is a banged-up team. We weren't able to do everything necessary for us to escape our hard Sectional, much less get through an even tougher Regional.
Truth? When I heard about the realignment, and once I saw how hurt you girls were, I didn't expect to survive Sectional. That was way back in JUNE! There were many times along the way it seemed that notion was reinforced. And yet, somehow, you did get through Sectional, and better than that, improved a great deal by the end.
How well? Every single girl in Sectional was under 23:10. Our top-5 were nearing 22:00 and under. This was a massive improvement over the course of the year. And, let's not forget, we put several girls on the All-Time Top-25 board. All-Time. You might think you did poorly, but truth is, you outperformed your training.
Where do we go from here? I need a few days to digest that. Of course you girls should participate in winter sports, and if you do, play that sport. Give everything to that sport. But if you're not, you need to train. Not just running; you can do anything that will improve you as an athlete. Cycle, lift, swim, P90X, I don't care, but train. Everything adds up!
We'll be talking about spring track before you know it, and you girls have the foundation for an outstanding distance group on the track, plus a few relays. State meet? I surely think so!
I told you before the meet; no matter what, no matter how the day went, I was already proud of you. I haven't changed my mind at all on that point. I am.
You were asked to go out and give it your all. You did. Perhaps one or two didn't stick to plan, but it wasn't through lack of desire to compete or a lack of effort.
A couple were sick. One was up late last night nauseous, another had an asthma attack on the course. These things happen, and often at the most inopportune times.
Look, the reality was we needed a perfect day, and we needed Salem to have a bad day. Salem had a somewhat bad day, ours was simply worse. If we were to run the race again tomorrow it could easily reverse. Nothing we can do about that.
The thing that is not mitigated by any other circumstance is how hard you tried. Ladies, that's all you had. I know it, I believe it. And I'm proud, win or lose, you threw it out there.
Those aren't empty words. I live by them. Almost to an event, and I mean both athletic and non-athletic, my life's successes are often preceded by a failure. I may not fully understand what it takes to do a particular thing, and when I fail, I examine what happened, what I did right, what I did wrong, and I resolve to fix the things that went wrong. I stare right into the face of my own weakness, face it, and conquer it.
This was not a failure today. This was falling short of a goal. Please, please do not look at it as a failing. Some of you are too young in running to realize this is not the way it goes normally. You don't see this many people on ice, on bikes, cutting miles, etc. No! This is a banged-up team. We weren't able to do everything necessary for us to escape our hard Sectional, much less get through an even tougher Regional.
Truth? When I heard about the realignment, and once I saw how hurt you girls were, I didn't expect to survive Sectional. That was way back in JUNE! There were many times along the way it seemed that notion was reinforced. And yet, somehow, you did get through Sectional, and better than that, improved a great deal by the end.
How well? Every single girl in Sectional was under 23:10. Our top-5 were nearing 22:00 and under. This was a massive improvement over the course of the year. And, let's not forget, we put several girls on the All-Time Top-25 board. All-Time. You might think you did poorly, but truth is, you outperformed your training.
Where do we go from here? I need a few days to digest that. Of course you girls should participate in winter sports, and if you do, play that sport. Give everything to that sport. But if you're not, you need to train. Not just running; you can do anything that will improve you as an athlete. Cycle, lift, swim, P90X, I don't care, but train. Everything adds up!
We'll be talking about spring track before you know it, and you girls have the foundation for an outstanding distance group on the track, plus a few relays. State meet? I surely think so!
No comments:
Post a Comment