Sunday, April 25, 2010

No Track, No Field, No Problem!

As I mentioned in my last post I have begun working with schools in the Northeast Kingdom, or specifically in Hardwick, VT. Hardwick is a small town halfway between Stowe and St. Johnsbury on Route 15, and home to Hazen Union High School. Hazen Union has a track and field team, and starting two weeks ago I began working with them as an assistant/conditioning coach. I don't know a whole lot about track and field (I was never on a track and field team) but I can certainly help them with conditioning and getting in the right physical shape to perform. The team is great and I am excited to work with them. Only one small issue with the track and field team; Hazen Union doesn't have a track or a field. Needless to say we won't be hosting any events. However, this far from deters the kids, in fact they embrace it. Their team shirt from last year reads "no track, no field, no problem!" Pretty sweet.

To be accurate Hazen does have a jumping pit and a throwing area for the discus and shot put, and at the end of last week they have a semblance of a track. Roger, an older gentleman who is also volunteering his time, and I began marking up the school parking lot with a white spray can measuring out distances for all of the events our athletes would be competing in. So far we have the 100m, 110m hurdles (men) and 100m hurdles (women), and the 4x100 relay which is actually two laps around a 200m track. Measuring out the 200m relay track was especially challenging as Roger and I were trying to keep as much of the turn/straightaway proportions the same as a 400m track while staying on the slab of asphalt. It was actually lot of fun, and instead of being bummed out about our unique situation, the kids were psyched to have fresh distances measured out for them (turns out our 100m dash from the beginning of the week was only 90). Also, this also may have been the first time in my life that I have actually needed to use Pi in a real world situation, thank you high school geometry class.

We have our first meet this Thursday about an hour south of Hardwick. If anyone has some helpful tips for the team let me know!

Sunday, April 11, 2010

A Tradition Unlike Any Other

I really like watching the Masters. Every March during the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, Jim Nantz’s low, quite voice comes on during a commercial break to remind me that the Masters is only a few weeks away. I consider it a quasi-holiday, knowing that on a Sunday in early April I will be devoting more than a couple of hours to watching golf.

I’m not quite sure why this is so relaxing but it is. Maybe it’s because around this time of year I am (supposed to be) surrounded by the last snowfields on the planet trying to get in the last ski race of the year. So to see the absurd amount of green grass and bushes of Augusta National that dominate the television lets me know that summer activities are coming quickly, and that for other people it started a while ago. This year the amount of coverage that Tiger received leading up to the event made the Masters a different spectacle, but in the end sitting on the couch and watching the Masters was just as relaxing as I hoped it would be. By the end of the weekend I even stopped noticing the ridiculous requirements imposed by Augusta National on CBS and ESPN in order to broadcast the event: the fans are referred to not as a crowd but as “patrons”, commercials basically don’t exist (4 minutes every hour, no one is complaining about that), and announcers never utter a bad word about the place for fear of losing their job (Gary McCord was banned by Augusta from covering the event after using some colorful imagery to explain how closely groomed the greens were). It’s a tradition unlike any other, and one that for some reason I really enjoy watching.

On the work side of things I am excited to announce that beginning this week I will start working with schools from the surrounding area of Wolcott, VT where I am currently living. I don’t have all of the details ironed out as of yet but plan to be up and running shortly, working as an instructor both on the field and in the classroom with local grade school kids. After a week of meeting with school principles and volunteer coordinators it is clear that my help is appreciated, and I am fired up to start working. I’ll let you know how things shake out. Until next time, go Mariners!