States, Blow-Pops, and Skiing

States
Saturday marked the end of my stint working with the Hazen Track and Field Team with a marathon day (no pun intended) at the Division 3 Track and Field Vermont State Championships. Because the meet was held further south in Vermont in the town of Chester and the field equipment inspection was scheduled for 8:30am, the bus had to leave from school at 5:30am. It was a long day for the kids, and the hot muggy weather added to the exhaustion of competing in multiple events. Towards the end of the day there were some tired bodies (see the video below), but I couldn't be more proud of the performances that so many of the teammates got out of themselves. On the day we had 18 personal records (PRs), from freshman and seniors alike. It was a great end to this project and I am very proud to have worked with this group of kids.


Only a Vermonter recovers with cheese...Cabot Sharp to be exact

PRs and Blow-Pops
A little more than 2 weeks ago I began employing a form of shameless bribery with the kids at the meets. For every PR that an athlete earned in an event, I would reward him/her with a Blow-Pop. This seemed like a way to encourage more motivation and focus throughout the 6 hour meets, and also break up any stress that goes along with competing. Besides, at 25 cents a pop how much damage could these kids bring on me? Upon reflection, I now realize that I severely underestimated a teenager's affection for sugar. The track team went from having around 2-3 PRs each day to 6 to 8 to 9 to 12 and then at States to 18.

I believe that the uptick in results certainly had more to do with the hard work the team put in at practice than anything else, but the kids certainly seemed to enjoy making me march over to the snack stand a couple times each meet. I was constantly explaining myself at the checkout register that I was not a sugar fiend, but a coach who is in favor of abandoning inner motivation speeches for the allure of tasting sour apple sugar on a stick. Or cherry, or watermelon. Sometimes the kids were a bit forward in their preference for flavors, and would even request Tootsie Pops. It turned out to be kind of a rallying point during each meet to see how many lolipops they could make me buy. Although I never thought that I would spend over $15 in less than a month on candy, let alone one kind of candy, I was happy to reward the the hard work of the team in very direct and visible way.

Skiing
I have a week off until I head to Mt. Hood in Oregon to work at a ski camp and get back on snow for the first time since the premature end of last season. I am really excited to try next year’s equipment, I'll let you know how it goes. One last time, Go Hazen!

Hazen Track and Field Meets

Decided to bust out the Flip camera for the last couple of track meets. Go Hazen!

Training at Hazen!

      

        

    

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!

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!

A Fitting End to a Fitful Season

This season has been riddled with injuries, and apparently March was no different. Last week at North American Cup Finals in Waterville Valley, NH, I fractured my clavicle in the second run of the slalom. About 8 gates from the bottom of the run I got a little behind and hammered on my downhill ski, causing the left tip to catch in soft snow and catapult me forward. I landed on my stomach, not really a normal ski fall, and rolled to a stop. Initially I didn’t think anything was wrong, and even joked with the coaches on the side of the hill that at my age I needed to make sure to do a full systems check after each crash to confirm that my body is still in tact. But when I pulled off my bib I heard a crunch in my chest and felt things shift around just below my neck on the left side; immediately my chest began to tighten. X-rays showed that it was a double break of the left clavicle.

To say that I am bummed out about this is an understatement. This season began with a lot of promise and an outside chance to qualify for the Olympics. Unfortunately, injuries have played a major role in what I have been able to do on the race course (when I am healthy enough to be in one) and I was not able to come close to reaching my potential this season. In the weeks leading up to my latest injury I had a great training session at Burke and was ready to capitalize my recent improvement and a hungry mental attitude. March is a time when some people are mentally checked out after such a long season, whereas I was chomping at the bit after so much time off throughout the season. Things were going to plan, my best races of the season in GS and SG took place during the three days prior to this event. It’s an unfortunate part of the sport that injuries occur so frequently, but not something that I can change if I intend to keep pushing the line and trying to land on the podium.

I spent the last week relaxing in Boston with my girlfriend while I healed up and figured out what to do with a cleared schedule for the next month. I was able to have a very productive meeting with Amory, the Director of ITA, and am currently working on expanding my role with ITA throughout the summer. Not exactly sure where I will be living/working, but if anyone has an opportunity that I need to hear about feel free to let me know!

Powder Day at the Ski and Ride Program!