Coach

I was never an athlete. Not even close. Cut from Little League twice in elementary school, my athletic career was effectively blown at age 7 with the first of many sets of Coke-bottle eyeglasses. So I never had a coach when I was a kid. Until my senior year of high school.

Will Clark was one of my best friends, and had been since 6^th grade, when we met in the Gifted & Talented program (geek squad). Will wanted to go to the Air Force Academy more than anything, and had spent his entire high school career gearing up for it. So in January of our senior year, I was a little baffled when Will came up to me asking me to join the track team.

“Huh? What would I do that for? (the grammar of a future English minor)”

“I need somebody to run with me.”

“I suck at sports.”

“Doesn’t matter. I suck, too. But if I go through the whole season again this year, I get a varsity letter, and I can’t get into the Academy if I don’t letter in a sport.”

“You think of this now? And why me?”

“Who else would I ask?”

“I’m an idiot, but okay. What do I have to do?”
“Meet me at the track Tuesday after school. Bring sweats.”

This does not begin the tale of a gloriously undiscovered athletic drive, love for competition, or Olympic fire. I did a favor for a friend, and ran the 4,000-meter race for a track season. Poorly. Well enough to make the Upper State Championship team for our school, but only because we only had 4 guys running that race, and we had to field 3 for Upper State. I was marginally (and really only marginally) faster than Ricky, the sweet but brutally slow Special Ed kid who also ran the mile. Come to think of it, I think Ricky may have been our third guy, behind Will & me.

But somewhere in there, I got myself a coach. Now let’s not lump Durham Smith in with Bobby Knight, Bill Parcells, or even that Russian guy that carried Kerri Strug to the medal stand. Not to say that he wasn’t a great coach, but the competition wasn’t really the key to it with Coach Smith. Ricky the aforementioned Special Ed kid got every bit as much attention from Coach as the guys who actually placed in or won their events, because Coach Smith knew that we were all there for different things. Some guys were there to win races and get varsity letters. Some guys were there to hang out between seasons of football or basketball. Some guys were there for completely ridiculous reasons, like their best friend needed moral support to get into the Air Force Academy.

But Coach Smith encouraged us all to be our best, win or lose. It never mattered to him that I never ran the 5-minute mile that he believed I could. It only mattered to him that by the end of the season my 8-minute mile warmup pace was actually measurably different from my competition pace. I did manage 5:20 in the mile before we finished the season. Coach never once yelled, never expressed disappointment in us, not even when the scrawny white kids from Fort Mill actually lapped me and Ricky during the 8,000-meter race. Now, really, was it absolutely necessary for a 15-year-old kid to shave his legs and rub Afrosheen on his legs for aerodynamics? This kid sat still faster than I ran, I think all the other shite was just window dressing.

And you know what? I never felt like a loser. Not once in that spring did I feel like I couldn’t do it. Like I couldn’t succeed. That’s what a coach does, and it’s why I will run to the theatres and watch every lame-ass high school sports movie, or pick up every copy of Miracle of St. Anthony or My Losing Season that I run across. Because I do believe in the power of athletics to mold kids. I do believe that a coach is the second most important man in a kid’s life, and in too many cases, the single most important. I was fortunate enough to have a great coach for one spring, and I’ll never forget him.

I don’t run anymore. It’s been 15 years and 100 lbs. since I ran the mile in 5:20, or ran the mile at all for that matter. But I still bump into Coach Smith once in a while, and I still call him “Coach.” And I’m proud that once, for a little while, I was an athlete.

Will got his letter, and he got into the Air Force Academy. I haven’t seen him since right after graduation, but I know he’s somewhere – flying high.