Clint Joslyn
Another school that dropped down into Division 3, however many years before Kearsarge is Monadnock. At that time, Monadnock played primarily in CVCs, attending meets outside of NH fairly regularly. I wouldn’t say we had a rivalry, as we didn’t compete with them very often, we would see them come Divisionals and oftentimes we’d be seeing their divisional lineup for the first time. In those early days we were riding high in the division and their lack of visibility wasn’t an obstacle for us at the time. But as years passed, Monadnock became more of a force in the division and they beat us handily in 2016. From that point on, they’d be a force.
If I recall, this win in 2016 coincided with Clint Joslyn, Monadnock’s current coach taking over the program. But it’s not exactly like you might think. Clint took the reigns after the 2016 season, with many of those on the winning team having graduated out. Having been at the middle school, and with his own kids soon to join the high school ranks, Clint took over the program in 2017, again if I recall correctly, needing to rebuild.
I knew Clint (and his wife Angela) from the early days when we lived in Keene. Our paths would cross at local races, Angela being the fast one as Clint was getting into running. He caught on fast, joining a group of fairly elite runners, some being KSC alums and others that kinda got pulled into their gravitational force. But we moved from Keene to New Ipswich not much later and no real friendship bonds were formed.
But that certainly changed upon his arrival, although it was somewhat accidental. Or at least I’m calling it accidental. Members of his squads might disagree, thinking I was messing with them. The accident was I was identifying them incorrectly in the previews and recaps for the website. It all started when I wrote the recap for the 2017 Division 3 State Championships. Having coached the race and focused on my team, I was typing in the passenger seat on the way up to run the White Mountain Milers Half Marathon and mis-identified Delaney Swanson as Sadie Lorenz. While I never heard about it directly, Clint reached out to let me know that I had in fact, screwed up.
All that would be good but I continued to do that as other members of his teams came into prominence and I screwed up their names as well. I called Harrison Ryan – Ryan Harry, as if a kid with two first names in a sport that often lists last names first is all my fault. I did it a handful more times seemingly just to Monadnock athletes and Clint would always let me know it. This faux pas would even trickle down to my wife, taking names at a home meet (where we are old school and simply write first initial, last name for results) wrote Alyssa Hall as A. Hole, something I only caught as I took the results sheets off the scanner.
But also over this time, Clint and I had opportunities to talk everything cross country and track and field. We worked together to host a number of middle school events for our region, hoping to make both the travel and scheduling better for our local teams. We’d often develop our schedules around each other such that we could better meet the needs of our kids. And for me, it was great to have frank conversations where I could be assured that when we planned something it would go the way we both had said. I would have to “lose it” when we showed up to one of their meets, looking to run fast in the mile only to find their big guns were racing the next day somewhere else with better competition. This never happened when Clint was at the helm.
Our friendship has been strengthened over the years as we’ve come together for other things as well. We’ve teamed up over Valhalla XC as well, with members from both of our teams combining to run Junior Olympics. We’ve been to Nationals together watching our own and each other’s kids race, spending the in between time talking all things running, sharing training ideas and bouncing thoughts off each other. While we don’t have the same exact training philosophies we can recognize that we’ve both achieved some very strong results with what we do, making for a great sounding board.
This friendship and mutual understanding has led us to also partner in events meant for our local running communities that include our athletes. For a couple summers we hosted what I called Club XC, community races based on the club system in Europe where a circuitous course was raced between village teams, with each village’s top five accounting for the scoring, gender indifferent. These races were a mix of young and old, a ton of fun (if racing up the back of Mt. Caesar can be considered fun) and great community builders as well. There were a number of years that the Monadnock boys and the Mascenic boys would be found warming up and cooling down en masse, pretty much whenever they were together.
And this was right through the 2020 covid season where Monadnock beat Mascenic, 45 to 57. Some might think I would like to forget that season, one where Monadnock interrupted what would have been a five year streak. But that isn’t true. While I’d love to scrub that 2020 covid season for lots of reasons, Monadnock winning isn’t one of them. Honestly Clint and I talked a lot over that season, trying to make sense of it all. While I think with a couple weeks more training we could have given them a better run for their money, they did everything they needed to in order to win and I did and still do, tip my hat to them.
Like Bob Ross says, “happy little accidents.”
I’ll see you out there.
