Athletics is often thought of as a battle against all sworn enemies, those being all the other teams out there. And while we do ask our athletes to wage war, the real battle is within themselves, overcoming their own demons and slashing the restraints that hold them back from their best performance. Their real foe is themselves, the limitations they subconsciously create in their minds. It’s true, sometimes as coaches we demonize the competition to stoke the competitive fires within our athletes.
But in truth, cross country is much different than that. Going back into my quarter century of coaching, I have cultivated great friendships among teams and coaches with who we had some of our greatest battles. I suppose the opposite is true as well, some of our biggest rivals still to this day are not part of my inner coaches circle, but there generally is a respect for how they work to empower their athletes.
But I distinctly remember the day when my athletes realized their competitors were actually partners in the endeavor towards greatness. In 2003 I had a few kids getting into the sport pretty seriously and I distinctly remember them coming back from a cooldown run with Hillsborough Deering’s Morgan Kennedy. Kennedy was coming along development-wise, right along with my guys. And without a contingent of his own to warm up and cool down with, over the rest of the season you would often find him jumping in with my guys when our schedules matched up. My kids had an affinity towards him and I did too, as they would seek each other out at meets and it was almost like he was one of the team. We’d even work him into some of our plans during track, helping each other to faster mile and two mile times.
This attitude, one rarely seen in society’s more visible sports, has permeated the team culture as well. Over my coaching career, we’ve developed friendly rivalries with particular teams, or “frenemies” if you will, making friends with other runners and coaches. Mostly on the distance side of things, those bonds could be noticeable throughout the season and beyond. Nothing better than seeing a large group of runners from various teams head out collectively from the UNH fieldhouse, to get their warm up in before battling each other in their events.
I distinctly remember hearing from my 2006 girls squad, when they upended the Hopkinton crew and what would be a streak of ten straight wins. In the chute (back in the day the kids had to negotiate a chute of chain link fence that could take what seemed like forever on a cold wet day) girls from other teams were thanking them for knocking the Hopkinton team off. Hopkinton had a long precedent of winning, and other teams would be happy to see their reign upended. I knew it was close, and we did win, but our girls were taken aback a bit by the sentiments of the other girls.
More recently, my girls on the 2022 team bonded with the girls from Newfound. Even with the two year difference in school of most of the girls, mine being older, at every race we had together, they would not only run warm ups and cool downs together, they would go cheer on the boys races together, gossiping and trash talking the dumb things boys do much like you’d expect any group of high school girls to do. We even had a couple girls get their senior pictures taken by Reese as she’s a budding photographer.
That’s not to say every rivalry is friendly. The years leading up to the girls 2006 win, I would say we were desperate to beat Hopkinton. And apparently everyone else was as well. At the time the Hawks were the gold standard in Division 3, having figured out a winning formula and a way to replicate it. We were on our way up, had a great spring track season, but we hadn’t shown anything specifically to indicate we were in the mix. Their coaches did a good job, both in training and preparing their athletes, but also in creating a tangible aura of invincibility they enjoyed flexing on the division. Safe to say I was hoping to have the team to upset their reign, and to be honest, I really enjoyed it.
I remember a conversation I had with their assistant coach before our first race of the 2006 season, where he offered we were better than all the other teams in the division he had seen at their first meet. I looked at him, and said, that while I meant no disrespect, simply put, we were coming for them. Taken aback, he said of course and we continued a conversation about the upcoming year. I was outlining our schedule, where we intended to get after it and when we were looking to simply practice racing. Conversations coaches often have in the inter-between of a meet. I indicated what kinds of workouts the kids were crushing and what our plans were for this first race of the season. I was being so forthright that one of my athletes admonished me for giving away our secrets. I told her not to worry, as I had witnessed Hopkinton, in hearing what other teams were up to make adjustments according to rumor and innuendo, and we were simply going to stay the course.
In the end, my girls did exactly what I had said we were going to do, run strong for the first two miles and just get on it over the last mile. As my girls charged for the finish, upending Hopkinton’s initial expectations for the meet, their coaches were screaming in effort to get things back on track and take control. I learned from that point on, we would never make plans with regard to other teams, but simply plan to run our best races and let everyone else try to beat us. I’ve said those last few words so many times over the ensuing years, let everyone else try to beat us. And while we haven’t always won, I still feel it’s the right strategy.
In more recent years it was the Mascenic boys sitting at the top of the D3 heap, with many schools making us the villains Hopkinton had been. We loved having that aura but I was keen not to ever make it be about staying on top, but simply focus on what it takes to be ready for another championship run. Just down the road there was our “cross town rival” with a new coach wanting to win a banner and take us down. Having been frenemies with the previous coach, this was a change for both teams to go through, and we found the friendly relationship we had previously was now out the window. Sharing buses to far away meets was no longer an option.
While we were demonized (and successful as well) I learned to simply go about our business, while also reaching out to the D3 community through the work I do on the website and having been around a while I had some opportunities to help out new coaches along the way. While we never directly focused on this other team, we did take some pleasure when we were able to disassemble a plan they had to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery. While it sounds bad to relish someone else’s failure, we were able to delight in the fact that by going about our business it was confounding things somewhere else. We were the fly in their ointment for a lot of years.
But that’s not to say things were all bad. I saw the coach just the other day, both of us having moved on from our previous stations. We shared pleasantries, those feelings having mellowed over time.
This sport is incredible in its ability to draw similarly minded people together. Where else can two competitors go head to head, trying to devastate and dominate each other, then go out and share a simple chat over the cool down miles. I’ve never truly seen it anywhere else in sport.
I’ve made some incredible friends throughout my 25 year career at the helm of Mascenic, all pretty much by accident. An odd question here, some advice there, an incorrect naming while writing recaps and commentating on races, all have led to conversations that have led to strong friendships that I’ll cherish as long as this porous mind can hold them in context. I’ve already revealed my connection with Walt, and there’s more to come.
I’ll see you out there.
