Endless parade

I do not recall the year. It had to be in the mid-1990s -- maybe 1995 or 1996, something like that. Heck, that’s a loooooooooong time ago!

I was helping out of the Mid-Hudson Road Runners Club Twilight Track Series out at Arlington High School, something we had been doing for a while since our good friends Matt Williams, and then Rich and Marisa Hanson, were in charge of the summer series.

Working the finish line along with good pal Steve Perks, we saw this young girl blazing around the track. She must have been 5 or 6 or 7 … who knows? She was pumping her arms furiously, an earnest look on her very youthful face. She was having fun with it, and she was fast, always speeding her way to that coveted next ribbon. (Years later, my own kids would be sprinting and smiling/smiling and sprinting, after their own ribbons at the same track series!)

Mr. Perks, at that time still a championship-level coach at John Jay High School and always with a keen scouting eye for local talent, turned to me and said: “Whoever gets to coach that girl is going to be lucky. She’s gonna be FAST!”

Turns out, the lucky coach was our pal Mr. Bucket (some know his as “David Swift”) over at Spackenkill High School. The girl was (and is) Siobhan Dwyer, and the flashback to the mid-1990s came to me as I chatted with Siobhan and her parents at the ECAC Championships a few weeks ago down at Princeton.

On that night down at Princeton, Siobhan had just completed her outstanding track running career with Iona College, our MAAC friends down the road in New Rochelle. It was hard for me to fathom how that little girl from the track series had gone through high school and college, along the way becoming a really strong and tough women’s track and cross country athlete at an elite-level Division 1 program.

It seemed to go by in the blink of an eye, something the Dwyers – and all parents -- know all too well. As a father of three young children who are growing up really fast, I am beginning to get the idea of this process. And as a coach now completing my 20th year at Marist, the four-year cycle that ends with graduation each May goes by more quickly each time. To quote my guitar hero Warren Haynes, “it’s like an endless parade.’’

This year’s commencement was on Saturday, and once again we had to say goodbye to a group of young men and women with whom we have become quite close over the years. The class of 2011 will be one of the special ones for me -- for many, many reasons.

Much like the where-did-the-time-go flashback from ECACs, I could not help but remembering the class of 2011 getting together and meeting for the first time at freshman orientation in June of 2007. And now, they are gone. In the blink of an eye. All those practices, those long runs, the endless bus rides, the morning runs, the meets, the workouts … how did that happen so fast?

As I walked away sadly from commencement on Saturday afternoon, my cell phone buzzed. It was an incoming freshman recruit. He wanted to talk about his injuries and how it is affecting his outdoor season, and when he should start training for the fall XC season. Endless parade.

One group says goodbye, and there is another one waiting at the door to say hello.

The young boys and girls I watch at the summer track series in a few weeks? They will be graduating college before we know it. Endless parade.