Sing us a song ...

Track coaches. We mark our time by the seasons, and the meets within those seasons. The calendar is the same for everyone, but the way we look at it differs. Because of our three seasons, and the competitions within those seasons. And so the first two weeks of March are transitional. The indoor season (quite frankly, my personal favorite) concludes at the ECAC/IC4A meet up in Boston on the first weekend of March. My general recollection of this meet – again, general, not every year, but most – is one of celebrating milestones within the program while wistfully reflecting on the end of another long and successful indoor track season (with most highlights usually centered around the Magic Carpet at BU). Two years ago, the meet was a resounding success and our athletes were flying high, looking forward to the outdoor track season of 2020 in a few short weeks. We know now, of course, that the season – and the world, for that matter – came to a screeching halt just days after that JTR bus rumbled back onto campus on that particular Sunday night. In fact, this day – the Thursday after IC4A/ECAC, right before the start of our Spring Break – is when the MAAC officially pulled the plug on all practice and competition for the remainder of the winter sports and all of the spring sports in 2020. No need to rehash this all here now. Just go back and review those moribund blog posts from that time!
 
On Sunday’s bus ride home from the 2022 ECAC/IC4A meet, the mood was light and there was plenty of talk about our athletes’ goals for the outdoor track season. Which, again, begins soon enough, right after next week’s Spring Break. While in hindsight, we should have seen what was coming two years ago, the jarring reality of our norms being upended still resonates today. In reflecting on that time – and, really, most of the past two years, especially with these blog posts – I probably could have been a bit less self-pitying for what we were going through. Oh sure, the Class of 2020 lost a lot. We’ll never forget that, or them, or all that they lost. The Class of 2021 didn’t exactly have a magical ending to their college careers, either. But sometimes, we need to zoom out and look at the big picture and realize that what we do is relatively small and insignificant in the scheme of things. It’s all small stuff. For our student-athletes, though, it’s not small stuff, this is almost everything; the center of their little universes. We know this. We live it with them every day, every month, and every season of our constantly whirring sport.
 
Back to that bus ride on Sunday. At some point, most of the athletes gathered around the center seats, enjoying each other’s company. Smiling, laughing, playing music and singing. I wandered back and forth, stretching my legs, using the bathroom and generally unable to sit still. At one moment, I was sitting in the back of the bus, minding my own business, surveying the scene. Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” came on whatever music player they were using. Suddenly, the middle of the bus was swaying with the song, as several of them were singing every word to a great tune that’s etched into my memory from long ago. And then it dawned on me, why this seemed so familiar. In the fall of 1991, 22 of us – 10 men, 10 women, two coaches (me and Phil Kelly) were crammed on an old mini-bus, riding home from Pittsburgh, where we had just competed in the Northeast Conference cross country championships. It was my first full season of coaching, and the first conference championship at which I was a coach. I was young, 27 years old, still trying to figure this stuff out. Phil was a great mentor and remains a dear old friend. We talked for hours on the way out there about coaching strategies, reading reams of Running Research News, an old running publication, and sharing ideas. It formed the seeds for who I am today as a coach, and I’m forever grateful and have fond memories of those early years. But on the way home, there was no nerdy coaching talk, just a celebration of a fun and successful weekend with a nascent team and a rejuvenated running program. Someone, somehow (cassette player? CD player? I don’t recall … remember, it was 1991!) decided it would be fun to listen to music and have an old-fashioned singalong. “Piano Man” comes on. Phil and I are at the front of the bus, singing loudly, swaying to the words, while 20 young men and women – most of whom are in their 50s now, which is mind-boggling – joined along. More than 30 years later. A bigger bus. A much older coach, with much younger athletes, watching a group of Marist runners smile and laugh and sing “Piano Man” on the way back from a meet.
 
It’s been a long ride, man. Going on 32 years, close to 100 actual seasons, one shitty pandemic, hopefully a few more fun and successful chapters to this storybook, as we’re looking ahead to what hopefully will be a neat outdoor track season for this edition of the Running Red Foxes. I know for certain that 30 years from now, I won’t be singing “Piano Man” on a bus with some young athletes, so we’d do well – all of us -- to savor each and every season and however many more years we’ve got remaining here. We’re all in the mood for a melody. And you’ve got us feelin’ all right.