First Cross Country Meet

Well, yesterday I got my first experience as a cross country coach, when we traveled to Burleson for a meet. There had to be over 1500 kids participating in the meet, which is enormous. Because I have to drive over from Weatherford, I had to get up at 4 yesterday morning, which is awesome. Additionally, it had rained all night long, and was still raining when we arrived at the park where the meet was to take place. As you might expect, the course was an enormous mud pit. It was nasty. I had been doing the coach thing, and made my way down to the course to find the one mile mark. I saw our guys team standing close to the starting line, and went down there with them. I asked them why they were standing there, and one of them pointed to the first turn, directly in front of us. Instantly, it made sense: they were just waiting for someone to eat it, at which point they would laugh hysterically. The first race up was the 5A Varsity girls, and their faith was rewarded. This poor girl just flat out ate it; it was bad, and yes, freaking hilarious.

While I was standing there with the guys watching the race, this group of kids from some other school started cheering for one of their classmates. My kids (and I was so proud for this) began to mock them. They started yelling the girl's name, and I started telling them random names to yell. "I promise you there's a Mackenzie in there!" and they started yelling that. When I told them to yell for Brooke, they did, and a girl turned with the strangest look on her face. AWESOME!

Also, I ran into several basketball coaches there that I know, and like me, they coach cross country because we're required to coach two sports. Anyway, I began to notice a clear line of demarcation between the coaches there. There were those like me, basketball coaches who are SO GLAD not to be coaching football that we'll coach dang near anything. We were there mainly to drive the bus, give the kids their times, and try to encourage children who voluntarily run (even though we all know that they're friggin' crazy). On the other end of the spectrum are those who are SERIOUS about cross country. I mean, real friggin' serious. These were the guys running next to their kids, screaming some sort of encouragement to them that sounded like Farsi to me. These guys are the ones who are militant about carbs, don't own anything that isn't reflective (so you don't get run over by dudes like me at night), and would never buy a pair of shoes strictly for the color or style. You know, freaks. Many of these guys also were wearing shorts that were, how do I say this, a little too short for my taste. Now, I'm not saying that these are the really short running shorts so people wear. Typically, the minimum inseam I'll wear is 9"; these dudes probably wouldn't be caught dead in anything longer that 7". All they were needing to complete the total douche bag uniform would be a mustache.

Speaking of which.... The other day, the other Physics teacher (yeah, I teach Physics. How screwed up are my students gonna be?) was having his kids make lab safety videos, and a couple of the cross country kids were wearing fake mustaches. Like '70s cop show mustaches. Anyway, I dared one of them to wear one to practice the next day. He was like, "I'll run in it in the meet!" I'm watching the JV boys race, and he runs by, WEARING A FAKE MUSTACHE! At this point in the race, he's run over 2 miles with the mustache on. Now, at this point, he's kinda dogging it, and when he runs by me, I yell at him, "You're disgracing the 'stache! Pick it up! Run harder!" He looks at me, and it finally registers what I was telling him, and he took off. It was fantastic.

Now, time for full disclosure: I feel like a total hypocrite being a cross country coach. Not a day goes by that a kid asks me why I don't run with them. With the shape my knees are in, I feel as though I have a legitimate excuse as to why I don't run, but the simple truth is this: I'm really, REALLY LAZY. When I'm telling them to run harder, mentally I'm telling myself, "No friggin' way I'd be running hard. Running sucks!" Accordingly, I've taken it upon myself to be the "keep things loose" guy. Try not to be too critical; after all, I couldn't do it any of what they do. I'd be hurting just after warm-up and stretch.

Also, I don't want to hear any crap about basketball coaches. I'M A BASKETBALL COACH!! I'm allowed to make fun of other coaches, just like they make fun of us.

Long Time, I Know....

So it's been a while since I've done a post, I know. And a lot has happened in that time. We moved up to Weatherford, I took a job in Granbury, and we've made some substantial decisions on our family. (If you're not sure what I'm talking about there, well, it's probably none of your business).

Anyway, I've gotten on a new kick lately of listening to albums that I jammed to during high school and college. J. has a ton of old CD's that I dig, and I loaded them onto my laptop while I was up in Lubbock last week. For example, I loaded up the album "Home" from Blessid Union of Souls. Now, if you came up in the '90s like I did, you know this album primarily for the song "I Believe." Great song, pretty darn good album.

I also loaded up "Pocket Full of Kryptonite," the album from the band Spin Doctors. One of the great songs from this album is "Two Princes." If you're not familiar with this song, check it out; it's a good one.

However, the album that I'm digging on the most right now is probably the most obscure of the bunch: "God Shuffled His Feet" by the Crash Test Dummies. Now, this band is most well known for the song "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm," which I like, but is not my favorite on the album. I particularly enjoy "Afternoons & Coffeespoons," but in my opinion, the best song on the album is "Crash Course." This song is an instrumental, and for some reason, I think that it is absolutely great. Now, I recognize that this band is completely random and probably not the greatest, but I particularly enjoy them. Also, they really remind me of my buddy Jim, who was with me when I bought the album years ago.

Nostalgia can be great, don't you think? If you're not familiar with any of this music, check it out, because it's all pretty dang good. But what do I know? I'm just a DOCTOR!!!

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

These, ladies and gentlemen, currently constitute the coolest thing ever. These, for those who might potentially be overwhelmingly dense, are my tickets to the Final Four. While they are not the best seats in the house (which are currently going on stubhub.com for oh, $65,000 PER TICKET), they're pretty darn good, considering what I paid for them. They are on row 1 and 2 of the section, which doesn't bother me because either Dad or myself will lean forward or backwards to talk. It's pretty dang cool. And oh, by the way, Dad's gonna go with me. Which places me in the lead in the race for favorite son. Mykal has been the leader for the past 9 years (he did give Moms & Pops the first grandson), but I think I'm now the leader in the clubhouse. Mykal, J., this is your invitation to step up your game. Because currently, you're on the outside looking in, and I'm just getting comfortable.

Black Friday

If you've read Erin's blog, you know that we're leaving Liberty. I announced my resignation to the kids today, and it was really hard. These are great kids here, and they haven't had anyone who cared about them before, and they ate it up. So did I. It's been a great year here, but telling them was extremely difficult. I've been carrying around a lot of guilt for a while about this, knowing that I have to leave them and leave before the job is done. The goal of any coach is to build a program, and with the work we did this year, we laid the ground work for a program the school and community can be proud of. Well, now I'm leaving before the job is done. I don't want anyone to think that I'm not completely, 100% on board for what our family is doing; if I wasn't, we wouldn't be going. It's just hard to leave these kids, who have done exactly what I've asked, completely bought in to what I've tried to do with them, and then leave before we had a chance to finish the job. I broke down a couple of times while I was talking to them, and the look on some of their faces was painful for me.

Rumors had been flying around school for a couple of days, and I'm glad that I finally got the truth out to my boys. Like I said, I've carried guilt about this for a long time, and I feel somewhat unburdened now. The kids understand why it's happening, they just wish it was happening to someone else. I've also taken several calls from fellow coaches who've heard the news, and wanted to know what was up. My job was posted yesterday, and the AD has already received almost 20 applications. That in itself is a victory for me, because this job was NOTHING when I took it; it's a pretty good job now. I hope they get someone good for it. At least that's what I'm praying for.

One funny thing (at least it's funny to me) is that one of the kids who's not a basketball player asked me if it was true I was leaving because I wasn't going to have my contract renewed. I looked at him kind of funny, and told him, "I'm the best teacher in this school (okay, that might be stretching it, but at least I'm competent) and I'm Coach of the Year. I could be here as long as I want." It's just funny how people take any opportunity to spread garbage about other people. Bye, bye, small school/town. Had enough of this for a while....

March Madness

My favorite time of the year starts tomorrow (Thursday). It's the start of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, and my favorite 3 weeks of the year. This year will be particularly great, because I am going to Detroit, site of this year's Final Four and NABC Convention and Coaching Conference. Anyhow, another reason why this time of the year is awesome is because of the brackets that everyone fills out. However, one thing that totally bothers me is the ridiculous number of brackets that people fill out, each of which is different. That is why I am supporting the Mike & Mike (an ESPN Radio program that comes on in the morning) effort to encourage people to utilize a SHEET OF INTEGRITY. A SHEET OF INTEGRITY (imagine a booming voice, kind of like Chuck Heston) simply means that you fill out one sheet, and then use that single sheet to fill in every bracket that you use in all of the contests you enter. I mean, if you fill out 15 brackets, it's easy to say you picked some random team to win in an upset. If you just picked one though, you are the man. So if you filled out multiple brackets using different teams in each one, shame on you. i point the FINGER OF SHAME at you for that! Repent!

All-District List

Since Coldspring (sorry about that, Dennis; congrats on the great season) and Cleveland (HAHA! Couldn't happen to a nicer guy!) both lost last night, I can announce the All-District list. There were 4 superlatives chosen (MVP, Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year, Newcomer of the Year), and 6 first and second team selections. So, to have a kid make it, kind of a big deal. Anyway, here they are:

Steve Guillory, senior guard, Offensive Player of the Year (unanimous selection)
Arlando Senegal, senior forward, first team all-district
Jacob McBride, junior forward, honorable mention
Josh Marshall, junior guard, honorable mention
Lucas Cowl, senior guard, honorable mention

Honorable mention means that I put these kids up for selection, and they didn't finish in the top six vote getters.

And, oh yeah, Coach of the Year: Josh Jones, Liberty. The other coaches selected me as Coach of the Year, which is a tremendous honor. Particularly for a guy in his first year as a head coach, at a school that hasn't won in basketball in a long time. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself. But honestly, I'm much more excited for my boys. They earned their honors on the floor, and that's something to be very proud of.

Got Done

That's the phrase my players use when somebody gets a good insult on them or they get beat on a play. It's also what happened to us last night. We got done. We lost in the first round of the playoffs to #11 Hardin-Jefferson, 52-76. We were up by 2 at the end of the first period, down 1 at half, and got dealt with in the third quarter. My kids could not have possibly played any harder than they did; we simply met up with an experienced team that just so happens to be pretty darn good. It was tough. I've grown somewhat attached to these boys, and it was hard to see them cry in the locker room following the game. Luckily, I only cried once while talking to them, which means I held my emotions in check much better than I felt that I would in the situation.

We had a packed house, and they were in to the game pretty much the entire time, which was fun for the kids. I also got to bring my seniors off of the floor together, and that was a nice moment for them and me. We can keep our heads up because (a) we weren't even supposed to be here; (b) it's my first year to be a head coach; (c) we weren't even supposed to be here. Also, my coaching staff totally won the attire war. They wore polos and khakis, and my guys wore suits. I wore my 3-piece suit, and ending up losing my jacket fairly early in the game, but looked totally pimp in my vest.

All-district team was chosen today. I'll tell you how we did when the other two teams in our district are eliminated, and the list is officially released.