A Letter to my HS Coach, Thank You !!! - struggling d1 freshmen

StrugglingD1runner wrote:

As I ponder my future in this sport, I think back to the quote you wrote in my yearbook

"Push yourself until the pain comes, and you feel you cannot survive. Then go on. Here the ego will let go. Here you will be purified."

Thank you,

X

FWIW- that quote is pretty creepy. Who asks their coach sign their yearbook anyway? Sounds like you had an unusual relationship with your HS coach, and I don't mean that in a good way.

This struck a cord with me, so many college coaches are only concerned with running, be tough , it will work out

I like this quote, it shows that we can always do more, pain is just in our way, when you push through anything in life you find true character

Your letter aligns with what many freshman go through, college is a transition , but if u keep training and keep the fire you can succeed

Here's a quote for ya:

Suck it up.

You're welcome.

Seems to me you figured out that it is much harder to run sub 4:22 from the middle of the third heat, than it was in high school.

Welcome to college; there is a steep learning curve at the DI level. Some great HS athletes never make it and some average ones will become great college runners. Now go get your double in since Conference is not happening for you this year.

Also, coaches tend to have closer relationships with their better athletes. If you are really missing that close student-mentor type bond with your coach you will need to run faster.

oh boyyy wrote:

StrugglingD1runner wrote:

As I ponder my future in this sport, I think back to the quote you wrote in my yearbook

"Push yourself until the pain comes, and you feel you cannot survive. Then go on. Here the ego will let go. Here you will be purified."

Thank you,

X

FWIW- that quote is pretty creepy. Who asks their coach sign their yearbook anyway? Sounds like you had an unusual relationship with your HS coach, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Why would it be "creepy" to encourage an athlete to push harder than they think they can in pursuit of what they want to achieve? Do you have nobody in your life who has ever encouraged you? Did you find it creepy?

Isn't it interesting how you learn as you get older? And as you get even older, you will realize that your current college coach is probably a fine coach and it is you that needs to take what you can from the past, and then get over it and move on.

Sdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdf wrote:

oh boyyy wrote:

FWIW- that quote is pretty creepy. Who asks their coach sign their yearbook anyway? Sounds like you had an unusual relationship with your HS coach, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Why would it be "creepy" to encourage an athlete to push harder than they think they can in pursuit of what they want to achieve? Do you have nobody in your life who has ever encouraged you? Did you find it creepy?

It's a strange quote, what can I say? Not one that I find particularly inspiring or encouraging, to be honest. Stating that one can be "purified" by running through excruciating pain is an odd notion.

The OP also states that his coach loved him no matter the outcome. That strikes me as peculiar unless his father was the coach?

This site attracts an odd bunch of social misfits.

oh boyyy wrote: FWIW- that quote is pretty creepy. Who asks their coach sign their yearbook anyway? Sounds like you had an unusual relationship with your HS coach, and I don't mean that in a good way.

If the OP were female, clearly she was being mastered by her HS coach. That's why she felt whole and complete and performed well. It's possible that a male OP was in a relationship with a female coach, why not? But now there is no closeness, no support, no sense of love and value and everything is about the running. That's why failure looms and why there is a sense of alienation and abandonment.

OP here , female frosh, no I did not have any odd relationship with my coach!! Also coach is female... taking things to literally here everyone

Pics?

The thing that I found weird was that a high school girl feels like she knows her body better than anyone else and therefore should have input in the training.

HS Female runners usually graduate with a different body than they started with. Your HS coach probably has years of experience with these changes and way more experience with how to deal with training. It is offensive to think that a 15-17 year old should have input.

As a college coach I would have never recruited an athlete with that attitude. Have an open mind and learn.

This happens a lot, you have company! The training is different and usually much harder...to many it is a shock to the system. Have you had your iron checked? Do you like your college coach, do you think he/she knows what they are talking about when it comes to your event?

Hang in there...I'm also female and I run the 800 for a well-known DI sports school. My freshman year in college I ran 10 seconds slower than my HS PR even though I was working harder than ever! By sophmore year I lowered my PR by 3 seconds and junior year 4 more seconds.

To my High School Coach,

I am not sure whether you know who I am but am guessing you don't. We never met but I heard about you. I was the best long-distance runner in the School District and probably still have the School 10km record. I certainly did during your tenure, and that wasn't for lack of competition. Some weekends 4 or 5 of us would be out at a race trying to break it.

Keep in mind that the school received no glory for 2 of 3 podium spots in the 17-and-under division being filled by students from your school. We wore club colors or random clothes; we didn't feel we were representing the School or District and we weren't. You didn't even know we were out there, training after school most days (sometimes before). We hung out at G Wing and that's where the afternoon session usually began. Occasionally we'd be on the track and some other guys that I, of course, knew would be there. I suspect these were your team but I didn't have access to the team roster so I didn't really know.

I wanted you to know that you had no influence on my development as an athlete (different age group now but competitive within it) or as a whole individual. You never counseled nor advised me in matters athletic or otherwise. We never spoke. I heard talk about you, though. How you were an assistant football coach in the Fall Semester and coached Track and Field in the Spring. How much was true? Who knew... You may not remember this, but my main training partner once asked you (Senior Year, I believe) if he could run for the team. You declined his offer.

I never made such an offer. It's not that I had anything against you, it's just that you had nothing to offer me. I didn't sprint, jump, nor throw like the off-season football players that you were able to keep an eye on for much of the year. Didn't want them to get out of shape or into trouble. Basically, it was not you, it was me.

The only sport I was good at when I was 15 was long-distance running. Your program didn't offer that. I didn't participate in it. What I didn't realize was that running very regularly and being competitive at it, but not doing it for the glory of the School, would be controversial generations later. When I was a student the races I went to were swamped with teenagers.

Among that crowd it would have seemed weird to HAVE joined the Team. The races in question were often right in the middle of the school year so it was obvious that the road racers, at least those in front of me in our Division at a local marathon, had as much to do with their Track Teams as I had with ours. The School, Team, and quite frankly, Coach, just didn't offer anything we needed.

Perhaps now that you know I exist, you wonder if my talents could have been utilized by your team. I was, after all, a student in good standing with the School. On the Honor Roll, in fact, so probably eligible to participate. Well, they couldn't have. You didn't compete in any event at which I was competitive. No loss, then, that we didn't cross paths. I would just like you to know that in spite of the lack of contact or influence from you I have grown and succeeded at many endeavors. Thank you for reading.

I'm guessing you won't be writing a similar letter to your HS English teacher.

D1_coach wrote:

Here's a quote for ya:

Suck it up.

You're welcome.

Suck it up? That's terrible advice. No one outside of the running world cares that you were a scrub D1 runner (no offense). No one in the real world will care that you decided not to run after one year, I promise. No one will care if you decided to run for all 4 years either.

Life is short, there is no point in wasting 4 of the best years of your life doing something you don't enjoy. Here's some life advice: if you don't like it, quit, there is absolutely no point doing things that don't add to your well being.

Sliding Scale wrote:

Seems to me you figured out that it is much harder to run sub 4:22 from the middle of the third heat, than it was in high school.

Welcome to college; there is a steep learning curve at the DI level. Some great HS athletes never make it and some average ones will become great college runners. Now go get your double in since Conference is not happening for you this year.

Also, coaches tend to have closer relationships with their better athletes. If you are really missing that close student-mentor type bond with your coach you will need to run faster.

also, coaches in college are concerned with the next class coming in. that's a huge distraction for the athletes struggling, requiring attention, and trying to stay motivated.

in high school they can groom who they have and develop a better relationship.

What's odd about the letter was misidentified. It was not that the relationship was strange or anything like that. It was that the quotation contradicts the claim earlier in the letter. The quotation says to run through pain, while the letter praises the coach for evaluating even small pains to see whether they were anything serious.

College coaches often ruin distance runners because they don't pay attention to the need for a gradual transition and to check on the health of their runners at all times, a short-sighted idea that costs the coaches as well as the athletes over time. At programs like Stanford, they end up getting their top prospects injured or burned out, wasting the chance at multiple national championships.

Say farewell to that level, say hello to the new level. Most college kids find out in the first year of university life that their high school coaches didn't help them make the mental/physical transition to harder training. And they find out it's not all fun-and-games. No more ultimate Frisbee for practices and ice cream after tri-meets. It's real work, like being employed (which if you get scholarship, you are employed in a sense).

And they struggle mentally with this because their narcissism comes to the surface because they are not getting articles in the paper about them, no friends/family constantly patting them on the back telling them how awesome they are and to chase their (often unrealistic) dreams (thinking they'll be 'x' fast). And they struggle and want to go back to where they were loved, appreciated, praised, adored, coddled, invested in...and it hinders the cold, necessary realization that if you want to get better, it make take months/years of steady, unrelenting, careful, meticulous, HARD work to move to the next round of PR's/ability to compete at the NCAA level. (But it can be done, and many do it by accepting this.) Their college coach (who knows his/her stuff) becomes cold and distant and a barrier because they won't wipe their a** and paste 'encouraging' posts on their social media shrines to themselves about how dedicated they are because they ran when it was below 40* or when it was above 80* or, gasp, when it was raining! And their college coaches are cruel because they unapologetically suggest that the athletes high school diets and supplemental training was sh*t and they can no longer eat, sleep, and half-a** their way to success because the athletes they are competing against now have also stepped up their game.

Babies want to go back into the crib where it's warm, comfy, low-light, plenteous napping, and all meals are accounted for and everyone is cooing over them like they are the new 'god' of the world. College rookies are sometimes the same. You want to stop feeling alone and insecure at this level? Then realize everyone isn't about you; only you can be about you (only you can really make yourself great). And, stop comparing yourself to others...just set your goals, work hard, and even if you never make All-American, win some Conference title, etc., you'll look back satisfied that you busted your a** and learned lessons that probably 90% of the population never learned: how to endure the real pain, the pain of reaching for something outside yourself with everything inside yourself.