I remember my coaches

When I finished first in the 600-yard walk-or-run at Arthur Kramer Elementary School, Coach Price pigeonholed me and said to come see him after lunch. He wanted me on his track team. But it wasn't for the distance runs. I was a sprinter. A pretty fast one as it turned out. Won a few 50-yard sprints against the top runners from Dealy, Preston Hollow, Pershing, and even St. Marks. Then we came up against Randy Walker. The guy was as fast as greased lightning. Left the whole field in the dust. And he was pretty cocky about it - the little bastard. What a come down. Sensing our dejection, Coach Price called us together and said "Some boys just mature faster and peak earlier than others. Don't be depressed about it. In a few years you'll be leaving him in the dust".

As it turned out he was right. By the time I raced Randy a few years later in Middle School I was beating him like a red headed stepchild. Coach Eckhart picked me as a section leader in PE where I made life miserable for the boy who was to eventually become my dearest friend in life. Jump ahead 50 years and I'm making a rare in-person sales call on a potential customer. I walk into the office of a small medical DME dealer in Pearland and who do I see but the owner - Coach Eckhart. We spent the morning reminiscing, and I asked him why he chose me to be section leader. After all, I was kind of a runt. "I don't know." he said. "Just something I saw in you".

By the time I had made it to High School I was still running sprints, and still mostly winning, but I was coming from behind to pull it off in the last few strides. My history teacher, Coach Brown pulled me aside in track practice after school one day and said "You're not gonna run the stands today. I got something different in store for you." I was elated. Running the stands was a particularly grueling torture wherein you'd run up and down the bleachers of the football stadium in the searing Texas heat.

I watched perplexed as he took a bicycle inner tube, and slit it into two loops lengthwise, then tied them together with a stout piece of rope. He said "You could be a half decent sprinter if you just had a good start. We're going to give you one." Then he draped one loop over each of my shoulders, had me crouch down onto the starting block, attached the end of the rope to a wooden stake and hammered it into the ground. "Now start." he commanded. For the next few weeks and even on till the end of the season, I strained against the resistance of the rubber loops as my thighs and calves burnt like they were on fire. By the end of the season, I had set an all-time district record. I was anchor man on the 4 x 100-yard relay, and never had a worry when I got handed the baton in 3rd or 4th place. I'd breeze past the field like they were crawling and take the blue every time. Boy was I cocky. Then came the city-wide meet.

As I walked through the tunnel into the stadium, I immediately realized that something was different. There were black boys here! I had never so much as seen a black person in any of my schools let alone run against one. It was 1968 and it had never even crossed my mind that there must be schools where black people went. Needless to say, I didn't win that day. As I walked back to our team's area on the infield, I met Coach Brown's eyes with hunched shoulders and gave him a questioning shrug. His wry smile and slight nod spoke volumes.

I had barely missed qualifying for the US Olympic Training Center for the 1968 Olympics and thought that was pretty cool till I realized that thousands of other boys across the country had just barely missed also. A pretty big club of also-rans. By the time I got to college I was no longer one of the creme-de-la-creme. So, I tried out for the gymnastics team. It was Coach Lee that gave me the push I needed to soar away from the parallel and high bars. "You've got to get over your fear of flying." he'd say as he strapped me into the harness, secured on each side by safety ropes to two running channels overhead. Time after time I missed the mark and flew off into space, but as the saying goes - practice makes perfect. I was certainly never perfect, but I got to the point where I could turn in pretty decent parallel and high bar routines and contribute to the team score.

"Lean into it, and don't back away." he would say as I'd recoil from my latest attempt at a Japanese split. "The body's natural response to pain is to retreat from it. But that's just when you need to push on. When those tendons start to stretch, you have to slowly press on, and day by day you'll see improvement." And he was right. It worked for my tendons, and it worked for my arms and legs also.

One day I was showing off for the girls that would walk by and look down into the workout room from the mezzanine. I would face the walkway and drop down into an iron cross on the still rings. One day a burly man stopped and watched as I held the cross for a few long seconds. A few minutes later he was in the room taking to Coach Lee who beckoned me over.
"Dana, this is Coach Gregory, and he wants you to try out for his wrestling team."
"I don't know a darned thing about wrestling." I responded."
"Son, you don't need to." he said. "With your upper body strength, you're going overpower anyone you come up against."

The day I wrestled Hockmeister from the Naval Academy, my brother Stan and my roommate Geoff were there to cheer me on. I'd learned just enough about wrestling to look only half incompetent in competition, and Hockmeister apparently knew his stuff. But so did Coach Gregory. Time and again Hockmeister put me in a match ending hold, and time and again I bulled my way out of it. Olympic style wrestling consists of the most intense six minutes of all out anerobic activity you can possibly imagine. In the end I guess I just wore him out. To this day, every time I see Geoffrey, he greets me with "Hockmeister!" But then came the day we went up against the guys who really knew their stuff. Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, etc. But by then I was no longer the cocky kid I'd been in my younger days.

I remember a few years ago speaking to an old friend who I hadn't seen in decades. As we were wrapping up our visit, he asked me "Are you still as blazingly fast as you used to be?".
"Mike," I replied, "I've got two artificial knees, and these days I'm doing good to walk around the grocery store holding on to the shopping cart for support."

No matter how good you think you are, there's always someone who's better, or who is going to be better. A record is just a temporary benchmark in time that's waiting for some new wonder kid to come along and smash, and be cocky, and have their day in the sun. For every Usain Bolt, there's some undiscovered kid in the Kalahari who's faster, who'll never make the news, but who outran the lion and lived to tell the tale.

It does us all good to eat a little humble pie every now and then.

Except maybe for Nolan Ryan.