And you think you've got it bad.

This Saturday's PBLHS Cross Country Invitational left me with something I had never witnessed before, and Coach Tipsord did a GREAT job relating this to the team at Monday's practice.  Of course, this was a meet day, of which I'll get to in a bit, but first something even more important (I should have written about this on yesterday's blog but had other pressing matters to deal with).

We were talking about team members whining and complaining about different things, sometimes seemingly giving up in practice or maybe even a meet, or feeling sorry for themselves.  Coach T interjected what we both saw at Saturday's race...............  a BLIND young lady run the open race with the aide of another fellow student athlete.  He was quick to add, "If you think you got it bad, there is always someone else out there who has it even worse.  Be thankful for what you have."

And so, a real life lesson for the day........  When I saw this young lady running, my sore ankle and knee became very insignificant.

Today's meet featured some great competition all across the board.  Plenty of runners of varying abilities taking advantage of the nice weather to put out a good effort.  Generally speaking, our course is slow, so if our team thought they would run as fast as they did at Dawson last week, that wasn't going to happen for lots of reasons.  We had a pretty tough workout yesterday, and I did not expect much pep in the legs.  As a matter of fact, we hadn't talked too much about today's meet because THE MAIN THING is our focus on the September 27 meet at St. Joseph.  That will remain THE MAIN THING all the way to that date.  Nothing else is important as our training, combined with the competition, with all things pointing towards the 27th.

I thought our girls closed the gap quite nicely on today's opponents and the effort was there. BUT, we have to learn to get out better in the first 200 meters of the race.  We become much too complacent and are out of the race before it even begins.

For the guys, we lack discipline before we run, and I am expecting the 8th graders to clean this up, or else I'll be forced to deal with it.  It's time to stop horsing around, as some of the guys call it.  Our pre meet demeanor and mental preparation are what will make us or break us.  We've got to become like "Jedi Knights" and use all of our collective forces of positive energy to focus our energy.  This team will not come even close to reaching its potential without clear, concise FOCUS.  We still don't get THE MAIN THING.  The head Jedi Master is about ready to summon his powers and perhaps exile a few wannabee team members from away meets or even off the team.  It won't be the first time this has happened.

So, may THE MAIN THING be with you!