The forecast called for thunderstorms, but the morning is warm and clear when I arrive at East Kentwood high school for the Michigan D1 Track and Field State Meet. It seems the weather is always hot on that first weekend in June. Waves of heat rise off the track and the athletes wait nervously under the bleachers, trying to follow their coaches’ advice and stay out of the sun. In the stands, the spectators glisten with sweat. I remember one State meet that was so hot the event staff set up misting machines for the runners to stand under in an attempt to stave off heat stroke.
It’s no small thing to qualify for this meet. The runners, jumpers, and throwers around me---warming up on the infield, shaking themselves loose at the discus or long-jump pits---are the best of the best in Michigan. Exceptional athletes, all of them. This year, for the first time, I’m not here to compete myself or to watch a younger sibling compete. I’m here as a coach, with a job to do. Sort of.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been very good at attending these meets, not when I was in high school, not now. I get all riled up, agitated, restless. I want to watch the races, and at the same time, I don’t want to. Somehow, during the most important events, the ones that I used to run and should theoretically care about the most, I find myself walking in the opposite direction of the track or watching with only a peripheral interest, as if the race were little more than a commercial on TV. I detach.
Why do I do this?
While standing near the pole vault pits watching one of my athletes jump, I run into an old teammate of mine from high school. Five years ago, we competed in this meet together as members of our school record-holding 4x800 relay team. I’m very happy to see her again.
Happy, but also mildly unsettled.
Though I was a little bit faster than her in high school, this girl had walked onto a D1 track team and consequently, by the end of her career there, became a phenomenal runner. And I mean phenomenal. This girl is now leaps and bounds ahead of me. As we stand there catching up, I find myself making excuses internally, justifying why I chose to go to a D3 college, and imagining what I could have accomplished had I decided to go D1 as she had (not that any D1 schools were remotely interested in me). I want to believe that my potential is just as valuable as hers. That she is not really better than me.
Ok, so I’m jealous.
As much as I hate to admit it, it’s for this reason that the State meets always make me so restless, unwilling to watch those events I have every reason to be interested in. In high school I didn’t like feeling like a small fish in a big pond. And now I’m no longer a fish and this isn’t even my pond, but I still find myself envious of these teenagers who are faster than I ever was or will be.
Later, after the meet, I go for a run to clear my mind. It’s not so much my jealousy that’s the problem---although that certainly is a problem---it’s the assumption behind it that’s in error, I realize. It’s the idea that, at the end of the day, shaving a few seconds off my 800 time really matters, really means something about my identity and worth. It’s the desire for brief moments of glory to last longer than their due.
It is so easy to think about life in the immediate present, with it’s trivial cares and worries, and forget to take a step back and remember what it looks like from a bird’s-eye view. Setting and achieving goals in athletics or elsewhere is a great thing and has brought me much happiness over the years, but like nearly every accomplishment, it is short-lived. A flash in the pan.
Every single one of the athletes who competed at the State meet will one day lose their speed or their height or their power. Probably one day soon. It’s a victory to be held loosely lest the acid of bitterness corrode whatever lasting satisfaction it did bring. I don’t want that to happen to me, even when the day comes (which I’m sure is not far down the road) when the athletes I now coach are able to leave me in their dust.
While we were watching the girls’ 2-mile relay, my brother elbowed me and pointed down the bleachers. “Britta, look,” he said excitedly. “I’m pretty sure that’s Austin Sanders. See him? The kid with the dreads.”
I followed his finger to a muscled black man finding a seat in the stands below us. I didn’t recognize him.
“Who?” I asked.
“Austin Sanders. He won the 100 and the 200 last year. He’s super fast.”
I studied him for a moment, as he sat with his friends in the stands, watching the first heat of the relay. He was the superstar of the meet last year, but today no one---besides my brother and maybe a handful of other people---would know him from Joe. He was just a member of the crowd. Like me.
Of course, this Austin kid is probably running for some big name D1 university now with even more accomplishments under his belt, but I still felt a brief moment of solidarity with him. Today is not his day---not anymore---and it’s not mine either. It’s time I let it go.
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