Monday, 8/25/08 (a)

Matt's first day of classes at Clover Valley was a blur.

His first period Algebra class had 25 freshman who were as new to this high school experience as he was. He covered the format of the class and other logistical items like how much homework they should expect. It went well. And while this didn't necessarily surprise him, he had somewhat started to expect surprises after his first week on the job. It was a perceptible relief to start his day, week, semester, year, and career off with a solid first class.

Second period Honors Algebra II was homeroom. There was a 6' 6" kid in that class of whom he made a mental note to check on his basketball status. James Keegan was the guy's name and he was the first student who's name Matt learned. "Hey, he looks like a rebounder ...", he thought somewhat guiltily knowing that Algebra was supposed to be his sole focus here. Of the numerous opening-day announcements during homeroom there was the one that Matt had written encouraging would-be cross country runners to come to an meeting immediately after-school for more details.

He had a planning period for number three and Matt thought it was a nice touch that Principal Tierney came by to see how his first day on the job was going.

He was on lunch duty for 4th period which seemed easy enough as that was the seniors time to eat.

For fifth period, he was excited to see D.J. was part of the Honors Algebra II class although the excitement didn't really appear to be reciprocal, at least outwardly during their exchange of "hey"s. Those sophomores were a little more wound up then second period, but just as they had warmed up to their day, so had Matt and he was easily up to the task.

Sixth period was another planning session, although it'd be Economics in the spring.

The day ended with another Algebra I class with another 25 freshman, this one with an abnormal 17 girl / 8 boy split. He had more energy than they did at this point and the class day ended smoothly.

Sunday, 8/24/08

Matt spent the last day before school started by unpacking the last of his boxes, finding a new church to attend in Clover Valley, reviewing his lesson plans for the first week of Algebra classes, calling home to check on Emily and Zeus, and soaking his seriously sore legs in a hot bath.

He'd seen D.J in church with his family but was unable to make eye contact with him before he left. Matt wasn't sure if he liked the idea of numerous student-teacher interactions outside of school, but it was pretty much unavoidable in a small town like Clover Valley.

"Not like I'm going to drive all the way to Troy to do my grocery shopping", he concluded.

After not being able to fall asleep right away when he lay down at 10pm, he dropped out of bed to get his copy of Dean Smith's "The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching". After about 45 minutes of contentedly reviewing the familiar territory in the well-worn pages, he put it down, awkwardly clicked his bedside lamp off, and quickly nodded off.

Friday, 8/22/08

The second practice, and the last practice before school started, also went fine. Jake, Kory, Mark, and D.J. showed up with Jake reporting that Nick was too sore after Wednesday's practice to make it. Matt had learned from the post-practice conversation on Wednesday that the normal procedure was for the team to dress in the locker rooms after school, then jog over to Thompson Park where they would stretch some before starting their eventual workout and eventually running or walking the one mile back to school as a cool down.

So on Friday morning, they jogged over to Thompson Park as a team. Coach Adamson impressed them with his easy gait over to the park. He and Jake were the only two who were in shape enough to have any conversation on the way over and they set the pace a few steps ahead of D.J and maybe 20 yards ahead of the two senior friends Kory and Mark who were already laboring.

"So Jake, you ever play basketball?"

"Not really coach. I'm tall enough, I guess, but I just never got into it."

"You never played at all? Not even as a kid?"

"Played a few seasons when I was like 9 or 10. I didn't really like all the shouting. Pass it! Shoot it! Get the ball! It wasn't like I was heading to the NBA anyway. I think I made one basket my whole career."

"Is that why you like cross-country? 'Cause it's quieter?"

"Who said I like it?", Jake said with a laugh, before proceeding somewhat hesitantly, "Anyway, Coach Perlozzo yelled at us pretty good last year."

"I can imagine. Don't worry that's not my style. Players play better when they're relaxed and they can focus on what they need to do to succeed."

"Well, I've never really found running relaxing, but I'm willing to give that a shot." Jake said with a grin as they entered into the park.

Matt led them through their stretching before sending them off for an easy lap around the 2 mile park path. All four runners made it around the park, and eventually back to school, without incident. Matt left the practice with tired legs and a good feeling ... happy that at least he knew a handful of Clover Valley students before school started on Monday.

Wednesday, 8/20/08

By the time Wednesday evening rolled around, Matt had contacted three more potential Cougar runners, two of which said they would be there at practice. So, he knew to expect five kids, but other than that he didn't know what to expect. He'd called a friend from college, who he knew had run track in high school, but unfortunately he had been a sprinter and didn't know what the long-distance runners had done.

"All I remember was that they were never around." he proffered quite uselessly.

He thought about getting in touch with Sean Perlozzo but decided the risk outweighed the rewards. Even a google search for "coaching cross country" or "cross country practices" didn't really yield anything fruitful, other than that some high school cross country teams have seriously impressive web pages. He eventually resolved on the ride over that there was no point faking it, he'd just 'fess up to being completely unprepared for this and hope that someone who'd been on the team last year could get the group started in the right direction.

He got to school around 6:40 and paced nervously around his car waiting for other cars to pull into the lot.

"This is crazy. I wasn't this nervous when I had to hit those two foul shots in the conference tournament finals my senior year. Settle down Matty-boy."

Finally, at 6:55, a minivan turned into the school lot and approached where Matt was standing. The driver rolled down the window, and a mom asked out, "What time should I pick him up?"

His mind raced. Hadn't though of this. Thinking back to the hundreds of basketball practices he'd attended, he said as confidently as he could ...

"9:30."

"9:30!?!" echoed back at him simultaneously from both the driver and the boy who had exited the car.

"Won't it be dark by then?" asked the suddenly startled driver mom.

"Um. I'm sorry. I meant 8:30."

"Oh, okay. All right Nick, I'll see you then." she said before pulling away.

The other four runners came in quick succession and Matt couldn't help judge them internally with the eyes of a basketball coach. Only one of them appeared to top 6 feet and that kid (Jake) looked the least athletic of them all. He gathered them in a loose circle, introduced himself, and handed out copies of the year's schedule. Before he could come clean that he knew nothing about cross-country beyond what Wikipedia had taught him, one of the boys (Kory, he thought ... or was this one Mark) asked him:

"Uh, coach ... whaddya want us to do with these while we're running?

Oh, this was spiraling down the hole quickly, Matt thought. And at that moment, instead of sticking to his original plan of full and open confession, his competitive spirit goaded him into giving it a go as a newly-minted, supposed, running expert.

"Good question Mark ..."

"Uh, I'm Kory, coach."

"Right, sorry about that." he said ... gratified that his stalling tactic had bought him another 10-15 seconds to come up with something.

"Yeah, I'm going to hold the schedules while you guys run. I just wanted you guys to get a look at who we're up against this year. It's never too early to start circling dates on the calendar."

"You're not gonna be running with us, coach?"

Now Matt wasn't sure if they were serious or were on to his charade and playing it for their own malicious enjoyment.

"Nope, I want to just observe you guys. See what we have here." Matt answered.

The volley of confused faces at least let Matt know that they hadn't sniffed him out yet.

"Hey, let's just do some stretching and then we'll get started."

"Stretching before a little warm up?" ... it was Nick this time

"Yeah, today only. Then we'll go back to normal next time. We're gonna take it easy tonight."

That was the first thing he'd said all night that was greeted with any semblance of comprehension and happily it was also greeted with relieved smiles and murmurings from the team. Matt led them through some basic stretching ... more arm and shoulder stuff than they were used to ... and then had them warm up a half mile or so by having them jog around the school. He used that time to draft out the rest of the practice which ended up being heading over to the school track and jogging 8 laps (2 miles), then racing a quarter mile, then jogging another 4 laps as a cool down. They were done by 8:15, so he had some time to get their names, what grade they were in, and how many years they'd run cross-country. When they all had been picked up shortly after that, Matt exhaled and laughed to himself that he'd pulled it off ... at least for one practice. He looked down at his team roster, with an embryonic and unexpected sense of pride, and scribbled a few additional notes.

2008 CVHS Cougars XC Roster:

Jacob (Jake) Rogers: Junior, 3rd year of XC: most endurance (?), no sprint speed
Kory Hall: Senior, 3rd year of XC: battler ... won the sprint w/ a ending kick
Nick Vincent: Junior, 2nd year: started walking some ... looks out of shape
Marcus (Mark) Whitton: Senior, 4th year: SLOW but steady, I guess.
Darrell (D.J.) Turner: Sophomore, 1st year: smoothest runner, quiet

Tuesday, 8/19/08

Even a day later, Matt was decidedly unclear on how he'd become the varsity boys cross-country at Clover Valley. The only running he'd ever done in his life was for basketball conditioning and even then it was only a mile at a time.

"How in the world do you coach running? Don't they just run ... and the fastest one wins?" He wondered aloud over breakfast.

J.T. had given him a packet of information on the team in a large accordion folder. The entire contents of the needlessly large folder consisted of two lonely sheets of paper. One had a handwritten list of 11 names with phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Apparently, this was the interest list compiled last Spring. The second sheet had the team's schedule for the season.

Per J.T's instructions he'd tried to get in touch with all 11 last night. At this point, he'd heard back from six, and three of those were no longer interested. He told the other three that the first practice would be Wednesday night at 7pm. None of the kids he talked to sounded any happier than him about the prospects of the first practice.

Gloomily peering over the schedule, as his Cheerios began to soften, he concluded that the only positive element of this surprise assignment was that he'd get to familiarize himself somewhat with the locations of some of the other schools in the Pine Hills Eight conference.

2008 CVHS Cougars Boys Cross Country Schedule

Sept 3rd Away Rose Hill
Sept 6th Away Kickoff Classic @ Troy Central
Sept 10th Away Flagler County
Sept 17th Home Troy Central
Sept 24th Home Troutdale
Sept 27th Away Hickory Creek Invitational
Oct 1st Home South Troy
Oct 8th Away Willowsburg
Oct 15th Away St. Teresa
Oct 22nd Home Bisbee County
Oct 29th Away Pine Hills Conference Championships @ Willowsburg
Nov 6th Away 3-A State Championship @ Culver City

Monday, 8/18/08 (b)

Matt hadn't really been sweating the educational part of his new adventure. (He'd spent about 90% of his time after accepting the job thinking about how to install a zone press for the basketball team to run.) He'd thoroughly enjoyed his student teaching last spring and his advisers had told him, essentially, that he was a natural-born educator. He was able to maintain a controlled, learning-conducive environment while relating to his would-be scholars in a friendly peer-to-peer basis. (He didn't view this a particularly noteworthy characteristic given he was only about five years older than some of them.) Plus, he'd always been good at math. Dominated it. And his load was pretty light. He was teaching Algebra to two 9th grade classes and then Honors Algebra II to two 10th grade classes. Then in the spring he'd be teaching Honors Economics to seniors.

It was because of the Econ class that he was in Sean Perlozzo's classroom with four other teachers on his first afternoon at CVHS. It wasn't entirely clear to him why Economics was grouped in with the English department, but he wasn't looking to make waves on his first day. In fact, he was just glad to be out of Perlozzo's crosshairs to this point. He'd spent the first 20 minutes of the session absolutely blistering the two other English teachers who didn't show up for the meeting and the next ten blistering Principal Tierney for not running a more efficient school. The subsequent 60 minutes were as tedious as any he'd ever spent inside school walls as Perlozzo started listing individual writing assignments that a CVHS student should write from week one of his/her freshman year to the time he/she graduated. Matt was deep in thought about potential under-the-basket in-bounds plays when the sliver of his brain tasked with minimally paying attention issued an alert.

"Matt, I'm sure you're wondering why you are here."

At that moment, an older, heavily-bearded man slowly sauntered into the room causing Perlozzo to stop talking for one of the few times for the last hour and a half.

"Sean. Gotta a call. Said you ... weren't at cross country practice this morning."

"Well J.T., why would I have been there? I'm not coaching cross-country this year."

"Nobody told me that", the older man responded after some thought.

"I told Gene a couple of weeks ago. He was supposed to tell you. I'm too busy now that I'm chair of the English department."

Perlozzo impatiently started to turn his attention back toward the teachers.

"Nobody told me that you weren't coaching."

Perlozzo sighed heavily and rotated back to face J.T. and muttered,

"I think we've covered that."

Meanwhile, the four veteran CVHS teachers who'd been held captive over the past 90 minutes, and who weren't going to let a second chance for escape go by, used the distraction of their jailer as an excuse for an ipso facto adjournment of the meeting.

Perlozzo now traded in his previous condescending tone for one of agitation.

"Arrgh. Can't that old fool Tierney do anything right!" "All right. Let's go see him. But it's a waste of your time and it's definitely a waste of mine, because I'm not coaching this year. You might as well start looking for someone to babysit that mollycoddled squad of so-called runners."

With that Sean Perlozzo stormed past J.T. near the door, with the older man in tow, en route to the principal's office.

And just like that Matt found himself all alone in the classroom. After a few moments reflecting on the sudden squall that had just passed and left only sunny skies in its wake, he got up to return to his classroom. Turning left out of the door, he immediately found his path blocked by the grizzled figure of J.T. Weber.

"Matthew, right? I need to talk to you."

Monday, 8/18/08 (a)

Even though it was only 7:15 am, the low valley fog was already starting to burn off. It looked to be another abnormally warm day in the North Carolina hills. In the Clover Valley H.S. parking lot, two kids chatted aimlessly while a third lingered just outside the conversation.

After about a 45 second pause in their talking, the taller of the two boys said ...

"He did say the 18th, right?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"And the e-mail said 7 am. I know that ..."

The conversation sputtered out again as both boys peered into the direction of the lot's entrance for another 45 seconds. The shorter boy said with a sigh,

"Well Jake, I think Coach Perloser is a no show."

Jake stretched his calves by leaning his 6'4" frame against one of the handicapped parking signs in the lot and responded,

"It's probably good he ain't here. Imagine he'd have us running suicides or some other nonsense and I only ran maybe 100 miles all summer. Well, I can drop you back off at your house and then I can go back to sleep until about noon."

Jake continued.

"Nicky-boy, I gotta say this is a great way to start the season. Just the two of us and no coach."

The mention of the number two called their attention to the third boy in the lot who was fidgeting nervously about 50 yards away. Jake yelled over.

"Hey. Are you here for cross-country?"

Jorge gave a quick nod. This time Nick hollered over.

"Well, we don't know where the coach is, so there's probably not much point in hanging around here. Someone will figure out something I suppose ..."

Jorge didn't really understand what the boy meant, but when they got in their car and left it was pretty clear that his first cross-country practice had not gone as he'd expected. His mom had dropped him off and headed off to work. There was little choice but to run the seven miles home.