First Cross Country Coaching Job

My running journey began when I took a position as an Assistant Cross Country coach at Bradley Bourbonnais Community High School.  I teach science at this school and flat out saw an opportunity to coach a sport I had no experience in. 

I was dedicated to being able to run with the kids I coached.  To show them that I can do it and so can you.  Unfortunately, my devotion and passion was short lived.  I ran with the kids, intermittently but did a lot more bike riding than running.  It was a truly disappointing time in my life and certainly a regret.  

I did not stick it out for another year with the birth of my first born.  I choose to walk away from cross country coaching and, likewise, so did my running. 

I enjoyed coaching the kids and definetely saw it as my own source of inspiration.  Still keeping in contact with many of the kids from that team, albeit through social media, as continued to keep my motivated watching them achieve their goals.  Recently, Nolan Grace completed a marathon and he is doing another.  Here is the link to his fundraising for it.

https://goldenapple.myetap.org/fundraiser/2013marathon/individual.do?participationRef=488.0.346007579

I think of Marty Hinze (Concordia), Kevin Martin (Milikin) and Sarah Higgins (Bradley University) who are continuing to take their talents on to the college level. 

It has been awesome being associated with one of the toughest sports to participate in and watching these very talented young men and women work hard for their goals.  There are very few sports (proudly wrestling being one of them) in which an athlete's performance is singled out and running cross country is that.

Although I took a couple of years off, I am proud to say I am again coaching Boiler Cross Country and am hoping to build this program to be very competitive with the help of Head Coach Alison Zipper.  This season was a nice one locally, winning boys All City and All Area but we fell short of the conference/regional goals we set for ourselves.  We graduated a couple of seniors that have meant so much to the program (Mitchel Kahl and Colin Hanson) so we have work to do.