Thought for the week: You have to expect things of yourself before
you can do them. Michael Jordan
In preparing for the coming weeks, Id
like us to consider adopting the word believe as our theme for this season. Girls, we cannot achieve greatness if we
dont believe were capable of greatness.
Just as breath is necessary for life, belief is necessary for
success. We must believe in ourselves no
matter what.
To fully understand why belief is so
important, Id like to use some girls on our team as an example of the
embodiment of this word, and hopefully not embarrass them too much in the
process. Ill begin by saying that Abby
and Michelle Pike, and Katelyn Sandell are very
normal girls. Of course, theyre smart
and they have a variety of talents, but none of these girls possesses
superhuman strength. None of them has
amazing athletic talents. For example,
they cant just go out and run really fast times without training. Theyve definitely got some athletic ability,
but their ability levels arent that different than many other girls on our
team. Like I said, theyre very normal
girls. What sets them apart from many
other girls, however, is that they have developed a strong sense of belief in
terms of what they can accomplish. They believed
they could do well long before they actually did. E.g., Abby and Michelle ran their first 5k in
28:24 and 27:31 (resp.), and Katelyns was 25:49. Katelyns Mom told me that when Katelyn ran
in grade school, she had to wait for all the other kids to finish before
Katelyn even appeared on the radar. Within
a year of starting Cross Country, however, each of these girls set a goal of
earning a Varsity letter. They began by
believing they could accomplish greater things long before seeing much evidence
that they were capable of those things. Their
belief in this case led to determination and a sense of purpose, and it was
these qualities which ultimately allowed them to achieve their goal. Abby, Michelle and Katelyn have continued to
believe in themselves and by continuing to move
forward, they have become an important competitive part of our team. Saturdays race was a perfect example of what
Im talking about with these girls. Abby
dropped 10 seconds on her time from last year, in spite of having a slightly
off day, and Michelle improved by 2 and a half minutes. Katelyn ran 22:33, an outstanding time, and
finished 9th in the JV race. What they
have achieved and will continue to achieve is something each of you can
accomplish. You may not run quite as
fast or place as high, but you can still achieve great things. We would do well to pay attention and adopt
their attitude across the board.
Our race on Saturday was filled with
great performances and came at a time when we should have been quite
tired. I dont recall many years at any
meet where weve won both the Varsity and JV individual race, but Ashley El Rady and Amanda Vokoun did just
that with fine races. Caroline McCaslin also ran an outstanding race and became our fourth
sub-20 girl this year. These were key
individual efforts for us and point to some potentially great things for our
team down the road.
A perfect way to characterize our effort
at the Rumble is by saying we ran with real heart. E.g., Melanie Strothman
was hurting and yet she ran through the pain to do very well. Brittany Passanisi
told me she twisted an ankle during the race and yet hung in there to also do
very well. Katie Fizer
even threw up during the race and yet hung in there to win a medal. One girl who impressed me in another sense
was Allyson Cissell, who looked incredibly strong
over the last 400 meters. In fact, I
thought all of my Super Sophs ran very solid races - Jill,
Candace, Sarah, Abby and Sydney all improved quite a bit - and two of my
seniors, Maddy Turner and Katie Bergamini
did very, very well. There is much I
could say about everyone in this meet, but space prevents it, so let me close
by saying I was quite proud of each of you.
As we look ahead, lets continue to
dwell on what Ive said here. We need
each girl to look within herself and recognize that she has the ability to do
great things. I know what each of you is
capable of achieving, and if you simply believe in yourselves as I believe in
you, big moments are just ahead.
Meet MVPs
JV race: Amanda Vokoun, Katelyn Sandell, Brittany Passanisi, Melanie Strothman, Allyson Cissell, Maddy Turner, Katie Fizer, Kathryn Harder
Varsity race: Ashley El Rady, Caroline McCaslin, Michelle Pike, Sarah Doerr