And now, here we are. The 2020 spring seasons will not happen. The invitationals are off the calendar. The individual goals will not be met. The competition between teammates for a coveted spot on a relay team is simply melted away. The Section True Team championship goal, the State True Team championship goal, the Conference, Sub-Section, Section, and State - all gone. I am wallowing tonight in my own losses. But, I know my losses do not hold a candle to those who don't get the opportunities to compete for their last year - our seniors. As coaches, we feel grief at the end of each and every season. But then, it's a loss of relationship, of the intensity that that relationship gives us for one season or over the course of many seasons. Now, not only is it the loss of relationships, it's also the devastation of thinking about what could have been and never got the chance to materialize.
Every athlete and coach has defining moments in their lives related to sports. Before this year, I had three.
The first one occurred in my senior year when my team lost the region 3A final in girl's basketball by a slim margin. The buzzer sounded, the other team and their fans exploded in cheers, and I sat on the court with my head in my hands and sobbed. We were so very close to realizing the dream of going to the state tournament in a season where others had already written us off.
The second happened during the Section track and field meet in 2002, long before live results even existed. Our boy's 4x400 team walked across the field toward Matt and me to see if their 2nd place might still qualify them for state. (At that time, only the first place relay team qualified for state.) We had to tell them that they had missed the qualifying standard by .01 seconds. There was nothing we could say to ease that pain.
The third was just two years ago at the State meet. Our senior athlete was running in the 800m finals. We were cheering on the backstretch of the track, feeling the joy and excitement as he sprinted down the homestretch. The runners disappeared behind the awards tent as he was vying for the lead with the eventual champion. We heard the crowd gasp, the runners emerged on the other side of the awards tent, but our runner did not. He had been tripped, got up, and crossed the line in 9th place. The officials ruled that he could rerun the race, alone, at the conclusion of the meet. We didn't want him to regret not trying, so we told him he would do the rerun. It was emotional as the crowd gave him a standing ovation, but his rightful placing in the top 3 was not to be as his final time would not equal his best. Emotionally and physically exhausted, he crossed the line. Career over.
Each of the previous defining moments still gives me pause. Even the basketball game from 30 years ago. Each moment produces an ache that never will go away and has shaped who I am. I've gotten better at revisiting those moments and sitting with the ache and the sadness. I've gotten more efficient at squashing the what ifs, because now they've become what wasn'ts. But still, I go back, sit in that space with the ache, cry a little, open to feeling the sadness, breathe in and out and let it go until the next time. That ache isn't a space I avoid anymore, because it's become a tool. When disappointment and despair occur again, as they inevitably do, I think, "Oh yeah, I've felt this before. I've been through this. And I've come through on the other side, maybe not stronger, but different. I can do this."
And now, I have a fourth defining moment. And oh, does it ache. One of my strengths is empathy, and it's killing me right now. I feel all the feels for our seniors and their parents who just are suffering loss after loss after loss. I feel for the kids I've been coaching since I taught them as students in 6th grade. I feel for my own kids whose goals for this season won't be realized. I feel for our coaching staff and the volunteers who were beyond compare this year! I feel for my husband who has been talking about THIS season and THIS team since the seniors were 8th graders.
Grief is funny, and definitely not funny haha. It's loss. It's disappointment. It's sadness. It's anger. It's despair. This spring, each of these is a response to something that we collectively had absolutely no control over. It's something that's happened or is happening to us, in which we have no say. The only say we have is in our response. Trite. I know. The one thing it ISN'T is regret. I often think regret can be even worse than grief. Regret happens when we choose our action or inaction to something with which we are faced. I will never regret my season kick off speech to the girls. I will never regret the hours in invested in planning this season. I will never regret the meetings and the captain interviews and the planned workouts and the emails and the facebook and twitter posts. And the athletes? They won't regret coming out for track and field. They will not like the pain and loss and disappointment. But, despite that, the emotional and physical and mental investment that they and their parents and our community has made in track and field will serve them well in the future. It doesn't feel like it now, and won't for a long time. But this hardship? It will come to look like an opportunity, a gift.
Here's what else this is - a pivot. It isn't a stop sign, a brick wall, or a cliff. It's a pivot. And we choose HOW we pivot and where we go from here. It doesn't mean that we will easily and simply move on. We won't. We will move through, sit in the ache, cry a little (or a lot), and feel all the feels. This hardship is practice for what will come later in our lives - when we will return to the aches we've felt before and know we can get through whatever it is that's going on, because we got through the losses of 2020.
