Folders |
Passing the Adrenaline-Fueled Torch
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You know that rush you get when all eyes are on you? That feeling in your core that tingles when you will be going head to head in competition with the people standing beside you? That Track & Field and Cross Country sort of feeling? Well this is the exact feeling any adrenaline junky could thrive on. Heading into the 2011 Track & Field season, it had been nearly two years since I had felt that feeling. Two years deprived of the races, the competition, the adrenaline that causes so many to fall in love with a sport thatother sports use as punishment. You step up to the line, nerves racing, trying to foresee the coming race in your mind as the Starter begins that oh-so familiar sequence of words that will soon set you sprinting for victory. For two years, the thrill of the race and standing at that starting line vacated itself from my life and I could feel a void within myself that refused to be filled. Intramural flag football teams, pick up basketball and soccer games, lifting weights and running time trials; these activites are a condensed list of the many things that attempted to reignite that Track & Field adrenaline-fuled fire once again, but to no avail. For a while I did not know if I could ever find something that would let me feel the adrenaline of T&F racing again. Then, the 2011 Track & Field season rolls around. As I was working at the Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis, playing with kids and running educational programs, I overheard the athletic directors saying something about the Track & Field program needing a coach for the upcoming season. I thought, "This could be a great opportunity to get back into the sport." Maybe it was just the edge for which I was looking. Soon enough, I found myself conducting the first practice of the season for the 2nd to 5th grade mini-athletes that had joined my team. Practices ran for two weeks and already we were upon our first track meet. As the events began, my first little runner stepped up to the starting line for the 50 meter dash. A second grade boy who, throughout our first six practices, had proven he was nearly as fast or faster than many of the older members of our team. Then, there it was, like the dim embers of a slowly lit campfire amidst a dark cloudy night, the spark of adrenaline was making its way back into my long deprived nervous system. The gun went off and the little second grade trackstar zipped his way to first place in the first ever track race of his young life. As the meet progressed and more of my athletes ran, jumped, and through, the embers began to spread and logs were thrown onto the fire of that old feeling I used to get when I competed. The members of my team took firsts, seconds, thirds, and some never placed, but at the end of the day I was equallyproud of every single one of them and I realized I found what I had been looking for. If I was no longer going to be a part of an organized track team, experiencing the rush and the thrill of competition as an athlete, I would do so by coaching these young kids and teaching them the thrills of Track & Field that I had know since I was there age. In that 2011 track season, the athlete in me passed on the adrenaline-fueled torch to the now coach in me and I have to say, there is no better feeling.
Written by Head Coach Benjamin Bradley |
