in Practice by coach mike on 06 Sep 2007

When it comes to athletics, what is toughness? Is it being the best player on the team? The top scorer? Most points? Number 1? Would you rather be the best on a weak team or a member of real good team? If you just work hard enough in practice to keep your spot but never work to improve does that make you tough. I have seen athletes that have a lot of talent but don’t work at their skill.  Most coaches have a plan for their workouts, a reason, usually the reason is to work on something to make their athletes better. If you are having problems running the 2nd mile, then you set up your workout to improve that 2nd mile. Once again I couldn’t make practice, couldn’t get away from work. Michael and I set up the practice, he was there to run it.  You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. You tell your runners to hit certain times, but you can’t force them to.  You can yell at them I guess, can’t really punish them, what are you going to do make them run?  They have to want to get better!  When your top runners run in the back in practice, what message does that send?  Specially when on race day they run number 1 or 2 for, what does that tell the ones working hard but not racing as well?  Today we were to do 2, yes only 2- 1 mile repeats, trying to hit  certain times. Jones did 4 all between 5:20 to 5:28.  Jaron hit his, as did Drew, no one else seem to be able to hit the marks. The girls were lead by Courtney on the first one, with Alyssa stepping up on both. Kissner had a good practice. I’m not sure whats up with the rest of them! I’m about to give up. We’ll see how they race on Saturday.