Getting started

This is a podcast episode where Coach Rick talks about his journey into coaching youth sports. He shares how he was unexpectedly thrust into his first head coaching position with no experience. He explains how he dropped out of college to take care of his family and ended up working as a gopher at a car rental center. He then talks about how he got involved with coaching a girls' track and field team in South Lake Tahoe and the challenges he faced. Despite his background in sprinting, he took on the role of coaching distance running and had to learn on the job. He also talks about the difficulties of organizing and running meets, as well as the lack of recognition and respect for his team. Despite the challenges, he is determined to change the mindset and perception of his team and make them competitive. Hey, welcome back coaches, both old and new to Got You Coached, a podcast for coaches by a coach. If you're listening to this podcast, you are either one of my very closest friends, and thank you very much, a family member, or someone who is thinking about becoming a youth coach, and well, this is the podcast series for you. I'm your host, Coach Rick, and in my first episode, I gave you some of the earliest journey into the coaching world, and why I decided to dedicate my life to teaching youth about sport. Today, you'll hear how I was thrust into my first head coaching position with absolutely no experience, and some of the issues that I had to overcome. October 31st, 1973, Halloween, I made a decision to drop out of college and move to South Lake Tahoe and take care of my mother. You see, she had moved there with my three youngest siblings because her doctors had suggested that she get away from the toxic environment of the Bay Area, and my father needed to stay in the Bay Area because of his job as an aerospace engineer for Lockheed. After all, I was the oldest male child, and the responsibility of filling in for my father was, in my opinion, an expectation and not an option, and since my 10.6 second hundred meter time in college wasn't fast enough for a scholarship, and I couldn't find a job to pay for college at San Francisco State, the choice was obvious. My parents had purchased a three-bedroom, two-bath, single-wide mobile home in a very nice mobile home park in South Lake Tahoe, and my two brothers and youngest sister had joined my mom, which meant that, well, it was extremely crowded. I got a job as a gopher for the Hertz Car Rental Center at Harrah's Casino Resort. I was responsible for retrieving the cars for the people who were renting them during their stay in Tahoe, as well as cleaning them up when they were returned, gassing them up, and other odds and ends. It was an exciting time in my life, not. In January 1974, my youngest sister had heard about an all-girls AAU track and field and cross-country team that had been established in South Lake Tahoe. The head coach was a local banker, and since there was five feet of snow on the ground, I was extremely curious as to how he was going to train this team. So I took my sister to the first track practice in the South Tahoe Middle School gym, sat in the bleachers as an observer. The team consisted of girls ages 6 through 13, approximately 30 to 35 of them, and the head coach had a male adult helping him trying to keep the athletes organized, but in my opinion was having difficulties doing so. Does the term herding cats seem appropriate? At the conclusion of practice, I went to the head coach and introduced myself, told him of my past coaching experiences in track, and asked if he needed any help. He gladly accepted my offer, and this started my multi-year experience with the South Tahoe Steppers. The Steppers were supported by the South Tahoe Parks and Recreation Department, which was how we were able to use the school gym and the school's track equipment. The equipment was stored in a wooden storage unit that was located midway between the gym and the track, about 100 yards away, and outside. This meant that if we were hurdling or high jumping, we were bringing equipment in from the shed, in the snow, and 30 degree temperatures or less. They said it built character, but I doubt that very much. The first season went along without issue, traveling to the Bay Area and Sacramento every weekend for competition, and eventually ended with the PAAAU championship meet at the end of May. But wait, there was still another meet. This one was at our home track, the former home of the 1968 Men's Olympic Trials that were held at the top of Echo Summit, just up Highway 50, about 12 miles away. You see, the 1968 Olympics were being held in Mexico City, and the U.S. Olympic Organization chose this site so their men's team could train at the elevation of 7,300 feet above sea level, comparable to what they would experience in Mexico City. When the trials were over, the all-weather track was rolled up and transported into town and placed at the South Tahoe Middle School location, where it became the first middle school in America with an all-weather running track. This home meet took place in early June, and was my very first experience at what it took to organize and run a track meet. 600 female athletes and their parents came to Tahoe for this meet, for the chance to run on the Olympic Trials track and enjoy one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. And that was pretty much it. The season was done. The championship meet was completed. But the idea of running on this track and the inherently beauty that is South Lake Tahoe made this a very popular event. So now the girls have the rest of June and July off until August, when the cross-country training season starts. Cross-country training? Distance running? What's that? After all, I was a sprinter. I had a best friend who ran distance, but that was nothing that I was interested in. But apparently, there was another path that I was to take. Halfway through the summer, the head coach called me and told me that he needed to talk. I had just turned 21, so he had me over to the house, sat me down, and gave me a beer. Then he proceeded to let me know that the local bank that he worked for had given him a promotion, and he was relocating him away from Tahoe, which meant he could no longer coach the team. The next few minutes were a blur, very much so, but he asked me to take over the team and keep the program that he had started five years earlier alive. I agreed, and my life changed forever. So how does a sprinter wind up coaching a cross-country program? Good question. Why? Because, you see, there's different muscle groups that are used in sprinting and distance running, and when a coach hasn't had the experience in one, it can become difficult to do the other. My only experience at running any distance over 400 meters was in college, when my best friend, a distance runner, told me that it would build my stamina. So I would go out with him and his distance buddies and attempt to run five miles. Big mistake. He would carry on a conversation with me, and I would be gasping for air. Then, after my first 100-meter race in college, when I tore my hamstring, I attempted to slowly get back into shape by running distances over 400 meters. I sucked at it, and I swore I would never try anything like this again. Life lesson to any coach or anybody, for that matter, never say never. So here I am, a single 21-year-old man, thrust into a coaching position that involved a girls-only running team that had all of their competitions anywhere from two to five hours away from home. And remember, we lived in South Lake Tahoe, where it snows quite a bit, which meant that traveling was somewhat of a challenge, no matter what time of the year it was. You see, there's years where we've had snowstorms in June in Tahoe, which makes it extremely uncomfortable. To say that the first year was an experience would be an understatement. Signing up the girls for the team, getting them registered with the AAU, including getting birth certificates, collecting fees, figuring out the competition schedule and making travel arrangements, making sure there were enough female chaperones, fundraising, and, oh yeah, coming up with practice routines was an incredible amount to undertake at such a young age, especially for someone with no previous experience at this at all. I was driving a 1967 Pontiac LeMans that had Gabriel Hijacker shock absorbers and 60 Series tires on the back. Not exactly a vehicle geared for the snow in Lake Tahoe, let alone transporting a girls cross-country and track team to competitions. But before he left Sacramento, the banker slash coach arranged with a local car dealer for me to purchase a Chevy cargo van. Since at the time there were no seat belt laws in place, I proceeded to build a big enough bed in the van to accommodate six or more girls for our treks down the hill for our competition. This also doubled as my sleeping area, so I didn't have to get a motel room for me. I was so excited about my van that I proceeded to make some changes to it in order to make it look cool. The van was already green in color, the same color as our team uniforms. In addition to the bed, I personally added two circular windows on each side of the rear of the van, carpeted the walls so it wasn't so cold-looking inside, and hand-painted South Tahoe steppers on the hood with snow-capped mountains as a background. I wanted others to know that the steppers were in the house! Okay, in-the-house thing wasn't a proper vernacular for the time period, but you get what I mean. We had a wonderful group of parents that were very willing to help transport the team to our meets and act as necessary chaperones and handle the issue that surrounded an all-girls team with a male head coach. We also had some financial backing from the South Lake Tahoe Parks and Recreation Department that helped in paying for the gas and lodging, as well as a small stipend for me. But I still had future dreams about being able to actively compete as a runner again, and was told that if I accepted this stipend, I would lose my amateur status. So I arranged to have my stipend go back to the team instead. The girls that came out for cross-country were an interesting group, to say the least. Now keep in mind that living in South Lake Tahoe in the mid-70s was not exactly a melting pot of diversity. My first job was to change the mindset of the team and those that we competed against. You see, it had become obvious to me that other teams looked at us as a patsy or easy win when they lined up against us. I actually heard them say that. This bothered me a great deal and helped to form my coaching philosophy for many years to come. I mean, really, why would a coach settle for having his or her team be looked upon like this? I wanted the steppers to be respected in both cross-country and track. So I set out to do just that. Tune in next time to see how I set about changing the mindset of our team and the perception that other teams had about us. Until then, take care, be safe, laugh a lot, and tell somebody that you love them. And don't forget to send me your questions, suggestions, or comments to CoachRickB53 at gmail.com. I'll talk to you next time.