Gunshots echoed through the trees. Limbs and leaves swayed with the cool March breeze, while the neighbors dribbled a basketball in their driveway. In our yard, a freshly painted set of outdoor chairs sat while drying, and the blooming flowers looked sad on this overcast day. In the home, little stirs. Ingrid is taking a nap on the couch and the cats rest downstairs. I’m wasting time on my phone, afraid to make noise while my wife sleeps. My social media is buzzing and alive with posts and memes about the Coronavirus, and the stock market is continuing to crash into oblivion for much the same reason. It is quiet.
The President has just issued a recommendation that people should avoid gatherings of 10 or more, but this is to no one’s surprise. Every public space imaginable has been closing in recent days, with sports being the first to go. The NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS- if there’s a professional level of sport, it’s been cancelled for the foreseeable future. Road races are nearly impossible to come by. The NCAA did its part and took the axe to everything they have, including sports in the middle of their season or approaching championships. Members of the track and field team at my alma mater, the University of North Dakota, found out on their spring break training/competing trip that their season was over- gone in just a blink of an eye. Student-athletes that had poured everything into this outdoor season came up empty-handed, and though the NCAA is promising an extra year of eligibility for them, many seniors need to move on to the next step of their life, track or no track.
It sucks.
The Myrtle Beach training trip was one of the peaks of the UND season. After enduring a gruesome North Dakota winter and the equally gruesome training facility (the Hyslop) we shared with baseball (RIP) and softball, and after enduring the long indoor track season, where every meet you walk away with cottonmouth, a raging cough, and/or a nosebleed, we finally were afforded the opportunity to train and compete somewhere warm. When we would step off that plane in Myrtle Beach and feel the radiant sun on our exposed skin, we knew we were arriving in track and field heaven.
The layout was simple: we stayed in villas right by the beach, complete with multiple bedrooms and kitchenettes. We were assigned teammates to live with and given a certain amount of money ($150 each I recall) to pay for food for the 8-10 days we were living there. The grocery store was a few blocks away- an easy walk- but coaches would periodically offer rides to the store. We were free to basically do whatever we wanted as long as we showed up to vans to go to practice at the right time, we didn’t do anything stupid like go to the bars, and we were limited to one hour of beach time per day, because exhaustion and sunburns don’t improve performance. The track was about 2.5 miles away, and most groups would do two practices- one in the morning and one later in the afternoon.
I got to meet my teammates on a completely different level. For us distance runners, because we had no need to go to the track every day, we would make our own schedule and run together morning and afternoon every day, and fill our time in between with bonding. Each year it seemed that someone would have the amazing intuition to bring a gaming console, and we would waste away hours sitting in our running clothes, eating food, and playing something like Super Smash Bros. In fact, this is where I learned from Connor that Jigglypuff is dangerous in a group setting. If it came time to do another run, those going would simply yield their controllers and go run. Upon return, it’d be time to play again. The throwers and jumpers on our team would often be gone all day practicing, and so it would often just be us. We were at peace.
The meets were something to behold as well. Track teams all over the northern half of the US would descend on southern climates for spring break to compete. The big ones were at Arizona State (Phoenix area) and Coastal Carolina University (Myrtle Beach). The record board here at CCU was full of professionals and high-level D1 athletes. Hundreds of athletes from all levels of the NCAA and Ju-Co were there: From the University of Minnesota and Clemson to dozens of small, private Christian schools throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania. Everybody was looking for the same thing: great training conditions and the ability to actually have an outdoor track meet right after indoor season ends in early March. For many of us (ESPECIALLY UND), outdoor track meets in mid-march simply was not an option back home.
During the week we would try to arrive at the track early for workouts, not simply to beat warmer weather later in the day, but also to avoid the crowds. On one side of the track, some teams would be practicing relay hand-offs in lanes 5-8. On the other side, lanes 3-6 would be used for hurdling. The infield would have dozens of athletes from different teams doing different warm-ups and little space for anybody to maneuver. The inside lanes of the track would be reserved for runners doing workouts. When you finished a rep, you stepped off the track to avoid getting trampled. If you were about to trample someone, you yelled “TRACK!” and hoped they heard you. Behind the stadium, throwers would be practicing javelin, discus, and shot put in the open field. It was a bustling metropolis of athletes.
The first meet when we arrived would be relatively small, but then throughout the week teams would start showing up in all the different resorts up and down the main boulevard. The culmination of it all was the big CCU meet that went Thursday-Saturday on the second and final weekend we were in paradise. In outdoor track, the largest meets are commonly Thursday-Saturday, where Thursday is used to get some throwing events and the 10,000 meters out of the way, while Friday and Saturday are commonly used as a prelims-finals kind of thing for the rest of the events. Some meets will also fill up Friday and Saturday morning with ‘unseeded’ heats of events, for everyone except the top 10-20 in each event, and then the ‘seeded’ heats during primetime on Saturday, when the top dogs go at it.
During this long weekend of track, we would seemingly go days without seeing the throwers, and when we did, they would have some incredibly damaging sunburns and be totally exhausted. Our bodies weren’t used to being exposed to sun, and the throwers would sit outside all day supporting each other, and it seemed that no amount of sunscreen could protect some of them. Hell, we all got ridiculously sunburned on that trip. Athletes were encouraged (required in some cases) to stay at the resort unless their event was close, in which time the coaches would pick you up and drive you to the meet. If you were done after that, you could stay. But if you had an event later, you’d be asked to go back and rest in the shade.
We all felt like we could stay there forever: lounging in the sun, competing against people from all over the country, watching how other athletes and coaches train and interact, sunrises on the beach, living carefree- it almost felt like a dream. I remember laughing until my sides were sore, running with friends into the cold, salty water, racing my heart out and breaking my first school record, cheering on teammates, eating ice cream, morning runs, watching Indoor Nationals, and learning more about myself as a person.
You see, these are things that student athletes will not have this year- the memories. You miss a meet or two, and it’s not the end of the world, but you take away an entire season of memories, and you’ll always wish you had more time. It reminds me of the video a few years ago of the Boston College basketball player who, after his season had ended, was asked what his favorite memory of college was. He responded with: “eating lunch”. He didn’t say the games, travel, or practice- he talked of the little things that he shared with his teammates.
We forget how powerful the little things can truly be. When I think back on the spring break training trip, what stands out to me the most was when I was leaning on a fence. We were at the track on Thursday, and it was getting late. Darkness had descended and the stadium lights were on. The stands had cleared out and just about everybody had gone home. The only event running was the only event left- the 10k. The air was breathing a huge sigh of relief and the temperature was slowly dropping. The sea breeze had calmed down after a busy day and the whole world seemed to be relaxing. I was standing along the fence with Coach Clay and a teammate, while other assorted distance runners and distance coaches dotted different areas around the stadium. On the track, some runners were racing the 25-lap monster of outdoor track, clicking off lap after lap. Every time around, coaches would be yelling splits and words of encouragement. Other than that, it was quiet- so quiet, in fact, that you could hear the labored breathing of each athlete as they came around for another lap. I recall thinking to myself, surrounded by only a few distance-minded types, on a perfect Thursday evening in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: I wish this moment would last forever.
