Joys of parenting

As many of you know, Sam has become quite a runner and I am very proud of his achievement. In basically 3 years he has gone from being the last or next to last in his 7th grade middle school track team long distance events to being ranked highly in the state for his prime distance, 3200 meters, essentially the 2 mile race. His latest time is just a shade over 10 minutes 11 seconds, run May 6 in a conference meet in Charleston, WV and he came in first. One more medal for his collection.

His progress that first year was slow but steady. The hardest part was helping him adjust his sights. He always was so disappointed he did not win. I suggested he should forget about that right then....that an achievable goal was to work on personal improvment and shave off seconds each time he ran. He did that and constantly improved.

When 7th grade ended he left for a 10 day bike trip from New York City to Albany NY. This trip was a first for him....to go and have an experience completely his own where he did not know anyone. Within 3 days we had a phone call telling us that he felt he had know the other kids for weeks and it was very hard and sad for him to depart at the end of the camp.

However, when he returned home, there was a 5K road race, and with those toned up leg muscles, he cut 10 minutes off his time. And that was the start of the new Sam.

The next middle school track season he was in a leadership capacity, and while he often ran against another boy his age from a nearby school...and that boy is gifted and we expect to see him in the Olympics one day....those times Sam did not win, he ran faster and faster in his desire to catch that other kid. He learned never to hate someone who is better than he is because of a natural gift, but to appreciate the guidance he provides, whether he knows it or not, to others. Sam and all the other runners in this area ARE running faster because of this other kid. (His name is Jacob Burcham and he has already begun to break records, so remember you heard the name here first. *S*)

Well, high school started this year and Sam ran cross country for the first time.Each race is 5 kilometers (3.2 miles) so the distance is always the same, but the difficulty of the course varies by the location of the run. Being West Virginia, we have more hills on most of our courses than other parts of the country.

At Sam's first meet his coach told us ahead of time that he will inform us when to buy running shoes with cleats for Sam. At that race, in the rain, Sam ran 20 minutes even. The coach said "Go buy those shoes."

The next race the spikes made a difference in traction and he shaved his time to 18:29. This past January, he had shaved over another minute off his time.

He is very fortunate to have a great coach, Ferg, who tells the kids in no uncertain terms what he expects from them and then shows them how to achieve it. He is also lucky to be with a great group of guys who, while they put him thru a bit of hazing since he is a freshman, learned to very much respect his ability and swallow their own pride at being passed by Sam.

And now, we are in his first high school track season. The course is, of course, flat...that oval around football fields. Sam runs distance so he has been in races varying from 400 meters (once around) to 3200 meters (8 times around), He usually runs in open events, but has also participated in a relay or two.

He is doing great and at this moment we expect Sam to qualify for the State meet which will happen in two weeks. The qualifying meet is coming up this week at the Regional Competition.

So, what does this all mean to me...besides the very obvious glow of pride for my youngest achieving something pretty nifty.

Well, I also feel a bit of pride in my own parenting....not only that Sam is a good kid, but the simple fact that I provided opportunities for him and also make time to be there for him. At these track meets, with 20-40 kids there, there are usually less than 10 parental units in attendance. About 4 of us come to every meet.

Now I realize that we make that happen, and it takes work and compromise. I have missed a few because of work commitments in the evening, but I do enough overtime other days that I can leave early on track meet days. Graham's schedule is pretty open but he has missed a few because of travel. Not everyone has that freedom tho, I know that. I understand that if the meet is an hour or more away, some people also may not have the transportation to get there. But there have been meets at our school and still, attendance is not much better.

Graham and I started taking photos of Sam of course. He soon asked us to take pictures of the other guys running distance and he started to post them to his Facebook page. Soon some of the distance runners from other schools noticed that there were some photos of them and the word spread. The other runners and field event athletes on Sam's team started to say "Hey! get a picture of me!" and so, we did.

We bought better cameras to get better photos...stop action shots of hurdle jumping/flying, relay baton-passing, and speed speed speed of all of them. We've learned that the right equipment makes the end result better.
Kids who most likely wouldn't normally be seen talking to middle aged old fogies like us are now hugging on us and telling us they love us. They beam with pride when I comment they ran well. They suck up the attention. They need it.

Where are their parents? Watching tv? Look what they are missing.