Zack Beavin is a freshman at Belmont University after running four successful years at St. Xavier High School in Louisville. This is his second blog post for KYtrackXC.com this fall.
Blog #1
https://ky.milesplit.com/articles/91077-ky-running-blogs-zack-beavin-belmont-university-st-xavier-hs
Team.
Perhaps it’s an overused word. The team speech is something every coach gives, and, let’s be honest, most coaches love to repeat themselves. I know Coach Medley certainly never grew tired of reusing speeches. In fact, one senior class gave him a recording device at the cross country banquet. Apparently it was so he could record his more frequent catch phrases and replay them rather than wasting his voice every time. We never saw it in use because, at least I think, he decided it wasn’t loud enough.
Anyway, I must have heard the team speech 50 times while at St. X. Coach Medley followed every cross country meet up with a commentary based on the team- how well we packed as a team and how we as a team could improve. The names and times in the speeches changed over my four years, but the core idea never did: the team.
I think that coaches repeat the team idea so much because they know the importance of and power of a tight-knit group. However, when it comes down to it, coaches’ speeches, no matter how often they are repeated, can create a true team. A true team ultimately comes from the athletes themselves. A mutual agreement of suffering and sacrifice is made that creates a group of people that are more than friends: they’re teammates. I didn’t know what a true team was until my sophomore year, and perhaps, as I’ve seen recently, I’m still learning what it means to be a team.
My freshman year, to my great surprise and excitement, I was named the third alternate on St. X’s state team. I was not really as concerned with the team, I now realize, as much as I was about my making the squad. The meet was on a miserable, freezing cold, overcast day with stinging rain. We ended up losing to Daviess County. The attitude on the bus afterwards seemed to be a reflection of the depressing weather (thanks to the literary genius that is Coach Yochum, I now know this phenomena is called pathetic fallacy. Contrary to popular belief, I did learn something in sophomore English!). I remember being upset, but I didn’t understand the level of despondency present on the bus. Looking back, I now understand. They felt like they let each other down. They were running for each other, and they felt like they had failed each other. They hadn’t let a state championship slip away just from themselves, but from their teammates, too. My sophomore year, I was firmly in the top seven and no longer felt I was fighting for my life. Only then did I understand this idea of team, and the loyalty and commitment I felt to the team only grew stronger every year.
This all brings me to an interesting place now. For this blog entry, I sit in the Belmont library rather than my dorm, (which means I’m receiving mandatory study hall hours right now!) and there is no laundry looming over my head to distract my thinking (it turns out it’s not too bad- not that I enjoy it, or anything). Now that I am at a new school on a new team, with 4 years of my loyalty almost 200 miles away, does my idea of team change? In a way, it has, though it has changed in a way I wouldn’t have expected. I find myself talking with my Belmont teammates about my “teammates” when referring to people who graduated from St. X from three years ago to two years hence. After Tiger Run, I was excited by how well “my team” ran. And, as I thought about this, I remembered Jimmy Paul at St. X cross country camp last year talking about how well “we” packed as he talked about results from almost 10 years ago. My notion of “team,” as I’ve discovered, is much more inclusive than the group of guys I practice with in any one year. There is something deeper, more profound to a team than a practice schedule or uniform that transcends graduation year and locale. And really, there’s no explaining it. Only experiencing it.
This past Friday I had my first collegiate race of my career- the Belmont Opener. It was a little 5k meet with a few schools that we hosted. Still, a race is a race, and when the gun went off, my racing instincts kicked into gear. As soon as I could I found my teammates and packed up because we had a race plan: come through the mile in a pack right at 5 minutes. Though I’ve only been here for 3 weeks, as we came through the mile at 4:58, and I looked around and saw we had a strong, tight pack of six guys in Belmont uniforms, I felt that old sense of team return. I don’t know what’s in store for me over the next four years, but I do know that whatever it is will be done with a team- my team.
