Track and field in Bavaria

This spring I have been coaching the track team at the international school.

When I say team, I need to add an explanation, or a disclaimer. What we have are a group of kids who come (usually) twice a week for one hour after school to practice. They range in ages from 5th to 10th grade and we spend the whole season gearing up for the one and only meet. This is pretty normal for the school - most other teams only get one practice a week. There's only so much you can squeeze into a one hour practice, especially with kids who have never raced before and will only get to do so once this year. I say things like "ok kids, today we learn how to use starting blocks." So it ends up being more like an after school track club than a team, or at least that's the way I need to think about it to avoid comparing it to a US track program and getting frustrated (I might be a little competitive).

This weekend was the German international schools track and field championship meet. The International School of Bavaria hosted, which meant that we left Hannover at 7am Friday on the train to Munich, then caught a local train heading north of the city, then a bus picked us up at the station to bring us out to the school and start the meet. So I can't say that I really visited Munich, or Bavaria even, but I did spend many hours at the track. The meet was all afternoon Friday, and most of the day Saturday.

Our kids did not do very well at all. They came in dead last a few times and ended up 6th of the 7 teams that competed. Some were too small, too scared, too out of shape, or just not interested in competing. And losing did not seem to bother them at all. They still cheered for each other and smiled and played games on the train home. I'm not sure whether that was a good or a bad thing. I wouldn't want to deal with crabby sullen pre-teens all the way back to Hannover, but I wanted them to be upset, at least for a little while, that they didn't do better.

It did feel good to be at a track meet again. I've spend many hours of my life sitting around at meets, either as an athlete or as a coach, and there's something very familiar about it. The start and finish lines never move, the starting gun still makes me jump, and it's always fun to watch a runner come from behind to win... even though that runner was not on the Hannover team.