"How are elite athletes made?"

Although Amory often provides great prompts for our blogs, I often take a pass in favor of blabbing about running and jumping and stuff. Although we're just now trying to get the season revved up, this is a tough month for competitions as a post-collegiate athlete because most meets are reserved for various collegiate championships. As a result, we are discriminated against for being too old cool for school. On top of which, I'm curiously battling a mysterious flare up of my glute injury that I picked up in April. As a result, not much to speak about on the track so I think this is a pretty good opportunity to try my shot at one of Amory's prompts that I've actually been thinking about for a while.

As posed by Amory herself:

tell the story of when you first self-identified as an athlete. Was it in grade school? Middle school? High school or later? When did you first realize you were possessed of an abundance of talent and passion for sport? I think it’s fun to plumb the depths of the question “How are elite athletes made?”

For most I guess this is one of those basic questions of nature versus nurture, but I think I might be able to answer this prompt with a single picture:

What? You didn't have a hammer to play with in your front yard? Yes, that's me. While you were smashing toy cars into the wall and trying not to drool on your over-alls, I was training. Well, ok, to this day I have no idea how to actually throw the hammer, but needless to say, I come from a bit of a track family. My parents both separately competed for then eventually met while coaching at UCLA. My mom was a hurdler, javelin thrower, and discus thrower turned throws coach. Yes, she was the first to teach me the proper way to squat and clean, but she also taught me how to work hard and to get things done the right way. Dad was a crazy mid-distance runner but also my first jumps coach. On top of which, they may have one a couple national titles along the way. Thus, there was some pretty decent nature there (thanks for the shoulders mom...but dad, when the hell are those 1500m genes going to kick in?), but for me I think it's really the nurture that counts. I was a little misguiding here or there (baseball), but on the whole, when you spend your sick days bicycling around Stanford's track and football stadium and throw javelins at the park with mom and little brother during Christmas Breaks, you're given pretty good opportunities to do and generally enjoy track and field. Even to this day, when Brenner wasn't able to make it down to Baton Rouge for the LSU dec, dad was able to make it down to help me out as a coach.

In fact, I really don't think there was a time that I self-identified myself as an athlete; It's just all I've ever known. I'd never be one to say I've really got any pure talents, I mean, Josh Kreuzer and I had some epic races for fastest kid in school in third grade and I was always one of the few boys that could outrun the girls at recess (looking back on it, probably not the best skill I could have picked up), but since then I haven't really been that fast. I was always the shy, tall geeky kid whose skinny ribs you could see sticking out of my chest until maybe my sophomore year of high school. Other than that, I was just really good at eating.

As far as passion goes, however, I just always loved sport. My big sport growing up was always soccer and I played baseball through my freshman year in high school, but on top of the club teams I played every sport my middle school had to offer (except for cross country of course, I may never understand distance running...). I wrestled (thereby adding some gray hairs for mom), played basketball (at least after getting cut once or twice), ran track, and even played volleyball for 3 weeks until we failed to find a six man to make our squad whole. There were seasons that mom and dad got to cart me around to basketball, baseball, and soccer practices all at the same time (on top of my younger brother having a similar schedule). Of course, however, it was all only if my homework was done the night before...thanks mom.

Ironically enough, I actually managed to excel in the positions that required the least to do with my eventual path towards the jumping, throwing, and the endless running of track and field. In baseball I was a catcher (to the detriment of my knees) and was one of the few kids in the history of little league to almost never pitch and I was never able to hit a ball out of the park. My arm sucked - to the extent that my high school baseball coach once asked me after try-outs: "so, have you ever had any injuries to your arm" - and my power hitting was worse. In soccer I was a goalkeeper, probably mostly due to my height and asthma, but even worse was that our team was good, thus I hardly ever saw action. So much so that I once had to be carried off the field because the lack of movement in the second half of one cold game stole my ability to do anything but stand in place and chatter my teeth while mumbling: "I-I-I-Immm c-c-c-c-ooooooolllld-d-d..." while the rest of the team shook hands with the traditional "good game" exchange. The first day of freshman football in high school (again, more gray hairs for mom) I signed up for strong safety (so I could hit people without them seeing it coming) and wide receiver (so I could run away from getting hit - plus I figured I was way too skinny for anything else). Within two days I was a defensive end and tight end. A couple weeks later and I was a defensive tackle and a center. I got moved up to varsity my sophomore year to back up an all-league center that was maybe 5-10 and about 250 ilbs. I was 6-3, had ballooned up 185 thanks to that off-season strength work, and my shoulder pads made my arms look like long icicles dripping off a roof-top.

Thus, my point being, how does a skinny slow kid with asthma turn into an "elite athlete"? Easy, the people around him: amazing parents, and great coaches and teachers. Yes, the genes you get from your family play a role, but more importantly, having parents that tirelessly drive you from soccer practice to baseball practice, come to all the games (even when your 25 years old and they're still making your car payments), and never push, but always encourage and support. Furthermore, it's from them I learned the value of hard work, and about how determination and attention to detail pay huge in the long run. The reason I'm still where I am is because I learned how to always strive to be better - plus I'm just too stubborn to quit.

What got me here are the coaches. I have been incredibly fortunate in that my coaches from Tommy Anderson (developer of the amazing Daisy Cutta'), my U-10 soccer coach to my Little League coaches, to Coach Filios every summer at basketball camp, to my amazing high school coaches - Tom Tuite and Jason Hinkin who taught me to vault, Dan Quinn and Carl Florant who taught me to hurdle, Coach Frank, Coach Adams, Coach Ivers, and even teachers like Mike Kemp, Gary Dinneen, and Don Carroll (who I hope is not proof-reading this right now), and so many others that I may not have ever seen on a track yet I still carry with me every day the lessons I learned in their classrooms. You pick up a lot of great stuff when you surround yourself with good people. Things like carrying horsepower on the runway, keeping your dive through a hurdle, or the proper way to warm up are huge, but it's really the little lessons I learn from these people that I carry with me every day. It's about how to treat people, how to be unsatisfied with nothing but the best, how to love what you do. Those are the real lessons I learned from my coaches and teachers that get me through every day of training. Though, when you start traveling for competitions in college and realize that your high school coaches were better than 80% of the college coaches you see around, that doesn't hurt.

Of course, my college coaches weren't too shabby either. Coach Dee taught us all to work our butt's off, V always kept us on track and going with a smile on our faces (when he wasn't stealing my Wheat Thins...). When you have a chance to go to a D-II school, get a great degree, and be coached day in and day out by people that are not only some of the best coaches in the world, but also world-class people, how can you go wrong? Again, it's almost like the toughest part is just not screwing up all they have to give you. Then of course you've got your scattering of Olympic finalist throwers (Andy Bloom) to teach you a thing or two about hucking things and lifting weights, a Japanese Olympic coach to teach you some things about high jumping (H) - plus fix you here or there when you're nice and broken, Coach Rob (he tried his best to make me fast), and Ken Norlan who all contributed in so many ways. Not to mention someone like Julie Baclene and her endless hours in the training room with me when things were not quite right (if you plan on being a decathlete, make good friends with a great trainer).

Thus, I guess what I'm trying to say is, the answer is in the question. From my experience, elite athletes are just that: made. Find yourself some great parents and surround yourself with the most amazing people around. Next, just keep you ears open and do what they say (even if you're countless 400's deep, in the rain, an hour after the rest of the team has gone home, barely able to stand, and all you can here is V yelling: "shuffle!").