Team Player

Team Player

It is a cold, wet October morning in Slippery Rock, PA. The school bus carrying 50 sleeping high schoolers pulls into a gravel parking lot, joining a crowd of buses and vans already lining the edge of a vast grassy field. A never-ending white line is painted on the short-clipped grass marking a trail. It follows the outside of the expanse, along the parking lot, beside the road, up and down the hills and valleys, and through small patches of trees and brush at the far end of the field. Football goalposts crown the crest of a hill in the distance and white wooden posts guard the insides of the curves of the white line. As the bus driver turns off the motor, the girls begin to stir and sit upright in their seats. They wipe the beads of condensation from the inside of the windows and look outside, absorbing this beautiful scenery. A few begin to talk to the person sitting next to them. Others stretch and let out loud groans. This is the morning they have been preparing for since the summer months: this morning, this very group of girls will try to prove themselves as the highest-ranking, fastest-running cross country team in western Pennsylvania. Soon, this calm field will be overtaken by swarms of coaches, runners, parents, and officials.

As the morning moves on, more and more people gather around the tents that have popped up between areas of the course. After about two hours of preparation, the teams start gathering near the starting line for the first race. First to run are the boys’ junior varsity teams, followed forty minutes later by boys’ varsity. And then it’s my turn.

Coach LeDonne gathers all of the girls on the JV team around him in front of our duck-y...

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... that I gave as much to the team today as any other girl walking in those doors with me. And at that moment I realize that I contributed an equal amount to the victory as the first runner or the fourth runner, or the last runner on my team. Perhaps running is my secondary duty for the team. Maybe it is equally important that I helped Amy push up that hill in her race as it is important that I finished my own race with an average personal time in mine.

Even though the team as a whole may value speed over every other quality, I realize that it isn’t necessarily the most important for every runner. The team could never run well without a steady support, a push from behind to run up the steepest hill. I was never meant to be the fastest runner on the team. But I could still have that same importance by being a proud, supportive member of the team.