LouisianaRunning.Com and other Updates

On occasion I like to give updates, like I did here, and here about Southern Athletics, about the things that are going on with either Vintage Performance, my athletes at Southern Athletics, my athletes at John Curtis Christian School, or other events going on in the running community around the country or even here in Louisiana.  The videos I mentioned in the first link, I am working on retooling some of them and refilming the drills and lunge matrix that we do every day, so if you were looking for those videos, they will be back sometime this summer.  

I will be working more with Louisiana Running throughout the year and will be writing articles such as the one I did recently.  We are working on putting together some of the rankings we did last year again for this year.  We are also planning on putting together more video interviews and possibly even following recruiting in Louisiana which is very popular amongst the football and basketball communities.  Also, on this website I am working on putting together capsules for the top junior and senior athletes on the teams I coach and will also mention where our graduates have signed and are competing at.  There will also be a few more articles on training during the summer, and not simply aspects of coaching.

The summer track season is also in full swing and we have our first meet this weekend.  In a few weeks we will be taking a couple athletes to New Balance Outdoor Nationals, and later in the summer we will have more out of state meets through AAU.  I plan on taking at least one trip to the beach, so maybe I will write a fun article about how to stay in shape on vacations. 

Also, don't forget to check out some of the websites listed under links.  I have given a short detail about some in this recent blog post. 

Have a good summer, and check back often!

Running on the beach may be in the plans for a lot of athletes this summer!

Promoting the Sport at the Grassroots Levels

One of my biggest goals as a coach is to find ways to make the sport of track and field bigger and better, and more accessible to young athletes all across the country.  I, as a personal trainer, also have a goal of helping people across the country become more fit as well as helping young, non-track athletes, become better at their sport by increasing their fitness.  First and foremost I like to brainstorm on ways to create new and innovative ways to take to running and become better athletes.

There are ways, from a coaching angle and perspective, to create the atmosphere necessary for success on the youth level.  Here are a couple of ideas:

1)  Coaches should strive to learn how to be the best authoritative figure they can be.  Learning about the sport is a must.  If a coach expects his athletes to give effort in becoming the best athletes they can be, the coach needs to, at the very least, give an equal amount of effort into building the team and the individuals up.  Don't be stubborn and learn to be resourceful in your coaching.  Perfect conditions and scenarios day in and day out rarely exist as a coach.

2)  Remember that some things you say to a kid may stick with him for a long time, if not his whole life.  One of the most important things you can teach a young student athlete is to have a goal, and how to work with others to achieve that goal.  Having open dialogue about what the team needs are and how to give your share should be an important aspect.  

3) We need to prepare the young athlete for the future, and not just the immediate future.  Teaching them how to live by certain standards, and how to understand other peoples standards is a big part of success in college and in the workplace.  Personal responsibility and teamwork is never too plentiful.  An athlete that learns to be self sufficient and learns to revolve around standards will be less inclined to give up when the going gets tough or to cut corners in workouts or other aspects of their life.

Keeping kids healthy and active in investing in the future.  Track and Field offers a great opportunity for staying in shape and learning valuable lessons.

Coaches and Accessories

No, I'm not talking purses and belts, I'm talking about tools that a coach can have that aid him and his team.  I'm a big fan of useful devices or services to help my athletes to achieve success on a daily basis and there are a few items that I have come across that I feel make a big difference.  Here is a list of some ideas that can make a difference for your team.

Foam Rollers- These guys are one of the most useful items I have gotten for my athletes.  The foam roller is a stretching, massage, and injury prevention tool that can do wonders.  All you have to do is lie over the roller and move your body back and forth to get a deep tissue style massage and loosen up tight muscles and tissue.

McMillan Running Calculator-  This isn't a physical tool, but it is very helpful.  Even wonder about what your athletes should run in other events based off their recent performances?  This calculator is very helpful in establishing where your athletes should be (although it is not perfect!).  This is also useful in establishing paces for workouts.

GPS Watch- This is especially useful for those coaches and athletes who do not have access to a track or a course that is already marked out accurately.  I am very interested in knowing paces and distances for my workouts, and this is a great aid, especially on easy distance runs and it allows you to keep track of your athletes.

Online Team Page- This is another non-physical tool, but is very important for team organization and recognition.  Having accurate graduation years and accurate stats not only help your athletes get noticed in their running community but it also keeps track of their progression and is a showcase of their efforts throughout the years.  Especially on milesplit, you have access to different stats and graphs for each person and it keeps track of school records.

Lists of Parents and Sponsors-  This is one of the most underrated tools you can have.  A list of parents that can help during events and a list of sponsors that can help your team pay for expenses such as a travel and uniforms.  Anyone who has coached for a certain amount of time knows that you need good help to keep your program together and the best place to start is parents.  Business and individuals willing to donate money to a team are also pretty neat too.

The Greatness of Track and Field

I love sports.  You can find me watching touchdowns and tackles on the weekends in the fall; when World Cup rolls around I like to pick teams to follow and cheer for; I even watch a bit of basketball and baseball when good teams play.  Mainly, I love track and field though.  Why?  Well it isn't simply that I coach it or that I ran in high school, there is more to it.

There are plenty of kids who think track is not a sport or propagate other myths about running.  I find it amusing that these athletes who usually play one of the big three (football, basketball, baseball) don't realize that track is one of the few events that are completely pure in the athletic sense while all the other "games" simply look to utilize the teams athleticism. In no way do I mean to diminish the athletic prowess of athletes in those sports (I actually believe some of the worlds best athletes play in the NFL), but track and field is just one athletes body and athleticism against another's.  Yes, there is occasionally some strategy, but mostly in the distance events and relays.  But 99% of the time the winner of the event comes down to who has trained the hardest and who can execute to the best of their ability on meet day.  You can't use a trick play, or get a penalty to give you free throws, etc.  It's you vs the opponent, your body vs theirs.  And the events reflect the core movements of sport: jumping, running, and throwing.

So I enjoy the fact that track and field represents mastering the fundamental movements of sports and how it relates so much on a basic level to all other sporting games even created.  The other reason I love it so much is that you can advance yourself so much simply with work.  There is an event for every body type, every talent level, every person who wants to contribute can find an event that they are successful at if they are willing to work.  This is especially true in distance running where often kids get placed for not being very "athletic" (something I obviously don't believe; the athlete usually has not done much fundamental training when they are labeled "unathletic"), yet you actually find that some of the hardest workers in the sport are guys putting in over 100 miles a week year round in addition to all the ancillary training that modern athletes add to their workouts.

Yes, at the highest levels a lot of factors besides work effort are what allows an athlete to succeed, but track and field is one of the few sports that allow you to become nearly world class on work level alone.  When an athlete puts his mind to it and isn't afraid to put in the necessary training, the sky is the limit.

Tell this guy that track and field isn't a sport!

What If?

As I eluded to in my first post of this two part thought, work ethic and "talent" are really only one half of a formula for success.  The other is being in the right place at the right time.  Some call it chance, I call it providence.  Either way we are fortunate to be in situations that we can use as springboards to do the amazing and fantastic things that our hard work and resolve can take us to.

What I mean by that is, consider if you had been born in another part of the country, or another period in time, or had not had the fortune to meet certain people in your life who introduced you to certain concepts and ideas.  You would not be the same person you are today.  Basically, life has a path for you but you won't know where that path can take you till you actually explore it.  Furthermore, along that path you will have myriad choices to make which will determine the final route of that path.

I think about the Nike "What If" commercial from 8 years ago when I think about how easy the present can be different just depending on the choices and actions that comprised our past.


Understand that if you are in a situation that allows you to excel, don't turn your back unless you have a surefire means to excel in another arena.  This video shows all these athletes excelling at other sports, but what happens if the decisions in their life led them to be excellent at nothing?

Learn to understand who in your life can help you succeed and can offer you an avenue to progress.  For young athletes, they should look at coaches, teachers and mentors as those who have been placed in their lives not as obstacles to success through their discipline or standards but rather as enablers to a better future.  Coaches should look to their peers and even their athletes as a means to learn more about people and broaden their horizons.  Life is full of choices, and the success we have in life will be based on how well we react to those choices.

Mediocrity Is A Choice

About ten years ago I had made an acquaintance, a friend of mine's father, who would impart wisdom on us weekly when we met for coffee.  He was a successful businessman and was involved with the younger generation by offering them sales jobs right out of high school and college and sought to teach them about finances, responsibility, and decision making.  I distinctly remember one afternoon when we were discussing how to make a big decision in life, this particular instance was about taking a job that required moving to a new city.  The lesson can be applied to all major aspects of life though.

He offered us the advice that you couldn't be comfortable with a decision until you had gotten rid of all your alternatives, although he had used a more colorful description of how to eliminate the excess.  He told us that as long as you have other options you can never truly commit to a project, a job, or anything else in life that required a commitment.  If you always kept an escape plan, any time a situation became difficult you would opt to leave.  This, he described, is why people tended to be mediocre.  It is natural for people to abandon a project when it becomes trying, instead of sticking with it and enjoying the fruits of their labor down the road.  Greatness required a sense of urgency.  Having alternatives gave people a passiveness and a carelessness about their day to day lives.

I had a lot to think about after that talk, and now when I think about what he said and relate to it as a coach I understand even more.  In order to excel at a sport you have to eliminate the option of being mediocre at it.  That might sound counter-intuitive.  You simply can't decide to be above average, or can you?  I think about elite level high school talent that I have met who aren't doing half the training, or preparation, they could be doing to further themselves along as an athlete.  There are plenty of coaches around the county who do well because of the talent in their programs, not necessarily that they go above and beyond.

If there are some at the top who are seeing success off of average work ethic, that simply leads me to believe that the middle of the pack, and the back of the pack for that matter, are that far behind simply due to lack of effort.  If all work ethics were equal, talent alone would stratify elite and average and below average talent, but it isn't.  Therefore you would assume to see elite level talent in the mediocre groups more often due to bad work ethics, but even that isn't normally the case.  Simply, what this tells me is middle of the road talent, instead of working up to an elite work ethic, instead also have a middle of the road work ethic.

To sum up, I am saying being mediocre is a choice.  Just like what Malcolm Gladwell talked about in his book Outliers, deliberate practice and a refusal to succumb to the pressure to give up is what it takes to be truly elite, even amongst those with elite level talent. But the average person can climb vastly higher than they truly allow themselves in most situations.  There is, of course, one other important factor to success and that is the providence to be exposed to the necessary components at the correct time, but that will be explored in the next post.

Beating the Heat

The heat can be a big problem in summer training, especially in the south where temperatures can reach nearly 100 degrees some days.  The coach and the athlete need to plan to do what is necessary in order to avoid any issues that may arise.  Here is a short list, definitely not exhaustive, to consider in the summer months:

1) Hydrate BEFORE and AFTER practice.  Don't simply wait till you are thirsty in the middle of a workout.  By then, your body will he dehydrated and your performance will suffer in the later stages of the running, etc.

2) Get electrolytes.  You've heard the term before but may not be that familiar with what they are.  Electrolytes help your body retain liquids so that is why sports drinks are preferred over plain water in the heat (among other things).  You lose a lot of water and electrolytes when you sweat, so make sure to replace them!

3) Get more sleep.  Your body will be even more tired in the summer months over the winter months because of the suns effects on your body.  Make sure you are getting adequate sleep at night.

4) Dress appropriately.  Give yourself some clothing that will allow your body to breathe.  Avoid wearing stuffy clothing or items such as long tights that are unnecessary in the summertime.

Common Sense Eating

If you've never had one of your athletes say "Coach, you'll be proud of me, I ate pizza last night!" then this post probably isn't for you.  Working with young kids you begin to realize that they have a totally skewed idea of what is healthy and what an athlete should be eating.  Most young athletes these days focus more on supplements than they do what they are taking in for their actual nutritional and caloric needs.  Furthermore, especially for girls, the crash diet has become a common and disastrous answer to their perceived "weight issues" (which usually is not even an issue).

Our job as coaches is to disseminate information to our kids that will help them in life, in addition to the present.  One reason the obesity epidemic is as bad as it is now is because we aren't teaching the youth that over consumption of food and eating processed goods is not a healthy path.  The worst offenders are the "high metabolism" group that can eat anything they want as a child, yet ultimately they will have major weight gain issues in their 20s when their metabolism begins to slow.  Arming these kids with knowledge is going to help them to not just be better athletes now, but healthier people in the future.

Not only is processed food less nutritious than fresher foods, even normal fresh food products are becoming less nutritious than they use to be due to various reasons such as genetically modifying the plants.  The more we allow our kids to go down the path of eating fast foods and microwaveable meals, we are setting them up for failure.  It has been noted by physiologists that processed foods affect performance in even elite athletes.  Imagine what it is doing to the young one.  If you want your body to perform to the highest level in a competition, or even just daily life, you have to consider how to make some common sense decisions on diet.

Some keys are not to substitute processed foods when you can eat the real thing, such as eating protein bars instead of just eating a healthy portion of meat, beans nuts, etc.  Don't eat Ramen or ice cream (believe it not many people do this) for carbs when you can have whole wheat breads and pastas.  Don't eat processed oils for fats when virgin olive oil is available.  Also, try to cook at home and eat foods that have been altered as little as possible since they were harvested.  

Yes, your body may crave fast food, which also has addictive properties, but you need to think about how your body 1) can only use for energy what you put into your body.  There is no magic pure energy system that comes from no where.  Everything is based on what you ate. And 2) your body is composed of what you ate.  If you've eaten nothing but fast foods, you will probably be more susceptible to getting sick, feeling weak, etc.  Eat healthy, don't over eat, and treat your body the way it needs and wants to be treated!

Can A Coach Please Everybody?

Coaches often struggle between having to both keep their own standards and address certain needs and wants of the athletes they coach.  A coach has a certain work ethic he wants to see his athletes emulate or has a certain set of team goals he wants to see his athletes to achieve.  In a coaches mind, the perfect team would just allow him to coach and not have to deal with interruptions or issues that deviate from his plan.  Obviously this is not how the world works.

Athletes have their own desires, goals, and work ethics.  Some just want to be a part of a team, but really don't care to put in a large amount of work, and others are all in on team goals and what is necessary to achieve those goals.  Some will do whatever it takes to advance themselves personally, but don't have much motivation to bring the rest of the team up with them.  There is a wealth of issues a coach has to deal with.

The coach has to determine at one point a person's attitude becomes detrimental to the team, or if a person who has a lazy or apathetic attitude shows enough prospect of helping the team to warrant keeping around.  It's never easy for a coach to have to ask an athlete to leave the team, or at the same time have an athlete leave the team because their goals did not meet eye to eye with the coaches or the rest of the team.  This is compounded even more when a coach only has a small amount of athletes to begin with.  The coach needs to determine if quantity of athletes or quality of athletes is his philosophy because the core makeup of the team can be vastly different with both.

Grouping Your Athletes

One issue that often comes up in track, but to a lesser extent cross country, is what training group to put athletes in.  You have an athlete than can help you in sprint relays, but is a long sprinter or even middle distance runner in their most competitive events.  Or sometimes you have guys who run the same events but come from different backgrounds of training, especially in the 400 and 800. Well, in order to place these athletes in the right training group you need to evaluate your own team.

Smaller teams will tend to have more encompassing training groups such as all sprint events in one group and all distance events in another which may break off somewhere at the 400-800 mark.  I've even seen some teams that were so small that there was only one training group (not that I recommend this, but apparently the coach figured even the distance runners needed to train with the sprinters).  Large teams may be able to break training groups into short sprints, hurdles, long sprints, and distance. Really large teams may even have coaches for all those groups.  You need to think about how breaking down your groups would benefit you before you even assign an athlete to a specific group.

Now that you know how many groups you have, or rather what groups is specifically training for which events, you can figure out how to place your runners.  One thing to remember is that this does not have to be a hard rule on who is training with which group.  You may switch an athlete depending on which day of the week it is and what the training goal of your workout is.  Consider the strengths and weaknesses of an athlete when grouping them.  The goal of grouping is workout optimization so place your athletes where you think they will gain the fitness to have their best season possible.

Nike SPARQ, Combines, and the New Track and Field

Something important has started to happen over the past decade in a sport that doesn't even share the same season as track, yet has had a profound impact on it.  In recent years, football, king of sports in America and especially the south, has expanded to cover the spring time and summer as well.  No, the season hasn't really gotten much longer, although it has expanded a little, it is all the off season fanfare that is starting to eat away a little at the base of track and field.

You certainly have a distance element that has it's own culture, but outside of the mile and two mile, and possibly the 800 depending on where you are from, track and field is almost exclusively speed and power events.  Jumps, throws, sprints, hurdles, etc.  These are all events that are traditionally filled with the kids who are running for touchdowns and making tackles on the gridiron in the fall.  The emergence of the high school football combine, recruiting shows and websites, the festivities related to signing day, and the long wind-up to the NFL draft has distracted many athletes from being competitive in the second half of the school year.

Make no mistake, baseball and basketball also lose athletes to this phenomenon as well, but both those sports have a wealth of specialist athletes who don't play football, so the level of play is still high in many leagues around the country.  Also, year round sporting events for baseball and basketball presents a way for those athletes to stay active in the "off-season" months.  But now football combines, clinics, elite training sessions, seven on seven football, and weekend after weekend of recruiting trips takes a toll on an athletes ability to participate effectively in other sports.

Well, I didn't want to present all doom and gloom, but rather identify the issue and help create a solution.  Events such as Nike SPARQ are basically track and field events in other forms.  The 40 yard dash is just a couple seconds longer than the 55 and 60 meter dashes indoors.  The vertical jump has a lot of relation to the high and broad jumps (obviously the broad jump is no longer an event).  The ball throw shares similar elements to the javelin or discus based on using the majority of the body to launch a projectile.  And the shuttle event is the least like any track events, but is totally based on explosiveness like a sprinter leaving the blocks.

Now how does this information help a coach keep a kid on the track team who would rather do combine training?  It may not help, but if you can find the similarities you may be able to convince the athlete that track and field training will not only help him in his combine, but he will also have an outlet to help a team achieve competition goals as well.  A coach can see the symbiotic relationship of being able to help that athlete do well in their "off-season" football training, but actually contribute to a team and, who knows, maybe they will even end up liking the sport!

Football players are the core of the high school track and field community!

College Scholarship Info and More

I have done a lot of updating to the website including adding a page on college scholarships, and I have also added a links section.  For the athletes who are racing and training with my club team I have added our schedule to the website as well.  Also, I have added a clothing and spike section on the Southern Athletics page.  In the future I plan on adding a media section with videos and pictures as well as a training guide section.  I hope you guys find this information helpful.  There is a lot on the horizon so stay tuned in!

Time Management

After dealing with finals, moving, dealing with end of the school year banquets and working on summer programs, I am being reminded with how important time management is.  Time management is a crucial element for a coach who needs to get a lot of work done in a limited amount of time, or a coach who works with several athletes for various events or even athletes of different ability levels for the same event.  Planning ahead of time and using your time wisely is a common characteristic of successful programs.

One thing that you can do, and I highly recommend this approach because it is something that I personally do and find it highly effective, is to write out a daily plan of action or a list of things to get accomplished.  It helps remind you of things you need to put into a workout that you may forget about when you show up to practice and start working with the athletes.  Don't be afraid to get detailed because you want to know that you covered all your bases.  The more in depth you get, the more comfortable you will feel that you accomplished all your daily goals.

Another approach to time management is giving your team a routine to follow that does not vary day to day.  This will get your team accustomed to showing up to practice and getting the work done in an timely and orderly fashion.  A team that doesn't have a routine often finds itself with athletes who do not have a sense of urgency at practice.  And remember, practice is a dress rehearsal for a meet!

The Summer Season

I remember when I was high school athlete just over a decade ago that summer training groups and competition shifted often from year to year.  Depending on who the cross country cross coach was for my team in the fall was the determinate of if I would train with the team or would have to seek out a training group of local adults.  Getting quality training, and also quality training that actually made sense from a scientific standpoint was a tough task.  One reason I decided to start coaching was to offer young athletes the opportunity to work with a coach year round who could put together smart and systematic training.

As I have mentioned in my first post about Southern Athletics that in the summer months, the kids I work with are training and competing in AAU summer track.  I've been coaching AAU for a few years now and it is a very fun and worthwhile experience for the youth athlete.  What I've found is that instead of simply putting in boring distance runs all summer long for distance runners or sitting at home for the sprinters and throwers, having an opportunity to compete keeps the athletes interested in the sport and gives a reason to work hard throughout the part of the year with no scholastic competition.

While it may not be as important for a high school athlete who may be interested in taking a break from competition for a while, running AAU is crucial for the middle school athlete.  Usually these athletes do not have many opportunities to compete during the school year since middle school meets are not plentiful.  AAU offers age group competition that gives the kids a chance to excel amongst their peers.  It a chance to learn about the sport, continue to get into greater fitness, and can be fun for the athlete if the coach allows the child to learn and grow at their own pace without forcing him or her to put in more than they are willing.

I am a big proponent of long term athletic development and I have mentioned some training protocols for developing the youth athlete, and I feel that an AAU summer track program can fit perfectly into that long term development mold.  As coaches, we must plan the summer into our year round training and if done properly, it will help propel your team forward better than almost anything else you can add to your training.

A Post Season Review

After each season a coach should sit down and consider how their season played out.  Did you reach your coaching goals?  Did the athletes reach their competition goals?  Were you happy with how the season played out?  These are critical questions that must be asked if next year or next season will be any better than the last.  Consider what you learned about yourself, your athletes, and your sport, or perhaps even just people in general.

After we won the state championship Friday I spent time thinking about the individual races and how I thought each athlete might have improved their performance based on something I could have done.  Every coach in every sport can do the same.  Outline the main reasons for success or failure and what you can do to move your team in a positive fashion next year.

Remember this, though: don't change your standards year to year based on your team, have your team rise to your standards.  If you sink your standards you will never fulfill your full ability.  Don't confuse standards for goals.  Goals can, and should, change on seasons, years, and athletes.  Standards are how you want your team to conduct itself and the things you want to instill in your team.  Keep those high and don't change them because your team is smaller this year, or your best athletes are your least dedicated.  This is the path to bringing your team to where you want to be!

Is the Hay in the Barn?

Our state championship for the scholastic outdoor season is tomorrow.  It's been a fun year which included trips to New York, Mobile, Houston, and still have trips to Greensboro and Orlando planned for the post season and summer track.  The training has been coming along and the kids are responding well in workouts The weather the past week has been pretty bad, but luckily we were tapering and could make arrangements to get the necessary work in.

Every season around this time I can't help but think back to a few years ago when a coach that I was working with on a group of long sprinters told me I shouldn't be doing a voluminous workout as close as a week out from the state meet.  I can remember I was doing some longer reps (400s) mixed with some shorter faster reps (100s and 200s) seven days before the championship (admittedly, I would have done a few things different now than I did then, I was not as well versed of a coach at that point!). Well after some discussion on what type of workouts we should be doing, to my dismay we backed off the workout and for the rest of the week did "strides."  The coach was emphatic that the "hay was in the barn" and we didn't need to maintain the quality.  At the state meet we ran nearly 5 seconds slower in the 4x400 and looked like we were simply not prepared to compete.

It would be later, after listening to talks from Boo Schexnayder, Joe Vigil, and a few others I realized that my tapering workouts were not exactly what they should have been, but the "hay is in the barn" approach was even worse.  An athlete needs to continue to train (with certain restraints) as the same intensity (normally near race pace) all the way through their last workout of the season in order to keep the legs sharp for performance.  Doing nothing but strides with sprinters did very little in the way of preparing those athletes for a championship caliber race.  Does the volume need to be as high?  No, it does not.  You can drop the volume of your workouts because it has been proven that Vo2 max can be maintained for an extended period, at least as long as your post season, with keeping the intensity of the training high.  The goal is to go into the championship races without tired legs, but they still need to be keen on the proper paces.

I would recommend finding what works for your team.  With my training I find that we do best when our last solid workout is 3 days out from our championship competitions, but each team may be different depending on training methods and fitness of their athletes.  But one thing I don't recommend is just going out and doing strides the week leading up to your important races.

Why Does Rice Play Texas?

Sometimes when we are caught up in coaching, or being an athlete, we lose focus on exactly how special and important it is for humans to find ways to challenge our limits.  What exactly is it that we do when we train everyday?  Why is the pursuit of excellence such an important aspect of the human experience?

 In a speech given by John F. Kennedy in 1962 he was discussing the future of the space program, the challenges it presented, and why the human spirit is important in all difficult tasks we undertake.  He said:


But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Here he mentions the football match between Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin.  This match up is notoriously one sided with Rice only winning 21 of 103 meetings as of this date.  To Rice, a small private school compared to the large public institution of UT, beating the Longhorns was an extraordinary task; a one in six chance of winning.  JFK gives insight into the motives of doing the things that others consider impossible.  We undertake these challenges "not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Furthermore he says "that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills."  And this is the most important aspect of what we do in athletics.  Yes, winning is a measure of success and no one should say winning should not be a goal in sports.  After all, winning is a pinnacle of the pyramid that athletes strive to climb.  But before that, one thing that must be understood is that we must embrace the challenge above everything else.  Winning, losing, ties, all of this are measures of our best energies and skills.  When the day is over, regardless of the outcome, ask long as the coaches and athletes accepted the challenge and worked in every facet possible to achieve their personal pinnacle, that is truly what sport is about.