Created by MidJourney with a custom Tio moodboard
Friday was an emotional day. I am a tad melancholy today. Even though I am not a writer, I write...a lot. It is difficult to express what I am feeling but it has been a weekend trying. I need to get to the studio so I am going to let draft number 13 sit...at least for now. Here we go...
The espresso exploded in the microwave that morning. My last day as a high school cross country coach, and I baptized the teachers’ lounge in coffee. A fitting start, maybe, a small mess marking the end of something bigger.
It was a cool, blue Nebraska morning, the kind that makes your breath visible and your heart beat a little faster. October 24th, 2025. State meet day. My last. It began with 7 a.m. Mass, the team scattered across the pews in hoodies and warmups. There’s something grounding about starting a day like that in prayer. Not because it changes the race, but because it reminds you what really matters if it doesn’t go your way.
After Mass, I grabbed a quick espresso from the bistro across the street, a habit from my summer in Italy. It helps quiet the static of my restless, neurodivergent brain. By the time I reached school, the boys were loading the vans, laughing about something I probably didn’t want to know.
I’m an artist and a coach. The same, really. Both require seeing what isn’t yet visible, potential waiting to be revealed, threads waiting to be woven together. Love is the binding.
I stopped by my studio classroom to grab the measuring wheel, marking flags, and water bottles. Then I spotted another espresso I’d forgotten earlier in the week and figured I’d heat it and store it in my little three-ounce thermos for later. The one that blew up. The smell stayed with me all day, a strange, fitting metaphor for how coaching lingers long after you’re done.
Breakfast was at Perkins. I missed the turn, tossed my now-cold espresso, and laughed with Coach “Yee Haw,” one of my former runners who’d come back to help. The food was slow, the conversation fast. Granger Danger, the other assistant coach was with us. Parents joined us. We prayed over pancakes and bacon. These are the moments that never make it into the stats, the invisible threads that hold everything together.
Created by MidJourney with a custom Tio moodboard
Parents handed out goodie bags, snacks, gigantic sunglasses, toy finger chickens that somehow became weapons. They’re the quiet backbone of every team, filling the gaps coaches can’t. The bus smelled like gummies and nervous energy.
The 100-mile drive east was quiet, the kind of quiet that hums with thought. The boys stared out the windows, lost in pre-race rituals. I thought about what it means to coach, really coach. People think it’s about winning. It isn’t. Some coaches think it is about building champions. It isn't. It’s about revealing them. At least in my opinion. Every kid has something God placed inside them; my job is to help them see it. Stride by stride. Failure by failure. Each difficult tempo run, threshold run, CV run, long run or VO2Max workout, adding another thread to their fabric.
We arrived at the course, the chatter, the smell of cut grass, and endless, precision line of port-a-potties, the prayer circle that started a few years ago with one of our own and now stretched across half the state. I don’t lead it, never did. The athletes do. I just stand back and listen. That’s when you know a tradition has roots.
I received a generous offer for my over-sized sunglasses. Four crumbled one-dollar bills, a few shreds of torn paper, a fluorescent green golf ball and a broken pencil. The gun went off. Then again. False start. Everyone held their breath. The restart was clean. They were gone.
There’s nothing quite like that moment, the controlled chaos of hundreds of spikes cutting into grass, the noise folding into rhythm, the uncertainty of what’s about to unfold. We were ranked sixth. We finished sixth, well behind what we’d hoped for. The favorite team didn’t win. The favored runner didn’t either. The underdogs did. I love that about running. It humbles everyone equally. The sting of defeat generously handed out to all but a few.
Some of our boys ran lifetime PRs. Some had course or season bests. Every one of them left something on that course. People outside the sport see a clock and a place. Coaches see a thousand quiet victories, the kid who learned to believe, the one who came back from injury, the one who ran through fear, the one who finally smiled at the finish line. Each race another strand in their tapestry.
After the race came goodbyes, handshakes, photos, invitations to keep running with the Rogue Athlete Tribe. We packed the bus, ate a nice dinner, played around a favorite music store then headed home. The sun dropped low and turned the highway gold. I was somewhere between exhaustion and peace when my phone buzzed. FaceTime. I couldn't grab it then but after I put the bus away, I called back. My youngest daughter, senior in college, about to start her teaching career. “Dad, I just got engaged!” I knew it was coming before she did, a difficult secret to keep. The young man chosen for her; respectful, grounded, and genuine with quiet strength, had stopped by the week before to ask for my blessing. A day of endings, wrapped in a beginning.
That’s when it hit me. This isn’t the finish line for me. It never was.
What we do in this sport, coaches, parents, athletes, it’s not really about running, and it’s certainly not about winning. It’s about building up people who keep running when life hits back. It’s about small communities forming around something hard and staying because it makes them better.
If you ran this season and didn’t get the result you wanted, good. I know that sounds harsh. You learned the truth though. You can’t control outcomes, only effort. And effort, practiced daily, is what builds a life. You didn’t medal? You didn’t PR? You didn’t make varsity? You still won. Because you learned to show up when it would’ve been easier not to. You learned how to belong to something bigger than yourself. You learned that growth hides inside discomfort. That’s the quiet victory. That is living.
Created by MidJourney with a custom Tio moodboard
The scoreboard only tells half the truth. The good stuff is hidden deep in the work ethic of each athlete. That’s where the thread of a champion becomes fabric. Each different. Some soft silk, others rough duck canvas. It starts as a single thread, fragile, ordinary, almost invisible on its own. But over time, through repetition, friction, and connection, that thread becomes something larger. It weaves itself into a fabric... and the greatest of these is love.
That’s what cross country is. Life and love. Every run, every ache, every painful mile is a thread. Some bright with joy, others dark with disappointment. Some stretched thin, others strong and sure. Together they form the story of a season, a team, and a person learning what endurance means.
We like to think the wins define us, but they’re only one color in the weave. The real fabric comes from showing up on the days your legs or heart are heavy, your lungs burn, and the finish line feels a mile too far. From losing....again....and choosing to lace up anyway.
Over time, you realize this fabric isn’t just your own. It’s woven with the voices of teammates cheering for the last runner, the quiet nods of respect between rivals, the coaches who see more in you than you do in yourself.
In fifteen years of coaching high school, and a decade coaching adults before that, I’ve seen the fastest fade and the slowest keep running for life. That tells you everything. Times fade. Community doesn’t. Running doesn’t just reveal the champion inside the athlete, it reveals the human inside the noise. It makes you honest. Humble. Teachable.
And that’s what I’ll miss. The bus rides. The early mornings. The sound of laughter echoing off empty gyms for warm-up, or wonky weirdness and the post run elevation (restorative inversion). The look on a runner’s face when they realize they’re capable of more than they thought. Even the daily grind.
Tomorrow, I’ll pour another espresso, carefully this time, and start my next lap with the Rogue Athlete Tribe running club. Same calling, new chapter. I am still an artist, still called to create. And just like all true creation, it isn’t about making something new, it’s about allowing the Holy Spirit my hands and heart to reveal what was already there.
The medals will tarnish. The times will fade. But the community, the quiet, faithful work of helping people find their strength, that’s forever.
It’s the same in art. The studio is just another course, each brushstroke, each failed layer, each patient hour a stride toward something larger than you can see. We chase form, color, and meaning the way a runner chases time, but the deeper truth hides in the repetition, in showing up again and again until something inside finally clicks. The race and the canvas both ask the same thing: trust the process, stay faithful to the work, let grace do the rest.
It's true, I am melancholy today, maybe this week or month even. But to follow a call, means it will get even better. 2025 State signals the end of this chapter for me. Releasing the past can be painful...fearful even. Stepping out on faith requires two open hands, one open to receive and one open to give. Keep running. Keep showing up. The race goes on.
My Secret Creativity Hack