Coach "K" on the track

I was just informed via email that I "got the job" for coaching track this year. My reply, "Wow! Well, I knew it was a close race." I thought that was appropriate since I was the only one in the race for the job. The high school has been lacking a full coaching staff for the past several years. Last year I was asked to coach, but I really didn't want to since I was already the cross-country coach. Not to mention the fact that the principal here at the time told me, "If you coach anything else it has to be at this school- not the high school." I was fine with that but the superintendent wasn't and ripped the principal a new one. Then he asked me to coach and I still said no. This year I decided to give it a try because they drastically changed the meet schedule and I also figured if I coached I would take the summer off completely and not work like I did last summer doing construction work.

Next week we start running "open track". Basically, I go run and if any other runners want to come out and run with me they are welcome to. It's basically preseason training. We'll see how it goes. I'm cautiously optimistic. It's going to be a lot of extra work of course, but the money is good, I like running with the kids, and I have a summer totally off to look forward to, and the kids want me to coach- so that makes me feel good. I was told that until I agreed to coach that several kids weren't going to run track because they didn't think it was worth it. I'm not bragging, but it's a pretty cool thing when a kid will come out for a sport just because you're the one who's going to be coaching them.