Personal Narrative: My Interview With A Cross Country Coach

Cross Country Coach

I have always loved sports and the competitiveness that comes along with them. In so doing, I have decided to eventually become either a high school or college coach at some point in my life. Subsequently, I decided to interview the Vilonia High School Cross Country Coach, Coach Sisson. As I walked into her office, I instantly noticed all of the trophies and team photos from all of the past years of coaching. She is also the school nurse so her office has first aid equipment intermingled into the trophies and team pictures. While I set up my notes and questions for the interview on one of the desks in her office, she was finishing up a diagnosis of one of the high school students who felt sick. After her patient left, I quickly started the interview in order to waste no time. She began with how she got involved in coaching. The Vilonia School District expressed their interest to her as being the next cross country coach several years ago. She was widely known for her passion for running and she gratefully accepted the position and has been a coach for numerous years now.

The interview quickly moved on to the requirements for being a High School

Cross Country Coach. She explained that there is a committee that oversees all high school sports in Arkansas call the Arkansas Athletic Association(AAA). In Arkansas, a cross country coach is the only official coach that does not have to obtain a secondary degree. They can be strictly volunteer. However, there are two course requirements which are fairly easy to pass and they are CPR and First Aid.
The cool thing about being a cross country coach is that, “There is a great potential to learn a lot,” said Coach Sisson.

They have the ability to discover random and cool things about the human body that the average human would not normally know. She explained that the hours a coach can put in, are strictly optional. A coach who is devoted to the kids and the team will put in hundreds of extra hours in, but, a coach who is only there temporarily or who is not as devoted will put in not near as many as devoted coaches. When I asked her specifically how many she put in this summer she quickly remarked, “A bunch! How do you figure that?” She tried going into the numbers and came up with about 700 plus hours of scouting, planning workouts, meal plans, or just fun activities for the

team.
As I began to wrap up the interview, I asked her what her passion was for devoting all her extra time and efforts to a seemingly meaningless team. “It’s wonderful to share a passion with kids that you have a passion for also,” explained Coach Sisson. Kids develop into adults and learn how to mature properly. They learn valuable life skills such as: leadership, self-confidence, lifetime impact of fitness, and how to actively participate in society. Coach Sisson gave an excellent example of how these life skills changed one of her current runners. There is one 7th grader that joined this year and this was his first ever time to run. He had self-confidence issues and was extremely shy. After joining the team, his parents have excitedly confronted Coach Sisson explaining that he is not shy anymore and his school grades have actually been raised as a result of a boost in his self-confidence. “Running is only a small part of cross country, I just enjoy hearing from former runners and their success years down the road because of cross country,” said Coach Sisson.
After I left Coach Sisson’s interview , I pondered on how to go about writing such a paper. As I went through the notes, I realized that I was the same way in 7th grade as that boy who began running this year, but running cross country has shaped me into confident and upright young man. As stated above, a cross country coach is one of the few occupations that incorporate much more than what the job is listed as on paper. To elaborate, on paper a cross country coach shows up to practice daily and coaches the kids on how to run. However, they must also develop relationships with the kids. They must be life counselors for the kids. They must train kids on how to be successful in life. The list can go on and on with the extra-curricular tasks that cross country coaches are assigned on the day that they decide to accept the job.