When you’re good at something you feel incredible. When you’re bad at something, you feel like you're nothing and you drag everyone else down. 

For me, that feeling manifested during the middle of the track season, where I felt like everything I did was dragging all the people around me down. My slow times, lack of speed, and not being in shape whatsoever made me ask my distance coach, Coach Razor, if I should quit the team. 

Maybe he saw something that I couldn’t see. Maybe he literally couldn’t cut me from the team. Whichever the case, Razor looked me in the eyes and said: “Cole, I want you here. You aren’t dragging down the team and I think you could be a good runner.” 

Did I magically become a good runner after that pep talk? Of course not, but it told me something important: that I belonged and that I wasn’t dragging the people around me down. It was exactly what I needed to hear, which Razor knew.

Time passed, I thinned out, and my times improved Junior year. Each practice, each workout, each meet, ingrained as time went on. Razor was always there, telling the boys to get after it and to push themselves even harder. One thing that he said that has always stuck with me is that: “Life is like a sewer; if you put crap in, you’ll get crap out.” While a little vulgar, his ideology has stuck with me, not just in running, but in many other aspects of life, such as my job or my relationships with other people. 

I think that Coach Razor is pretty good at reading people, specifically what a person is going through. I’ve seen him give hard talks to runners who can’t run for the whole season due to an injury, or him knowing when someone has a bad day and just needs to talk. He doesn’t pry and ask too many personal questions, but you know that if you needed to talk, he would listen. 

For me personally, it manifested in a hat, of all things. I used to have really, really, really long hair (think Chris Hemsworth Thor) and it would always get in my face whenever I ran. Not wanting to tie it back, I decided on a trucker hat from Walmart that had the words: “Genuine Dickies” on it, based on the apparel company. I knew what I was doing, but it was still funny to me as he gave me a new nickname: Dick. 

As embarrassed as I was about the new nickname, it did wonders for me. I’m not super social, but the hat combined with the nickname forced me to be social with everyone on the cross country team. When I think back on it, I think Coach Razor did it intentionally because that’s just the kind of person he is. 

Thank you, Coach. I wouldn’t be half the person I am today without you pushing me to be better.