Doug Hall remembers vividly how it felt to be first. And what a depressing moment that was.
He couldn’t wait to be last, knowing what a buoyant emotion that would be.
Hold it right there, hoss.
First is a downer? Last an upper?
What’re you saying?
Simple.
When they read off the scores at the end of a track meet, they’re given in descending order. The last-place team is announced first, the first-place team last.
Back in 1995, his first year as an assistant coach at Everett High School, Hall stuck around after the Western Conference meet to hear the team scores. The Seagulls were the first team announced. Ugh!
“This year, we were read last,” Hall said with a satisfied look the other day. “That’s the only time I like to be last.”
He’s getting used to it. Twice this spring, the Seagulls have won championships – first in the Wesco South meet, where they doubled the score on the runnerup team. Then last week, when they overpowered the field to win their first district meet in 45 years.
“The district was a little bit more of an accomplishment,” Hall said, “but the league meet was kind of cool for us because that was our goal.”
Their first goal. They had three – to win Wesco, the district and to place high at state.
With six qualifiers in nine events, they could have some fun at the 4A state meet in Pasco this weekend.
None of this would have come about if the Seagulls didn’t have a coach who “scraped the hallways” for athletes. When Hall took over as head coach five years ago, he had only 29 boys turn out.
“The bottom line is, track is not one of the Big Four (sports),” Hall said. “Kids don’t grow up doing track. Of course, they chase one another around the playground, but they don’t do the sport of track, so it’s very hard to get kids interested in the sport.”
Hall knew that if the Seagulls were to be competitive, he had to get more kids out. And to do that, he had to somehow convince them that track could be to their benefit, especially if they participated in other sports.
“The first couple of years, I pushed hard for numbers and I definitely scraped the hallways,” he said. “I tried to get everyone and their cousin out for track and I learned my mistake there because you get numbers but numbers aren’t always the best so I learned to hit the good kids and the good athletes.”
The football players. The basketball players. The wrestlers. The cross country runners.
He stressed the conditioning they could get in track to help them in their other sports, and the competitive “edge” it would give them. So many kids used the excuse for skipping track to the fact that they lifted weights in the spring to start getting ready for fall and winter sports.
Hall had heard that line before. And he knew it was so much bunk.
“I guaranteed the kids, ‘You’re lifting now in the winter, your lifting program’s going great, but as soon as the first day it’s sunny out and all your friends are out, you’re not going to be lifting in the spring. It’s very hard for those kids to be serious. Some kids will but the majority do not lift seriously during the spring.’ That’s the number one reason not to do track: ‘I want to lift.’ “
Hall had grown up in a track environment in his home state of Wisconsin – his parents started a track and field club – and was a thrower in college until he got injured.
So now he went to work spreading the word about how much fun running, jumping and throwing could be. And the kids bought into it. They’d tell their friends, and their friends would also see the light.
“It had a snowball effect,” the coach said.
This year the Seagulls had about 60 kids turn out, including all the big-gun seniors who made up the core of what Hall felt was a very good team.
What was so neat about this group of seniors, Hall said, is that in the past when they were participating in track, they’d always talk about how they were looking forward to their other sports. This year, when they were involved in their fall and winter sports, they were anticipating the track season.
“It’s been a complete 360,” Hall said. “Where, when they were younger, it was, ‘What’s track?’ Or ‘Why should I come out.’ Now it’s like “I can’t wait for track.’”
It wasn’t all milk and cookies getting kids to come out. He had to do some hounding. And some chasing.
As a freshman, Mike Hudson quit the team for a week. When Hall went looking for him, he found him in a computer class, hiding behind a monitor so the coach wouldn’t see him. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ Since then, no one’s been more pro track or more dedicated than him.”
In fact, Hudson is one of the Seagulls’ co-captains. The other is Niko Sievers, who also wasn’t sure this track gig was for him. “Niko wouldn’t be out unless I definitely hounded him,” Hall said. “He was all basketball before.”
Sievers is the one doing the hounding now – hounding for glory. He qualified for state in both the 110 and 300 hurdles.
Hudson, a sprinter, has been injured all season, but still played a “huge role” as a leader. “He’s definitely someone the kids look up to,” Hall said.
One kid who didn’t have to be talked into coming out was Jake Stevens. “He was coming out, no matter what,” Hall said. “He’s been pro track from day one.”
It’s good that he was. Because he’ll try to earn points in three events at state – the shotput, discus and javelin.
Vance Taylor is another kid who didn’t have to be persuaded to give track a try. But he did have to convince the coach that he was in the wrong event.
Taylor started high school as a distance runner, but after his workouts each day, he’d drift over to the pole vault area and watch longingly as guys made like birds. “I wanted to go up in the air,” he said.
Hall wanted him to be less of a nuisance. “I had to chase him away three or four times,” he said.
Finally, Hall gave in. On his first vault attempt as a sophomore, Taylor cleared the bar at 10 feet, 6 inches.
“Hmmm,” Hall said. “Guess you’re a pole vaulter.”
He’s also a favorite at state, with a height of 15-1.
Which is very good, but not nearly high enough for the smallish senior.
Taylor has bigger things in mind. He wants to be a stuntman in the movies.
So what’s the most daring feat he’s attempted? “I did a backflip off a house,” he said.
Oh? “And I went skydiving from a mile up.”
Fifteen-one?
Kid stuff.
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