Subject: Coach Hyatt's Reflections
From: "Sarana Hyatt" <[email-masked]>
To: "''" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 03:27:17 +0000

Good Evening Sidwell Friends Varsity Indoor Track Family,

For those of you who don’t know, I am Sarana Hyatt, the Head Girls’ Varsity Indoor Track and Field Coach and Assistant Boys’ Varsity Indoor Track and Field Coach. Coach Cooley is the Head Boy’s Coach as well as Assistant Girl’s Coach. Coach Ryan, and Coach Spencer are Assistant Coaches serving both teams. This is my first year at Sidwell and it has been amazing so far. A couple of exciting things have taken place in the past couple of weeks as well as are coming up soon!

  1.  A select few had the privilege of kicking off the season and setting the tone for the entire program at the Run and Gun meet at Georgetown Prep this past Tuesday. We saw some indoor personal bests which is an encouraging start for the rest of the year. For some, it was their first ever indoor meet, SO PERSONAL BESTS TO GO AROUND!
  2.  We hired Kendall Spencer to assist with the Speed/Power skill acquisition across the event groups. Coach Spencer was a Division I NCAA champion, Olympic Trials Qualifier, and a New Balance Sponsored Athlete. He comes to us from coaching and teaching at Harvard University, and currently still trains professionally while working towards his law degree at Georgetown.
  3.  Due to how connected our staff is in the running world, Coach Ryan had the privilege of traveling to New York City to coach the District Track Club  at the Dr. Sadler Invitational Columbia Challenge this past weekend. There he was able to be around the best track and field post collegiate programs in the nation, along with the best Division I track and field programs in the nation. Most notably, he spent most of his time around Coach Centrowitz Sr., arguably one of the best distance/middle distance coaches in the nation! Only a select few have these kinds of doors open to them, and we are lucky to have one of our coaches on staff to be one of them!
  4.  We also attended the Last Track to Philly on Saturday. This was a first for some, and for others it was a great meet to get back into the swing of things.

Our next meet is this Saturday, February 2, 2019 at Georgetown Prep! The itinerary will follow this email.

Now for some thought process! For those of you that know me, I am someone that always wants to grow. The day I choose to stop growing, is the day I have failed my athletes as a coach, and in life in general. One of my favorite quotes is, “I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” That being said, I came across this while reading “Success! The Glenn Bland Method” the other day and it hit my heart and I wanted to share.

There is an ancient legend about a time in the history of mankind when society so abused Wisdom that the Wisemen decided to take the secret of happiness and success away from man and hide it where he would never again find it. The big question was-where should they hide it?
                A council was called by the Chief of the Wisemen to discuss the question. The lesser of the Wisemen said, “We will bury the secret of happiness and success deep in the earth.”
                But the Chief of the Wisemen to said, “No, that will never do, for man will dig deep down into the earth and find it.”
                Then they said, “Well, we will sink the secret of happiness and success into the dark depths of the deepest ocean.”
                But again, the Chief Wiseman replied, “No not there, for man will learn to dive into the deep , dark depths of the ocean and will find it.”
                Then one of the lesser Wisemen said, “We will take it to the top of the highest mountain and hide it there.”
                But again, the Chief Wiseman replied, “No, for man will eventually climb even the highest of mountains and find it, and again take it up for himself.”
                Then the lesser of the Wisemen decided to give up and concluded, “We do not know where it can be hidden. It seems that there is no place on earth or in the sea that man will not eventually discover.”
                Then the Chief Wiseman, said, “Here is what we will do with the secret of happiness and success. We will hide it deep inside of man himself, for he will never think to look for it there.”

This story pointed out two things for me in coaching.

  1.  Greatness is already there. As a coach, it is not our job to make you better, that is your responsibility. I do not create better athletes. There is nothing you accomplish that you do not already possess inside of you. It is my job to empower you to bring that out. Your talents and abilities are things I have no control over. That means I am not trying to create a great athlete, I am trying identify one. There is nothing that an athlete has done under my guidance that was not placed within them from creation. It comes however with one minor detail. Walking in excellence is a choice. As coaches, we can take that walk with you. I truly believe that people need relationships in order to help them find what is within. You only know what you know, and like Socrates’ Oracle said, you don’t know it all. (paraphrasing) Also, unfortunately sometimes it is hard to see within ourselves what others see in us. As coaches, we can see not just where you are, but where you are headed. That is why the coach-athlete collaboration is key.
  2.  Stop searching for meaning beyond the mirror. So often we place our value in outside success like medals, and personal bests when the true value should be placed on the victories within. Winning is fun, trust me I know. But your outside victory on the track is only as good as your next competition. What you bring out from within is only as good as the next time you utilize it. This means that it is always there, an infinite resource to pull upon in any area of your life, but you have to have the will and humility of self-awareness to access it.

That being said, the two biggest hinderances of finding your success and happiness are fear and doubt. The great part of that is you can control your thoughts. Once you realize what you have, allow others to help you tap into it, and decide to believe it, you can do more than you thought you could in the beginning!

GO QUAKERS!

In Hope, Powered by Joy,
Coach Hyatt