I chose to observe the practices at Cuesta College for Track and Field. I primarily focused on the distance team with Matt Sherman as the coach. When I arrived at the first practice I observed Coach Sherman talking to the team at the beginning of their practice. He was going over what they should focus on during their first track meet, which was coming up. His positive attitude stood out the most. He put his emphasize on having fun. He stressed the importance that they work as hard as they can to achieve their best performance but his final words were, “Have fun!” I started to realize what he stressed most for his team and that was to achieve the goals they set for themselves. For both practices I attended the athletes started out with a warm-up run. They then met as a group and had the team captain (Chris Schachter) lead in their stretches. I noticed strong team cohesion as they stretched talking about their activities from the previous weekend and the work out that they were going to have. After the stretching Coach Sherman gathered them together to explain the workout (both days a speed workout). As he explained he made sure each of the team members understood the exact instructions for the speed drills. One of the athletes (Karen Maas) had a question and he patiently answered it and encouraged more questions to make sure the team knew the exact workout. He had the lone male distance runner do 2 sets of 4x200 meter sprints on the track. He had the women’s distance team go out to the pond’s to run a 20-minute fartlek in which they ran a minute hard and a minute easy. I observed the male distance runner and when he finished his second set of 200’s, Coach Sherman suggested he run one more set of 200’s. Chris was tired and was hesitant to do more but he ran them without incidence. When I talked to Chris after his workout I asked him if he agreed with Coach Sherman’s decision to...
