The Fifteen Minute Run

I went for a run this morning. This is no big news. Neither is the fact that my mother's house is just a few blocks from my old junior high school. This is why I decided to do my running on the quarter-mile track at Centennial Middle School today.
As I ran, I remembered gym class: Physical Education. As a seventh grader I showed up in my baggy grey shorts and my white t-shirt with my last name neatly printed in the big green box on my chest. That's where I learned that gym teachers don't like to be called "Mister," they prefer to be called "Coach." In seventh grade we had Coach Clark. He was a pleasant entry into the world of phys ed, without some of the harsh criticism and ridiculous expectations that would later become part of that experience. In elementary school, I had already spent my time being ostracized for my lack of coordination and ability. Back then we had a gym teacher, not a coach, and it wasn't every day.
I showed up for Coach Clark's class every day, "dressed out" unless otherwise requested or excused. We followed the sports calendar, building football and soccer skills in the fall, basketball and wrestling in the winter, with track and softball in the spring. There was a certain amount of fear associated with doing things I had never been very good at, but Coach Clark graded for participation, not specific achievement. All the while during seventh grade, we warned of what awaited us in the eighth: Coach Straight.
Eighth grade PE resembled seventh grade PE primarily in name and uniform. The most horrific difference that awaited us all, the nerds as well as the jocks, was the Fifteen Minute Run. As an educator, I can see the comparative ease by which this plan was derived. Once a week, students will run for fifteen minutes. Add in the time it takes for kids to get dressed on one end, shower, throw up and get dressed on the other, and you've got a full period. Easy enough. At the beginning of eighth grade, boys were expected to run four laps (one mile) in fifteen minutes. Fair enough, but here's where the mildly sadistic part came in: if anyone in the class failed to meet that expectation, the whole class would run the following day, until those slackers who weren't pulling their weight were brought (literally) up to speed.
We were told that "anyone could walk four laps in fifteen minutes." As a kid who had trouble getting to the top of the climbing rope in sixth grade, I had my doubts about being part of "anyone." Sure enough, for the first few weeks of eighth grade, I was part of a small group of troublemakers who "refused" to help the class meet their goal. I'm not sure how Coach Straight figured that we were consciously trying to keep the class out on the track every day for a week, but as he stood there with his clipboard in one hand, stopwatch in the other, and his whistle clenched in his teeth, four of us learned to loathe and despise not only the Fifteen Minute Run, but the genius who created it.
One Wednesday, when we were supposed to do our run, Coach Straight was absent. His substitute took us out to the track and turned us loose. Some of the clever ones, real troublemakers, not just genetic misfits, got the idea to hide behind the bleachers, for a lap or two, then run another lap, staying with the pack as they came around. After a quarter hour, the whistle blew, and everyone reported their number. A bunch of the delinquents lied, saying they had run eight or nine, or even ten laps. This wasn't clever.
The next day, Coach Straight was back, and we were lead back out to the track. Before we ran, we did a flurry of calisthenics, as we listened to just how exactly disappointed in us he had become. Then we got up, brushed the dead grass and burrs off our uniforms and ran. Nobody was going to miss the mark today. I know I didn't. I ran almost four and a half laps that day, a new personal best.
Coach Straight left Centennial after that year. I suppose I would like to think that he was asked to leave, but I'm pretty sure he just moved on to another junior high, where his authority would be respected. Today I ran a mile on that track. I ran it in far less than fifteen minutes. Thanks, Coach.