The Montoya's

All good things must come to an end.

This has been my first week without XC and it has been a difficult pill to swallow. On Monday I think I was actually depressed and I moped around for most of the evening. I had worked with these kids roughly five days and sometimes six days a week since July. Unlike other sports I have coached, I never looked forward to this season ending. I love this sport and I love the kids that I am lucky enough to work with. Nobody ever gets into coaching for the money and I know I could be in better shape and see my family more if I didn't coach, but I would not be better off.

Today, we held our first annual run-a-thon at our school track so I was able to see all the kids in that environment one more time. I am hoping that this will prove to be a successful fundraiser for us and we will not have to do many more besides this one. The kids went out and got pledges per lap or donations and we ran around the track for an hour. Very easy for one thing. There are even different levels of fundraising a kid can achieve and they can earn things in return like T shirts, hoodies, or a Nike watch. So after school, we all met one last time at our normal spot and ran. My top boys ran in sync and comfortable at 7:30 pace, finishing 32 laps in the hour. Most importantly, we had fun one more time. Money is not due for a little while longer so we'll see how we did. With all of the expected budget cuts I am unsure of the funding we will have for XC next year. It is unfortunate that sports like XC are affected when in reality we really need very little at all. We are in fact, just about self sufficient. If anyone reading this would like to make a donation to the team or a pledge to any individual on the team that you might know, please let me know via email: stevenmontoya (at) q.com


Wednesday has also become our newspaper day for XC. The state championships were only the second race that I did not have to send in an emailed race report. There were actually two newspaper reporters attending from rival Socorro area newspapers. Here is a link to the Defensor Chieftain article. Some other notes on the team and their performance:

• 11 kids ran personal bests out of the 12 runners Socorro took
• Both the SHS boys and girls records were broken
• First time we had both a boys and girls team qualify for the meet
• Tim Abeyta finished 33 places and 1:21 faster than 2008
• We graduate zero girls from our state team and our oldest girls were sophomores this year
• The girls beat rival Cobre, by 62 points, after having finished runner up at district to them
• We finish the season with 4 trophies. 4 more than last year :)
• We will graduate 2 very good boys from our state team who I will miss but I look forward to see who will "step up"
• We had fun and we got faster. When you work hard, good things happen.

As for now, I need to start running more as I have a marathon in December. I am also working on the end of the year DVD for team and will share that when it is finished. I will show it at out banquet which I also need to get planned. A lot of my kids have already started swimming and I look forward to watching them learn something new and become a better person because of it. And last but certainly not least, I get to see my family a little more. Nothing beats that.