“Lean into the hill.”
He yelled that as we ran by, whispered it as we stood close, repeated it at every course over hill and dale.
Duane Ball, my track and cross-country coach, for most of the years from seventh-grade until we graduated.
That was his line. At least it was the line I held on to. Of all the encouragement and advice, the prodding and the pushing, it was those four words.
“Lean into the hill.”
They’ve been part of my psyche for 50 years, a gift from Mr. Ball.
It has been helpful in running, and crucial in life.
Like it was in junior high, when life was hard and home was hell. When times get tough, you have to be tougher, when adversity pushes, push back harder. Attack your challenges, lean into the hill, fight to get to the top. Never wear out and never give in.
That’s what I learned from Mr. Ball.
He was the ag and heavy equipment teacher. It was that way at my school. If you took Conservation, Mr. Ball taught you how to operate a backhoe and a bulldozer. And if you went out for cross-country or track, Mr. Ball taught you how to run.
He was a farm kid from up in Corfu, the oldest of eight, with a 4:44 mile that was the school record until his brother broke it. He met his wife at Alfred Tech. She was the daughter of the family he boarded with, and one afternoon she watched him in the basement rec room playing ping-pong. He looked at her, and joked that if she shined his shoes he’d take her out. She did and he did. They were 19 and 15 then, and have been together since, with 62 years as husband and wife.
I met them again yesterday.
She had valve surgery last November. He uses a walker and sits in a chair that helps him stand. He is stooped, and in the hard part of life, with the death of loved ones and the memories of a life that was and a vigor that is gone.
He teared up often.
And seven times as we sat and talked he said, “Lean into the hill.”
But this time he was mostly speaking of himself, not of me, not just as a coach, but as an exemplar, and a beneficiary. A man who could use a phrase and by his example and circumstance show that he truly knew what it meant.
He told me the importance of a team, that team is family and family is team, and that he always wanted the attention on his runners and not on himself, but we were all part of a team. A team that could decide whether it wanted to be winners or losers. He spoke warmly of the steak dinners he put on each year for his runners. Coaches get a stipend, some extra pay, for their time and their efforts, and it is an important source of income, especially for new teachers with young families. But his stipend always got put aside to pay for the steak dinner, to celebrate his runners and remind them they were part of his family.
I wanted him to know that he had made a difference in my life. He had given me a motto of resilience, and he had taught me a sport for a lifetime, the keystone of my physical vigor to this day. I told him that my life had been better, and that my children’s lives have been bettered by the passing on of the lessons of fitness he had taught me.
Me and thousands of others.
Thirty-two years in the classroom and on the track. One teacher in a small town doing his job. How to run a farm, how to drive a tractor, how to raise a family. How to live a life worth living. I never took a class from him, but he was one of the most useful teachers I ever had. And I am just one of many, a brush dab on the masterpiece of his life’s work.
And he was just one of many, then and now, in schools large and small, of every sort and in every state. Those who fulfill the high and holy calling of teaching. Who day in and day out do their best, and set an example, and strive for good, to leave things a little better than they found them. To leave young people and society a little better than they found them.
It is a mission of love, and I told him that I recognized that, and that I loved him back.
I am so grateful for this visit with the past, to express my gratitude, and let this man know that it had not been in vain, that his life’s work was the bettering of other people’s lives, that we truly were a team, and always would be, and that such was his impact and legacy that even as he runs his last race and leans into his last hill, that countless of us still hear his shouted encouragement and push harder and live better because he was our coach and teacher.
Even as the sun is setting, you can still feel the warmth.
I walked out trying hard not to cry.
Then I drove a couple of towns over, to our old school, to take a lap on the track and run the hill from the old cross-country course – back and forth beneath the pine trees that spell out our town’s name on the hillside -- then I cut down by the cemetery and the playground and finished up by running downtown and back.
The faint echoes of my coach playing in my head and in my heart.