Bomber Cross Country!

 At Tomato Street Grill with Coach Kerr and Coach Bartlett.  Jay (aka Coach Barlett) and I agreed to split a meal, which was basically a pizza with salads for each of us. Needless to say, he filled his obligation and ate his half, while I daintily ate a whopping one piece. 

 Coach Kaleta (aka Mary) and me, shwoing off our awesome Richland coaches polos.  We. Look. Awesome. We were roomies on the Spokane trip, and it ended up rather funny.  I am usually the one who is more quiet, cool, and reserved, whereas Mary loves, LOVES to talk. And laugh. A lot. She however, had a 13 hour day at work that particular Friday, and was BEAT after her 2+ hour drive to Spokane. Somehow the whole dinner/coaches' poking fun at each other (sans Mary, who was on her way up), had gotten me really hyper. REALLY hyper. Sufficeth to say, Friday night Mary was the quiet one, and I was bouncing off the walls. Almost literally.

Oh yes, and here we have half of the reason we actually went on the Spokane trip. It was the Regional Cross Country meet, and both our boys' and girls' teams qualified to go. Unfortunately, out of that meet, only 2 of our girls were left to go onto the State meet. 

I have never gotten any "coaches" pictures during my whopping 3 years as a coach, so I insisted on getting some during this overnight trip.  Back in September when I took the job as assistant coach at Richland, I could not have even begun to fathom how much I would love it, and how much I'd love the kids.  The ironic thing about it though, is that I worked at the State cross country meet as an official, not as a coach for Richland. And......for those who were not aware of it, the Pasco (and Chiawana) teams are the ones who pretty much put the whole meet on. So, I spent the day with my Pasco homies.  There were times during the day that I had to stop and remind myself that I am not a Pasco Cross Country coach anymore--I am at Richland now. Halfway through the day I actually left my post at the Finish line and went over to the Richland tent to talk to the coaches and our two girls who had just run. I have to say, it was the strangest feeling--and hard to describe--going from being around my Pasco clan, to suddenly running over to my Richland clan.