It’s a geek project, a labor of love, something to do to pass the time, exercise the brain. It’s a nostalgia project. It’s a way to see how good the kids are now. It’s a way to see how good we were back then. Accidentally, it was a way to see how much work it takes to coach, how much love coaches put into teams and athlete. And a little bit about how inadequately I feel like I returned that love at the right time.
In the process, I’ve learned how to write a database in Access and then SQL, some forays into data scraping with Python, and now website design with WordPress (I am not yet very good at this). Resume skills, I guess?
This whole thing started with me keeping track packets Coach Walter Roberts gave out. My freshman year he provided class records in outdoor track, three deep in every event and class. I kept it and crossed out records as people broke them. I eventually added my own name, all the way to tying two school records.
About 18 years after I graduated I came back to campus and caught Walter for some time. It was also the first time I met Coach Carol Quarles, one of the best accidental meetings I’ve ever had. My track spark was re-lit. Back in California, I followed a track meet on-line, hitting F5 during the 800m of the 2012 Division 1 Championship and launching two fists into my office air seeing Chris Poggi had won the event. Now in the 4x400m I was tapping Refresh chanting “don’t drop the baton don’t drop the baton.” They won the event and the championship for the first time since . . . well, sheeee-it, when I was a captain.
I was hooked. I dove back into old outdoor track packets, got other packets from friends, scoured the internet, and brought the 3-deep lists back up to date, one year at a time in spreadsheets.
Then I did the indoor track team. Then boys X-C, girls X-C, girls indoor. The girls outdoor was a holdout, but a coaching change dropped a ton of packets in my lap.
And so I build these team databases and kicked out interesting tidbits to the coaches and teams over the years. I absolutely overdid it sometimes. Most of the time.
The pandemic seasons gave me undesired time away from the project, but that turned out OK when I needed to focus on where I was at work. But when NHIAA was not able to secure facilities for the 2021-22 season, I figured it was my last chance at developing a website while teams weren’t throwing new data at me.
So, I know it looks like your kid’s or your kid sister’s website project from 5 years ago, but I’ve got a vision and I’m going to see how close I can get.
I am *always* interested in hearing about, reading, or seeing anything from past XC, indoor, and outdoor teams. If you want to tell a story about a coach, teammate, or race, try your own little write-up, I’ll see what I can make happen here.
Try me at mworster@paxctrack.com.
