Lauren Watts
Reporter
Cross Country is a sport that teaches life lessons through the mentality of the runner, and the connection that the coach has with the team.
“I could not have picked a more perfect person to take over cross country because her sons have been runners, she has been involved with cross country, and she knows the sport, and she is doing a great job,” the previous cross country coach Seela Newbill said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of everyone around the world, especially athletes and the sports they play. But the Dyersburg High School Cross Country team has faced more change than just powering through the restrictions of the coronavirus; they also have gained a new head and assistant coach for this year.
The new head coach, Marty Newsom, has a history with running that dates back to her sons’ high school careers. Her eldest son ran cross country and her other three followed suit. Participating in the sport for a long time as a mother, she took up coaching the long-distance runners in track and field. When she couldn’t find another coach to help her with the jumpers and throwers this past year, she took the position as the new head coach for the cross country team.
“This is where my heart is anyway, with the long-distance," Newsom said. But this year is not just new for the runners that make up the team, it is new for Newsom as well.
“Do you know what my biggest fear is?” she said, “It is coming here to the actual meet, and looking like the new kid on the block- where you do not know what to do.”
That is what she is most nervous about, and she fears letting the team down by not making sure they are enjoying the sport.
But this is not the only challenge the new coach has faced, she has also lost a huge group of runners and had trouble finding enough to make a team.
“This hurts my heart because [running] is a great life skill. I would love to see more people running. I feel that right now during all of this [COVID] they need it more than ever to relieve anxiety and depression...It is a sport where you only compete with yourself,” Newsom said.
The numbers always ebb and flow in a sport like cross country, and this was a perfect year, to her, to have small numbers. Not only because of the coronavirus, but because she is new to the world of coaching cross country, and she hopes that as the years go on, the numbers will grow as well.
Newsom also had to adapt her coaching strategies for the sport and to help the team achieve its goals.
“My coaching philosophy has been a work in progress, and I have learned from my sons being athletes,” Newsom said.
Even though she is the new head coach, Newsom doesn’t do it alone. Her son is her assistant coach and a source for her research.
“It was a blessing,” Newsom said about her son, Hoyt Newsom, who teaches at Dyersburg Intermediate School and helps her with cross country.
He helps Newsom with her coaching strategies by leading the team into easy, moderate, or hard runs; the team’s cooldowns and warm-ups; and increasing their times. The mother-son duo is constantly bouncing ideas and information off of each other towards running and the team.
As a coach, Newsom wants to see her team meet not only the goals she has set for them but the goals that the individual team members have set for themselves. At their practices before the upcoming meet of that week, she shares the data from the last meet with the team and has them write down their goals for themselves in the upcoming event.
“I want them to have a personal goal each week,” she said, "and let them determine how much that is.”
On top of setting goals for themselves, Newsom wants the team to love the sport and everything that comes with it.
“[I want them to love] freedom. The freedom to get out there and run and ignore everything else. [I want them] to find solace and peace,” she said, “I want them to develop a love for the sport and take it as far as they want. . .”
She believes this is the beauty of running; that anyone and everyone can do it. Newsom counts on the program to grow and to attract many more runners. There is so much more to happen within the program beyond the tribulations of the coronavirus.
“Bring them on, let’s get ready,” Newsom said, “We are going to grow this program from the ground up all over again. We are not going to let COVID beat us.”
Luke Watts, a junior, lead them into the prayer
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