track in Keetmanshoop

Once again, I spent much of the last weekend at a track meet! I absolutely love track and field, but it is SO different to be viewing it from the other side! Coaching is really, really different from running as an athlete! (I did especially love the part where one of my learners asked for sweets – I told her she had to wait because she hadn’t earned them yet. “But why can you keep them then, Miss? You don’t have to do ANYTHING…” thanks.)

Aside from the part where I’m a coach instead of a runner, track here is really just a whole different animal.

some of my kids at the Youth center where they spent the night

For instance – some of my learners participated in field events like high jump and javelin. Let me tell you, our school does NOT have high jump mats or javelins. One of my boys was really interested and so he has been practicing javelin by himself with a treebranch (also shockingly hard to come by in Tses)! Some of them high jumped before in primary school, so we practiced one day on some mattresses from the hostel and they just went for it at the meet! They do really well given these constraints. One of my girls jumped 1.35m SCISSORKICKING the bar. She can’t go backwards. It was so impressive!

One of my boys throwing a shot for the second time in 2 years!

I have never seen such a successful scissorkick.

There are also some interesting cultural comparisons to be done at meets like this. Our region varies a lot socio-economically, and we have the highest Gini coefficients in all of Namibia, 0.63 (the Gini coefficient ranks discrepancy in where wealth lies). So we had one school competing that had only white learners. They wore spikes, knew how to use starting blocks, and raced events like the hurdles.

These aren't my kids - but have you ever seen hurdles like these??

Start of the under-17 girls' 800m - you'll notice the girl on the left is wearing spikes and the 2 in the middle have on socks because of the rocks on the track

Then there are schools like mine. All of our kids are barefoot, most of them haven’t seen a hurdle outside of the regional competition, and we most definitely don’t have organized practice through the school! I’m proud to say, they definitely still held their own.

 Aloysius ran a 10:20 for a 3k, barefoot on a cinder track. He won, and had 0 competition.. he just jogged with the other guy until the last lap, which he ran in a 63 low. Not even tired. I really hope they advance him to the national meet in Windhoek!