Josh Hess

10/23/2013

WRT 105

Tim Craven

The Tensions I Deal With

Life is a journey. People move from place to place, and people make new friends and lose old ones. One area remains constant, however. Once a person finds something that they love or that they are passionate about, it is very difficult to drop that hobby. Regardless of where people go, it is the things that they love and show interest for that will move with them. A person that loves books will find a book club wherever they are in life or wherever they live; someone that loves to run will make time to run and exercise throughout the week. To keep these personal traditions alive, people join specific groups called discourse communities. When people come together like this, they form a special bond that only members can relate to. These members form their own community within the larger community as a way to feel the most comfortable. Through practice, members can integrate themselves and “acquire discourses through social practices” (Gee). There have been many debates over what a “discourse community” actually is, but one thing remains constant: everyone is a part of one.

When reviewing this assignment and trying to think about which discourse I found tension in or could relate tension to, I struggled. At first I could not think of a discourse community that I was in, and when I finally decided, I did not think there was any tension involved. It took a lot of research and actual reflection into the discourse community to understand where the tension lay, and how my discourse community of being a high school track and field athlete was different from any other community out there. Track and field, like just about every other sport, has characteristics that make it unique. Runners do not just “do track”, we make it a lifestyle for ourselves. We learn and master all of the different terminology that makes our sport special and teach it to the younger members. Those who understand what we are talking about can be accepted, and those who do no, according to Swales, are imposters. Track and field athletes also make academics a high priority alongside succeeding in the sport, and this is where a lot of tension occurs.

I devoted four years of my life, my entire high school career, to running. Specifically, I was a distance runner which required a full 12 months of the year to training except for a week or two here or there in between seasons. I had to keep a watch on my training, my eating habits, and my body as a whole. I could not slack off for a few weeks or during the summer when there were no races because I needed to keep my body in shape to prepare for success when the season did come around. I always kept in mind that to be successful I could not always act how I wanted to; I had to act how I needed to in order to be the best possible by the time outdoor track, my favorite of the three seasons, rolled around. I kept track of everything about myself at all times, not just when I was in season or a week before the season started. Practice takes up time, yet I still have to keep tabs on my schoolwork even when “The entire workout consumes 2+ hours a day” (Keech). I monitored my sleep habits, drank and kept a liter of water with me throughout the school day, and measured how many miles I was running in a certain pair of shoes- something that no other athlete in any other sport would even think about.

When people tell me that “track is not a sport” or that “it’s too easy and anyone could do it” I have to refrain from explaining how being a runner is one of the most complex sports to be involved in. I assume that these people say these statements because they are too afraid or could not handle running six or more miles a day, everyday of the week. It is a certain breed of people that can run as a sport, and that is what makes it such an elite community. Yes, everyone has to run in his or her sport to stay in shape, but running for track and cross-country requires making running a person’s lifestyle. My favorite shirt reads: My sport is your sport’s punishment.

“All you do is run. How can that be fun?” That’s a common phrase any high school distance runner will hear over their four- year high school career. But truthfully, running is fun. It’s the racing aspect that isn’t as much fun. Going out for a training run during practice, regardless of the pace or distance, releases endorphins throughout the body. Endorphins are the stimuli that create the so- called “runner’s high” that many distance runners experience. This “runner’s high” relaxes both the body and mind and makes the runner feel better and creates motivation to keep running in the future. The creation and utilization of endorphins is at a maximum during a normal training run, and not during a race, regardless of the distance. This is because a race strains the runner both physically and mentally in a way that a normal training run does not.

I have friends that would “play” a sport maybe just in the winter or during the spring, and they would never see much improvement from one year to the next. I, on the other hand, continually saw success. There was rarely a span between races that I did not improve my mile, 5k, two mile, 800m or 400m time. I dedicated my time and my life, and in doing so I felt good while practicing and training. Many people in other sports outside of track do not feel any motivation, especially in high school, to do extra training. Well, if running makes a person feel good, it makes perfect sense to do it on a regular basis. People in school would tell my friends and me that we were crazy for running on the roads, but we felt good doing it. To us, they were crazy for sitting around and not getting outside to do extra training.

Each discourse community has it’s own terminology- the language of the community that truly sets it apart from everyone else. Track is no exception, and aside from football play calling, it probably has the most difficult lexicon to pick up. “We use different phrases and abbreviations to make communication easier” is something that I mentioned in a previous assignment about my discourse community, and it still holds true. We use words and phrases like “waterfall start” (Sun) to mean a specialized starting location when a distance race has more than 12 people, “acceleration zone” (Sun) to mean the area before the actual exchange zone in a 4x400m or 4x800m relay, or “flights” (Sun) to mean the divided sections used in field events. Nobody who is outside the track community would understand what a waterfall, acceleration zone, or a flight is. Tensions then arise when people inadvertently offend a runner by incorrectly using these terms. Like every athlete, runners take their sport incredibly seriously, and hate when “imposters” (Swales) try to insert themselves into the community by wrongly using these terms.

It is still possible to have tension in a discourse community, and this can result directly from language. Runners will use different types of track terms to get an advantage over or to confuse an opponent. So, even though all of the runners are in the same discourse community, they will do whatever possible to get a leg up on the competition. During a relay, for example, as one runner approaches the “acceleration zone” (Sun), he may shout “Stick!” to let his teammate know to start running. Other teams may say “Go!” as their signal. Just like Anne Johns details, it is possible to have tension within one community, and during a relay race, tension is obvious. If a runner starts to go when he hears the other teams’ signals, it could cost his team the race. People do not always have to get along regardless of the fact that they share common ideals, another thing that Johns is adamant about.

But why does track need terms that when taken out of context seem completely irrelevant? A specified lexicon in the sport actually keeps tensions at a minimum between all runners. This cannot be said for other sports such as football. In football, different teams have different words that are said at the line of scrimmage that does not mean the same thing for any other team. This creates tension as Team B tries to figure out or understand what play Team A is trying to run. In track, runners, regardless of nationality, can universally associate themselves with all of the specific vocabulary necessary. This helps the meet to run smoother and all of the runners can thus accomplish what they set out to do: win the race or set a new personal record, also known as a “PR”.

            Track athletes remain diligent on and off the track. In my specific discourse community of my high school track and field team, we were always pushed to have strong morals and dedication to the sport and even more so to our academics and anything going on in school. My coach, Coach Jacobs, was not only our coach, but was out mentor. He would always say, “Being an adult means you no longer do what you want to do. It means doing what you need to do” and “Academics are always above athletics.” To be strong athletes meant not necessarily getting straight As, but striving to be the best that we could in the classroom. Each season, the conference that my school is in would give an award for scholar athlete, and each season this award would go to someone on the boys’ track and field or cross-country team, depending on the season. We could see athletes from other sports get frustrated that track runners would always get a prestigious award, but we knew that it was because we dedicated ourselves to both academics and athletics.

On race day, we would wear a shirt and tie to school. We needed to dress our best in order to perform our best. Other coaches would tell their athletes to “dress up” or just wear whatever they wanted. If another sport dressed up, it was an untucked shirt, khaki shorts and moccasins; this is not the attire of a champion. Dressing like champions made our “ideals and goals public” (Swales) to the rest of the school. So what if other students thought we were crazy for wearing a shirt and tie when it was 90 degrees outside. Success and winning was our primary objective, and we would not let anything come between our goals and us.

Track and field and the discourse community that goes along with it has shaped who I am as a person. The mini discourse community that was my high school track and field team created someone in me that I thought I could never become. I was introduced to an entirely new way of life that I am very proud of. I do not really care what other people think about track or running in general. To truly understand the beauty and how hard runners work, it is necessary to actually be involved in a program or in the discourse community as a whole. Those people who look down upon the sport are ignorant to me and underestimate themselves. By looking down at the sport or not understanding the true values that are dear to a runner, especially in a high powered program like the one I was in (we have not lost a meet since 2004 and have won multiple conference and state championships in the process), these people create tension for themselves. We do what we need to do to win, and even if the lifestyle or work ethic seems crazy to outsiders, it is because they are outsiders. Track and field becomes almost like a “primary discourse” (Gee) for those in the community, and we take pride in what we do. When people try to strip us of our pride, tension wil

 

 

 

 

 

WORKS CITED

 

 

Keech, Mike. “ON THE RUN Series: Training for Success The Last of 4 Friday Profiles Examining              How High School Student-athletes Balance the Demands of Training and Schoolwork. Today’s Focus: Track & Field Athletes: [Final Edition].” ProQuest. ProQuest Central, n.d. Web. <http://search.proquest.com/pqcentral/docview/342847510/1413E2F23223D1752F2/1?accountid=14214&gt;.

Sun Prairie. “Track & Field Terminology – Sun Prairie Area School District – High School Track & Field.” Track & Field Terminology. Sun Prairie High School, n.d. Web. <http://www.sunprairie.k12.wi.us/faculty/trackteam/terminology.cfm&gt;.