One of the most difficult moments in the coaching experience is coming to the end of the season and realizing that your time with your senior class has run out. Whether well or poorly spent, that precious interval of time is over and there is no getting it back. What was yesterday is gone.
For coaches, it’s an annual ritual to release the ties that have bound you to your senior class for the last four years. Every so often, however, the tables turn and young athletes must bid farewell to a coach. That is the situation that the Bayfield Wolverine track team members will find themselves dealing with this spring.
For 34 years, Vernon Kimball has set young athletes in blocks, held a stopwatch, and yelled himself hoarse as his purple-and-gold clad Wolverines have sought to attain the levels of excellence he envisioned and set before for them.
Rival coaches—as close as Pagosa Springs and as far as Yuma—have had occasion to marvel at what has happened in the little town of Bayfield under Kimball’s watch. Now it is our turn to put our outstretched hand into his, tell him how much we admire what he has done, and bid him a retirement as fine as the job of coaching he has done over the last third of a century.
Although I am a scant few years younger than Coach Kimball, our coaching careers overlap but briefly. While I came to coaching at a much later stage of life, it did not take me long to learn that Vernon Kimball was a soft-spoken giant among Colorado’s cross country and track coaching community. Partly to satisfy my own curiosity and partly to share what I learned with the Colorado high school running community, I asked Coach Kimball to share with us a little about his years of coaching track and cross country.
Every coach has a history of some sort in the sport. What were some of your accomplishments in high school track?
I graduated from high school in 1969. We did not have much of a track program. I competed in the 880 and 440 open events and ran on the mile relay team. I probably should have been a sprinter, but my coaches did not recognize that potential. I did not set any school records, but I did place consistently. I was part of a district champion mile relay team.
How was your high school track experience reflected in your coaching career?
Early in my career, I think I did favor the 400-800 athletes. My workouts were best suited to developing those types of runners, and much of our early success was with those events. It did not take me long to realize that other athletes had other needs, and I began providing greater variety in my workouts for the different events. It was difficult with usually only one or two coaches to meet the needs of all the athletes in all the events.
You will likely be best remembered for the track and cross country teams you coached in Bayfield, but was there more to your coaching career than Bayfield track and cross country?
Bayfield is the only place I have coached. I was an assistant football coach for 10 years, head girls basketball coach for 18 years, boys and girls cross country coach (and middle school) for 16 years, and will complete my 34th year as boys and girls track coach.
34 years is a long time to accumulate memories, but are there any particular highlights that stand out above the rest from that period of time?
Highlights of my career have to be the state championships [girls track and field – 1991, boys cross country – 2005] and the establishment of the cross country program. What an amazing feeling to win that first state title! The establishment of the cross country program at Bayfield was basically to meet the needs and desires of a couple of girl distance runners who did nothing but track in the spring. They wanted more, and cross country met the need.
At the end of the cross country season this year, knowing that this was my last season, my athletes and parents put together a "memory book" for me. There were pictures and letters from over 60 former athletes and parents, going all the way back to the first year of cross country. The appreciation and respect that came through in the letters literally brought tears to my eyes. I suppose that the greatest satisfaction comes from knowing that I did touch a lot of lives in a positive way and that my efforts were appreciated.
Are there things you wish you had done differently…?
I had one basketball season that did not end well. We were a team that I was confident would be in the state championship game. One player was ejected from the final regular-season game and had to miss the next two games. Another player was caught drinking after the last game of the season and I removed her from the team. Yet another player landed in the hospital the day before the district tournament and could not play that weekend. To top it off, the officials in the championship game at regionals decided to "tighten things up" and called fouls differently than they had all season. To make an already long story short, we did not even make it to state. That one was a hard one to overcome. I don't know that I would have done anything differently, but I wish there had been a different outcome to the end of the season.
What does the future hold for someone who has been very busy with teaching and coaching for over three decades?
I plan to get into officiating of track and field and cross country. I also have an affiliation with the NEED (National Energy Education Development) project that will have me doing workshops on energy-related topics for teachers and possibly also for students. This will have me doing a bit of traveling to various parts of the country and will keep me in touch with the field of education. The nice part is that I can pick and choose what workshops I want to do---which should work well around retirement. I do hope to do some traveling during retirement.
As you reflect over your time in coaching what gives you cause for hope and cause for concern?
I have seen a lot of changes in the past 34 years, but the kids are much the same. That perhaps gives me the most reason for hope, that kids still want to perform well and that they appreciate good coaching. At the same time, I see so many more things available to pull kids different directions. It is harder to get and keep kids involved in our programs because there is so much more available for them to do. Some kids never experience what involvement in athletics can give to them.
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I have no idea when my own time to hang it up will come, but I believe I would count it all a grand success if I could start my response to a question about things I wish I’d done differently with “I had one basketball season that did not end well.” Indeed, there have been countless things Coach Kimball has done well. For my part, I will most miss exchanging greetings him at the state meet and competing against the quality teams he always brought to those meets.
On behalf of the Colorado high school track and cross country community, thanks for all you’ve given of yourself, Vernon.