SPEAK OUT

(A Personal Blog of Observations and Opinions by South Bay Track Club Coach, Len Webb)

What's in a Uniform

Throughout my life I have been blessed with the ability to vividly recall micro-momments that have powerfully affected me. In an instance, I can sense that a certain occurrence has transformed my conscientiousness and thus, I can trace the moment when I began to think a certain way, or when and where the formation of my particular philosophical viewpoint happened.

As such, I remember that it was in January of 1972 that I was introduced to the critical meaning of the term "Team".

Of course, I had been on 'teams' since the fifth grade...first playing goalie for The Eagles at James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School in Michigan City, Indiana...and then a succession of baseball, basketball, and football squads throughout Junior and Senior High School. But, it was in a classic lecture hall at Los Angeles City College, during a season-opening Address by my new Track Coach, Elmer Douglas, that I was truly taught what it meant to be on a "Team".

Coach Douglas explained in an ever-intensifying manner, just what it meant to have the "Privilege" of being included into a fraternity of people pledged to fuse their talents into one effort. He painted a vivid picture of what it would be like when a "sea of red uniforms" stepped-off the bus, and how everybody would know that you belonged to a great program, with a great history. Coach Douglas spoke of the power that would flow through your performance from the athletes who had come before you, and how whatever you did today would have a simular effect on the legions of athletes to come after you.

And then he held up a singlet. He said this is your flag. It symbolizes this program and it's history. Each and every athlete that has ever come through this school will now be represented by you when you put this "Uniform" on. "Regardless of what your favorite color was before you got here, your favorite colors while you're here will be the Red and Blue of Los Angeles City College."

I have always wanted to pass that sentiment along to the athletes of The South Bay Track Club, which has now created a tremendous history of it's own...whatever your prior preference, your favorite colors are now Black, White, Blue, and Grey.

I have tried very hard to make athletes understand that the style of a uniform is completely unimportant. The color-scheme is trivial. The name-brand of the garment is irrelevant. A singlet is just a shirt. A warm-up suit is just a jacket and pants. But, when you place a logo on the garment it becomes a uniform, and becomes invaluable. It should be cherished, and cared for...and cared about.

Athletes should understand that when you are issued a uniform the first thing that should come out of your mouth is...Thank You. Thank you for including me...thank you for honoring me...thank you for supporting me.

It doesn't really matter what the logo looks like, or if you think the colors match your eyes, or if you like the designer. What matters is that you are now and forever linked to something bigger than you, and that you now represent those persons who went before you and that history.

Because an athlete has to be able to function at a very high level in these garments, there is concern for fit and comfort...but that's it! Not, "oh, I don't like the way it looks on me."
Trust me, if your program has the proud history that SBTC enjoys, people will be impressed with seeing you in a uniform that they have come to associate with class and dignity. It is your responsibility to see that those things remain true when you are no-longer wearing the uniform. Afterall, the best uniform in a race is always worn by the winner.

Careful This Doesn't Happen To You When You "Speak-Out"

Can You Hear That?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009:

Commentary by Steve Ledette

Since my personal background is centered more around the movie business, with my most intimate sports experience being in Baseball, I have had to learn on-the-fly about the intricacies of the sport of Track & Field.

Along with the interviews I'm conducting with Coach Webb, I have been trying to familiarize myself with the history of the sport, especially the period since just before The South Bay Track Club was formed until the Present.

My appreciation for what Coach Webb has achieved is particularly strong given the devastating toll performance-enhancing drugs has taken on the very pursuit that has driven him for nearly four decades.

It would have been a much different path for the coach had he succumbed to the many opportunities to cheat along the way.

Instead, he has endured year-after-year of personal financial stress as he funded every aspect of the Club's endeavors.

In the past, he has lost athletes who were destined to go on to awesome feats because he wouldn't give-in to the dictates of the shoe companies whom he invisioned would compromise the ability of track-club programs to promote up-and-coming athletes in an atmosphere of integrity. He was approached by Butch Reynold's Junior College coach in 1986, but advised the future 400m World Record-Holder to transfer to Ohio State, firstly to get a great education, and secondly to take advantage of the scholarship that was being offered him instead of taking a weak shoe contract and coming from Kansas to California to train with the club.

In 1988, Coach Webb was locking up his Carson, California office in preparation for a three-month trip to Europe where he was taking a large group of journeyman runners and jumpers. Ten minutes before shutting off the lights, he answered a phone call from a colleague who wanted to put him together with a college freshman who wanted to get his feet wet overseas. With no chance of getting a passport or airline tickets together in that short span of time, he asked the coach to get back with him when the team returned. In that six-week period, Steve Lewis, the athlete in question, shot to prominence, eventually winning the Gold Medal that year in Seoul.

So when he was forced by circumstances to dismiss Carmelita Jeter from the squad three days before she placed third in the 100m at the 2007 National Championships, and who then went on to capture the Bronze at the World Championships
in Osaka, history seemed to be repeating itself, yet again.

But, then I did some research and came across some very interesting data. This data has raised more questions than answers, and shall be saved for disclosure at a later time when perhaps the overall picture of things becomes clearer.

Still, as just an interested observer, the rhetorical questions abound...has there ever been an athlete in any sport, who had performed for so long a period of time, at such a mediocre level, exposed to decent-to-excellent coaching on the school-level, have such an abrupt rise in skill-level in such a short period of time? Concurrently, expungeing the only trace of an explanation (injuries, though not serious)to the point of being completely non-existent, with no plausible explanation...either for why they had been occuring, or why they aren't now.

And then there's the matter of this perfomance-level rising to the point where it has eclipsed even the awesome exploits of those persons positively deemed to have only been able to achieve those exploits because they cheated, keeping in mind that those athletes were far more accomplished at an earlier age than what history has shown this athlete to have been. And during periods of their careers in which there was no doubt that they were clean.

But, my biggest question is how and why are these exploits beiing received with so little fanfare? Coach Webb has challenged me to..."listen to the sound that's NOT being made"...I find that sound deafening.

Pitiful Epitaph For a Promising Squad

Monday, October 5, 2009

Commentary by Steve Ledette

Today, almost two years later, there was a dramatically sad close to the squad that was the 2008 edition of South Bay Track Club. A unit that, despite several Personal-Bests, three Olympic Trials berths, and an unbelievable amount of talent, constantly set new lows in human character. In 34-plus years, you're bound to lay an egg at least once...and this squad was definitely it.

As Coach Webb participated in a procedural process set-forth by USATF, it was difficult for him to wrap his mind around what he was witnessing. Three members of that team took turns weaving lies and half-truths into a weird, rambling exercise in idiocy...under oath, no less.

The fabrications themselves, were not so much the mystery as was the ability to find any kind of understanding of what these so-called athletes felt there was to gain.

These are people who, variously, were led to the best successes of their respective lives in the Sport, and by all reasonable accounts, the best results they will ever have.

Not only that, they perjured themselves in front of their own consciousness, which is something that each will have to deal with at some lonely point in their lives. And again, for what gain?

Each of these athletes had been nurtured, protected, promoted, taught, and supported by the South Bay Track Club family. Coach Webb has on many occasion, dragged his entire family out to the track at sometimes, 5am, to hold individual workouts with each of them...FOR FREE!!!
Mrs. Webb has volunteered to struggle through murderous 800m workouts with people young enough to be her children, just so that a person could have a training partner on that particular day.

The coach once drove three & ahalf hours to support one of them as they ran in a Cross-country race the person had no chance of even placing in, all-the-while, that person was representing ANOTHER team as South Bay TC wasn't even entered into the Meet. When that person's race was over, the coach and his family jumped into the car and drove the three and ahalf hours back home.

These three were the ones Coach Webb held up as mentors to the other fifteen urstwhile journeyman runners who once spent an entire weekend engaging in vile and indecent behavior while at a house the coach had rented in the resort town of Big Bear City where the team had gone for altitude training. In one of the most poignant scenes anyone could witness, the senior member of that squad, battling a horrific disease at the time, led heart-felt testimonies to the group about the many sacrifices made on his behalf by the coach over the years. These three were among the most teary-eyed in a room that had no dry ones.

At the end of 2008, Coach Webb rented a small compact car and drove his family fourteen hours from Long Beach to Eugene, Oregon to witness one of these three fulfill a promise the two had made to each other four years earlier...to compete in The USA Olympic Trials. The Coach had paid for the athlete to fly there.

All of these three have slept in his home. Eaten at his table. They shared personal trials and tribulations with the Coach and reaped invaluable life-counselling from him and his wife.

He raced them in exotic locales around the world, always at his own expense. The standard fee for his services? Try $15 per week!! And no-one was ever turned away when they didn't have the money, which was a frequent occurance.

He was there to help one of them rebound in-time to qualify for the Trials after an unexpected pregnancy detrailed the endeavor.

He was there when another was having trouble with a teenage son on the brink of juvenile delinquentcy with no male role model to look to for guidance.

There is one very important thing you need to know about the South Bay Track Club and Coach Webb...he doesn't recruit. Every athlete that has ever been a member has been brought in by a current or past member...or they requested membership on their own. The same is true for these three. Point being? He and the Club owed them NOTHING!!

Of the seventeen athletes who began the journey that year, all but five were dismissed from the team. Four of that five were members in 2009 and three are still on the team today, and one has been allowed to return after showing alot of contrition.

But, these three are dead to the program now. And a sad requiem has been created by their own hands.

Our Sport often asks the rhetorical question...how can people who say they love the Sport so much take performance-enhancing substances which have nearly destroyed it?

Well, Coach Webb now knows to what extent a human being can stoop when suffering from a lack of character. Very low, indeed.

[NOTE***Steve Ledette is a professional biographer who is doing a chronicle of the career of Coach Len Webb for a book to be published for sale next summer]

TUESDAY, MAY 12,2009 -

This blog is supposed to be the musings of observations I make on a daily basis, but the following offering from the USATF CEO Doug Logan is so insightful and mirrors so much of my own experiences and attitudes, I have decided to post it here. He calls it "Get Your Kicks On Route 66", a title that will likely cruise right over the heads of many readers.

Enjoy...

"Get your kicks on Route 66"
Sunday morning, Mother's Day, and the last day of my 65th year, I woke up in my Indianapolis apartment. The sun was shining, the temperature in the low 50's; it was a perfect day for an extended workout. After a bit of fruit, protein and grains for breakfast, I did what many of you regularly do: I mapped out my walk/run through the urban heart of the Circle City.

I have a perverse tendency to play mind games as I put a route together. In some cities with numbered streets and avenues, I run a circuit that will add up to a specific number. For example, if my goal number is 35, I will go out 5th Street to 7th Avenue to 21st Street, returning on 2nd Avenue. 5+7+21+2=35. Sometimes, I just start with the goal number and construct it on the run. Indianapolis has most of its downtown streets named after states of the union. I will sometimes take a run only on streets named after states I have lived in. I must say I have a lot of options.

This day I did not play any of my macabre games. Walk three miles; jog three miles. All I wanted was a gentle sweat. About a mile from returning home, as I exited the canals on the west side of town and took a right on 11th Street, I stumbled and fell flat on my face. Prophetically, I was listening to Scott Weiland's new CD, Happy in Galoshes, and the cut was a great song, "Paralysis". The first thing to hit the ground was my chin and then my forehead. My first thought: I hope I haven't scratched the lenses of my Oakley shades.

When I got home and peered into the mirror to inspect the damage, I looked like I had survived a bar brawl in Astoria, Queens. [I use that example based on personal history, but that's another story.] Scratches and welts on my chin, forehead, both palms and left knee. But, the most painful injury was that to my ego. When you think you are 26, it is very hard to come to grips with the fact that you are 40 years older.

Some of us are doing the right things to reach what we hope is wholesome aging. We eat well, exercise regularly and avoid modern temptations. Along the way we have become addicted to the stimulation of endorphins and can attest to their affinity to the opiate receptors. We use seat belts, slather sunscreen, see our doctors regularly and have learned how to mitigate arthritic pain. But, every once in awhile, a stumble like the one I took Sunday morning brings the chicken home to roost: we are playing in the fourth quarter.

I cannot tell you the level of disconnect between this reality and the way I think and feel. I know I am doing the best work of my professional life. I still do the Saturday and Sunday Times crosswords in ink and have become conversant with technology. I work an 80-hour week and am alert in situations that cause many a youngster to yawn and droop. I plan my wardrobe meticulously and am cognizant of the way I look. I stay culturally relevant and read voraciously. I love to dance and occasionally practice the Cuban art of flirting. I think Justin Timberlake, singer, dancer and comedian, is one of the most talented performers of this generation.

However, I know I now have outlived Nostradamus by three years. My posture is not what it used to be and I am certainly a much slower runner. My fairway drives are less than 250 yards, and the volume level on my TV is aggressive. I don't get the point of reality shows, Paris Hilton or the X Games. I cannot gracefully enter a sports car nor can I drink espresso after an evening meal. I cannot understand why young women tolerate how badly young men dress. I am grieving the decline of the newspaper business and cannot get used to being informed on-line. Travel would become so much more civilized if flight attendants did not act like drill sergeants and if cab drivers actually knew where they were going.

Being 66 beats the alternative. But I steadfastly refuse to "yield" to it. I will still hang around young people, personally and professionally. I will still stay addicted to good, alternative music. I refuse to become a cranky, all-knowing, so-called senior. I will still wake up with a smile on my face and retain my self-deprecating humor.

Today, a good friend, on the phone, offered to send me some Grecian Formula for my hair as a birthday present. I told him he didn't get it. I have spent a lifetime trying to stay "authentic," and dying my hair, to me, would be the epitome of hypocrisy. I'll take this dealt hand. Look for me to get my kicks on Route 66.





TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 2009 -

We are entering into the final month of our normal Track & Field season and for the first time since Gold Medallist, Linetta Wilson, retired from the team in 2003, I am truly pleased with the prospects for the future of the Club.

Clinging to the core principles of an institution you treasure with all of your heart is an odyssey that can't possibly be planned for adequately. There are twists, turns, setbacks, roadblocks, and challenges that just can't be foreseen. South Bay Track Club went through them all in the past five years, and especially during the past three-plus seasons. But, it is glorious to realize that it was exactly the strength of those "core principles" that sustained one of the best organizations in the sport.

I can see that other programs in the sport have endured simular challenges in their histories, and not all have survived....but, we have!

Many times during this period, I made decisions that were intended to nurture various athletes and help them blossom beyond the confines of an otherwise mediocre experience in Track & Field, only to find that the athlete was his/her own imprisoning foe. I took personalities that I felt could benefit from a glimpse of Life at "The Top", only to learn that the reason they were at the bottom in the first place was because that's where they wanted to be...that's where they were most at home. And, the athletes that succeeded were the one's who had the temerity to face the truth in themselves and endeavor to change their circumstance, be it on the Track, or in their personal lives.

The old adage, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" might apply if it weren't for the fact that to exchange happiness for strength isn't my desired goal in Life.

Still, as we conclude our 34th season, if someone would have told me that there would only be five tumultuous years to deal with in that period, I would have had that person's sanity checked.

South Bay Track Club has endured and now is embarking on a new exciting path.

Though we have fielded athletes in the past whose roots were from another country, for the most part those athletes have been defacto citizens, having either been reared here, or come here to further their education. But, for the first time, South Bay Track Club will host foreign athletes as club members, but whom will retain their affiliation with their birth-nation.

These athletes will train alongside our hand-picked group of people on a push towards the Summer Olympics in 2012 to be held in London,England.

Having no corporate sponsor, as has been the case for the entire history of the club, this will be another immense challenge for me, especially in these special economic times. However, I don't think that anyone who truly knows me will ever doubt my resilience. I will make this happen...and it will be ground-breaking.

On a different note, few people have ever been more joyous than I was this past Saturday. At approximately 8:30am, my youngest daughter voluntarily undertook her first full Track workout. At age six, she follows her older sister & brother into the sport that has truly blessed our family.

As she went flawlessly through the rigors of "Suicides" and "The Circuit", followed by a set of abdominal excercises, it was clear that the future of the South Bay Track Club is in good hands.

Women's 100m at Mt SAC...I'm just sayin'

SATURDAY, April 18, 2009 -

Horrible start + humongous body development in short span of time, viola! 10.96...uh, okay!