sla book review: God on the starting line

God on the Starting Line

Reviewed by Diane McManus

MAY 17, 2005 archive

The title of Marc Bloom’s book embodies both conflict and resolution, embracing the pain as well as the miracle of this unlikely partnership. Bloom, a writer for Runner’s World and The New York Times, becomes the boys’ cross-country coach for St. Rose’s, a smallish Catholic high school in Northern New Jersey. By his own admission, it’s a surprising, yet ultimately auspicious mix: Bloom was contacted by one school after sending out resumes seeking a coaching job, and preferring to coach girls: that school was St. Rose’s. Apprehensive at first, Bloom began to see the value of his situation and to recognize the common ground that he and the boys shared, drawing him closer to his own faith: “With each bit of evidence that I’m doing some good, I feel closer to my faith, fulfilling the Jewish commandment to do mitzvoh, to help someone in need, especially the young” (p. 33).

He gets off to a rocky start, working with an unruly bunch of seniors, not particularly interested in having him or anyone coach them. “They were wise guys,” he recalls, “who’d received no direction and spent most of the practice imitating the professional wrestlers they’d seen on television.When I took over, they would quit and walk in the middle of runs and slack off at every opportunity” (p. 12). Fortunately, the second year offers the opportunity to work with freshmen, still impressionable, still people he can influence, still prepared to listen.

They enjoyed their early successes, showing promise as they moved up the ranks from freshman year. But they didn’t make his life simple. They were “a ragtag bunch from the getgo,” unlike the team at a nearby school, Christian Brothers’ Academy, a school with a long tradition of cross-country excellence and runners who dared not overstep boundaries. Bloom compares the school to “a miniature Princeton” in its amenities—tracks both indoors and out, running trails, groomed fields. In contrast, “St. Rose has nothing. No track, no school grounds, no running tradition. We have a parking lot. Our athletic fields, including a murky cross-country course abutting an airport, are ten miles away” (p. 39).

Students are lost to soccer and basketball, sports that offer more immediate rewards at a school without a cross-country tradition, a school in which cross-country is the poor relation of the other sports. Yet Bloom gradually helps the boys turn this deficit into a strength, appealing to the boys’ rebel pride in being different, in not following the easier path, in showing themselves to be made of tougher material. “With running as the linchpin,” he tells us, “I want to convince my boys to reject the ornamental culture, and come over to the other side, the holy side, if you will” (p. 43).

He likens this “holy side” to running the “Bowl,” an infamous hill on the school’s cross-country course, the shaper of character, the hill that Bloom describes as “a long, steep pitch midway that can whip you silly” (p. 40). Yet it is in this trial by pain that running becomes salvation, and interestingly, Bloom has a sensitivity to this concept that grows from both his Jewish background and his experience coaching his Catholic runners. “To run to the ultimate,” he writes, “as I want these boys to do, is to be in touch with a deep need, or at least an acceptance, of bettering yourself through suffering. It’s a good suffering. It’s the religious idea of suffering. It’s a suffering not only for personal growthbut also for the greater good. There are souls to be saved. Ask those at Columbine High. There are times when running hurts so mcuh it consumes you—like when you pound up the Bowle jelly-legged in a race—but it’s a temporary suffering” (p. 45). On the other side, Bloom promises, lies “a different world, a pristine world, where you have a higher consciousness, an exquisite understanding of life, a taste of hardship and hardship conquered” (p. 46).

The students resist, of course, interrupting his inspirational speeches to ask if they can have the promised cookies a runner’s mother brought and head home. They come from a variety of backgrounds: one of them experiencing his parents’ divorce, another his sister’s disability, another a heavy work schedule helping his father. They recognize hardship, and are encouraged through running to move past it, past their pain.

They begin with their own ideas and rebellions—the star runner who goes out too fast and burns out, the runner who sports chains and spiked hair, the out of shape baseball player who turns out to be a dependable top scorer in meets, the sprinter who insists he’s not a distance runner, yet improves with every race.

They disappoint—lying about rescuing someone in the ocean in order to cover for their impromptu (and forbidden) swim during a workout, getting into a fistfight with another runner during a race, showing up late or not at all for practice.

They learn. Bloom learns. They come to understand and respect and ultimately, dare I say, love one another.

The challenge presented to Bloom is to mold this “ragtag” bunch into a team that cares as much about running as he does. With every step forward, he celebrates. With every backslide he suffers. But in the end, the book itself is a celebration of what can be done with very little when a coach cares about his runners and believes in them, pushes and encourages them, knows their pain and rejoices with them in their successes. A very touching, well-written book!

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