(Zionsville boys full team after the Taylor Invitational late in the month of August. Photo courtesy of Coach Porras)
Welcome back to the "Monday Motivation" series. We invite coaches around the state to give insight into their teams recent performances and have them relay messages that they have shared with their teams at various points in the season.
This week's piece comes from Zionsville boys Head Coach Gabe Porras. The Eagles were victorious at the State Preview meet over the Labor Day weekend. They are a top team in the state and are looking forward to competitive races in the upcoming weeks.
Below is a full message from Coach Porras about his Eagle team and their season thus far.
After graduating from Munster High School in 1997, I began running at Franklin College. During that time, I had opportunities to coach Indian Creek Middle School Track, Fulton JH (R.I.P.) for CC and Track and Ben Davis high school (C.C.) before landing a teaching job at Zionsville in the fall of 2001.
During my time at Zionsville, I began as a volunteer assistant for cross country in the fall of 2001. Since then, I have been the head boys track coach (2002-2018), head girls cc coach (2002-2003), head boys cross country coach (2002-present), Head Unified Track coach (2016), head girls track coach (2017-2018) and assistant boys track coach (2022-present).
I have had some great mentors and support throughout my career and am happy to help anyone getting into coaching to talk through training or team management. My email is gporras@zcs.k12.in.us.
We have 69 runners on the team, and it is a fun group to work with. David Brake has been an assistant coach for the team since 2011 and has been an integral part of our team culture during this time.
This past weekend, we ran at the THSB Invitational at the Lavern Gibson course. We had a strong showing against some great competition and were able to win both the varsity and junior varsity races. We are looking forward to our next opportunity at Brown County this weekend.
At our meet last week at Taylor, we knew there would be some parts where there would not be a lot of fans so we would have to be very focused on competing hard at those points of the race since we wouldn't have the external motivation of fans. As a whole, we did well with this and that was a point of emphasis again this week at Terre Haute. We also continue to work well with our teammates throughout the race.
After every meet, we send the athletes a Google form where they can write their initial thoughts about their race. They have opportunities to write out what went well and what is something they want to try differently for their next racing opportunity. I will print these off and give it to them the day before the race so they can remember their initial thoughts about their race and remind themselves about how they want to approach their next race as we are making final preparations. I highly recommend all athletes to write down their thoughts about their race on the bus ride back (if not earlier) as we are most honest with our performances at this point.
At this point of the season, we are halfway through the regular season. Some advice I would give to all athletes across the state would be:
1. Continue to be a great teammate. Recognize and appreciate it when someone on your team does well or helps you during a difficult part of a workout or race.
2. Remind yourselves of the goal you have as an individual and as a team and have steps on how to achieve them. Otherwise, they are just wishes and not goals.
3. Have fun and enjoy the competition at every practice and meet. There is nothing like high school cross country.
Our sport is in great hands with the amazing coaches and athletes across the state. If there is anything I can do to help grow the sport, please reach out to me on email (gporras@zcs.k12.in.us) or at a meet. Best of luck this week and the rest of the season.