Yes, Virginia, There IS an Indoor Track Program

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 17 years old and I attend Concord Academy. My friends say there is nothing to do after cross-country except play intramural basketball and write college applications, and there's no such thing as "indoor" track. My coach says we can keep running outside, and doing drills in the hallways, and strength and core in the weight room, and if we believe in it hard enough, we can even run races in places like Harvard and BU and Roxbury. PLEASE tell me the truth; is there an Indoor Track season?"

- Virginia O'Hanlon, CA Class of '2012


VIRGINIA, your friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe in what they do not see. They think that nothing can be which is not described in the CA course catalog. All course catalogs, Virginia, whether they be CA's or some great university's, are the product of convention and previous experience. In this great universe of ours, course catalogs don't even begin to capture the possibilities of sport.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is an Indoor Track Season. It exists as certainly as strength and speed and endurance exist, and you know that they abound and give to your afternoons their highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the winter world if there were no Indoor Track. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no burning light of aspiration to break 13 in the 100, no dedication to come to practice on Saturday mornings in the hopes of running faster, jumping higher, or throwing further, no controlled chaos of indoor meets to make tolerable this cold and dark time of year. We should have no enjoyment, except in watching football on TV. The eternal light with which the competitive fire of young people fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Indoor Track! You might as well not believe in winter running! Sure, you could get the maintenance man to inspect the campus to see if there are any facilities for practicing hurdles, solid floor for putting shots, or mats and pits for the high and long jumps. But even if the maintenance man found nothing but a few unused hallways and a tiny weight room, what would that prove? Nobody sees an indoor track on campus, but that is no sign that there is no Indoor Track. The most real things in the world are those that neither athletes not coaches can see. Did you ever see the invisible lift that helps a triple jumper set a PR by two feet in a championship meet -- the sudden revelation that follows months of patient effort in the weight room and on the runway? Of course not, but that's no proof that it isn't there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the soul of an athlete.

You may biopsy the muscle and see what makes it contract with such force, but there is a veil covering the unseen world of athletic aspiration which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, dedication, and training can push aside that curtain and view and picture the beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Indoor Track! Thank God! It lives, and it lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, indoor track will continue to inspire the strong and rapid beat of the hearts of athletes everywhere.