Prep Track and Field Ageless wonder

At 83, Batavia volunteer Harold Anderson continues to have no trouble connecting with young athletes
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The sun has climbed above the horizon this June morning, but it's full impact won't be felt for a couple hours.

That's good news for the six teenage girls who begin arriving, just like clockwork, at the Batavia High School track. Some drive themselves. Some are dropped off by parents. Another comes by bike.

One by one, they start to stretch.

Soon, it will be 7 a.m.

An elderly gentleman in khaki pants and golf polo, snow white hair showing from underneath his red baseball cap, joins them. There's good-natured banter before he goes to work, lining up five pairs of hurdles, side by side on two of the running lanes.

Class is in session for 83-year-old Harold Anderson who suffers from macular degeneration. It starts with the one-step drill.

This is a rite of summer for the assistant coach who works each spring with hurdlers and pole vaulters for the girls and boys track teams of coaches Chad Hillman and Dennis Piron.

Anderson, who retired from teaching at Kaneland in 1987 and quit coaching there in 1991, gives the term "veteran" new meaning. Prompted by former Batavia coach Mike DiDomenico, who still assists Piron, Anderson has volunteered here since 1991.

It's no coincidence that both programs have developed into consistent challengers for conference titles.

The magic is hard work
Three times a week, bright and early, Anderson puts his hurdlers through specialized drills at voluntary workouts that last an hour or so and run through July. You snooze, you lose.
"This is the best hurdle drill in America," Anderson says as he watches each girl line up for a turn, doing what is close to a walk-through over the five, tightly-placed hurdles.

They don't run all out. This is about feel. Emphasis is on form, balance and economy of motion with just one step between each obstacle before going over the next one, always with the same lead leg.

"When that trail leg comes down, they're jumping (over the next hurdle)," said Anderson. "That's why I call it the one-step drill.

"It looks easy but it's not," he continues as one of the upperclassmen navigates it smoothly.

Moments later, a younger girl loses her balance and has to stop before wiping out on the third hurdle.

"It's hard," Anderson says gently, knowing it's easy to get discouraged.

Several attempts later, the same girls gets through it, a tad shaky but with no bobbles.

"If you lose a little momentum, by the time you get to that fourth or fifth hurdle, you can't do it," he says. "That trail leg has got to come through and reach out because you don't get another step. ... instead of jumping the hurdle, you run the hurdle."

In an aside to an observer, he notes, "I have had kids do 10 (hurdles) in a row. It's a fantastic drill. You can take a sprinter and teach 'em how to hurdle."

Other drills emphasize starts, curves and stride.

His No. 1 sermon, though, stresses the importance of clearing each hurdle with the same lead leg, no matter if it's the 100-meter or 300-meter race.

Don't their steps get choppy and cost them time, trying to maintain that same lead leg?

"Not if your stride is right," said Anderson. "If you hit it right on the button, you'll be alright."

Then, he repeats an oft-used phrase with a chuckle.

"I tell them, 'You can cuss, but you can't say alternate,'" he says.

Connecting with kids
Natalie Tarter remembers meeting Anderson for the first time at one of these sessions before she started high school.
Tarter played soccer and basketball and from junior high, knew she was a pretty good sprinter. Her older brother would challenge boys to race her when they were killing time while having to attend their younger brother's little league games and she always won.

"(Anderson) said, 'We're gonna have you hurdle,'" Tarter remembers. "And the first time I tried it, I fell down and fell down hard. I mean, I was all scraped up on my leg and hip, a bunch of strawberries. It looked pretty bad.

"I said, 'I'm never hurdling again.' But he was the sweetest man. He said, 'You can take the next day off and regroup. It happens to everyone.'"

It does. And Anderson, it may seem, has seen it all.

He has macular degeneration, which impacts the center of a person's field of vision. He still saw the potential in Tarter. It was realized her junior year when she won the state title in the 300 hurdles and repeated as runnerup in the 100 hurdles. Injury kept her from trying for a double as a senior but she's now a sophomore on a track scholarship at the University of Wisconsin.

Brittney Bernardoni, another of Anderson's charges, will join Tarter at Wisconsin this fall but she won't be a member of the track team.

Bernardoni, who had an injury-plagued career at Miami of Ohio after winning the state pole vault title in high school, will go to Wisconsin's medical school. It's one of eight she could have attended, Anderson says with pride. She also ran hurdles remembers her first meeting with Anderson.

"He was older than I expected," she said. "But he's very kind-hearted, very supportive and he knows a ton. He's very self-effacing ... has accomplished so much but he's never one to toot his own horn."

Both standouts grew to enjoy the summer workouts.

"They were tough in the beginning, and no teenager likes to get up at 6," Tarter said. "But (eventually) I couldn't get enough of it. It was such a challenge to learn it. You felt like you were learning something new every day. Plus, then you had the rest of the day."

Little wonder, both, like many who have trained under Anderson, stay in touch after graduation.

His most recent state champ (300 hurdles), Kathryn Warner, will, too.

She will attend East Carolina University this fall on a track scholarship.

Call him visionary
"I didn't start hurdles until my sophomore year," said Warner, also an excellent vaulter. "(Anderson) kept telling me the hurdles would help me in the pole vault. He kept telling me how good I could be in the hurdles so I stuck it out.
"He's a legend. He can barely see, but he can see how many steps you're taking between hurdles."

And he sees more than his athletes might think.

As Warner's father, Guy, notes: "Even though he claims he can't see, from 100 yards, he can spot a trail leg that is a couple inches low."

Anderson prides himself on teaching technique.

"The hurdles and the pole vault are the two easiest events to get points in because three-quarters of the schools don't have pole vault coaches and only 20 percent have anybody that really know the hurdles," said Anderson, who began coaching and teaching in Catlin after graduating from Illinois Wesleyan in 1950. He also led the track program at Mooseheart early in his career.

In his day, the vaulter's poles were made of bamboo.

"I like technique," he said. "I even like coaching discus next to pole vault and hurdles.

"I'm not a yeller. But in 60 years, you ought to learn something."

He has, and often achieves his yearly goal.

"I like to get two athletes in the finals of the conference in each event," he said. "I think we've had about 90 percent success here. Then, you know you're doing something right."

That's a given.

"Perhaps what makes coach so special is the respect and admiration he gets from the athletes ... which is equalled by the respect and admiration he has for them," said Guy Warner.

"When you see athletes finish a race then come talk to him with a big smile on their face looking for approval, you know something special is going on ... everything is a learning experience."

And could be termed the never-ending story.

"This is therapy to me," said Anderson.

Therapy that works both ways.