It was my first week of middle school.
Things were....odd.
If this was to be expected, I sure didn't know it.
A lot of things had changed since I "graduated" from 6th grade.
I had gone from confident kid with buck-teeth to lanky, ugly, insecure 7th grader, in 3 months flat.
This also happened to be the only September in my short career as a student that I wasn't signed up for a sport.
I spent most of my childhood fall months running around like a chicken with my head cut off on a soccer field, and even caved to peer pressure the autumn of 6th grade and signed up for football. If I was no good at soccer, you can only imagine what football did to my psyche.
My only grade school redemption: Gym Class and the 1 mile run.
I couldn't hit. I couldn't catch.
Tackle? Ha.
I could, however, put one foot in front of the other faster than almost anyone else in school.
So here I was, September of 1995, teetering on the precipice of anonymity. Perhaps even worse as a 12 or 13 year old- I had no clique. I needed....something. I just wasn't sure what that something might've been.
It was mid-week, at the end of the day. I departed my last class, and began the journey up the stairwell to my homeroom, from which we extracurricular-less students would be put on a bus and destined for home.
A middle-aged guy in glasses, shamrock-colored polyester pants, a white shirt, and matching green tie passed me. I had seen him once before, but couldn't remember where. All I knew was that he was the Wood Shop teacher and Cross Country/Track and Field coach: Bruce Bell.
I had never previously thought about running Cross Country, so I surprised myself when I stopped him on an impulse and asked if I could run this fall. He smiled, shook my hand, and told me to come to the meeting next week.
The meeting blew my mind.
I remember sitting in his Wood Shop classroom, him lecturing about running, practice, and interspersing life philosophy all at the same time. What really hit me: he was talking to us like adults. This was something none of my teachers had done yet.
As an early teen, all you hear is,"do this or else".
This "real talk" was captivating. You wanted to attract his attention just so you could feel like an adult in talking with him.
Bell did things that no teacher could get away with nowadays.
He swore. He flirted with women. He was famous for cracking jokes about how he pissed his wife off while doing some home improvements the night or weekend before- think Tim the Toolman. There was nothing creepy at all about it; his personality was extremely non-threatening, and everything came across in good fun.
He'd bring a duffel bag full of pills and athletic supplements to work with him every day, and on occasion, with a note from a parent, would give his young athletes zinc or vitamin c tabs.
Bell was an anomaly in the middle school teaching arena. The longer you knew him and his eccentricities, the more his legend seemed to grow.
There were rumors that he would run from his house in Augusta to school in Turner, then at the end of the day, run home.
He could do more pushups and core exercises than any of us, and sometimes egged us on jokingly as we were laying on the grass trying to keep up with him.
He'd make us drink "ultra fuel" before each race. I remember him pulling one of us aside every week, and giving us 5 bucks and telling us to go to the juice machine in the cafeteria, where we were instructed to buy as much of every type of juice as the 5 dollars would allow. No one really knew what exactly was in those 5 gallon Gatorade drums, but it was a crazy mixture of powders and a plethora of juices.
In the classes that he taught and even before every practice, he might skip the intended subject matter altogether and instead go on tangents about life lessons. While it may not have been to the school's liking, a lot of kids who may not have had guidance at home(or from the guidance counselor, for that matter), received it from him. I know of kids who stayed eligible for sports, and not just in cross country, because of his foot up their ass when their grades were in danger.
If a kid didn't have money for dinner on the way home from a race, he wouldn't even blink before handing over cash.
Bell would tell you exactly what he thought, and if that included swearing at you during a race or in school, so be it.
If you acted like a drama-kid, he would promptly tell you to cut the shit.
I had zero running form as a kid. If I had a dime for every time he yelled at me from across the field," GOD DAMN IT KALE, STOP HUNCHING OVER. RUN TALL!", I'd be counting stacks of money instead of writing this. I still run races and think of how I need to get my hips under me. Thanks, Bell.
Before every race from middle school to high school, he'd have all of us get on the school bus, where he'd play out the expected scenarios of each race. He would tell us what he wanted all of us to accomplish, making eye contact and singling each one of us out, laying out his expectations for every individual, and for everyone else to hear. We each had a goal, and we were all there to help each other with it.
We'd step off that bus every time in the minutes before the race, in a fury and ready to burn up the course.
If we failed and tried hard, there was never sympathy. If you were particularly hard on yourself, he would tell you to suck it up and that you'd get 'em next week.
If we failed because we didn't put in our best effort, the next week of practice was miserable, and he made it known why.
It set us straight.
In a world quickly blossoming to a place where no one was responsible for their own actions, Bell made every effort to mold us into upstanding citizens on and off the course. Nowadays, the number of educators and coaches like him is unfortunately few. New societal standards make it hard for a teacher or coach to step in and do or say the things he did. While we can't create people like Bruce, we can definitely be thankful for the ones that are.
thanks for reading.
krp
