Is winning all that matters? For some, yes. For others, there’s more to athletic competition.
The cross-country race was just a middle school league championship, but I was the team’s coach, so I was excited. Besides, we were the only team with a chance to prevent the league powerhouse from sweeping the middle school, junior varsity, and varsity team championships.
Although the individual championship of our race was a foregone conclusion because another school’s runner was by far the best, our team had sound reason to anticipate a team championship trophy.
The course was hilly and challenging, but off they went, and our team was running as a pack. All was well until it wasn’t.
The lead runner, the favored one, accidentally cut a corner flag, and our runners followed. In fact, all runners, except those of the powerhouse team, cut the same corner. The rules called for disqualifying every runner who ran a shorter distance. However, because it was a middle school championship and so many runners had made the same error, no runner would be disqualified. However, no team trophies were awarded.
I felt awful because I had not walked my team around the course since the time we had raced on it during the season. My runners were young, and they just followed along in the excitement of the race.
However, I learned from that day, vowing to never make that coaching mistake again. I demanded that every runner I coached knew and followed the race course.
That was then. Let’s flash forward to the 2025 NCAA D-1 men’s cross-country race. A video revealed that about 50 runners cut the course. However, even though that is clearly a rule violation, the NCAA has not disqualified either a runner or a team in the men’s race.
What about the women’s race? There aren’t any issues I know about, and no female runner has been seen cutting the course.
It just so happens that at the time of the 2025 championships, I was also re-reading Paul Tournier’s book, The Gift of Feeling. Tournier examines how women and men see the world and live in it differently. He writes about women’s roles and the values placed on them in modern society, while also stressing the traditionally ascribed gifts they possess, such as emotions, tenderness, subjectivity, and an interest in people rather than things.
The Gift of Feeling by Paul Tournier
Why did so many men cheat in their race but not any of the women in theirs? In the book chapter titled “Woman at Home and at Work,” I found a passage that I had marked in my first reading: “For a man, production is measured in the quantity of things produced, but for a woman, in the enjoyment of their use.”
Dr. Tournier gives us a window to understand what may have happened. Many men runners resorted to cheating, intent as they were on “production,” that is, winning or placing well. While that is an example of the ends justifying the means — something that is always problematic — the extraordinary thing about this occurrence is that their indiscretion was documented on videotape. In other words, they cheated even though there was no possibility of “getting away with it.”
Of course, every woman runner wanted to win or place high in their race. But the women racers did not cheat. Their approach illustrates an appreciation for measuring output by their enjoyment of its product. In this instance, that meant experiencing the joy of racing and competing fairly against other runners.
That attitude reminds me of Buzz Holmstrom, who made history in 1937. He built a wooden boat and then became the first person to navigate solo down the Green and Colorado Rivers, through the Grand Canyon, across Lake Mead, and to the Hoover Dam. He wrote in his journal that his remarkable journey was in “the doing of the thing.”
Buzz Holmstrom: I find I have already had my reward in the doing of the thing; the stars and cliffs and canyons, the roar of the rapids, the uncertainty and worry, the relief when through each one, the real respect and friendship of the rivermen I met and others.
The women D-1 cross-country runners also focused on “the doing of the thing,” that is, the experience itself, which is filled with a range of emotions. In doing so, they know and understand something I wish all athletes would embrace. Indeed, it is what I taught as a coach: What you do as an athlete is more than how you do.
