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Make It Worthwhile:
Four Critical Aspects of Goal-Setting for High School Track & Field Athletes

The fact is that it’s not easy to run fast, jump high/long, or throw far. It’s not easy to train hard every day. It’s not easy to win dual meets. And it’s certainly not easy to win league meets or state meets. I could continue, but the point is pretty clear. Track & Field is not easy.
But once you’ve made the choice to be a track athlete – be it to run, jump, or throw – you’ve already decided that the hard work (blood, sweat, and tears) is worth it. With that commitment, you owe it to yourself to be the best track athlete you can be. The key to getting there is goals.
It is impossible to reach your athletic potential without setting goals for yourself. You don’t need to have just one goal and you don’t need to write it in stone. If you have dedicated coaches, let them help you both set and achieve your goals. And once you set your goals, put them to work for you.

Set Multiple Goals

During high school track at North Attleboro, I constantly set goals of all sizes and levels for myself. There were a few high level goals that carried me through the whole season – winning the Hockomock League Meet, winning the State Championship Meet, going undefeated for the season, breaking school records – and those ideals were always with me. But the season is long, and if I ever wanted to get to those endpoints, I knew there had to be many smaller goals for benchmarking along the way.
For one example, there was practice every day. While I trained I kept the visions of a State Championship in the back of my mind, but in the forefront were more immediate and tangible goals. I told myself that every time I walked away from a practice, I had to leave everything on the track. My daily training goal was to never hold back a bit of energy, never save anything for that last interval, never put limits on how hard I would work at any given moment. What’s the point? I quickly learned that practice was hard and would be physically demanding no matter what. If I only ran at 75% for the 3rd interval, I would still be sweating, my muscles would still be throbbing, and I would still be short of breath. So why not run 100% and make the pain actually be worthwhile? Practice is tough. So why make it tough on yourself and still only be 75% as good as you could be? It’s going to hurt no matter what, so make the hurt worthwhile. My goal in practice was to always make the pain worthwhile.
Another set of goals focused on the dual meet season. My objective was a team victory for every single dual meet of the season, and to help accomplish that, another objective was to score as many points for the team as possible. Once the invitational and state meets came along I told myself to strive to win the races, run personal records, and always be able to finish the meet with a strong relay performance. My goals were many and they were all geared towards different levels and different objectives. For each overreaching goal, there were at least 2-3 smaller goals that would help me reach that final endpoint.

Write Goals in Sweat, Not Stone

Before the season starts it is common for a returning athlete to have goals in mind, but those goals do not have to be written in stone. A successful athlete needs to constantly adjust, update, or alter their goals in order to deal with the variables of the season. Some goals will last an entire career, others will be achieved early on, and still others will be thrown out all together. It doesn’t matter, so long as you have something in front of you towards which you are striving.
For instance, if I finished a race and looked up to see that I set a personal record and achieved a major goal – I set a new standard in my head before even taking my spikes off. I always needed something to strive for and I never let myself be satisfied with one accomplishment when I knew there were so many more out there waiting to be achieved.
Surpassing goals is not the only instance when your expectations need to be updated. Sometimes you take on a new event that you never expected to excel in and find out that you make great strides in it. I was a runner by heart but decided freshman year in high school that I needed a field event that was new and fresh so that I could add some variety to my season and (hopefully) pick up an extra point here or there for the team. On Coach Estey’s suggestion I tried javelin – not a very simple event. But I enjoyed achieving the small goals that I set for myself, and before I knew it I was throwing over 117 feet. Having small, progressive, and realistic goals allowed me to enjoy little “wins” so much that I dedicated more and more time to the event. At the beginning of freshman year I had never picked up a javelin, never had any goals set for the event. But once Coach Estey suggested I try it, I quickly adapted my outlook, put some goals out there, and eventually was competitive on the state level.

Trust the Coach

Another component of my goal setting that was critical to my success as a high school track athlete was communicating with my coach about my hopes/expectations of myself. This was important not only because he could design additional training to help me achieve my goals, but also because he could help me to set even better and more effective objectives.
One year the North Attleboro team went to Falmouth, MA for a weekend invitational and I was assigned to run the mile (which I had never competed in before). I went out and ran hard not really paying any attention to the clock, and I ended up winning the race. I was pleased with myself and later went to check in with Coach Estey to see what he thought. Much to my surprise he wasn’t very impressed. He told me that it was a fine race and it was great that I had won, but that he had expected me to run faster based on my performances in other events. A few weeks later a dual meet came up where we knew we would win handily and so people were assigned to events outside there specialties. I asked if I could take a second shot at the mile. He agreed and told me the time I should aim for to make the race worthwhile. When the gun went off I knew exactly what each lap should be in order to hit the time. The first lap was a little slow, so I sped up. The second lap was better but I was still slightly behind time. By the third lap I had caught up on time and was right on pace. I knew just what I needed for the 4th lap and was comfortable at the pace so I knew I could hit the goal. But then I heard Coach Estey yelling that he knew I could go faster and have a stronger finish. For a split second I thought, “but I don’t have to go faster, I’m right on pace”. I quickly snapped out of that frame of mind and started to sprint the final lap. And he was right, I could go faster. I ended up running much faster than the standard I had set in my mind due in large part to the fact that my coach showed faith in me and believed I could go faster. On my own I had been content with winning, but with the push of Coach Estey I set a higher goal that I thought possible, and I ended up breaking past it to an even better time than expected. Goal setting is a personal thing, but with the help of a dedicated coach you can find yourself achieving goals you never thought possible on your own.

48 Hour Rule

Once you decide on a goal you need to visualize yourself achieving it and you need to act on it within 48 hours. It’s not enough to set your goals; you’ve got to act on them. It’s the law of inertia (a body at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force) – once you take the first step towards achieving your goals you’ll have the momentum necessary to carry you through. None of that “I’ll start doing more abdominal work next week” – do it now.
If you decide you want to jump longer (long/triple), then go outside and do some drills right now. If it’s late at night when you decide to set your sights on a faster 2 mile time, then take 10 minutes to stretch your muscles and think about what you are going to do to achieve your goal before you go to bed. The first step can be anything – but it has to be something and it has to be done immediately. By taking some sort of specific immediate action, the goal becomes more real and thus more exciting. It’s this excitement that will ultimately create the sustaining energy you’ll need to see your goals through to reality. So don’t just sit there, do something worthwhile.

As a high school athlete I loved track & field and I approached it with an almost reckless abandon. Much of the goal-setting I did was just my natural approach to competition. I didn’t read articles, analyze my motivations, and recalibrate my outlook on training – I just knew what I wanted and went for it the only way I knew how.

Since then goal-setting has become a more systematic and functional part of my life. I’ve done values-based performance reports on my career development at work, I’ve created purpose-focused financial plans for my fiduciary future, and I’ve attended seminars on “Dreaming Big” with life coaches such as Barbara Sanfilippo.

Now it is difficult for me to approach goal-setting without thinking in a technical, systematic fashion. But in high school track & field I believe it is better to do away with the systematic mumbo-jumbo and let the excitement of having goals drive an athlete to success. Goals helped me in high school athletics – without them I wouldn’t have achieved any of the success that I did. But I approached goals as a source of direction, motivation, and excitement – not as a time-consuming exercise.

My recommendation to high school track & field athletes would be to set goals, remember that you can have as many goals as you like and that you can change them as necessary, share your goals with your coach in order to get the most out of them and of yourself, and act on your goals immediately. Other than that, just run with it.