By Michael Newman
ilprepharrier.wordpress.com

The evening of September 9 was like a death knell to the student athletes throughout the Chicago Public School District. The teachers’ union and the Chicago Public School board were at an impasse in negotiations for a new contract for the teachers. There would be no school the next day for all of the students and teachers would hit the picket line. The big thing on that Sunday evening was the question of how long would it go?

This was supposed to be a season where the Jones College Preparatory School was supposed to shine in cross country. Expectations were high for this school after a successful track season where most of the returning members of the team lowered their PRs by large amounts. Some of the expectations were realized at their first meet of the season at the Sycamore Invitational in DeKalb at the end of August. There, they defeated the 3-time defending 2A boys champ Belvidere North. The following week, the Eagles were rated #1 by Illinois Prep Harrier for their classification.

The coach of both the boys and the girls squads is Andrew Adelmann. The 28-year-old coach started at Jones in the fall of 2008. Jones is a small school in the southern part of the loop. They have no sophisticated weight room. They have no 8-lane all-surface track to do their training on. “A lot of improvisation has to go on with some of the workouts,” Adelmann said. “Lollapalooza usually kills us and we have to find another place to train along the Chicago lakefront. It becomes hard to find grass to run on, especially during the summer festival season.”

The stench of a strike was always there during the summer months. That meant more improvisation by Adelmann. “All of our mileage progressions and workout schedules for the entire season are in place before August even rolls around, so it will fortunately just be a matter of our leaders carrying everything out according to plan,” he said at the time.

Adelmann had three strong seniors that he would have to rely on: Jamison Dale, Luke O’Connor, and Kirby Lawson. As the strike date neared, all Adelman could do was prepare his team for what they could do during the strike period. It meant no contact by the coaches with any of the athletes, which meant a situation that Adelmann could not control.

“It’s obviously an unfortunate situation to be in, but we are going to just control what we can control and have faith that everything will work out. That’s really all we, or any of the athletes in the CPS, can do,” Adelman said in an e-mail the first day of the strike. “We have implemented a contingency plan that our team captains and mentors in our team mentorship program will carry out. They will be arranging meet-ups on their own (probably multiple locations since our runners come from all over the city) and implementing things from there.”

~~ Preparation for the strike ~~

For Jamison Dale, one of the senior captains, this was not how he was expecting the start of his senior season to begin. He was prepared for the possibility of the strike and when it was upon them, he was not going to let that deter his or the teams goals.

“Personally, it’s my senior year, so I hate to have any distractions,” said Dale at the time. “But we are still getting homework via the computer, so it no longer feels like a summer break. I don’t want to get too involved in the politics of it all. I just have to stay focused.”

On the Saturday before the strike, the team had a meet at Marmion Academy and afterwards Adelmann met up with all of the parents of the runners that were there. A successful cross country program always has a good parent support group that makes things easier for the coaches and for the kids. At Jones, this was no exception.

“We had a brief meeting with our parents after the meet on Saturday to ensure that they were all included on the plans as well,” Adelmann continued. “We have even had a few parents volunteer their houses as meet-up spots and themselves in supervisory duties if need be. So we are lucky to have such a great group of parents.”

“As a team we have worked together all summer, all year, to be disciplined, and push each other,” said Dale during the strike. “The strike is not derailing our commitment or season goals. As team leaders, the captains, have tried to ensure everyone keeps practicing and we still operate as a team.”

~~ Could there still be any competition? ~~

There was the possibility that there would still be a meet the next weekend. The Chicago Public Schools petitioned the IHSA to let the teams to continue to participate in any extracurricular events during the strike. It was a chance that the school board had to take. Whether it was a public relations ploy to sway the public to their side of the issue, that I can still not determine nor do I want to know. Nevertheless, it was something they had to do.

On the first day of the strike on that Monday, the IHSA did not grant a waiver from the Chicago Public Schools. In a prepared statement, IHSA Executive director Marty Hickman stated:

“At the request of the CPS, the IHSA Board considered a request to grant a waiver of IHSA By-law 2.140 which states in part that, ‘No team or other entity representing a member school may participate in an interscholastic contest or activity during the time the member school is not in session due to a strike by teachers or other school personnel.’

It was the conclusion of the Board that granting such a request extended beyond its authority. The IHSA’s By-laws are developed by and voted into practice by its member school principals and, after some meaningful discussion, the Board ultimately felt respecting the guidelines put in place by our member schools was the only option available in this situation, and any change to the by-laws would need to be facilitated through the IHSA legislative process.

While IHSA By-law 2.140 prohibits schools that are on strike from participating in interscholastic contests, it does establish conditions under which school boards can approve practice sessions for a school that is on strike, should those local school boards wish to do so.”

 During the entire strike period, not once was the last part of the statement from the IHSA acted on by the School Board in regards to approving practice sessions. “Per the IHSA, it is permissible for teams to practice with approval from the district (in our case the CPS Board), but unfortunately they and CPS Sports Administration have left thousands of athletes in the lurch by not giving an answer one way or another,” Adelman stated towards the end of the strike. “So that is the frustrating part…the fact that there is a way our athletes can be helped, but somewhere someone is dragging their feet.”

As the week went on, there was the optimism that the strike would end on certain days, but nothing could be agreed on by the two sides. All the kids could do was meet up and do the workouts that were written out for them.

“We’re staying optimistic about our season and working hard toward our goals,” Dale stated at the time. “It’s just an interesting diversion, but we still have a lot we want to accomplish.”

~~ One meet lost … and the frustration builds~~

At the end of the first week of the strike, Jones would miss running in the Connelly/Polka Invitational and specifically against Jack Keelan of St. Ignatius. With no agreement, it meant no running for the Eagles on that Saturday. There would be hopes that there could be an agreement by the end of the weekend and the kids would be back in school on Monday. Late Sunday evening, the teacher’s 800-member Hall of delegates told the union leaders that they needed more time to decide on the tentative agreement that was reached earlier in the weekend.

It meant a second week of school could be missed. It meant to Adelmann and his team a missed opportunity of possibly not being able to run at the Palatine Invitational against a strong field including nationally-ranked York and St. Xavier from Louisville, KY.

The frustration had reached a peak for Adelmann and it was noticeable in a reply to an message that was sent to him. “Plain and simple: this strike is just an unfortunate situation that student athletes across the city have been put in. From day one the customary statements have been made about how this strike has truly been for the kids, and I believe that at the root, it is,” Adelmann said on Monday the 17^th. “However, as the latest proposal contained many hard-fought victories for those kids, and has now been struck down, it’s becoming scary to think that this whole situation might be about more than just students. And sadly this battle for individual interests is going to provide collective harm for a large contingent of students that seem to be disregarded right now: student athletes.”

It had taken Adelmann four years to build this program up to a level that he could compete state-wide. In 2011, his junior-dominated squad placed seventh in the state meet. The opportunity of running in a big meet like Palatine was slipping away and possibly the whole season was as well. All Adelmann could do was stay positive.

“It’s been tough for us to deal with the strike, but I feel like we’ve adapted well. Being a city team, we are used to being creative and making do with what we have. We are forced to be adaptable even in the best of times, so this isn’t as big of a shock as it could be. Our guys are just looking at it as any setback that we’d encounter in a given year. Seasons are full of setbacks, so we are just responding as we always do to any obstacle,” he said. “Luckily, our senior leadership on this team is phenomenal and they have done an incredible job picking up the slack in our coaching staff’s absence. Our training programs are developed far ahead of time, so we don’t feel like we’ve missed a beat.”

The following day, the teacher’s strike had ended and classes would resume on Wednesday. That would give Adelmann three days together before competing at Palatine.

Nothing would be changed. Stick to the plan.

~~ 9/22/12 – Palatine Invitational ~~

To the everyday fan, the question would be how this Jones team would react to this meet after going through the past 10 days of emotional stress, not knowing whether or not they would race again. “The biggest thing we told them all week was to use whatever they were feeling from the strike. Whether it was anger or anxiousness or being prohibited from what they loved for two weeks, we told them to express it on the course today,” Adelmann said after the race.

They expressed it in a definite way. They only ran five runners in the varsity race. Adelmann said before the race he had not decided on the 6^th and 7^th runners and since the strike had gone on, he could not make a fair assessment. Therefore, only five runners ran and there was not much room for mistakes.

It did not look like the strike had made them weaker. In fact, they looked stronger as a unit as they stepped to the line and how they ran the race. Luke O’ Connor and Jamison Dale finished in the top 10 (5^th & 7^th). Teammates Peter Schaible and Kirby Lawson were not that far behind (14^th & 17^th). Sophomore Kyle Maloney finished off the scoring in 59^th. Put that all together and they scored 97 points, one point away from perennial power York and 13 points behind meet winner St. Xavier.

“We knew they were going to come out hungry. We knew they were going to come out aggressive.  It was a hands-off strategy today similar to how the state meet works out. I really wanted to mimic that and see what happened today,” a happy Adelman said, talking to reporters. “Being away from the kids, it was a halt in the momentum. We were so focused and so set on these goals for four years. I do not think that anything can prevent these guys from getting the work done and doing what they have to do in November.”

The race showed that they had not lost anything during the strike. In fact, it may have made them a little bit stronger and a little more unified in the goal at hand: a state championship. It also gave the program the national recognition that it had craved for and justly deserved. The following week, Marc Bloom of Running Times rated them #15 in the nation.

“The big thing that we have to do is focus towards state at this point. We are fortunate that we do not have to run that hard at the beginning of the state series, so our next big goal is November,” Adelman continued. “The ultimate goal is racing in November. That is what the guys are focused on. The goal is running the best that we can at state.”

Last Sunday at the North side / South side Challenge, the Jones squad ran a tempo run the entire 2.62 miles of the course to win the team title. The split from the first five was ZERO seconds; they all came in with the same time.  If you want to look at a team that is together, they symbolically sent that message at that race.

Their state series starts on Saturday morning at Washington Park on Chicago’s south side. There the Chicago Public League Championships will take place. All of the schools in this meet went through the same conflict that Jones did.  The question is did that conflict affect them the same way that it did to Jones.

The 10 days where the Jones runners were on their own showed to them that there will be struggles that they will have to face over the next four weeks. It showed that they have the togetherness and the strength to face and surpass any road block that will be placed in front of them.
 
It started with a disagreement that they had no control over. Now, with that inner strength that they have gained, they control their own destiny.