Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Trudging through the gathering light of a Saturday morning walk, the melodic voice of one of my favorite singers came through the headphones. Linda Ronstadt was singing her hit, “Long, Long Time.”
She was a meteor rocketing across the skies of popular music when she arrived as the lead singer of the Stone Ponies before striking out on her own path. She had a fabulous career.
Had is the operative word.
Life isn’t fair. That’s a lesson every toddler must learn and one that elementary school teachers chime in on often.
Linda Ronstadt has progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). It was initially diagnosed as Parkinson’s disease, but the name doesn’t matter. It affected her balance and muscle control. She battled it for a long, long time, but ultimately the disease won and took away her ability to sing.
This lyric from “Long, Long Time” came to mind as I walked toward home just as the street lights stopped flashing red.
And life’s full of flaws
Who knows the cause?
Living in the memory of a love that never was…
Only, it was. She had her moment, or rather many moments in the sun. It’s something we can all feel, or hopefully we can, once in a while.
Bruce Springsteen sings of “Glory Days”; many people live in those days, never venturing past the fading glories of their teenage years. Others continue on throughout their lives, remaining an inspiration to the generations behind them.
My track coach, my son’s track coach, and “THE” track coach to thousands of other aging athletes, is one of those inspirations.
As Linda Ronstadt sang, another voice from my past came to mind, not a singer’s, but Wind River legend and “Mr. America,” Leroy Sinner’s.
Full of flaws, as the song says? Hardly. It was just the opposite.
If you ran at the old 330-yard track as either a Morton Bronc or a Wind River Cougar, you know the infectious personality coach Sinner had on his boys and girls. The same was true of younger generations on the oval at Pavillion surrounding the field that honors him, “Leroy Sinner Field.”
Track isn’t easy; the workouts are not fun, but somehow he routinely had track teams of 40 boys, and in later years, almost that many girls.
Leroy began coaching long before Title IX. It was just boys. When the girls came around, he was quick to welcome them. Leroy was thrilled when Laura Sampson became the first girl to win a state track title at Wind River. Laura won the high jump in 1973, and took second in Coach Sinner’s favorite race, the quarter mile.
He would often tell us at practice, and sometimes in his business classes, this little gem: “If you have four quarter milers, you have a track team.”
Being clueless teenagers, we didn’t know the inherent wisdom in that statement. Years later, when I had my own track teams in Lusk and Shoshoni, his words rang true.
Around 2007, Trent Blankenship and I met at the West 2-A Regional Track Championships in Thermopolis.
We decided to find Coach Sinner and give him a little business.
There was Leroy standing outside the discus ring east of Hot Springs County High School. As we approached, Trent said in a loud voice, “Leroy, it means the king.” I chimed in with, ”And don’t you forget it.”
It was a phrase Leroy often told us as students.
Leroy froze with his fingers on the protective net surrounding the ring.
“Voices from the past,” he shouted.
He turned around and saw the two of us.
“I should have known it was you guys,” he said.
Only it could have been any two of a thousand boys Leroy sent on long runs along Lye’s road below Morton Lake. It could have been one of the guys at practice, the only time I can remember him being angry with us.
We’d finished a three-mile run on the road and had 10 100-yard dashes to sprint before the end of practice.
Assistant coach Chuck Frost was working with field events and Leroy was by himself on the north end of the field, under the goal posts.
He’d drop his arm as a starting signal and off we’d sprint. He timed everything.
We’d sprint down, jog back and wait a minute or so before the next sprint. The lines on the football field were long gone, erased by the winter.
We edged up a few yards on each sprint.
On one sprint, Leroy was amazed. He looked at his watch, and we were all under 11 seconds. Sprinting 100 yards in 11 seconds isn’t rare for a sprinter, but for a gang of skinny distance runners it was amazing.
Then Leroy realized we weren’t running 100 yards but closer to 85.
I still remember the disappointment on his face.
He didn’t yell, but he had a stern voice and said, “You guys are only cheating yourselves.”
It was a lesson I took to heart. Yes, we were.
Without jumping too far into the metaphysical, another thought came to mind as Linda Ronstadt finished her masterpiece to the drum of my feet pounding up the sidewalk on Sunset Drive.
She was a human songbird, trapped in a cage that denied her beautiful voice to the world. Yes, she was aging, but her talent wasn’t.
I thought of the poet Maya Angelou and her autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
I read it a long time ago.
Angelou’s core belief is that the caged bird sings to express a deep-seated longing for freedom. It’s not a joyous melody, but rather a song that copes with the pain of captivity and asserts the strength of spirit against oppression.
It applies to people even more than to the little parakeet bouncing around on the swing inside its cage.
Coach Sinner had a profound effect on generations of farm and ranch kids from Midvale to Crowheart and all points in between. He still does.
There were many Friday and Saturday nights, especially in the summer, when high school boys would drop in on Coach Sinner just to talk.
Boys brought their prom dates by, and in later years, many former athletes dropped in to introduce their wives and children to their old coach.
Sometimes his wife Karen wasn’t so enamored, but she grew used to the intrusions. Kids just wanted to hear a few stories, share a few laughs, and take in the wisdom of a man who shaped their lives, subtly, but permanently.
Everyone has a song. It’s up to them if they wish to share it.
Coach Sinner’s song came with a whistle, a clipboard, and a starter’s pistol.
The tune still echoes across the generations.