Cross Country

For the Fall co-curricular season, the school offers a very impressive array of both athletic and alternative afternoon activities. Not surprising, then, is the school’s decision to offer the alternative, athletic option of Cross Country. Cross country, a sport that is only just starting to gain the recognition it deserves, in the U.S. at least; is still a foreign concept here in Jordan. The school’s team currently consists of seven students; the other students are either in soccer, volleyball, or one of the other small, obscure, co-corriculars. Now, since the majority of these seven students ran on the team last year, they almost all signed up for Cross Country this year with the full understanding of what they were getting themselves into. The coaches this year are also doing a great job re-creating a near perfect Cross Country experience, one that looks very similar to those that I have seen in America. I say near perfect because the Cross Country co-curricular is still missing one very important aspect: a true interscholastic season. The team has had only two true competitive meets with teams from others schools, none of whom were as devoted to or knowledgeable of the sport as the academy’s team. I know that these other teams weren’t as devoted to Cross Country as our own team because I have had the privilege this season of serving as an official course guide/marker in both of this season’s meets. I volunteered this service because I wanted to help the team, see Jordanian Cross Country in action, and cheer on some of my dorm’s students who were running in the meet. I first began to suspect that Jordanian school's had absolutely no concept of Cross Country when I '"spotted" for the first interscholastic meet of the season. After three visiting runners had run past me I turned my back on them to cheer on the approaching King's students. When I turned around to check up on the three runners I found that they had completely deviated from the marked dirt path and instead navigated through parked cars, construction materials, and a dirt hill towards the track, where the finish line was. As soon as I saw what these students were doing I shouted as loud as I could so that I could salvage their race. I had assumed, after all, that they were running in order to achieve a personal record that they could use to evaluate their own progress in the sport. I know that one of these students heard me because he turned around and started moving in the direction that I was pointing in. The other two, however, disappeared over the hilltop, and I didn't see them again until the end of the meet. I still don't know if they honestly thought that they were supposed to run through the parking lot, construction materials, and dirt piles in order to get to the finish line or if they heard my shouts and just decided to finish the stupid race as soon as they could. After the second meet that I spotted, however, I am convinced that the teams against whom our students are running have no concept of Cross Country and probably aren't even part of any real team (I'm guessing they were here as a punishment). Now, for the second meet I was determined not to make the same mistake twice and compromise the meet for both our students and the visiting students. This time, however, I was spotting on a section of the course that was simply a turn on a paved road down the hill. All the runners needed to do was keep running on the only paved road down the hill toward the track. After three visiting students ran past me and rounded the corner, I turned around to greet the public safety truck that was following the last three runners so that they could no that everyone had finished the meet. I followed the truck with my eyes and watched it slowly pull up next the three runners. Then, to my shear astonishment, I see the truck stop, the students climb onto the back, and the truck drive down the hill. This time I knew right away that I had not made any mistakes and that something was seriously wrong with this meet. I again shouted to the runners and told them that I would have to disqualify them for their actions. Either the students didn't want me to disqualify them or they thought that I was yelling at them and ordering them to keep running. I still don't know. When I approached the three public safety officers in the truck, they all made faces of sympathy and concern and told me that the students were "tired". I told the three officers that the students had to finish the race on foot and that we couldn't do anything to help them. The drivers then asked me if I wanted to ride with them since I was in the middle of no where and since the last three runners had past me. I accepted this very nice offer, and, for the next three minutes, we trailed right behind the last three runners making sure that they didn't go anywhere where they definitely shouldn't be. While I was in the truck, though, I was looking ahead for the next spotter so that the students would know where to run. I looked ahead as far as I could but I couldn't see anyone else on the course. This was a bit of a problem because I didn't know this new course by memory yet. But, when the public safety driver told the students to take a left on a road that lead to the general track area, I thought that I didn't need to worry and that public safety must have familiarized themselves with the course beforehand so that they could better monitor the runners. So the three runners turned left and we continued to drive down the road to the track's parking area. When we got there, however, my I found my relief short lived. There, right next to the track, we found the next spotter, well beyond my field of vision from where I was standing before. At this point I wasn't sure if I had ruined yet another Cross Country meet or if everyone involved had turned this meet into a fiasco, either by having no knowledge of the sport beforehand or by not bothering to learn the very simple rules. But the spotter near the track reassured me that I hadn't messed this meet up and that I didn't need to worry. And I guess he was right because our school was clearly set to win from the beginning. And that's Cross Country in Jordan.