The Challenge
A multi-part set of blog posts about the beginning of a Triathlon club at McLane High School that completed its first triathlon in April, 2007
15 years ago this week a group of students and a 23 year old first year math teacher trained for and competed in their first triathlon. Eventually what became Tri-This! introduced hundreds of kids in the central valley to the multisport lifestyle — camping, hiking, running, swimming, rock climbing, road/mountain biking + cyclocross, even obstacle course racing (Mud Run.)
Yet the road to the TBF Racing Icebreaker Triathlon of 2007 started with the hubris of a newly minted teacher telling his sophomore Geometry students — “Some of you know you’ve made it through school by slipping through the cracks and you shouldn’t have passed Algebra. This is the class we’ll catch you up and set you on the path to success,” or something similarly bold like that. Looking back it’s a little embarrassing/prideful but, as a teacher I was on a path to change the world one classroom at a time.
After class a young man(Dustin) who had recently come off of a suspension in the first week of school approached me that he knew he shouldn’t have passed algebra and didn’t want to fall behind. So we started meeting at 7:30am every wednesday to practice math questions and then nearly every day. After a couple months of this, of course other topics started coming up and I got to know a bit more about him. I’d known his sister as a student teacher the previous year, and he had been on the swim team the previous year. I had started the water polo program that year after a 10 year absence from the school, and with a winter water polo season coming up and his football season ending, he insinuated that water polo was easy compared to football and he’d like to try it out.
Right before thanksgiving break, Dustin asked to do some workouts to prepare for water polo. I suggested running because of course lung capacity is needed for water polo. We ran from Mclane to Fresno State and back. — 5 miles — which I’m pretty sure was the longest we’d ever run. But while running, in a more relaxed setting then a school, natural conversation happened and suddenly there was no pretense of me a teacher (I usually wore a tie to look older), but just two guys running and pushing each other to go faster or keep going at all. We were elated to have completed the run and immediately decided to go the next day.
Winter water polo season came and he learned how to do the eggbeater kick and thanks in part to being so tall, was great at shooting goals and swimming. The water was cold but there’s also something about winter water polo — the coaches in long jackets on the deck, steam rising off the water at night — that is also different than a regular season-based water polo. Camaraderie happens between kids from rival schools, coaches rotate to different player groups and it’s overall more relaxed and more fun with scrimmages every night. He learned how to play water polo.
The day before Christmas break 2006, the class was watching something on tv (probably the math-based tv show Numb3rs), and Dustin was talking before the break. Having conquered math and water polo, he simply asked, “So Coach Dorman, how will you challenge me next” (or at least that’s how I remember it). Both he and I didn’t have much exposure to triathlons, and thought all triathlons were Ironman distances. So we were elated to discover that there were in fact shorter distance races. We looked for races in April and although there were local Fresno races, probably due to google search results the first one we saw was the TBF Icebreaker Triathlon in April of 2007. A half mile lake swim (wetsuit recommended), 13 mile bike and 4 mile trail run.
We’d never swam that far in a lake, never biked thirteen miles and certainly hadn’t followed one of those activities with a four mile run. So, knowing almost nothing but wanting to accomplish a seemingly insurmountable physical goal, we decided to try this thing called Triathlon…
2007
Soon we started training, but because we’d never done a race basically were preparing for more the running and swimming parts. Slowly more kids heard about the effort and started training. I made the kids push my toyota corolla up a hill, carry each other in relay races, and do pushups and squats. And run! We swam, then ran around the school and in the canal trails around McLane… usually with just athletic shorts and whatever shoes the kids had on. It was an exciting time because anything was possible and nothing was known or defined. Then we took a trip in March to Folsom to volunteer with TBF Racing to earn credits to race at the Icebreaker for reduced cost. Bill Driskill is still one of the most inspiring and hardest working people I know and we are incredibly grateful for his encouragement over the years! Each day of volunteering was a certain dollar amount discount. On that trip I forgot lighter fluid for the fire so the half dozen teen boys took out their cheap AXE deodorants etc and sprayed it across the match to help light the kindling.
Angel, Victor, Albert, Alex, Ashley, Joseph, Sovann, Skyler, Elizabeth, Reuben, Carlos, Roman, Josh are all students I see who joined in those early days. Not all ended up going (not sure why), but all made an impact. Dustin and I continued to train for the race solo.
Fresno PAL
The Fresno Police Activities League heard about our efforts and helped sponsor with insurance outside what came from the school, as well as visibility and Sgt Mike Doyle to help organize and lead the crew, as well as provide for camping supplies.
The relay teams were set. Only Dustin and I would do the full triathlon; the rest of the teens settled into relay teams based on interest and ability. With a successful, “carwash, bake sale, yard sale,” fundraiser that raised the last $400 for the trip, we were ready to go. The Fresno Bee heard about us somehow (I assume Sgt Doyle tipped them off?) and interviewed us the weekend before the race , and we prepared to set off to Folsom with 10 kids and 3 adults!
