Bring The Mules!

Oh, man - I've got about a hundred closely-related soapboxes I'd like to get up on this morning, most of them related to coaches who only want to coach "talented athletes" and who believe that their primary job lies in recruiting them rather than creating them, and that they can elevate their own reputations by associating only with the "best" athletes and the "best" programs.  The most memorable story I have heard lately on this topic was told to me by a colleague at Craftsbury.  He had recently had a conversation with the coach of a small college who fancies himself a real coaching savant.  The conversation had come around to the specious matter of which athletes are worthy of a coach's attention (the simple answer is "all of them, if they're serious about studying the sport"), and the coach-savant's head-spinning pronouncement was that he wanted to recruit "thoroughbreds, not mules.  I can train mules and turn them into fast mules, but I can't make them as fast as thoroughbreds so why should I waste my time trying?"  

Oh, coach - so wrong-headed, for so many reasons - where to begin?  Here's an observation: of all the elite athletes I've ever met in sculling, rowing, Nordic skiing, and biathlon, the overwhelming majority of them don't strike me as people who could aptly be described as "thoroughbreds", if what we mean by thoroughbreds is genetically blessed with superior anatomy and physiology for their sport.  In fact, if we're going to stick with the metaphor, most of them are mules - if what we mean by mules is ordinary, hard-working, and methodical - people you could pass in the grocery store and never suspect are world-class athletes.  Further, there is no breed standard for humans, and there are more proverbs than can be counted that chronicle the trouble we cause ourselves when we begin to think of ourselves as inherently superior or inherently advantaged, and this isn't a pitfall for animals, who don't overthink or indulge in petty snobbery as we do.  You can have the thoroughbreds, coach.  Bring me the mules.  I want to coach the mules.  Mules get it done.