Living a Dream: Coffee With the Boys I

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights. Muhammad Ali


I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan

My granddaughter's University of Arizona's graduation announcement said Magna Cum Laude. Mine said "Good Luck".  Dave Doerrer

 Previously on Living a Dream
 Dave: Maybe you should focus on something else for the time being.

Garry: Like what?

Dave: Oh, I dunno. Maybe something like, "Two old guys humbly training with ALTIS and living a dream."

The interview with Steve Lewis is set and the Dave and Garry show is on the road.  It's early evening and out spirits are high.
Author's note: 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' Especially when the interviewers forget to take notes on the unique ambiance of  Maverick Coffee. So link up and get you  some. 
http://www.12news.com/news/local/valley/2-olympians-open-coffee-shop-in-scottsdale/184144194

We find Steve chatting amiably with a young lady who could have been a friend or a customer. 
Steve: Here's the boys now. Glad you could make it. Can I get you some coffee? You know what  you like or can I make some suggestions?
I'm sure the brew he  suggests is of savory aroma and beguiling palate, but it's lost on me. I'm too busy rifling my pockets for my grubby but brilliant glom of interview questions.
Steve: Black ok with you boys?
 Dave: Works for me.
Garry: (grunting absently) Yeah, me  too.

Steve: (as the young lady moves sprightly off to get our coffee) I don't think she knows who I am. But I'm sure she'll take care of us. I told her I know the owner. Gotta take care of you boys, you know.

Dave: So you getting a girl or a boy?
Steve: Boy.
Garry: (having fished out his Interview questions) Do you have any cream?  
Dave: In my experience black coffee usually doesn't come with cream
Garry: Did I say black?
Dave: I think you agreed to it.
Garry: Dang! Really. My bad. Can I get some cream?
Steve: You can get anything you want, man. Just ask me.
Garry: Right, you know the owner.

The waitress returns with the coffee. My cream request is promptly honored and I've located my questions. Game on! Unfortunately at exactly that moment I overload my cup with cream and cause my first spill.
Garry: Whoops! I think I need to slow down.
Steve: (producing a cleaning cloth seemingly out of thin air) Too much cream, Garry?
I move the cup quickly out of Steve's cleaning path. Too quickly! A slog of coffee literally leaps out of the cup onto the table.
Steve: I think you might need some more cream there, Garry. What do you think, Dave? A Liter of cream for Garry?
Dave: I think he needs a Sippy cup.
Garry: Maybe you should get me a straw.
Dave: (shifting gears) So the body's holding up better than last year (2015) maybe? I remember you were struggling at times.
Steve: Yeah, we changed things up this year with our loading. So just backed off in the weight room. Still lifting weights but like smaller sections. More frequent but smaller. And with sprinting, backed off doing any really fast stuff. So I'm doing 80% and staying healthy all the time, and it's working, man. Took me two years to figure it out, and I have faith in it too. That's the problem, you know. You can change a program, but if you're like, "I'm not doing what I used to do. I'm not going to be good." Scary, you know.
Garry: Yeah, I can see that. (pause) So how old are you?
Steve: Turning thirty in twenty some days.
Garry: You don't look a day over twenty-eight.
Steve: Dude, that's solid. I'll take that.
Dave: You don't act over twenty-four.
Steve: I try not to man. Gotta keep up with the kids. No, it's funny. I don't feel old, and not that thirty's old, but in a sport context it kind of is. So I started young, jumping high when I was nineteen. Eleven years ago. So you think, that's almost a decade of doing the same thing.  And now I'm jumping with kids who are nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. So I'm the older guy now. Which is funny. But I don't feel like the older guy and that's kind of cool.
Garry: How did you come to choose the pole vault?
Steve: I did pretty much everything growing up. Swimming, gymnastics, tennis, track & field. My whole life's been sports, you know? And then with the pole vault it was like as I got better, I got more interested. As I got more interested, I got more serious.
Garry: Do you come from an athletic family?
Steve: Not really. My brother did the same as me. My dad played soccer, and then he played badminton on a pretty high level. But he never wanted us to do team sports. He just kind of thought that the politics of team sports wasn't good. He didn't like that when he was playing, so he was like, "Do an individual sport like gymnastics."
Garry: Gymnastics, you need good balance for that. I would think that would be very important in pole vaulting.
Steve: It's such a good sport for youngsters. I could still do tricks that I haven't done in twenty years, you know. It's incredible how, if you live with that every day...I think I was five or six when I started. Then I did it for five or six years after that and it's just in me. Like that timing and the feeling, and the skills.
Dave: So if you were standing on the edge of a cliff, you could just  do a back flip and save yourself?
Garry: Or when you do a winning vault you could celebrate with a back flip?
Steve: It's honestly like  riding a bike. If you learn it, you have the confidence jus to do it and that's all it is. It's just confidence.
Garry: Growing up, did you have any sports heroes?
Steve: I was always a big Muhammad Ali fan. I had all the poster, all the quotes so that was kind of my bedroom theme.
Garry: How cool is that? I was a Muhammad Ali fan before he was Muhammad Ali. You know we're close to the same age, him and me?
Steve:  That's cool. I was always a big fan of him and Michael Jordan. Obviously watching Jordan in his heyday.
Dave: So you thing you'll compete after the (2016) Olympics?
Steve: Yeah, for sure. I'll go through the 2017 World Championships back in Olympic Stadium in London. That's kind of nice career for me.
Garry: Ending back home, so to speak?
Steve: Yeah, like the last year and then I've got to decide if pole vault fits into my life. You, know, I've got a family. I've got a bunch of obligations.


Air Lewis update:  Most recent competition. ALTIS Track & Field Invitational at  Paradise Valley Community College on 5/21/16. Cleared 5.56 meters (18 feet 3 inches in American). Attempted 5.71(Olympic qualifying height is 5.70) which is well within Steve's wheelhouse.
Coming up in Living a Dream: Coffee With the Boys II

• Steve shares appreciation of mentor Dan Pfaff, ALTIS legendary Head Coach
• Garry goes sleuthing on a rumor that Constance Delaney is living in Scottsdale
• Link to Dave and Garry doin work on the track. A must see event!

Living a Dream

 

No matter how fast we run
How far we throw
or how high we fly
the earth will claim our mortal forms
and we will wait
like ordinary men and women
for our spiritual transformation
But until that day
We are free to set the pace
raise the bar
and claim the glory that is ours
because we are athletes

Some believe sports to be a metaphor for life. Others believe sports to be life itself. Like most of us, Steven James Lewis, British Pole Vault Champion and two time Olympian, would fall somewhere in between these parameters. Steve and his bid for a third Olympic experience is the inspiration for this blog series.

It's 1958
I'm a sophomore in high school. Our town, once a thriving coal mining community, is now hustling to bring in new industry and foster new dreams of solidarity and progress. My high school champions academic relevancy but lags somewhat behind in fostering respect for diversity. The name of our sports teams will become a serious sore point for many Native Americans.

Also in 1958
Elvis Aaron Presley, the King of Rock & Roll, has surpassed Francis Albert Sinatra, King of the Bobbysoxers, as pop artist of the half century. Over in Rome, Italy they're gearing up for the 1960 Summer Olympic games. Down at Tennessee State University, Wilma Goldean Rudolf is training to storm those Olympics much like her hero Jesse Owens did in Berlin back in 1936.

Here at home the Reverend Bob Richards, two time Olympic Pole Vault Champion, just sailed over a cross bar dangling from a cloud. His way of warming up for his upcoming motivational speech to our student body. The speech will get mixed reviews, but we all sit through it because, hey, the man was featured on the Wheaties Box. You don't get much bigger than that. Or do you?
Steve doin work


Elvis, Wilma and Rev Bob will each find their way into our adolescent psyches. Take me for example. I'm planning to be a Rock & Roll star like Elvis. I got the hair and the moves down already. And I'm going to marry Wilma, even though I'll have to wait two years to see her run.

Wilma will come along just in time for me to recover from my crush on Constance Delaney, arguably the prettiest girl in our school. But to me, pretty is as pretty does and the thing that Constance does is  glide like a gazelle around the playing fields during gym class. Sadly, before I work up the nerve to talk to Constance, we will graduate high school and I'll never see her again.

Fortunately I will be two years older and out of high school when I see Wilma run for the first time. Who knows, I might be a rock star by then and actually have the courage to talk to her.

But my dreams are not limited to music and leggy females. I'm also working on becoming a track & field star in my own right. I made the varsity team as a freshman middle distance runner, even anchored a couple of winning relay teams. So if the Rock Star thing doesn't work out, I can always shoot for the Olympics. Wilma can coach me if she wants to.

It's 2016
Elvis has long ago left the building. British born Adele Laurie Blue Adkins is the most successful Pop Artist in the history of the planet. Garry Lee Cox is joyously singing in the Unity of Phoenix church choir. Garry never met Wilma Rudolph, but still occasionally googles  up her 1960 runs for glory.  He also watches, in his mind's eye, his graceful classmate Constance Delaney flowing in the grace of her youth.


But before that there was The Dave and Garry Show
Often asked Dave and Garry Question:  How come you guys still run at your age?
Often given Dave and Garry Response: We suck at golf.



Phoenix 1997
The National (Senior Olympics) Games are being held in Tucson, Arizona. Here in Phoenix, guys and gals 50 years old and up (we're talking way up) will participate in our version of the Olympic Torch Relay. The torch will pas through Phoenix, then down to Tucson. Dave Doerrer and I have met briefly while being assigned our legs on the Relay. Dave is supposed to pass the Torch to me.

Dave: Hey, would you mind if we switched places. I'd like to pass the torch to my friend, Bud. He's an older guy I know and he'd get a kick out of it.

Garry: Don't differ me none.

The die is cast. Dave and I will become friends and get after it hammer-and-tong for the next fifteen years, mainly in the 400 meters. We will outlast most of our staunch competitors to the point that we were both semi-retired from the sport in 2011, the year my wife, Bernice, passed. But by then hooking up for track workouts will be ensconced in our DNA.

What's in a name? A rose
by any other name would smell as sweet.
William Shakespeare
What good is a name if you can't drop it to your advantage?
Garry Cox

Garry: Dang, I still haven't caught up with Steve for the big interview. I sent him the questions a month ago. And if I don't get a post in soon, I'm toast. No Steve, no story.
Dave: (always the pragmatist) Well, he does have a few things going on. Training. Traveling to meets. Working on getting the Olympic qualifier. Opening a new business. He just got married in the last year or so. Didn't he tell us something about having his 29 week baby scan with his wife.
Garry: So what's your point?
Dave: Maybe you should focus on something else for the time being.
Garry: Like what?
Dave: Oh, I dunno. Maybe something like,"Two old guys humbly training with ALTIS and living a dream."
And there it was, having appeared on the event horizon like an F-1117 Nighthawk. The name that will change the entire landscape of Track & Field the world over--ALTIS


Coming nest in Living a Dream:  

• An Evening with Steve, Dave and Garry
• Progress report on Steve's training for Rio

For more on ALTIS training and Steve visit  
http://altis.world/coaches/john-godina/and http://www.stevelewisgb.com/biography/