Tell us about your Sandburg running career. What was the team like? How did you run? What was the direction of the program before your group got there and how did you guys change things and start to bring back the glory of Sandburg running. What are some of your best memories from Sandburg CC & track?
Jeff Boele:
I don't have many regrets in life or from high school, but one that I have is that I would have run cross country all four years. I ran track all four years, but didn't go out for cross country until my junior year. I played, or more accurately, practiced football for my first two years of high school. I also sat the bench in basketball in the winter. To my memory, the team was kind of a mix of guys (for the purposes of these answers the team refers to distance folks). There were a few older guys that were trying desperately to steer the ship in the right direction and quite a few more guys that while not negative, seemed to be going through the motions. Looking back on it, the idea of not having everyone buy in seems like a case of, "if your not with us, then your against us." It's funny how when it comes to change, positive changes in culture take a long time, but negative changes seem to happen quickly. There seemed to be a lapse in the team aspect of the program for a few years when I showed up in 1993. Some of the older guys - Jason Geis (sp?), Mike Spreadbury - seemed to realize there could be more to the program, so they imparted that mindset to guys like Aaron Borling, Steve Rains, Jim O'Malley, Dennis Lemonte and Brian O'Donnell and a few others. That last set of guys were a year older than I was and I knew all those guys from track, but since I showed up to cross country a few years late I wasn't immediately seen as one of the next torch bearers. But those guys took about the task of righting the culture. We all knew there was a fairly prolific history to the program, those guys just weren't 100% sure on how to get back to that level. After the state meet my junior year, a car full of seniors showed up at my house and essentially entrusted me with continuing the process that had been restarted. To say I had any influence or was a leader of continued change would not be accurate. There were too many guys my age or younger that wanted a better experience. What was starting to happen at that point is there was greater buy in across the board. There was a collective effort by the vast majority of the team. It didn't matter if a guy was in the top 7 or struggling to run 20 minutes for 3 miles, more guys were committing to the process of getting better. In turn that made the team better. So while the process wasn't complete in 1996, nor would it be for some time, the inertia had been overcome and the gears were turning slowly in the right direction.
Jeff Boele:
I realized about half way through my freshman year in college that I really loved running. I decided that I wanted to be involved with it my whole life even after I was done with collegiate running. I determined the best way to do that would be through coaching. At the time, the only way I could figure out how to get into coaching was by being a teacher. So that was my plan, become a teacher and go coach - ideally at Sandburg. My college team grew immensely in the four years I was there. We only had one coach for cross country and a few for all the track events. Heading into my senior year, the athletic department determined it would be beneficial to hire another full time coach for cross and track. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and also for the head coach to think that I could fill the position. So in the fall of 2000, I start coaching at Greenville College for the men's and women's cross country and track programs. In track I handled events from 800 meters - 10K. My experience at Greenville somewhat mirrored my experience at Sandburg. The team had never been outstanding, but there was some lost history of some proud runners and decent squads. As an athlete and a coach, I wanted to resurrect that. I was fortunate to coach a few All Americans in track and have a few cross county teams earn top 25 rankings.
Like I mentioned, I enjoyed the position, but in 2005 I moved to Boulder, Colorado to pursue my own running without the long hours of collegiate coaching. From 2005-2009, I ended up working with some individual athletes here and there as well as coaching myself. In 2010 I was looking to get back into coaching with a team and a local school Lyons High School (not to be confused with Lyons Township) needed a middle school track coach and a high school jumps coach. I took the positions and that has been a great experience. In the fall of 2010 I started helping the middle school cross country team as well. In 2012, I moved up to helping at the high school with cross country and took over the distance runners in the spring of 2013. I was fortunate to join a program that had a good culture and solid leadership. Since I started helping with track, our boys have finished 3rd, 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd and the girls have been 2nd, 1st, 1st, 4th, 3rd in our small school classification. In cross country since the fall of 2012, the boys have won 3 state titles in a row and the girls have been 2nd, 2nd and won the first state for the school this year. On the individual side of things I have coached athletes to top 4 finishes on 30 occasions in track and 4 individual titles in cross country.
I have lived in Colorado now for almost 10 years. My wife Amy is a professor in the school of education at the University of Colorado - Denver. We have two boys - James (4) and John (1).
I have been trying to get the Sandburg cross country team to take a team trip to Colorado in the summer for several years now. I will continue working on the coaching staff until this becomes a regular occurrence in the summer camp routine. I also want to do my part and bring some athletes back for a race or two in Illinois. The tentative plan is for next fall in cross country. We'll see how that plays out.