Mater Dei Assistant Leads by Example

You have to wonder sometimes what goes through an athlete’s mind when he hears his coach screaming, “C’mon! Push through the pain!”

Does he think, “Oh, what splendid advice! Shall do!” Or is it more like, “Give me a break, Butthead. If you don’t think I’m pushing hard enough, why don’t you come out here and show me how it’s done!”

Which, to a certain extent, is the beauty of the Mater Dei cross-country program. At Mater Dei, runners are constantly told: run faster, train harder, push like you’ve never pushed before . Yet despite the demands, the Monarchs never so much as grumble. The reason? Monarch assistant coach Valerie Vaughan.

Vaughan, a world-class runner from Blarney, Ireland, trains with the Mater Dei boys’ team every step of the way. She encourages them, yells at them and inspires them. She keeps them on their toes. And the Monarchs, it seems, are more than happy to return the favor.

Vaughan, 26, was hired as an English teacher this year, agreeing to help Coach Rick Martinez with the school’s co-ed cross-country program, 80 runners strong. Martinez prepared the boys’ egos accordingly. Vaughan, he told them, was mighty quick, one of the top female distance runners in Ireland. She’s aiming for the Olympics in ’96. Don’t dismay if she runs you into the ground.

You might think a team of teen-age boys wouldn’t handle this well. That the thought of possibly being outrun and outdone by a woman might inspire them to pour on the machismo, to shield their male pride. Instead, the Monarchs handled it nicely. Especially after realizing both sides, ability-wise, were on a similar level.

It didn’t hurt that Vaughan gained the boys’ respect in about two seconds flat. All it took, junior Daniel Gonzalez said, was a glimpse of Vaughan working out in the weight room. There, in a blur of biceps curls and power cleans, Vaughan was re-defining the word intensity .

“We saw the way she pushed herself,” Gonzalez said. “We were like, wow.”

The Mater Dei girls were equally impressed. It didn’t take long for them to realize they had a genuine running role model for a coach. Not that Coach Martinez is (to use the ultimate runners’ insult) a jolly jogger or anything. “He’s a great coach too but it’s different when it comes from a girl,” senior Amy Brenner says. “For us, it’s like something we could aim for when we grow up . . . She’s like the Bionic Woman.”

The Bionic Woman? Vaughan--5 feet 7 1/2 and 120 pounds--chuckles at the reference. OK, so she won the Race for the Cure 5K Sunday in 16 minutes 3 seconds, but bionics are hardly her secret. More than anything, Vaughan is powered by simple teeth-gritting, body-aching, I’m-in-a-zone mental toughness. Which, before this season, was the one attribute the Monarchs needed help with most.

It wasn’t that the Monarchs of a year ago were wimps; it’s just that like most high school teams, Mater Dei ’92 had its share of sub-par attitudes: My knee hurts a little, I can’t run. I’m tired, I’m can’t push myself. I’d run faster, but I’m not good enough. Blah, blah, blah.

Then Vaughan arrived and told it like it was: Running--competitive running--involves pain. If you want to be a runner, a good runner, you have to learn to live with it. Accept it, deal with it, make friends with it. Don’t be scared of it; pain’s part of the game.

The Monarchs listened carefully. Suddenly, workouts were less like social hour and more like work. The focus was more intense, runners were more aggressive. The Monarchs, many of them recording personal bests week after week, couldn’t be happier.

“She’s made us really tough,” Gonzalez says. “Last year, the girls used to whine, now they’re a lot tougher. And a lot of the guys’ mental cases got fixed.”

Last Sunday, several of the Mater Dei runners watched their coach win the Race for the Cure. They watched Vaughan whiz past a field of five U.S. Olympians, they marveled at her intensity and focus. They cheered every step of the way.

They, more than anyone else, could relate to her pain.