My Health app clocked it perfectly: four point seven miles, in just under two hours, all inside about a two-mile radius. I hadn’t gone for a run. I’d been tearing through the woods behind the school, near Fellowship Bible Church and the highway, screaming a dog’s name until my voice gave out, already rehearsing the phone call where I’d have to tell my wife I’d lost the one thing she’d already warned me not to risk.
My morning had started right on schedule. Up at 5:30, gym from 6:30 to 7:45, home by eight for breakfast. My guys had baseball infield workouts scheduled at Fellowship from nine to eleven, the kind of voluntary summer reps that separate the guys who want it from the guys who just show up because their parents dropped them off. We’ve had our puppy, Melon, since March. She’s seven months old now, still built entirely out of puppy energy, and if she doesn’t get a walk before the day heats up, she turns into a small terror by the afternoon. I figured I’d bring her along and let her chase balls on the field while the guys worked.
I grabbed Melon and left the house at 8:35, and even emailed the guys on my way to say I was running about 10 minutes behind schedule. Ten minutes turned out to be the last accurate estimate I gave anybody all morning. I got to Fellowship at 9:10, and I never made it past the gate.
We ran out of the house, grabbed her harness, and loaded her in the truck. I can drive down through a gate by our field and walk her straight out onto the turf – easy routine, done it plenty of times. Everything was normal right up until I went to open that gate. I had a loose hold on her harness, the gate scraped against the concrete, and it spooked her badly.
She took off toward the double gate. I didn’t think much of it at first. She’s had decent recall, and sure enough, she stopped and looked back at me. I called her name and started walking toward her. She froze. Then she turned and ran for real, straight toward Woodstock Road.
I ran after her. She was terrified, sprinting along the shoulder while cars slowed down and a few people tried to help. None of it registered with her. She was too far gone into pure fear to recognize anything, including me. She ducked into a neighborhood, and for a second I actually felt relief. Fences, I thought. She’ll hit a fence, and I’ll close the gap. She ran all the way to the back of that neighborhood, into somebody’s backyard, and I was right; there was a fence. What I didn’t know was that it only ran along the edge of the property, and where it ended, so did my line of sight.
That’s when the fear that actually mattered showed up. I started running through the woods, calling her name, and somewhere in there my brain helpfully replayed a conversation from a hike with my wife a few weeks earlier. She’d said, “I don’t like how comfortable you are with her off leash. All it takes is something to spook her, and she’s gone.” I remember thinking, at the time, that she was probably overthinking it. Standing in those woods, soaked in sweat, I had a much shorter thought: what a way to prove her right.
I found the same deer in that patch of woods three separate times. Never once found the dog. Fifteen minutes in, still nothing, and I knew I had to call my wife and tell her what happened. Not because I had a plan. Because I’d run out of ideas and needed help, and admitting that felt worse than the running did.
I covered what felt like every inch of ground between the school, Fellowship Bible Church, and that neighborhood. The whole time, the thought sitting under everything else was the highway, six lanes, not far from where she’d last been headed. I popped out of the woods near Fellowship Bible Church in the middle of their day camp, which meant a grown man, soaked in sweat, wild-eyed, suddenly appearing out of the tree line in front of a few dozen kids and their counselors. Not exactly the look I’d have picked. I told them who I was and what had happened anyway, because at that point I had no better options.
That turned out to be the best decision I made all morning. My wife arrived and started searching her own section. One of the camp counselors spotted Melon, and she’d gone toward the school, away from the highway, not toward it. Between my wife and a handful of camp kids who joined the search, they closed in and got her. I made my way back through the woods, and by the time I caught up, Jessica was already holding her.
Melon was cowering when I got there. She fully expected to be in trouble. I wasn’t thinking about discipline. I was just relieved she was breathing.
By the time I made it back to the truck, I had a few texts from my guys, wondering where their coach had disappeared to for two straight hours. When I told them what happened, not one of them was upset about a missed rep or a lost hour of coaching. They’d gotten good work in together anyway: hitting ground balls to each other, running their own routine, no coach standing over the cage making sure it got done right. That’s its own kind of relief. The standard doesn’t hold because I’m standing there watching it happen. It holds because they’ve actually internalized it enough to run it themselves when I can’t be there.
I had a warning already sitting in my hand, and I didn’t believe it until it cost me a two-hour search, a missed practice, and a sprint down Woodstock Road.
That’s the first lesson, and it’s the one most of us resist admitting. Somebody who loves you gives you a warning: about your health, your schedule, your temper, your off-leash dog, whatever it is, and you nod, and you keep doing exactly what you were doing. You don’t actually believe the warning. You believe the track record, and the track record hasn’t caught up with the warning yet. Then one day the gate scrapes the concrete, and it does.
Proverbs put a name on this a long time before I lived it out on Woodstock Road.
“The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” (Proverbs 27:12, ESV)
I wasn’t hiding from anything. I was standing at a gate with a loose grip, confident in a routine that had worked every other time. The prudent person hears the warning and adjusts before the cost shows up. The rest of us adjust after, usually somewhere around mile three.
Here’s the second lesson, and it’s the one that actually matters more once the mistake is already made. Ken Ravizza built his whole mental game framework around a stoplight. Green means you’re locked in, confident, doing your job. Yellow means frustration or fear is creeping in, and it’s the signal most people miss entirely. Red means it’s already taken over and your decision-making is gone. The skill was never staying green forever. Nobody does. The skill is catching yellow before it turns red.
I blew straight through yellow. By the time I was in those woods, I was fully red: sprinting in circles, finding the same deer three times because panic doesn’t problem-solve; it just repeats itself louder. Panic doesn’t try a new direction. It runs the same failed play again and again, calling it effort.
The moment that actually turned the search wasn’t more effort from me. It was the release. Calling my wife instead of white-knuckling it alone. Walking out in front of a day camp full of strangers and admitting exactly what had happened instead of quietly disappearing back into the woods to keep failing in private. Recognize you’re in red. Release the version of you that thinks solving this alone is the only version that counts. Refocus on the actual next right step, which for me was somebody else’s eyes on the ground I couldn’t cover by myself.
Every coach reading this has had a version of this. A game plan that isn’t working, and instead of adjusting, you run it harder. A conversation with a player that’s going nowhere, and instead of changing your approach, you just say the same thing louder. A season that’s spiraling, and instead of asking your staff for help, you white-knuckle it alone because admitting you’re stuck feels like admitting you’re not built for this. You’re not stuck because you’re not built for it. You’re stuck because you’re still red, and red doesn’t take good advice from anybody, including yourself.
This week, do two things. First, name one warning someone who loves you has already given you, one you haven’t actually believed yet because the bill hasn’t come due. Write it down. Decide now what you’ll change, before the gate scrapes the concrete. Second, think back to your last real panic moment, on the field or off it, and be honest about where you were chasing the same deer instead of changing direction. Name what Recognize, Release, and Refocus would have actually looked like in that moment. You’ll need it again. Everybody does.
Melon’s fine. She’s back to being a menace right now, terrorizing our older dog, Hank, despite her five-mile adventure, which, honestly, might be the most predictable, most trustworthy thing in my whole week. My guys got two good hours of work in without me, which might be the most encouraging thing that happened all day. And when my wife walked up holding Melon, she was cowering, bracing for the correction she assumed was coming. She never got one. I was just glad to see her breathing.
It didn’t take just me to bring her home. It took my wife, a handful of day camp counselors who’d never met either of us, and a few kids who dropped what they were doing to go look. Some lessons you can actually learn by yourself. This one, I couldn’t have. That’s not a bad picture of grace, if you’re looking for one. The correction you’re bracing for isn’t always the one that’s coming. Sometimes the only thing waiting on the other side of your worst two hours is somebody who loves you, and a village you didn’t know you needed, just glad you’re still standing there.
Let’s get to work. — Coach O
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