Cross-country team keeps running because coach can't

With his right hand, Jim Tracy pinched the skin between his left thumb and forefinger.

"See this muscle here?" he asked. "Five years ago this muscle in my right hand started to shrink. Four years ago, it was gone. It was the only thing that went bad. I had one dead muscle in my right hand, but I knew this had to be something very serious."

Three years ago, when he was 57, a muscle in Tracy's foot suddenly refused to lift the foot when he ran. Tracy, who had logged 10 miles a day most of his adult life, used his own running as a tool in coaching his University High cross-country teams, in what is the all-time winningest program in the state.

Tracy didn't see a doctor. He believes that good news should be spread quickly, but bad news should be left to travel at its own speed.

A year ago Tracy's back went bad, then worse. He became unstable. The coach with a near-mystical talent for putting starch in the backbones of boys and girls was losing the starch in his.

Bad news picked up speed. Tracy went to a doctor and was told he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig's disease. His muscles, in random order, are shutting down. He wears braces on both legs and his back.

A couple of times last season, while standing at practice, Tracy simply fell. His runners, shaken, would help him to his feet. It wasn't part of the plan, but even in this there was a life lesson.

At the recent state cross country meet at Fresno, Uni's Holland Reynolds was running in third place with a half-mile to go in the 3.1-mile race, and she was poised to move into second.

Reynolds is the best runner Tracy has coached in his 17 seasons at University. But suddenly, possibly because of dehydration, Reynolds slowed and began to lurch and stagger. In a video that became an Internet sensation, Reynolds collapsed about 2 yards short of the finish line. A race official rushed over, determined that Reynolds was coherent, and urged her on. Reynolds dragged herself up to her hands and knees and crawled in agonizing slo-mo across the finish line.

As it turned out, Uni didn't need a high finish from Reynolds to win the state title, but she didn't know that at the time.

"That entire race, our goal was to win it for Jim," Reynolds said. "So crawling over that line, I definitely knew I had to cross it so we could do well for Jim."

Brutal honesty