Being the younger sibling had its advantages and disadvantages for Jake Watson. Being six years younger allowed him to watch his older brother Luke and sister Carly have stand out careers in endurance sports at Stillwater. But being the youngest also meant that there were limited resources when it came to choosing what sports he could pursue.
Instead of being able to try ball sports or hockey, which didn't fit in with his parents or siblings' schedules and transport options, Jake did cross country, cross country skiing, and track. So instead of being a future Minnesota Twin or Minnesota Wild player, Jake followed in his older siblings' footsteps and excelled in running and skiing. He got further help in that direction by one of his junior high teachers who noticed that "I was too hyper, so he had me run laps in the morning before school to burn off energy," said Jake.
The discipline and structure of sports put Jake's energy to good use. "(Sports) helped keep me on track," said Jake. "It was a huge benefit, especially the team element." And he was good at it. He not only excelled at running, but was also All State in cross country skiing. His sister, Carly, was a standout skier at UW Green Bay, and Jake followed Luke to a successful track and cross country career at Notre Dame, but it was the high school experience under coach Scott Christensen that gave him the tools for success, he says.
"I trusted Scott's training," said Jake. "I brought the techniques I learned with me to college and used them there."
Christensen excelled at providing a structure and motivation for his athletes, said Watson. Scott gave the athletes booklets every year that contained statistics on the Stillwater athletes' performances from each meet. He had each athlete keep a training log so they could see what they were doing, what was working, what wasn't. What they needed to keep improving. All this provided structure and motivation for the athletes, said Watson.
"(Christensen) was a very talented motivator," Jake added. "He could get you amped up to commpete." Many of the sayings Christensen used Jake still remembers, from "Our program owns the last mile," to T shirts stenciled with the letter S for Stillwater with "The Machine" overlaid on the S. Or Scott's admonition to his runners: "I don't want anybody out there feeling sorry for themselves." Or "Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."
Things didn't always go smoothly, Watson remembers, as in the early years of Jake's tenure on the team, the athletes were "a bunch of screw offs," immature and in need of discipline and direction. Christensen didn't as much come down hard on their transgressions as admonishing them for "not realizing their potential." Using reinforcement for positive behavior to extinguish the exesses of youth.
Christensen was able to transform "a bunch of jokers" to a team that, as seniors all PRed while finishing runner-up at the State Meet, said Watson. "We weren't happy to finish second, but we were satisfied that we all did the best that we possibly could(on that day)," said Watson. "(Christensen said) You guys are going to go on and do whatever you do in liife, but you're always going to remember what you did here today...He had a very good way of putting things in perspective."
"Trust in your training," was a motto Christensen used to bolster their confidence. "Never worry about time. Never put yourself against the clock." Scott wanted them to race, not time trial. And if they weren't responding, he would use other techniques to get them going. "You're dealing with teenagers," said Watson. "Sometimes you had to light a fire under their butts to get them to reach their potential."
For athletes with the ability who might be experiencing doubt, he knew how to light that fire, said Watson. "That's how I ran my PR at 800 and I got the school record," said Watson, who was up against another talented half miler who was a 400/800 runner, lots of speed, but not the endurance that Watson had from his mile/2-mile background.
"I was having doubts," said Watson. "I'm a miler and this guy's got great speed. Scott came up to me and said: 'I want you to bury that guy. I want you to run that guy into the ground because you're a distance runner, you can tolerate more pain than he can.'
"So that's what I did and all during the last 200, I'm in pain thinking, 'I can take more pain.' It worked."
That focus on a tactic served Jake well when he broke 4 in the mile in June of 2007, he said. He was running in the featured "pro" mile at the Music City Distance Carnival in Nashville. He didn't go into it thinking sub-4. He went into it to race. But the race had been set up to enhance the runners chances to run fast with pacesetters who took them through on 4-minute pace. Luke was there at the track, as he was coaching Jake at the time, and Jake's mother and his aunt flew in for the race without telling Jake they were coming.
They came through 3/4 in 2:58/59, Jake remembers, and Luke was there beside the track with 200 to go yelling at Jake that all he had to do was finish it off. Jake finished third and broke 4. And he had his family there to celebrate.
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