'Labor of love' brings track & field records board to LHS

One question can lead to a pile of trouble, and such was the case for Wool. After gaining approval from Craig Kozens, school athletic director, Wool set himself to the task of researching the history of track and field events at the school, and assembling the best times and distances, so that they could be displayed in the gymnasium, alongside the banners marking the high points for other Sachem athletics.

Doing so proved no small hurdle. Wool logged more than 200 hours of research, mostly poring over microfiche of old newspapers at the Laconia Public Library, but also on the phone, calling former coaches and athletes, to hear stories and collect the evidence to support the claims.

All that effort was rewarded Thursday, when Wool joined LHS Principal Jim McCollum, Kozens, former track star Samantha Hicks and former coach Chris Beyer to see the board hanging in its place.

“It was a labor of love for Alan, he put in a ton of research,” said Kozens, who said the board hangs as “a tribute to those whose names are on the wall, also to give those who are coming here something to shoot for.”

Track and field was never about numbers for Laconia, said Beyer, who coached at the school from 2002 to 2013. LHS wasn’t a school that showed up to meets with buses full of athletes. Instead, he said, the school’s tradition was of fewer athletes, who trained to perform at the utmost of their capability.

“It was trying to get the best out of every kid,” Beyer said.

The numbers situation has continued, particularly exacerbated when Gilford broke away to form its own district, and when Laconia added lacrosse as a spring sport, diverting many athletes from track.

“The kids that were there wanted to be there, and worked hard,” Beyer said about the culture of the team. “Everyone that showed up put the effort in.”

Some names appear on the board along with many events, and Hicks’ is one of them. Hicks, who now works at Laconia Middle School where she also coaches track, said she has lots of memories of her time on the track team. Some are of misery, feeling obligated to run events she didn’t want to because her team needed the points, but also times of exaltation. She said that she turned a corner, mentally, when she realized that she could run just for herself, and could pick out a rival in the field to run against.

“It definitely made me more competitive — very competitive,” Hicks said. “It also helped me with my leadership skills.”

Now that she’s in the position of coaching young athletes, she said she thinks often of moments when she was a sometimes lazy team member, and how Beyer found ways to get her to reach inside of herself.

“Even when I was a brat to him, he kept pushing me,” Hicks said. “Now that I’m a coach, I use a lot of the things that he taught me. I definitely appreciate all of the things he did for me.”

Hicks said she appreciates seeing those moments memorialized, in a way, on the records board.

“It’s nice to see something and be recognized for it, for all the hard work,” Hicks said.

Wool said that’s half of the reaction he was hoping his work would provoke.

“I want to see something that gives some recognition to the people in the past, and to give something to (young) people who think they can beat these records,” Wool said.

Wool’s own name is on the board, but it might be the board itself that is his greatest contribution to his alma mater.

As McCollum said, “This is representative of Laconia, its history, the legacy, and how Laconia folks, they’re always Sachems. That pride is represented in sports, but it goes way beyond that.”