December 5, 2023

Staff Spotlight | Marcos Bolanos

By: Vicken Semerdjian

Marcos Bolanos is a teacher and coach at El Segundo High, teaching Economics, and coaching both Cross Country and the Distance Track team. He recently led both the male and female cross country teams to CIF in 2022, and during his time coaching, a team has made it to CIF-SS finals 9 years, and a team or individual from ESHS has gone to CIF state for 8 years. I have had the pleasure of being an athlete under Coach "B" for 2 seasons of cross country, and we (the cross country team) think he is a great role model and coach, and has inspired us to go above and beyond in both running and academics.

Q: What is the most rewarding part of coaching a high school sport?A: The most rewarding part would be seeing kids grow and mature on a lot of different levels, individually becoming more mature and accountable to a team, understanding how to follow directions, taking on leadership opportunities, and then also doing things they thought they never could.

A lot of the student-athletes that I get maybe never did a lot of/were successful in sports, and so running offers them an opportunity to practice and get better every day, and it's awesome trying to help them set goals that at one point they don't think they could ever do; and when they break them, just seeing that huge smile on their face, it's a remarkable feeling.

Q:How has Covid reshaped the way you teach and coach in the 2022-23 school year?

A: I think the big mindset change that I've seen happen out of Covid is that more people want to keep things fun/casual, and so I'm having to ease up on how much I enforce certain rules and just try to keep perspective of trying to make running fun and making this sport enjoyable, as something that they want to do as a way to relieve stress and get their minds off stuff.

Whereas before it was hyper-competitive, and we wanted to make sure that our team was one of the best in the state, which I still do, but the emphasis now is more on trying to enforce personal growth.

Q:What are some of the similarities and differences between coaching and teaching?

A: Some of the similarities are that typically the people you're coaching want to be there, so it allows you to have some more fun, do different things with them, and learn more about the kids. With teaching sometimes, you have to be mindful of the fact that sometimes the kids don't even want to be in your class because they don't like the subject, or something different.

In that way they're different, the way that they're similar is that you still want to encourage kids to make good decisions, to work their hardest to be their best, to participate, and to always put their best foot forward.

Q: What are the similarities that a student and an athlete have to have? And would you recommend sports to someone who is mainly focused on academics?

A: Similarities that a student and athlete have to have would be a good work ethic, and commitment to try, and by that I mean it's okay to fail; so in running 80% of the time we don't hit PRs(Personal Records), so you're working, then you have to restructure, and go back to the drawing board- Injuries pop up- you'll overcome adversity, and that's no different from what you have to do in the classroom. A lot of the kids that run take hard math classes, and I would doubt that any of the kids get every math problem right the first time; it takes time, you have to keep putting in the work, and the effort, and I think those are the similarities they share.

I would 100% say that every student should participate in some type of sport. I think that we've missed the mark by not mandating it; I think every kid should be involved in some type of team sport, to teach them how to be cooperative, take direction, learn in a different way, how to be coached, because I think that the things that you learn in sport are probably more applicable to real life than some of the stuff that we learn in the classroom.

Q: Any words of encouragement to students coming into the second semester?

A: Do your best. Always keep trying. Don't look at failure as the final line, look at failure as a launching point. A lot of students are hesitant to try because they're worried about failing, but failure is the stepping stone to everything successful.