The Front Runner

running. I was the toughest, barkingest coach in the U.S. at that time.
    The reason that my boys didn't hate my guts was that I made them respect me. I was not one of your coaches with a bowler belly and a big cigar, who tells a boy to bust fifteen 63-second quarters while he goes off and has four beers. I went out running with my boys, and they knew I could do much of what they did. They knew that I cared deeply about the sport, and about what happened to them. I made them want to meet my challenge. I made them reach down and discover themselves. I would have run through fire for them, and the ones that survived the first few weeks on my team ended up running through fire for me.
    By then it was the Aquarius generation coming onto the campus, and we were having battles with the boys over sex, drinking, long hair and the rest. I am a Leo myself, so I didn't have any truck with that Aquarius crap. I won every one of those battles. I was adamant about crewcuts and pre-meet chastity. If a boy didn't conform, he was dropped from the team.
    Needless to say, I knew I was a hypocrite. I shut them away from their girlfriends because I wanted them myself. I made them cut their hair because I went into New York and ran my fingers through the shaggy locks of twenty-five-dollar fantasies.
    Along about 1968, the pressures of being head coach on a big-time team, and the terror of being discovered, were finally starting to get me. I didn't have much time to go to New York any more. That year, my team was sweeping college titles everywhere, and I was about ready for a strait jacket.
    It was in 1968—March 1968 to be exact—that the atom bomb fell on my world.
    Early that spring, a sophomore half-miler, Denny
    Falks, nineteen years old, started flirting with me. That's the only way I can describe his behavior. He was open about it, though he was careful to do it only when we were alone. Of all the runners who'd gone through my life by then, only Denny had divined what was going on in my mind.
    He was always coming around to my office for solo chats about pretended problems. Denny, it seemed, had more family problems, and more aches and pains, and more psych problems about running, than anyone else on the team.
    Since I had never before been cruised by a runner, it scared hell out of me.
    Out of self-defense, I was extra hard on him. But he saw through my Marine act too. Once during a workout, he actually faked a groin injury so that he could bare that part of his body to me in the locker room. I sensed he was malingering, and I had the doctor deal with him.
    Denny was attractive too. He would have caused a riot on Sheridan Square, even though I had forced him to cut off his long blond hair. I kept chewing him out and running him into the ground and trying to break his spirit. Then I'd have to get up at 4:30 A.M. and run fifteen miles to kill the thought of him.
    For two months, Denny tried every way he could think of to get my hand inside his jock strap. Then he did what so many piqued lovers do: he took revenge.
    He cheerfully and casually told a couple of his teammates, "Hey, you know, I think the coach is a queer."
    "No kidding," they said, quite amazed.
    "Yeah," said Denny breezily, "he kinda flirts with me when I'm in his office to talk."
    The rumor went like wildfire, and wasn't long in reaching the ears of the dean, Marvin Federman. Fed-erman called me in and told me about the rumor.
    I was simply stunned.
    Federman was cold and brusque. "The boy says that you have shown sexual interest in him."
    I was seared with shock and panic, but I managed to keep a calm exterior. "That's simply not true."
    "The rumor has reached a few of the trustees and
    alumni," said Federman. "There is heavy pressure on me. We can't have that kind of scandal. I'm sure you understand my position."
    "But this is ridiculous," I said.
    "Are you prepared to contest his statements legally?" said Federman.
    How could I contest them? I was afraid they would find out the truth about me. I was silent.
    "The best thing for you to do would be to resign. I've noticed that you look tired and strained lately. You can say that it's for reasons of health."
    With that rumor, and that brief chilling conversation with the dean, my coaching career at Penn State ended. I submitted my resignation that day.
    As I left my office for the last time, I saw Denny, beautiful Denny, walking out the building in his sweats. He was going to the track to work out, whistling.
    But the