Ranger Fit Does Not Quit

I woke up and it was raining. I took care of morning personal hygiene, got dressed, made my lunch and it was still raining. And somehow as soon as I got in my car and go onto the interstate I realized that it was not raining but rather it was pouring down rain.

As soon as I got to work it seemed to stop raining for a minute and then as I got out of my car, got all my things it started pouring down rain on me again.

It rained all day! And all day all I could think of was how I wanted to go home. So around noon I sent a message to the after school coordinator and told her to please make an announcement that we where going to cancel training for today. As I saw members of Ranger Fit through out the day I was telling them not to worry about training, and to just go home. In fact, even after the students where dismissed for the day I was still running into students asking me if we where going to run today. And my answer was still very much NO.

Then around 3:30 the school started to clear out, parents had come to pick up their children, most of the school buses had left, and all those who had the unfortunate pleasure of walking home where out the door. Thus, I went to the main office to sign out for the day and go home. After signing out I made it about half way to the exit when I was confronted by four members of Ranger Fit.

They stopped me in the hall and asked me where I was going. I told them, "Guys, its miserable outside, its been raining all day, go home." Which was an answer they apparently did not want to hear. I got bombarded with comments oh "awww mister" and "its not raining that bad" and "come on I really want to run". And that's when Daniel Gutierrez, one of my students, look right at me and said "Ranger Fit Does Not Quit".

I was stunned. All day all I could think of was going home, getting out of this miserable weather to the comfort of the inner city building I call home. But for my students it was different. All day, all they could think of was getting out of school so they could run. This was the high light of their day. They didn't care if it was raining or not.

So I told them "We will go outside to the track and look at the weather, and if it is raining we are going home". And by some kid miracle when went outside not a single drop of rain was falling.

Ranger Fit Does Not Quit! And today I realized what that meant. It means that Team Ranger is a lot bigger than just me. And I learned that it is not always about what I want but what the kids need. And today they just needed to run.