While attending a Luther College reunion, I was walking next to my cross-country coach Kent Finanger, who was bent over and limping due to back issues likely related to his years of playing football and basketball during his college career. Kent was a “Little All-American” back in his day and was apparently one of the first Luther College students to dance with his girlfriend, when such activity was banned at the little Lutheran college in the hills of Decorah, Iowa. I turned to Kent as we walked together, and in what I felt was a sympathetic way, observed, “Well, Kent, I guess those years of sports have a cost to us, don’t they?”

He whipped his head around and replied, “Wouldn’t change a thing.”

Kent lived life to the fullest during his prodigious athletic and coaching career. His favorite phrase while goading us through the pain and exhaustion of training was…”Wow Fun Wow!” That shorthand inspiration was written on mimeographed race workout sheets, scrawled in chalk on blackboards, and uttered with intention during many pep talks. And brother, did he ever give us pep talks!

But more than that, the man gave us his time and dedication. Only once did I see that focus on our cross-country team falter when his attention turned to the upcoming basketball season, a late-fall period when he left us to do a workout on our own because his basketball team needed his attention. That was forgivable because for us, Kent devoted thousands of hours preparing, leading, guiding, and inspiring us to run our best. He loved coaching basketball as much as he loved coaching cross-country. There’s no fault in that.

Success and failure

As runners, we often responded with success, but also failed at listening in some ways. He’d give us a workout at a specific pace, and we’d blast away at too high a tempo or speed. We frequently drank too much on Saturday nights, and I once missed a Sunday morning workout because my college girlfriend and I went overnight camping.

I have a clear memory of being in that tend half-naked with her on a ridge above campus when I looked out the tent flap to see my teammates running past on the road below. They were on their way to a hard ten-mile workout. I dropped my head and muttered, “Oh no.”

To this day, I don’t know what came over me that I completely forgot about that workout. I think it was love, and I don’t believe that Kent objected to that one missed workout, given that during my senior season, I’d improved from a laggard 5-7th man in previous years to become a team leader, running second most weeks behind my roommate Dani Fjelstad. He needed me to step up, and I was Luther’s Most Improved that season.

That was an important move given that Keith Ellingson, my freshman-year roommate and our best runner the previous season, was out with a back injury in 1978. Kent likely knew that having a steady girlfriend was largely good for my previously frail and fractured self-esteem. She wasn’t necessarily stable in that support, and we broke up once or twice during the season, but got back together. That’s the thing about young love. You can’t count on it sometimes. To quote Jackson Browne’s song “That Girl Could Sing…”

She was a friend to me when I needed one
Wasn’t for her, I don’t know what I’d done
She gave me back something that was missing in me
She coulda turned out to be almost anyone
Almost anyone
With the possible exception
Of who I wanted her to be

Things in Common

A few years after college, I met the woman to whom I’d be married for twenty-eight years. We lost my Linda to ovarian cancer in 2013. In that sad regard, Kent, Keith, and I wound up having something dire in common. Kent’s wife, Lucia, died of cancer, as did Keith’s sweet wife, Kristi.

I recall Lucia as a classically devoted woman who put up with many impromptu visits from students past and present who dropped by to visit Kent at the small house down the hill from the Luther campus. Lucia was a ‘long-suffering’ wife in that regard, often putting up with unexpected visitors. But she also knew the ropes, and once, thinking I was a privileged part of the greater “family” of Luther athletes associated with Kent, I asked to borrow a lawn chair to use while exhibiting my art during the Nordic Fest weekend. Lucia was having none of that. “I’ll never get it back,” she said with firm kindness. “So, no.” That was a good lesson in respect versus presumption. There were limits, I came to understand, that everyone should preserve.

But when that four-year college cross-country journey was over, and we’d placed second in the nation thanks to the performance of two amazing freshmen filling in where our original “five horses” recruited by Kent were supposed to thrive, he and Lucia hosted us in their home with our parents attending. That was Kent’s way of saying “good job” to all because in the end, it was “all for one” that we ran together for thousands of miles with Kent riding ahead, beside, or behind us during runs. “Wow Fun Wow!” he’d called out the window while roaring past in a cloud of dust on those Decorah country roads.

Nothing’s perfect in this world, it seems, and while it would have been perfect for the Five Horses to compete together that season at our best, that wasn’t how it exactly worked out. But over that season and through all four years at Luther, we all performed our best in some ways through dual meets with our fiercest rival LaCrosse raised our game, to a conference victory my freshman year when we placed all seven runners in the top ten and scored a perfect 15 thanks to going 1-5.

The message here is that every relationship is based on “give and take.” Kent gave us much, and we did our best to give it back. Personally, I made it through my first real depressive episode during my junior year, where I barely finished the conference meet due to a darkened mind, yet bounced back as our fifth man at nationals, where we placed 8th in the nation. Those are called “growth experiences” by any measure. That’s what Kent wanted to see from us, movement in terms of athletic and personal growth.

Visionary man

He started the women’s cross-country program in my freshman year because he believed in Fitness for Life and that it should include women runners. His vision spread across the nation with other like-minded coaches, and these days, women runners outnumber men in many places. That’s because the “Wow Fun Wow” factor of running has meaning to all. Perhaps that’s why Kent ignored the costs of time and effort and pain in assessing his life’s work.

His words, “Wouldn’t change a thing,” are not some conservative mantra or regressive philosophy in his case. He meant that challenging yourself in everything you do, even if it costs you, is the right thing to do. For that philosophy, so many of us in his sphere are forever grateful. I know Kent experiences fading memory these days, and his physical health has been difficult in later years. Such is the ‘wear and tear’ of forthright existence.

Can’t change a thing

But I’ll not forget walking beside him that day on the way to the Hall of Fame induction for his son, and hearing his response when I absently questioned the costs of competition. “Wouldn’t change a thing.” Which also made me laugh about another aspect of our relationship. During all four years at Luther, he referred to me as “Cudsworth,” not “Cudworth” as my name is actually spelled. Some of my teammates attempted to correct him on that during our final season, and he apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, Cuds.”

We all laughed at that. Some things don’t need changing. To Coach Kent, I’d always be “Cuds” and that nickname stayed and stuck between us. We should all be so grateful for such kind mistakes in life, love, and meeting its challenges. I don’t know how many years Kent will be with us in this world. Age catches up with us all. But his love of sport and life resonates through more than half a century. That’s a legacy worth recalling, as it should inspire us all.