“Oh my gosh, how am I going to handle this for the next three months?!” is the first thing running through my mind on the first day of Delaware Military Academy cross country pre-season. Coach Breger was telling us all about how the season would go, and I am not afraid to admit that I was intimidated. Not just by all the crazy workouts he had planned or all the running, but by him. Coach Breger has a tough exterior, but once you spend 3 hours a day, 6 days a week with him, you will understand how great of a coach this guy is. I grew to love him and everything that he had made me and my team. If anyone deserves Educator of the Year, it is him. He pushed me to go my furthest and taught me to run with my mind, body, and heart. But most importantly, he’s the reason I love to run.
One of the several things that coach was amazing at was pushing you go your farthest. Coach Breger isn’t like other coaches. Most coaches don’t come up with different pushups for when the team doesn’t do what they’re supposed to. But Coach Breger created a new pushup whenever a runner would do something wrong, and the whole team would suffer for the one kid’s mistake. Coach Breger had his own way of encouraging us. Coach Breger isn’t the kind of guy that says “Good job” unless he knows that you are giving it everything. He would never let me feel satisfied with what I was already doing because he wanted me to always think that I had more to give. Coach Breger knew what every single one of us was capable of. When we had one of our best races and we thought we gave it our all, he told us that we had so much more to give. The next race was even better than the last; almost all of us beat our fastest times. I always had more to give; he was just there to help me find it.

Coach Breger taught me to run with my body, mind, and heart. I have never been as fit as I was during this season. We ran so many hills and did all of these excruciating ,yet fun ,conditioning workouts( that coach came up with) to make sure that we were the most in-shape-team in the state. Having leg muscle plus the core strength helped me and the team tremendously with our times. Not even football teams conditioned the way we did. Believe it or not it takes more than being physically in-shape to run. If you want to be a successful runner, you have to be mentally in-shape too. Coach Breger gave us the best speeches that would get us mentally prepared to race. I have had many other coaches, but none of their speeches can even come close to Coach Breger’s. He just has a way with words and saying the right things that really make you believe that you can win. Which brings me to the next aspect of running: running with your heart. If you want to be an efficacious runner, the only way to do that is with your heart. Anyone can run a race, but if you run with passion, you are guaranteed to beat the person next to you. The last 100 meters in a race aren’t about ability, but who wants to win more. Coach Breger, with his love for cross country, taught me how to run with passion.
Another thing that Coach Breger was big on was sportsmanship. Coach values the ideals that the Delaware Military Academy instills in us and he used them with the team. We were supposed to act professional at all times. He would always say “We are not that team.” This means that we are not the team that people look at as a bunch of kids that joke around. When we got to races, we would set up camp in a secluded area where we wouldn’t be bothered by the other teams and their nonsense. We were to concentrate and get focused on our race. We were not the team that jumps around and screams to get pumped; we were not that team. When we would take bus rides to our races, the last 15 minutes of the ride were in silence. We were to get engrossed with what was coming up next. Coach wanted us to be respected by other teams, and by the end of the season we were.
Coach Breger is the reason that I run. Through his love for cross country, his passion gave me the desire to want to win it for him. He wanted us to do well more than anything; you could tell that he had so much faith in us. He was always telling us that he knew we could win but that we had to want it. I ran my last race for him because all I wanted to do was make him proud and prove to him that I could live up to his expectations. I love cross country because I love the sport, but he taught me that there is so much more to it than just running. If it wasn’t for him, I would not be the runner I am today. I can promise that if I ran for any other coach I would’ve never reached my full potential. On top of all this, Coach Breger has won coach of the year for the past nine years; he’s phenomenal. Coach Breger deserves Educator of the year more than anyone else.