INFO SOURCES: Santa Fe New Mexican/Santa Fe.com

It all started in a differrent time and a diffrent place..England. It all ended, a 21 year coaching stint at Santa Fe Prep, with one last victory lap around the Great Friends UNM Track Complex in celebration of a Girl's Class 3A State Championship this past May. 

It was the fourth State team title for Coach' Shere's girls team and the proverbial icing for her, as her last State meet to Coach the Blue Griffins. Shere has retired from the program that she built moment by moment, season by season, out of every form of success possible to celebrate, no matter how small it might seem to others. That has been Coach Shere's MO....honor the effort, honor and celebrate the inner battles and overcoming of her athletes. It has been a great journey.

Maybe it's Coach Shere's own journey in the athletic realm that brought such respect and joy to her kids accomplishments. As a teen in England, Tove is the first to say "I was not a great student. I was not an academic. I was very much an athlete. I grew up in a different time and place in a different country. And athletics sort of saved my bacon. I did not really like school, so I pretty much did every sport there was."

She is also the first to credit her own coaches. "I don’t think I would have made it without my coaches. I know for me that they were probably the most important people in my life during my teen years."

However, after about a 20 year hiatus from sports, Tove found herself wanting to make a comeback at the age of 37, weighing almost 200 pounds and smoking 2 packs a day for almost 30 years. "when I came back to it, the struggles were beyond imaginable, they were enormous, they were excruciatingly painful to get back into shape."

It was those struggles she faced herself, that has been her biggest assett in relating to her athletes. "To start from nothing, to start from scratch, to start from a memory, to start from a wannabe, and just struggle to get little tiny pieces of it put back together again. I mean I was a mess. So putting it back together again was a really hard endeavor."

It was those insights that Coach Shere brought to the table and the real feelings of what it meant to overcome, even the smallest battles, that became the next badge of courage for each step in getting back to a better place personally and athletically. "Everybody can do something to honor that part of what, I believe, God gave them, which is an athletic body.  That’s what we are: athletes by nature. It doesn’t mean you have to be an Olympian, but you have to get out there and honor your body, or you end up like I did at 37, just not feeling to good about yourself."

It is safe to say that the Blue Griffin's "Track Mom" of the past 21 years helped more than herself get to a better place. She helped two decades of young people to believe not only in themselves, but to believe in the values, the character, the tools and skill sets that will help them for the rest of their lives.

That is all Coach Shere has wanted to do: to help.

Mission accomplished Coach.