Benefield: Cross country a labor of love for Upper Lake coach

First-year Upper Lake High cross country coach Samantha Ponts was hosting the first big meet of the season a week and a half ago, making sure everything would go off without a hitch.

Course prep? Check. Runner walkthrough? Check. Intact amniotic sac? Nope.

Ponts was just minutes into hosting the Cougar Classic on Sept. 7 when her water broke as she jogged to the first mile marker to give racers their split times.

“She’s walking toward me, cheering her kids on, but she had this look on her face like, ‘Uh oh, I think this is it,’?” her husband, John Ponts, said.

This was her first baby, but Sam Ponts being Sam Ponts, she stayed to call out those splits, broken membranes and all.

“I think I was so excited, I didn’t want to leave,” she said.

She even gave her varsity boys a brief pep talk before leaving the meet.

“Everyone was like ‘Get the hell out of here and go,’?” John Ponts said. “She wanted to make sure all the loose ends were tied up and that everyone was good. She real calmly said, ‘Hey guys, I think my water broke … ’?”

The boys’ reactions were priceless.

“It was like they saw a ghost,” he said. One “turned white and they were looking down at her legs.”

Upper Lake athletic director Mike Smith calmly suggested that perhaps heading to the hospital would be a better idea than managing an early-season cross country meet.

“She was pretty calm the whole time,” he said. “She was even like, ‘I think I can time (racers) a little bit longer.’?”

Ponts’ due date was Sept. 8 or 9, depending on who you ask, so it was not inconceivable that Ponts’ worlds - mom-to-be and coach-right-now - might collide. It was just the fact that they collided mid-meet that made for such a tale.

“When I hired her, she told me she was pregnant,” Smith said. “We were hoping she was going to get this first meet under her belt.”

She was close. So close.

Her contractions started that morning, but Ponts said they weren’t painful; she just felt off. She even went for a hike.

“We walked probably 4 miles that morning,” John Ponts said. “We live up on a mountain. We hiked around. We’d stop when she had contractions.”

This, mind you, is a woman who was running with her team up until about a week before she gave birth.

But she’s not unreasonable. She asked her husband to attend the meet - just in case.

“We had to walk the course with all of the kids so they knew where the turns are,” John Ponts said. “She’s stopping every couple of minutes because she’s having contractions.”

But Ponts insists she felt certain she had a reasonable amount of time between her water breaking and when she needed to get to the hospital. She felt sure she could help time the rest of the meet.

Ponts said she wasn’t trying to do anything crazy; she just loves to run and wanted her team to see and feel that.

“I do feel like I am responsible for them,” she said. “I had such a great experience when I was running cross country in high school. I knew how important it was to have a coach that really loved the sport. I wanted to be that.”

On the team’s website, Ponts, a educator with the public health department, extols the virtues of running with more than a nod to the toughness one has to have to be a runner.

“If you don’t believe how something so difficult can be so much fun, ask any member of the team. Cross-country running; no officials, no timeouts, no halftimes, just you against the other guy. A real sport. Cross-country runners don’t play games.”

And Ponts didn’t draw attention to herself or her situation. It was more matter-of-fact.

“I was so surprised when she told me she was due the next day,” said first-year Kelseyville coach Jeff Weller. “Partway through the first race, the athletic director comes over and says, ‘Well, Sam’s water broke and she’s on the way to the hospital.’?”

Despite wanting to stay and see the meet through to the end, Ponts says now she’s glad she left when she did.

“Everything is fine. But she came really, really quickly,” she said. “It was on when I got to the hospital.”

None of this surprises John Ponts- not the part about running with the kids until the very final days of pregnancy, or the part about wanting to host the meet despite an imminent due date, or the part about her continuing to cheer on her kids after her membranes burst.

“She’s definitely one of the toughest gals I have ever met,” John Ponts said. “I have three sisters who are all tougher than I am, so I have a pretty high standard.”

And Sam Ponts is pushing the bar even higher still. After giving birth to Daisy Ponts at 10:23 p.m. that Wednesday, she returned to cross country practice on Monday.

“I knew that when I got pregnant and as soon as the baby came out, I wanted to be outdoors and I wanted to continue doing what I normally do,” she said. “I know most mothers nest, but I was like, ‘No. We are going to the track.’?”

As for the Cougars’ season? They’ll press on.

“We are just going to do the best we can,” she said. “They have a little mascot.”

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield. Podcasting on iTunes “Overtime with Kerry Benefield.”