A Writer's Journey Part VI
Title: A Writer’s Journey
Part VI
“Would the Coach of Jasper-Troupsburg, please come to the
line?”
I looked up surprised.
It was my second year coaching JT XC and I was at the sectional contest
at a school called Marcus Whitman. The
boys had already run and now I was waiting at the finish line for my three
girls that year, Courtney Cornell, Danielle Miller, and Jamie Peraldo. “I am a nobody coach,” I thought puzzled,
“why would I be summoned to the line? I
must have heard that wrong!”
Then the voice came again!
“Would the Coach of Jasper-Troupsburg, please come to the line?”
That was clearly me.
Timidly I made my way through the throng toward the voice at the finish
line. A shorter man, with white hair,
had his back to me, watching the finish line.
“Um... I’m the coach of Jasper-Troupsburg,” I said.
The man spun at me like a jump scare out of a horror movie
(at least that is how it felt), and snarled, “Your in trouble! Big trouble!
Get your team together!” He did
not tell me what was the problem, only that I was to meet the AD of Marcus
Whitman. I staggered away in a
daze. Running across my team Captain,
“Brandon Marlatt,” I said, “Brandon
I was informed the guys were together and I ran down to
them. “What’s going on, coach?” I looked at the them and asked, “Guys, did
someone do something?” Brandon Marlatt,
Doug Stutzman, Jay Dreher, Jeff Quigley, Cody Simons, Donald Mosher, and Christ
Hadley stared at me puzzled. Finally two
boys said, “Coach, we picked up a golf ball, under a truck.”
“A golf ball?” I asked, now confused myself.
The AD came up, towering over me height wise, and he was not
spluttering mad. Professionally he said,
“One of my workers said your boys were messing with the equipment in the sound
truck.” I replied, “Well, my boys say
they were near a truck but they picked up a golf ball they found under
it.” “Hmm...” he replied pausing for a
moment, “let me find her and see what her side of the story is. Please wait here.” I nodded in agreement.
Sternly I asked the two boys, “Guys, you just picked up a
golf ball????” “Yes, coach! Honest!”
I waited for our accuser nervously. Twenty-minutes later the AD came back, by
himself. “She is on the PTA and she went
home,” he explained as he walked up. “I
guess the truth might be somewhere in the middle. I checked the van and nothing was missing, so
no blood, no foul.” I thanked him,
relief flooding me.
Every year as sectionals comes, I tell this story. Then I give them a mock, severe face and say,
“So IFFFF you see a golf ball, DON’T PICK IT UP!!!” Everyone laughs and we get ready to get off
the bus into sunshine, swirling snow, driving rain, or a cloudy day. Sectionals is in early November, you never
know what you are going to get!” I’ve
never been summoned to the line again in XC and I’m glad. In my over a decade and a half of coaching, I
don’t think I have ever heard of ANY coach being called to the line!!!! In track it is common enough due to something
unclear, an athlete getting DQ’d for a violation, a sectional event worker from
your school not showing up to their assignment, an athlete getting injured, or you are on the games committee, and they want your opinion. In XC things
are generally straight forward (no batons or lanes). Athletes do get DQ’d at the finish line but
the coach isn’t summoned. You don’t bring
any workers to the cross country sectional meet but even if you did, I have no
idea what they would do besides maybe spotting?
There is no games committee in XC, there are just two coordinators at
the top. On the day of the golf ball, I
met one:) Lucky me! We call this story “The Legend of the Golf
Ball” and we have told it every year since.
The story of the ice chest.
That same cross country season, I would take several kids with me back
to Troupsburg after practice in my mini-van.
That might surprise you but it was a different time. There were no stories in the press about
female teachers and young male students and I don’t remember too many about
male teachers. I’m not saying this stuff
didn’t happen, you just didn’t hear about it on the national news! Even then I made sure I was in the car with a
male student last, to avoid the appearance of doing something wrong.
I had noticed that the students liked to eat the ice from
the ice cooler on the way home. We were
at Boyd’s course that day and I happened to open the small ice chest before we
left. It was almost empty. I felt bad for the kids and the high school
was right on the way... so I stopped and told the kids, “I’ll be right back,”
grabbing the small cooler. Into the
school I went and filled that puppy up to the top! Boy were they going to be surprised!
I brought it back to the car and handed it over to them
proudly. Courtney Cornell opened it and
blanched visibly. “Oh, my,” she said
slowly. I almost cried out, “Oh, my!”
because Courtney was very quiet for the first half of the year and rarely
talked, to the point you wondered if she could talk:) For her to say ANYTHING was amazing! The kids told me they had made up a
game. Now, I’ve played many a game in
the car to pass the time. I’ve played
Punch Bug, as a young child, the road sign alphabet game as a teen as well as
“YO COW!”, Zip with my children, and padiddle with my wife (if you see a car
with one light out you get to kiss... hopefully when the car isn’t moving. When I was dating my wife, we looked for any
excuse to kiss each other. Still
do:) The ice cooler game was a new one
on me and I inquired about the rules. One
of the guys explained that they had to eat ALL the ice in the cooler before the
last person got out. They took this game
very seriously because they all started to chow down on ice with gusto. When Doug got out Courtney said, “Hey! Take some ice with you!” She filled his hands with ice. When I dropped her off at the flower farm she
told Chris Hadley sternly, “It’s all up to you, Chris! Don’t let us down!” Courtney had talked three times in the same
day... it was amazing if she spoke AT ALL!!!
I felt like you do when you see a bald eagle soaring through the
sky! Poor Chris failed the city that day
but he tried valiantly!! After that, I
never refilled the ice cooler after practice:)
High School athletics is not merely about winning and
losing. It’s about creating memories and
being a part of something! It gives kids
from all different social strata and clichés, a chance to make new
friends. The poor kid and the rich kid
might become best friends. The cool guy
and the outcast, might forge a bond that will last far beyond high school. We all wear the same uniform, for the same
school, and somehow that begins to create a connection. I’m a big fan of schools having sports and
many other things! The kids at JT did
the Little Mermaid last night and I had a lot of kids from the track team in
the show. Some of them were stage crew,
others made waves appear, and some were out in the lights, BUT all were needed
to make the show happen!! That is a
great memory all those kids will carry for decades and might keep their heart
warm through darker times in their life!
When NY rolled out common core I was concerned that some of
those memories would be lost.
(NOTE: This is NOT a political
blog. I am not trying to sway you one
way or the other in this post!! If you
like Common Core, I’m sure you have your reasons, and I respect that. Please continue to enjoy the blog and don’t
put your armor on:) As a sub I handed
out math papers stamped with common core on the bottom. Having an elementary friend teacher who had
talked about how scripted her class had become I wondered, “Will we get to the
point where we hire minimum wage people as teachers, to hand out papers, and
play state approved lessons on You Tube?”
Then one day as I watched students taking a mandated NY test I thought,
“What if the state eventually got rid of human teachers period?” I imagined a future Dystopia where the State
controlled everything in a child’s life, from the morning when they woke up,
until evening when they went to bed. I
imagined a VR class room with AI (artificially intelligent... a computer program
if you will) teachers, who were programmed by the state. I imagined academic performance gaining you
special food like ice cream or the latest single by a state approved
musician. I imagined a world where
school was made more like a video game, incentives were real world, and the
price for failure... horrible. I
imagined a world where there were no ice cooler games and where “golf ball”
incidents, might have horrifying consequences!
My novel “Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games,” was born
out of all my good memories of my school days and new memories with wonderful
students at JT, and the massive loss to humanity if those good memories were
erased due to utilitarianism.
(NOTE: I am NOT predicting that
NY State common core will lead to Animal Farm or 1984!! No need to defend it in posts on facebook or
on the blog site! I was merely inspired
as a writer to a POSSIBLE outcome, among a myriad of them, both positive and
negative!)
*** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on
Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen! All of
them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which
will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.
All of his books are available in soft cover too! Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s
page should come up ***
Book list
Fiction
Wolf Hunting – Action/suspense
Wolf Hunting 2: Trick Shot – Military action/ science
fiction
American Fairytale – Colonial America
Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games – Dystopian
Asylum Series (Tribulation genre meets CS Lewis meets lost)
Asylum
Killer Robots
Werewolves
Elf Princess
Zero Book – 666
C-3 Series (Pilgrim’s Progress meets Ender’s Game)
An Assumed Risk
Heavy Opposition
A Distant Boom
Two Hearts
The Magnificent Six
Don’t Pass Go!
Two Paths – Coming Soon!!
The Princess of Ashes Series (C-3 Series spin off)
Falling Ashes
Non-fiction
Miracles Can Happen: The Jim Ross Story – Jim Ross was
miraculously sparred from death... twice!
Attack on Girl’s Track – A look at boys competing in girls
sports, from the perspective of a track coach.
The book uses five years of track results from Section V (2012 – 2016)
to prove its point.
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