Author Adrian Essigmann and Christian Writing

Title: Ferd Stenta Invitational Part I When we first arrived at the invitational, it was a comfortable afternoon, with the sun peeking out.   Huge groups of teenagers with different uniforms on were warming up together and relay boys and girls were passing batons preparing for upcoming events.   The weather report looked grim but you couldn’t tell at the moment.   Autumn was putting her poles under a tent the home school had provided, when a brief driving rain hit!   Student athletes scattered everywhere, heading for their tents or cover.   A coach near the pole vault ran out to start covering the pit and I followed.   It was the weather’s shot across the bow.   By the national anthem the rain was gone but so were the warm temperatures.   A brutal wind began and temperatures started to drop.   By the end of the night snow would be in the air, swirling around.   How bad was the wind.   It was bad.   In pole vault the...

Title: The Campbell-Savona Meet Part III Reese Draper has been a MAJOR force in the league this year!   He’s number two in D for High Jump and only drops to eighth place when you add in two more classes (C and CC)!   He’s seventh in D in triple jump and eighth in D for long jump.   On Tuesday night Reese brought this skill level into the meet and walked away a triple winner in high jump, triple jump, and long jump!   Quincy Cornell threw a forty the first meet and told me, “I hope that wasn’t a fluke.”   It must not have been because he nailed a 39 the other night!   Quincy is top five in Class D for shot and twelfth place when you add in Class C and CC.   You have to understand that in D, C, and CC represent 56 schools and they will list every athlete you have!   Quincy won the meet for shot and we swept the rest of the shot event!   Caleb Hulbert has been a rock in this event the last two years!   Caleb is eighth place in...

Title: The Campbell-Savona Meet Part II Pole vault pits are not universal and standards can move depending on the “zero” point.   While I was measuring and checking things out, having the boys start to warm up, Pink walked past the pit headed for the line.   The nice thing about CS pole vault pit is it is near the line and I can sort of keep track of what is going on.   A mystery Arkport girl was facing Pink in the 1500, but how good was she?   I had no idea.   The gun sounded and Pink went to work, while I got pole vault off the ground (no pun intended:)   A distance race like that takes a fair amount of time but when your running an event you only get to see flashes of it.   I nervously watched the girl following Pink, while Brock got over 7’.   Pink won handily.   Poor Hunter Heck would have to vault soon and I told him so as he began to walk away from the mile.   “But I have to go to the bathroom,” he complained. ...

Title: The Campbell-Savona Meet Part I This time of year I check the weather a lot and on Monday I did not like what I saw!   Thunder and lightning were in the forecast.   In Section V we must take a clap of thunder or a flash of lightening very seriously.   We have to send the kids to the bus or into a school building for thirty minutes.   If there is a new clap of thunder or slash of lightning, we must start the watch again.   “What if a parents cell phone shows that the storm is far away and not in our area?” you might ask.   It doesn’t matter.   Section V does not allow us to make a judgment call like that.   When I went to bed Monday night I thought, “Maybe the weather will look better in the morning.”   It didn’t.   Monday morning the percentage of a thunder storm had increased and the chances of it stretched from 4pm to 7pm at night!   Yipe!     I imagined being trapped on a bus with a bunch of kids, waiting...

Title: The Surprise Birthday Party! Somehow the cross country team learned that Sara, one of its runners, had never had a surprise birthday party.   One of us brought up throwing a surprise party for Sara as a team and since it was summer, that seemed doable.   We recruited Grandma into our scheme and began to plan.   Then on a beautiful weekday night, we showed up before Sara got home from work. We talked about how we were going to surprise Sara and finally we decided we’d hide all over the house and see which one of us she found first.   Carefully we picked out our hiding spots and then we waited for Sara to get home.   She pulled in and we scattered to our spots.   In the door she came and we heard Grandma talking to her calmly as she hung up her keys.   Grandma and Grandpa didn’t give a thing away as Sara left the kitchen and headed into the house.   Suddenly she screamed and we all came running out of our hiding spots.   We fou...