First Track Meet 2019 Cuba-Rushford Part II

Title: First Track Meet 2019 Part II

Location: Cuba-Rushford

The bus pulled into the parking lot and some of my cross country runners cried out, “The Piñata meet!”  In cross country, we celebrate all the birthdays in one day by smashing a Piñata before the invitational at this location!  It is a lot of fun and brings warm and fuzzy memories but this is the first time we’ve ever been here in track.  Grabbing the tent and clipboard I yell, “Everybody bring something!” as I head for the door.   We have a complement of four pole vault poles, throwing implements, multiple metal blocks, batons, pole vault forms, and of course a tent. 

Dumping the tent near the track I ask a nearby coach, “Where are the event sheets?”  He points up at the massive metal edifice and replied, “Up in the press box.”  Coach Laurens (the boys coach) and I head for it, leaving the team in the hands of captains and vets.  Up the handicap ramp we go, our feet clacking off the stainless, white steel.  It’s cold, but I’m grateful.  It is week five of track and field and we are trying to get our first meet in.  The night before the winds hit 40 mph at practice!  Yipe!  Tonight the wind is almost nonexistent.  The next morning we would have snow for several hours, but that night we had balmy 41 degree temperatures... or at least that is what we started with.  Judging from the few teams reporting results on Yen Timing, it looks like we were one of the few class “D” teams to get a meet in this week. 

We start filling out event sheets, totally absorbed in them, as we write down our athletes.  When I finish the track event sheets, I start on the mass of clip boards that have the field events on it.  While we work Coach Laurens and I talk about the upcoming meet.  Suddenly I mutter, “I’d better check on the kids,” and stand up in the box, craning my neck at the field below trying to find our team.  A sea of black nearby are doing plys with the guys captains at the head with the girls on the farside of the track with their captains.  They look great and are all doing the same thing!  I am proud for a moment and then I return to the task at hand.  Captains and vets often run the team for up to a half-an-hour without a coach at a large invitational or at least they used to.  With the advent of computerized scoring, scratch meetings are becoming a thing of the past, but at smaller meets we still vanish into the bowels of a building for awhile, trusting our captains to run things while we are gone! 

Back down into the chaos of a meet we go.  Four teams are here, so streams of kids in brightly colored uniforms are heading this way and that.  I grab a vault signature, have a hasty conversation with some captains and then head over to the pole vault pit with kids.  Autumn or Leland would normally do this for me but Leland is over at the jumping pits getting his mark and Autumn is over at discus taking her warm ups.  I stand there looking for an official.  I hear, “Last Call for 3200 relay!”  I shrug and leave the area to go to the line.  Half way there the BR coach yells after me, “Coach, they have the standards on wrong!”  I turn around and look back at pole vault.  Sure enough he is right.  I hadn’t actually looked very closely at them, so I hadn’t noticed them.  The Cuba-Rushford coach comes running out.  (A great guy by the way and runs a wonderful program!)  “What do we have to do?” he asks.  The BR coach (who has high level vaulters just like me) says, “they need to be switched.”  I break in with “BUT they are probably bolted down!”  We are talking about large bolts that I think our maintenance crew does with a large Pneumatic Hammer!  The Cuba coach says, “We have a guy here!  I’ll get him on it!”  I head for the line, leaving pole vault far behind.  Little would I realize that Brock Miles would help the maintenance man and the pole vault official get the standards changed out.  I guess he was a BIG help because the grounds man made sure I knew one of my boys went out of his way to help!  Boy that’s nice to hear!  He told my wife the story too!  She was like, “It is so nice to hear great things about kids in our community like that and it reflects well on their parents!”  I agree!

3200 Relay.  I get to the line and Hawk asks, “Coach, are we facing anyone?”  I shrug.  “I’ve only seen the girls papers, Hawk, but I know THEY are!” I say to one of my girls.  “Still,” I tell him, “at a four team meet, I assume you’ll face someone.”  I had assumed wrong!  While the girls challenged Cuba-Rushford to a painful duel, the boys ran unopposed!  The meet is barely starting and JT boys are up six points!  (Normally that would be five but this meet was scored like a mini-invitational).  Walter Plaisted, Bryce Myers, and Brock Miles got their first track win in varsity without a fight!  Still they were brave enough to get in the ring!  Hawk has scored many points over his career but he was still happy for an easy win to start off his year:)

110 Hurdles.  I jog back down and make sure the girls are all down there when I see Lance and a team captain ready to hold his blocks.  Lance has transferred in from another school but he has been trained in the hurdles.  He’s not perfect at them but he’s pretty good!  I’m looking forward to seeing him run!  “Hey Lance,” I say lightly punching his shoulder, “I hope you do well!”  He nods.  Lance ends up third.  “Oh,” you might ask, “did he not do well?”  Oh, he did great!  He ran so fast he is now qualified for sectionals!  We call this the “A” or AUTOMATIC qualifying time!  Everyone wants an “A” and Lance got one his first race of the year!!

Shot Put.  At this point we are stripping the hurdles off the track when Quincy is walking by.  “Hey, Coach guess what I got?  I threw a 40!!!!!”  My jaw dropped.  A 40??  “Wow!” I say.  “Did that win?”  He’s like, “It had better win!”  It did by the way!  Quincy Cornell, AUTOMATIC or “A” for sectionals, shot put!  Later I would find out that Cable Hulbert went third overall in the event!  Not BAD!!!!!  Way to go boys throwers!

100 Dash.  Tommy was at the doctors, so a new athlete Kaeden Moore had to shoulder the burden of being our fastest runner in short distance!  He got fourth overall out of nineteen boys, which I thought was good!  We have to get him going off blocks! 

1600 run.  The pole vault pit was now fixed!  The official put up the bar and Brock Miles PR’d going over seven feet.  Brock was very excited!  “Alright, Coach, we need Hunter Heck,” the official said.  I sighed.  “He’s running the mile, right now!” I said pointing to the track.  Hunter is not a natural miler and was only doing it to try and help the team with points.  Being that this was a quad meet he did score a point!  He got done running a 7 something and came over tired.  (As I said, this is not normally an event he does).  At least he didn’t have to do what Jill did last year at the county meet!  She had to run the two mile all out and then immediately vault right afterward!! Hunter failed to get over qualifying height.

Pole Vault.  Leland came over from jumping and grabbed his pole.  He went over 8.1, then 8.7, 9.1, and finally faulted out at 9 feet and seven inches.  Ending up with a 9.1 Leland is now AUTOMATIC for sectionals in pole vault!  He would end up second and Brock got third in the event.  As soon as he got done he had to run off and do the 400 Intermediate hurdles!

400 Relay.  Lance, Aaron, Stone, and Kaeden were our relay team!  BR had a team too and they were neck and neck until the third corner.  Our baton exchange looked really good and they dropped their baton.  They weren’t DQ’d BUT they were instantly out of the race.  Unless the other team really messes up or you have the FLASH on your team, you can’t lose a couple of seconds picking up a baton and win the 400 relay!  Our guys finished two seconds off the school record WITHOUT Tommy!  Wow!

Open 400.  We might not of gotten first but Aaron Flint, Tristan Stone, and Dylan Draper took 2^nd – 4^th (again, a quad meet goes down five places in scoring!  JT takes 9 points to the winners 6!)  Dylan placed fourth from the slow heat, which is impressive!!

400 IH.  Leland had just done several quick vaults, which can be exhausting and now he was doing the 400 hurdles.  Brock came over with him and they both got set up.  There would be no fast and slow heat.  Cuba had six lanes of hurdles set up!  This would be a one and done, event!  Leland managed to place fifth, getting a time close to his best last year, which was exciting.  It was Brock’s first time in a 400 hurdles (mod does the 200 hurdles... which is VERY different!)  Brock survived and Leland scored a point!

High Jump.  At this point I heard people whispering about Reese Drapers High Jump.  Reese went 5’8”!!  He won the meet in High Jump AND he is AUTOMATIC for sectionals!!  Way to go Reese!  Newcomer Kaeden Moore placed fifth, also scoring, and Walter Plaisted got over opening height in his first varsity meet!

800.  Hawk went out strong and held first for awhile but another athlete got him toward the end knocking him back to second, which was too bad!  Still, we got second!

200.  Kaeden Moore, our new kid, was holding down the fort for Tommy coming in third place!!  Not bad!!! 

3200.  No entry, JT.

1600 Relay.  A pulse pounding battle erupts and JT gets ahead!!  Yes!!  Aaron Flint gets the baton and rockets away BUT the other teams big closer also gets the baton and chases after him!  Leland hears some of the other teams fans talking.  “So and so will chase down that JT kid!  This is his event!  This is what he does!”  Leland thought, “Nope!  That’s Team Captain Aaron Flint, sectional champion in the open 400 last year!  You are NOT catching him!”  Sure enough they didn’t and we won!  Other members were Lance, Dylan, and Stone!  Great job guys!!!

Discus.  We did not have a great night in discus:(  Normally our guys get it out into the high 90s or low hundreds!  Last night we couldn’t get out of the low 80s.  Oh, well!  That happens!  Maybe next time!  Quincy and Devon scored third and fourth, which isn’t bad for such a horrible night in the discus!

Triple Jump:  Reese and Leland placed second and third, which helped in team points!  Reese is an old pro but Leland is new to the event!  They both are off to a good start!

Long Jump:  We didn’t place but Reese did a decent job!  He walked away with a provisional rating in the long jump and that’s with them measuring from the back of the board!

*** 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 ***