Strangers in a Strange Land Part II

Title: Stranger in a Strange Land

Part II

The Johnson City track and football facility is built into a side of a hill.  Scant feet away from where we placed our team tent, you could look down a sharp hill to the world below you.  As I grabbed what I needed for pole vault Quincy asked me, “Where is the throwing area, Coach?”  I called back, “As soon as I get this squared away, I’ll help you guys find it.”

“Find it?” you wonder, gentle reader.  Oh, yeah!  You never know where the throwing pits are going to be at a site!  At Wellsville the shot put is in two different areas below the track.  At Alexander you have to walk around the school building to find the discus area.  At a new track it’s always a treasure hunt but this was one of the most interesting places for pits I have ever seen!  When I got vaulting all squared away, I went to the other side of the track.  Why the far side?  Because the drop off was so severe on our end you’d need a ski lift to get back if the pits were far below us!  As I went, I bumped into Dylan and Devon returning.  “It’s really up the hill, coach!” they warned.  As I left the facility I found a large green hill in front of me.  “I hope it’s on the top of this!” I thought.  It wasn’t.  When I reached the top of that area I found myself in a layered parking lot, with another very large hill beyond that.  Cut into that hill was a tennis court and above that area was another plateau with people milling around.  Up that hill I went (hill of death steep for about two hundred meters!)  It was up there I found the throwing areas.

Back down I ran to the road below and then I jogged back down the road to the far entrance near our tent.  We might not have a multimillion dollar facility at JT but our throwing pits aren’t in another time zone!  I told Autumn, “Have mom or grandma drive you up there when it is your turn to throw.”

About this time the coaches meeting was being called.  I walked to the finish line and saw Coach Laurens coming around the corner from the jumping pits (they had a huge net cutting this area off from the main area).  He was the only coach I knew at the meet.  That is rare.  Normally at a coaches meeting you say hi to several coaches.  I stood there with Coach Laurens listening to instructions and was surprised that I didn’t understand a few things about jumping when everyone else seemed fine with it.  I figured I’d ask Coach Dave after the meeting was over to explain it to me and he did.  Turns out Section IV runs several events like his PA track league did.  Toward the end the head Coach is like, “Oh, yeah.  The games committee!”  There was an inside joke about a coach and several laughed at... I just smiled being polite.  Three schools were named and then the man said, “Where is Jasper-Troupsburg?”  I raised my hand.  “You guys are the last members of the games committee!”  That was unexpected!  What is the games committee you ask?  It is your last chance of arguing your case about some injustice or another and getting a ruling.  I have never asked for a hearing but I suggested a friend call for one... against me:)  My friend coach came over after a race one time and claimed that my runner had cut his runner off.  Everything had seemed clean to me but I might not have had the right angle on it.  I wasn’t going to DQ my own athlete without knowing for sure they did something wrong.  “I didn’t see that myself,” I began diplomatically, “but if you feel that way, assemble the games committee.”  This was a county contest in front of a grandstand of people.  If my athlete clearly cut off his girl, someone should have seen it.  He didn’t but he could have.  Ironically enough, later in the day at this new invitational I could have asked for a games committee ruling and joked with one of my athletes that I would be arguing against myself. (If I assembled the committee they would have replaced JT on it... for obvious reasons:)  

Our first surprise was the pole vault was starting at 7 feet.  Jillian has been over 6’6” but never seven.  Girls were getting out left and right as they crashed into the bar, sometimes so badly that Autumn shivered.  Jill had a great first attempt, only clipping the bar with her shoulder.  Her next two attempts did not go as good and she was out... along with over half the field! 

Hurdles are going at this point and I got asked more than once, “Why isn’t Autumn running the hurdles?”  I tried to explain that all three of Autumn’s main events (Discus, pole, and 100 hurdles) were happening at the same time and while that doesn’t sound like a big deal, it is extremely stressful and can help you lose pole vault in a hurry!  I didn’t understand their disappointment and it was later that I realized that they wanted to see our best girl square off against the best Section IV had at that invite.  The size of the meet had an impact on Autumn as she almost faulted out at 8’ and 8’6” but she gutted through it and placed third in pole vault.

Zoe was nervous too.  It was her first invite and she was in heat four, which I was surprised by... until I looked closely at the times.  “It is a semi and final meet!” I thought, the old light bulb clicking on.  We don’t do such things in Section V and I am so glad.  Semi and finals are stupid in my humble opinion but when in Rome....  Bottom line, Zoe was up against a mixed bag of 100 runners instead of all people her level.  In the inner lanes were people trying to get to finals and they got slower as the lanes moved out.  Pink held her blocks and Zoe ran down the lane in her first track invitational!  She was disappointed with how she did in her heat, not grasping that she was up against some of the best talent in an A school 100 dash!  I was glad she chose to come and run though.  It says something about her.  Zoe wants to get good but she’s willing to work and I like that.  I don’t mind watching a kid lose who is killing themselves to get better.

Quincy.  At the first meet of the season Quincy threw 40 feet and he told me, “I hope it wasn’t a fluke.”  Then he also strained his arm and we spent days icing it at practice!  On Saturday his arm felt good and he threw a 38!  I’d say it wasn’t a fluke:)  If you go to the leader board and put in both C classes and D class you will find Quincy is 11^th in shot but even if you drop him to a 38, he would still be top 15 (at least at the moment he would be:)  My point is in a big school meet like that Quincy didn’t even make finals with a throw like that.  What’s finals in throwing?  Something very dumb... trust me:(  How dumb?  Well you make finals from the regular meet by being the top seven and you get four more throws.  “What is so dumb about that?” you wonder.  Autumn made finals and then faulted her throws.  Instead of giving her the throw that got her into the finals, Autumn is listed at the bottom as if she never threw a qualifying throw!  I told her, “They are lucky you didn’t have a great throw getting into the finals or I would have been assembling the “Games Committee!”  Yeah, I could have had fun screaming at myself! Actually, I’ve never seen a screaming match in track and field over the last decade and a half. 

Leland found out starting height in guys was 9’0”!  Many boys scratched learning that and many of those left were eliminated quickly enough.  Steeling himself Leland went to work.  Like Jill, one of his attempts Leland was over it and just touched it knocking the bar off.  That must have been VERY disappointing but he took it well.  His uncle, who had also been a pole vaulter for Tioga Central in Section IV thought it had been a great vault, so it was nice that he got to see that! 

Aaron.  Aaron has been working very hard in practice.  In early season on easy days he’d run mileage with distance to the point, where one kid asked why Aaron wasn’t running with them that day.  I smiled.  “Aaron isn’t a distance runner.  He’s middle distance," I explained.  Aaron was just going beyond what was expected because he knows how tough it is to be a Class Champion much less face the boys at State Qs.  How would he do at this meet?  I had no idea.  He was lane three on a six lane track in the second to fastest heat.  I hoped he would be fast enough to steal a place from the fast heat but this was a tough field!  I waited on the bend with my brother-in-law, cheering for him as he flew by.  In the last hundred Aaron turned on the jets and beat his heat handily!  Would it be enough?  It was!  I had hoped Aaron would squeeze into 6^th place but he got 4^th and a great time!  Yes!!!

*** 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/ Fairytale

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