Strangers in a Strange Land Part I
Title: Strangers in a Strange Land
Part I
I have an AD that likes to stay on top of things and I
appreciate that. When we see each other
in January, she tells me, “As soon as you can, let me know what track
invitationals you want to attend this year, and I’ll get you registered.” I got her the list in February, asked for one
more invite than normal, and was pleased when she granted it!! But after a few days she did send me a concerned
email about the first invitational. “Did
you know that the first invite you scheduled is on the same day as Prom?” I did know that because my daughter had
brought it up to me. I told Autumn,
“It’s a buddy meet for field events and has hurdle relays! We can get a lot of nice ribbons for girls as
I can pair them up with you in field events!
AND it’s a straight up hurdle relay, as in ten hurdles! Come on, we will rock it!” Autumn nodded and said, “Okay, if it means
some girls getting some great ribbons, I’ll make it work.” The AD liked the sound of kids getting nice
ribbons too and we were all excited.
Then at the coaches meeting I found out that the relay and partner track
meet had gotten canceled. I guess they
had a huge craft fair scheduled and that was going to eat up all of their
parking. I had been hoping to give our
new girls a confidence boost and on the guys side maybe even win, but that was
gone now.
Oh, well! Alexander
was next on the schedule and that would be a good meet. The new girls probably wouldn’t get ribbons
but they would do well! As for our guys,
I was confident they would do some real damage!
Mrs. Green emails me out of the blue, “The Alexander meet was closed
twenty minutes after opening registration!
They are not taking any more teams!”
WHAT???? I got on the computer
and began looking for another meet, grumbling about Alexander. It wasn’t my AD’s fault, she had been all
over it, and I still thought it was dumb that they hadn’t taken more
teams. I start scrolling through
different invites but it was slim picking!
I jumped out of the Section V website and went to Tully Runners opening
up invites from all over New York
State Johnson City
What do I mean a big boy or a big girl meet? The first year I coached track I had a girl
destroy the 1500 all season long and then get to State Qs only to come in dead
last. After that I looked for a meet
with big schools and found one called the “Waverly Invitational”. The competition level was extremely hard and
that’s what we wanted! I’ll never forget
when we got to Waverly our first time and our guys high jumper went over to do
his thing. He came back with a long
face. “How did you do?” I asked. “I didn’t make it over opening height,” he
replied glumly. His best jump had been
in the high fours and at Waverly they started the bar at 5 feet! Yes, Toto, we weren’t in Kansas
“How bad could it really be?” you might ask. Well, my school, Jasper-Troupsburg, is a
Class D school with a size rating of 117 (based on school enrollment). Johnson City
has rating of 562 and Binghamton
I decided to go for it and told Mrs. Green to pull the
trigger on it! That day I got a
confirmation email with a list of seventeen other schools on the list. Only one of them was small like us and Corning Corning Corning and so nonchalantly mentioned to him
that we were facing Corning Corning Corning
One night before practice I explained that the invite was on the
edge of Spring Break and that it was going to be rough. I didn’t sugar coat it. It was like when Yakko from Animaniacs was giving
his army a pep talk in the Anvilania episode and they all run away in
terror. Dot says, “Maybe you should have
lied a little!” When I got done grimly
laying out what we might be facing, I growled, “It is going to be a strictly voluntary
meet, so don’t feel like you have to go.” Actually, it wasn’t voluntary for
everyone. I told my son Leland he was
going. He looked at me blankly and then
asked, “All I would be doing there is pole vault, right?” “Yes.” He relaxed a little and nodded. The other two that didn’t have a choice were
Cash and Pink. Cash complained, “Why
don’t I get a choice!” I told her she
needed to get a good look at higher level competition. Pink didn’t say anything but she was nervous.
I was very pleased with the amount of kids who signed
up! The other two members of the girls
3200 relay team signed up, Team Captain Jilly Bean and Dezie!! Then Zoe joined us too! Almost half the team! The boys had both Captains and several vets came along too. On Thursday night I
came to practice early to print out the event sheets for the meet. I ran them down to Coach Laurens and we began
to go through them with the team. Kids
were nervously grabbing at sheets searching for their names. We were all a little scared to be honest,
hoping we would at least stack up okay.
“OH NO!!!” I cried out. “What?”
kids asked timidly. “There are only
THREE 3200 relay girls teams in!! I
should have put us in!!!” Team Captain
Jilly Bean dashed over and stared at the paper.
“Look coach! Team three isn’t
even as good as we are!” Ugg!!! I cry out, “They have two heats of the girls
1500 but only THREE girl 3200 relay teams???”
I flipped over to the boys 3200 relay and they were jam packed! Nothing I could do about it but it at that
point but it would have been a nice confidence boost for the girls! Why didn’t I put them in? Well, remember that big girl meet I used to
go to? Yeah, when we ran our 3200 relay
the other teams were finishing when Courtney Cornell got the baton! Yipe!
I did not want my rookie 3200 relay team to get hammered at their first
invitational!
Autumn was in the top six of pole vault (no surprise
there... Autumn’s summer pole vault club is run by an A school coach) and while
Aaron was not in the top six of the 400, his times were close to theirs! Our best athletes were stacking up well! Those athletes in the slow heats had people
about their ability level to compete with and it should be a good day for them
too! The only big disappointment is that
Dylan missed a faster 800 heat by one place!
I said, “That is tough! What I
would do is run your first 400 at open 400 time, stride out the next 200, and
put everything you have in the last 200!”
Dylan smiled and said, “That is just what Coach Laurens told me!” I was very happy that night! We weren’t going to win the meet of course
but we were going to stack up nicely against our competitors!
The next day I got up in high spirits and noticed the sports
boosters had put up a post wishing the track team luck at our invitational. Since the team hosting the invitational were
also the Wildcats, we were headed for “Wildcats” stadium. I posted a picture of that on the sports
boosters page and stated, “At least we have homefield advantage!” The only weird thing is that the JC wildcats
have red and white colors. I’m sorry but
it you see a fire engine red cat with flecks of white coming out of its mouth,
it is probably sick and you should shoot it immediately!!!!! Our school colors, black and silver are much
more catlike and dangerous looking!!! I
stopped to buy a coffee at the Jasper Junction and was asked where the track
team was going. “Wildcat Stadium!” I
announced. With a smirk I repeated my
homefield advantage joke and they all got a kick out of it.
Can you think of a fantasy story where the heroes don’t
travel anywhere? I can’t. Every single Terry Brooks novel has the
heroes off to a far away land, Tolkien did the same thing, and myriads of other
fantasy stories! Usually in that story
it is a small group that is trying to slip into enemy territory with dangers
all around them and massive enemy armies.
If they do make contact with the enemy the battles are dangerous, the
stakes are high, and victory is not ensured!
These groups are generally called a “party” or “fellowship” and they
have champions, grizzled vets, and novices in their ranks. Just like a fantasy story, my team was
journeying into unknown territory headed to a place where you can almost hear a
veteran say, “One does not simply walk into a Big boy, big girl track
meet!” Ready or not we loaded up the bus
and headed out, under a bright blue sky.
*** 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 ***
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