The Campbell-Savona Meet Part I

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 for the thunder and lightning to move on.  “Maybe it will get better later in the day,” I told myself.  Outside of my house a warm sun smiled down on the world and a gentle breeze was blowing.  “Why can’t this be the weather tonight?” I grumbled.

I came in from my jog and my heart sank.  The odds of thunder and lightning in Campbell, New York had increased and were in the seventy percent percentile!  I started praying to my Heavenly Father about the situation.  It’s a long story but there was more than one reason I really wanted the meet to happen last night, so this wasn’t a tepid prayer but I was begging at the throne of grace in the name of Jesus.  When we got off the bus my daughter and some of the team like to gather up and pray before a meet.  Autumn also prayed for no thunder and lightning, very specifically.  God was good.  Please understand, He is not my genie in the bottle, and that I serve Him, not the other way around, but we are allowed to ask.  We didn’t get any thunder and lighting last night!  Do you know how rare that is in the spring with that kind of forecast?  You can call it luck but I appreciate God answering that request!

Campbell-Savona has a great stadium with a nice press box at the top!  At most league meets we fill out paperwork at a small table near the line or in a class room but at C-S, we climb the metal stairs to the top.  An official was talking to Mr. Rosko as I went over to the event sheets.  Coach Dave was right behind me and we sat down together.  Arkport-Canaseraga had already filled out the sheets (and of course C-S, being the home team had too) and I was stunned.  Arkport hasn’t been a huge team in years (they used to be a real power in the league years ago) but as I began to fill out the event sheets I began to grasp how big they were!  “They have a 3200 relay,” I muttered to myself, putting ours in.  I filled out the hurdles and then flipped the page to the 100 dash.  My eyebrows went up.  They had a huge list of girls!  “Oh, my,” I breathed.  We were in for a much bigger fight than I had anticipated.  It wasn’t just that event.  They had literal armies of girls in long jump and discus too!  At the end of the meet they ran FOUR 1600 relay teams!  Little D school like us are usually blessed to field ONE team much less run FOUR!

Like our first meet of the season Cash got us a lead in the beginning of the 3200 Relay but since at Cuba they came back to beat us, we were putting the pedal to the metal!  Jill did great maintaining the lead, which I began to realize was sizable.  I told Dezie, “When you get that baton, I want you go give me a very fast first lap!”  She nodded and when she got the baton, Dez took off!  Around she burned, looking like she was running the four hundred dash, just like I wanted.  At this point our lead was significant to say the least.  Would Dezie die though?  As she was coming into the line I told her, “Stride out the next 200.”  She did so.  When Dez reached the 200 line she kicked and when Pink got the baton, the door was effectively shut.  The last girl made up some ground but the deficit was too much and Pink crossed the finish line comfortably ahead.  It was our first 3200 relay win!  It was exciting but poor Jill had to head down to hurdles, Cash went to the high jump, and I told poor Pink, who was still at the fence recovering, “Get over to the triple jump and check in.”  She nodded.  What about Dez you ask?  Dez was signed up in four running events!  She didn’t have to head anywhere and it’s a good thing too.  She was in for a long day on the track!  Yet not one of them complained but headed off to do battle elsewhere!

Have you ever missed something obvious?  I mean something painfully obvious.  Well, I missed it and so did everyone else at the meet.  The girls hurdles were on the guys marks.  “Why is that a big deal?” you ask.  Well, the guys do the 110 hurdles the spacing is different.  Girls hurdles are spaced at 8.5 meters where the guys are spaced at 9.14.  That doesn’t sound like a big deal does it but what most people don’t realize about hurdles is that your steps are critical to success.  Four steps are the key to the event but if you start five stepping it slows you down.  My daughter came in a second slower than normal.  That was disappointing because she had worked hard over break!  Autumn still won but it was a poor time.  Jill was really off of where she should have been and Zoe had improved over break and yet her time was poor too.  It wasn’t until I helped set the hurdles for the next event that I realized something was wrong.  The hurdles were on the yellow and we shoved them up to the white lines above them.  That doesn’t sound so bad but when I looked behind us I saw another set of white lines.  “What????” I thought.  Early in my coaching career I memorized the little ditty, “To the blue and up two” to help me remember where to put the hurdles.  I got it from another team with blue lines for their boys hurdles too.  Boys hurdles are always pushed back toward the finish line, why was there another row of hurdles?  Unless....  Slowly it dawned on me that things were wrong.  I mentioned it to the coach next to me (who is extremely knowledgeable and I have asked his advice over the years many times) but he didn’t understand what I was saying.  “Maybe I’m wrong,” I thought... but I didn’t think so.  C-S kids were doing a great job getting things set up ahead of us, so I stepped out and counted the hurdles.  Sure enough I counted 11 rows!  I told the official, “I’m not great at math but I think we have 11 lanes of hurdles.”  He did a count and then nodded, “You’re right,” he said.  We adjusted it and the boys race went great.  How did so many vet coaches miss that?  It happens:)  At least it wasn’t the county or sectional meet!

The 100 dash was up next.  Remember I said that there were a lot of girls in this event?  Yeah, well, in the first heat I saw BOTH of my good girls.  I ran down the lane, reaching the official while the girls were checking their blocks.  “Is this the fast heat?” I asked, very concerned.  “Yes, coach.  I asked for the fastest girls from each school and this is what we got.”  I smiled at him and said, “That is fine, thank you!”  Back to the line I went (I was the second watch and in the 100 dash that is an important place) when a parent called out to me I had dropped my pen!  She directed me and I got it but now the starter was raising the gun.  You have to time from the smoke NOT the sound of the gun, so I started jogging backwards... barely missing a steeple chase barrier (ask Brandon Marlatt about how it feels to hit one of the those!)  The smoke poured out the top and I clicked the watch, then I dashed for the line too!  I made it just fine and was able to cheer my girls on for a second before the fast heat hit the line!  My top 100 runner got third and made a HUGE improvement on her time!  I was very pleased and let her know that.  My other top girl was very disappointed in her time.  “Shake it off,” I said, “you still have the 200 dash to go.”

It was then I noticed that pole vault was still not going and this was the third event, with bad weather in the forecast (which again the Lord was very gracious about!!).  “Leland,” I barked to my son outside the fence.  “Please get me Coach Dave!”  When David got over to me I said, “Coach, the pole vaulters need an adult to warm up.  Will you watch them until I can get over there?”  Why did you have to officiate the pole vault?  Well, a few years ago CS stopped paying their helpers and ever since track and field at CS has struggled to get enough help to run a meet smoothly.  That is not the coaches fault.  So next time you see Mrs. Green or a board member, thank them for paying our helpers.  It makes for a much nicer meet experience!!

In fantasy genre little things (like what happened to us in the hurdles) can throw heroes off too... or they should.  A poorly weighted sword can handicap an excellent swashbuckler.  A ring of power twisting the mind of our hero can create new problems for his or her traveling companions.  A sailing ship with great cannons and a great crew is low on powder due to some of it getting wet.  An expert archer has only so many arrows and he is being pursued by a horde of evil creatures!  Like the hurdles, things seem fine at first but our hero notices something is off during the struggle. 

 *** 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 ***