The Campbell-Savona Meet Part III
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 Quincy
Devon Hawkins had a huge throw on Tuesday! That throw has put him to the number one slot
in D and twelfth for D, C, and CC!
Obviously it won the meet:) Devon really struggled at the JC meet, so it was nice to
see him come back so strong on Tuesday! Dylan
Draper is sitting in third place on the D leader board and grabbed second place as
well and Quincy launching a third place finish
In pole Leland was in a battle with a really nice guy named
Will from Arkport and ended up losing it but it was a great match between
them! Leland has been very consistent in
pole vault this year and is one of the top vaulters in D right now. The battle for Leland is mastering the FX
pole and going higher. The other day
Leland came over shaking his head.
“Brigand really hates me!” he growled.
I smirked and replied, “Don’t take it personally, Brigand hates
everyone!” (Brigand is Autumn’s 145
Pacer FX pole). Brock Miles has been
working hard on bending the pole and came in third with a nice vault!
The track didn’t go quite as well for us on Tuesday but we
were missing our big gun team Captain Aaron Flint! He’s been very sick for the last several days
and we would appreciate prayer for him!
As good as Aaron is though, he does not run every event, and my hat is
off to some of the talent on the Arkport boys side!
Matt Geffers is an Arkport athlete that was a teammate of
Autumn’s this winter under the Hornell track program. Matt is a great guy and those few meets where
Matt and Autumn competed separately from Hornell, we brought JT blocks that we
shared with him. Former JT powerhouse
Parker Groff had a huge impact on Matt giving him tips on three stepping. During those long cold months I would be
cheering for Matt and Autumn in the 55 hurdles.
Now we were facing him. Lance is
skilled at the hurdles and he is very fast but Matt is a three stepper and he’s
mastered it. That is game over! Still Lance has been working on three
stepping and so as we walked in I explained he was up against someone very good
and not to get discouraged or be surprised after the gun went off. In D, C, and double C Matt is sitting right
now in fourth place!! Yipe! Lance brought his A game three stepping in
the beginning of the race and then he hit a hurdle and it threw him off. Matt blasted to the finish line for the win
BUT Lance got a great PR! It was good
enough to put him in tenth place in D, C, and CC! Lance and I have a lot of work to do and the
season is going to go fast but hopefully he can give Matt a run for his money
at the County and Sectional contest!
In the 400 relay a hero emerged. Camden Miles stepped in for Aaron and did a
great job! JT boys are sitting in third
place on the D leader board and it is really quite a group of boys! You’ve got Lance coming off the blocks,
Tristan Stone the second leg, Tommy Flint as the anchor, and of course Aaron
Flint who Camden went in for! The boys
won!
Arkport-Can (I keep forgetting they merged with Canaseraga,
no disrespect intended) had a huge cross country team this year full of hard
working guys. We totally got outmuscled
in distance events. But we fought them
hard in middle distance and short events!
On the track it was the boys night for second place overall. Tristan got us second in the 400 (it was
tough to have Aaron out of that!), Dylan got second in the 800, Leland got us
second in the 400 hurdles (losing to, you guessed it, Matt:), and Tommy Flint scored
second in the 200 dash!
The boys beat CS but came up short by one point against
Arkport-Canaseraga! The boys groaned
that if only they had run the 1600 relay they might have won! Hindsight is always 20-20 but Coach Laurens
is doing a GREAT job with the boys and I look forward to seeing what they will
accomplish yet this year!! Speaking of
Coach Laurens, to run pole vault I had to turn second place over to him, a very
stressful job for a new coach. (I used
to love the later places when I was a newer coach:) Coach Laurens managed the watch
perfectly!
In fantasy it is okay to come up short at times, even if you
have many great and talented heroes!
That is life! I think that is
what made Avengers Infinity War so good in that the heroes came up short. “What if Thor had cut Thanos arm off with his
new axe weapon?” Do you always make the
right call every second in your life?
Like the boys, don’t you sometimes groan, and say, “If only I
had....” We all do. Marvel raised the stakes but will probably
undo the damage with time travel or some such thing (I haven’t seen the next
movie so I don’t know:) When I was a kid
I really liked the Dragon Lance series put out by TSR. I doubt I would like them so much now but I
was riveted then. It was very formulaic
BUT the good guys lost sometimes and paid a price when they did. When the knight dies heroically I cried. (I cried in the hobbit when the lead dwarf
died too). If the bad guys are powerful
than the good guys should lose sometimes (unless God is on your side! If that happens it is game over for the bad
guys!) In “An Assumed Risk” (a blending
of science fiction and fantasy genre) several heroes have died. I don’t kill them lightly and have cried over
some of their deaths. Actually, the one
I cried about the most is coming up in book eight! It raises the stakes for the reader if they
know beloved characters can die or pay horrible prices for being heroic. I think this is why so many people like the
Ambulance sequence in “A Distant Boom”!
In the chaos of a base under attack C-3 is roaring through an overrun
area heading for the hospital. Jack
Pascel is close to death and they are doing everything they can to keep him
alive! A pregnant woman in the ambulance
is having a baby and Heavy has to help her even though he is only a teenage
boy. Crazy Mop is driving the ambulance
through the streets dodging tanks and enemy deployments as the bases mini city
teeters on falling. When they make it to
the hospital they find the dark is already there! The boys have to muscle their way in and
blast their way into the hospital to find a doctor. The reason it works is that the readers have
seen loss before! They’ve also seen characters
like Mop heavily scared by being heroic.
Mop’s very grip on reality is extremely questionable and that is the
character they must lean on the most in the nightmare they find themselves
in. Here is the scene....
Excerpt from Book Three in the C-3 series “A Distant Boom”
(Note: Weapons are spiritual and do not operate quite like
ours do. The swords, daggers, and
bullets the heroes shoot represent the Bible)
* * * * * * *
Doctor Eshe did
not know what to think. When she became
a royal physician she knew she might have to go into a war zone, but she hadn’t
thought it would be with a bunch of kids doing really, really crazy stuff! She clung to the boy, trying to fathom the
fact that her life was in the hands of a fourteen-year-old boy.
As they drew
closer to the city, she saw an abandoned ambulance on the city outskirts. “Thank you, Master!” she breathed. To Six she shouted, “That ambulance is just
what we need to keep your friend alive!”
Six skidded up to the vehicle.
Its lights were on, flashing incessantly in the growing dark. The driver’s door was open, but no one was in
the front. A rocket flew by them. As if by magic, a pistol appeared in Six’s
hand. A goblin was yelling to his
comrades when a bullet pierced his eye, misting him. Spinning, the other goblins began to shoot,
sending bullets everywhere around them.
Six dropped goblin after goblin, his accuracy a contrast to their
reckless shooting. The goblins broke,
fleeing, cursing as they went around a building down the block.
Mop roared up
with the others. “It’s going to get
worse as we get in the city! We need to
keep moving!”
“Doc wants an
ambulance,” Heavy nodded lifting Two and carrying him gently toward the back
doors.
“You can’t be
serious!” Mop yelled angrily. “Why not
just put a huge target on our back and....”
“I don’t think
he’s breathing!” Heavy cried out. Eshe
ran to the doors yelling, “Get him inside, fast!”
Mop sighed,
“Big target it is. Two had better
appreciate this!”
Ripping open
the back door Eshe found a woman moaning in pain. “Guys, get her on the floor, I need that
stretcher!”
“I’m having a
baby!” the woman screamed.
Eshe glanced at
her with a practiced eye and groaned.
The young mother was obviously in the final stages of labor, and she
might deliver in minutes. But she also
knew that babies keep their own timetable and that the boy in her care was
fighting a count down of his own. What a
nightmare! She groaned.
The boys looked
at the moaning woman uncertainly, but Eshe minced no words. “Boys, your friend is dying right now! She
can have the baby on the floor!
Move!” The boys jumped into the
back, gently lifted the woman and placed her on an empty space near the
door. Water spilled everywhere, and the
woman started wailing.
“Um,” Heavy
said, putting Two on the stretcher, “There is water all over the floor.”
Grabbing the
paddles nearby, Eshe shot back, “Congratulations, kid! I’m promoting you to doctor. Get us out of here!” she screamed.
Mop jumped in
the driver’s seat and Boom rode shotgun.
Opening the glass, Mop said, “We’re rolling! Keep him alive, please! The other guys are running interference for
us.”
The paddles
were charged. “Clear!” Eshe yelled,
slamming them down. A jerk, but no other
response.
As the
ambulance took off, Heavy declared, “They need me up front in the cab!”
“Well, I need
you here more!”
“But I don’t
know anything about women, much less one having a baby!” he protested.
“Time to learn,
big boy!” Eshe said through clenched teeth, ramming down the paddles
again. The woman yelled in agony. “Hand me your dagger, kid!” Heavy did so, and Eshe promptly rammed it
into Jack’s brain.
“Isn’t that
kinda extreme?” Heavy asked, wringing his hands.
“He’s dying,
kid. It doesn’t get much more extreme
than that!” Again the paddles came down,
the body jerked, and still, nothing.
Turning up the voltage, Esha ordered, “Check and see if the baby is
coming. Clear!” Another jerk.
“How am I
supposed to do that?”
Without
answering, she grabbed a shot from a bin and popped the cap. “Hey, you can’t do that!” Heavy
protested. “He’s not supposed to have
any more shots!”
“Thank you, Doctor
Heavy!” Eshe snarled ramming the shot into the boy’s chest. “When I want medical advice, I will certainly
seek it from someone other than a fourteen-year-old. What I want YOU to do is to look between her
legs to see if there is a baby’s head in the birth canal.”
Heavy almost
fainted. He looked at the groaning woman
and wanted to throw up. “I’m NOT looking
between her legs!” Heavy said miserably.
She hit Jack
was with the paddles again. This time a
faint pulse could be discerned. “Praise
the Master!” she cried out joyfully, and feverishly began hooking the boy up to
machines. “Heavy, you seem...” the
vehicle swerved sideways and skidded to a halt.
Mop and Boom leaped out and a massive amount of gunfire could be heard
nearby. “...seem to be a godly young
man, and I applaud that.” Pulling open
the window, she reached for the communicator.
“There’s nothing dirty about helping a woman have a baby. Relax.
Please look, OK?” With the push
of a few buttons, she activated the system.
Grabbing the wireless headset, she went back with the boy. “What is this lad’s name?”
“Two.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I
am,” Heavy laughed in spite of himself.
“It’s coming!”
the woman yelled.
“Shhh....” Eshe
said gently, moving to the woman. “Move
aside, Heavy. I’ll do it.” But as she
knelt down, the machines on Two went wild.
Eshe leapt back. “Heavy, please
check her.”
“Um...” he
glanced down with one eye open. “Ya, it
looks like the baby’s coming.”
Mop jumped back
in the driver’s seat. Angrily he yelled
at Boom, “Next time, don’t freeze like that!
You almost got us all killed!”
“Sorry! I’m not some combat soldier, OK? I’m just a kid!” Boom shot back and began to cry.
“You’re a
member of C-3, buddy! Start acting like
it!”
“I’m supposed
to be changing diapers and watching little kids! I’ve almost died several times tonight, and
I’m getting sick of it!”
“Stop whining
and feeling sorry for yourself, ya big baby!
Is that GPS finally warmed
up?”
As if in answer,
a female voice said, “At the next light, take a left.”
Nervously
watching the machines, Eshe thumbed the communicator switch. In her ear a frazzled communications officer
barked, “Command,”
“This is Royal
Physician Eshe, I have a critical patient that I am transporting to your
hospital. I need the hospital to....”
“I don’t care
if your patient is King Storm himself, no one is to go to the hospital...or
anywhere else without armed escort. You
need to divert to shelter F, which is....”
Eshe shot back,
“I have irregular troops with me, so I have the escort thing covered! I need you to call the hospital and....”
“Please
hold!” Elevator music actually started
playing in her ear.
Boom yelled,
“One of those FEAR things is coming!”
“I see
it!” Mop hit the accelerator. Bullets ripped through the ambulance, tearing
holes in the sides, popping cabinets open and scattering their contents
everywhere. Grabbing on for dear life,
Eshe looked out the window only to see a tank coming right at them. She screamed and pointed as Mop wrenched the
wheel, swerving wildly out of the way.
In Eshe’s ear
the comlink chirped. “Ambulance four,
Royal Physician, are you there?” Before
Eshe could respond, the tank fired and the loud roar stunned her. Shaking her head to clear it, Eshe glanced
over at Heavy and nodded approvingly as he held the woman tightly through the
last two sudden swerves. “Ambulance four, Royal Physician, do you copy?”
Mop shoved the
gas pedal to the floor while the GPS
stated calmly, “In three lights, take a left.”
Eshe spoke into
the comlink, “This is the Royal Physician, go.”
“Ma’am, the
city is under attack, and we have lost contact with the hospital. We have sent two squads from two different
directions, but both are bogged down at the moment. Your irregulars must hunker down somewhere
until we can get some extra help to you.”
Boom started
firing out the window as machine gun fire bracketed the ambulance. A goblin rocket hissed into the air,
exploding off a building beside them.
Bullets began to spiderweb the windshield.
Mop yelled,
“You hit one out of FIVE? Come on, Boom,
you’ve got to do better!”
“Well, excuse
me, Mr. Perfect. I’m firing from a
moving vehicle, and I wanted to make sure I got the goblin with the ROCKET
LAUNCHER!”
Eshe clicked
the communicator and responded, “Negative base.
The irregulars are determined to get through. Please notify city security forces that
irregulars are operating in theater.
Designate the group as C-3.”
Heavy suddenly
pleaded, “Doc, this lady is about crushing my hand! I think the baby’s....”
“You’re doing
fine!” Eshe snapped. “Just keep encouraging her. We’ll be to the hospital soon.”
A crackle and
then in her ear she heard, “Ambulance four, I must advise you that there is
heavy fighting in the hospital. Your
irregular unit should exercise extreme caution and not do anything crazy.”
“No promises on
the crazy part, command, but we appreciate the warning!”
Mop barked,
“Looks like Calvin cleaned up your mess back there, Boom, but you can’t always
trust hotshots like him to save the day!
You need to keep it together!”
“The guy with
the pistols is not Calvin! He’s
Alexander Sutton or Six. Go is driving a
motorcycle around outside. His real name
is Pablo, and he has a great sense of humor! My name is....”
Mop shook his
head in disgust. “It’s just your speed,
Boom, to cover up your failures with your big mouth!”
Heavy called
out desperately, “What I’m trying to tell you is that this lady is pushing my
hand. I think the baby’s coming!”
Alarms went off
around Two who flatlined. “No! No!
No!” Eshe cried snatching up the pads only to find them dead. The bullets had destroyed the shock
paddles. Eshe, started manual CPR,
praying for all she was worth.
“Turn left
now,” the GPS said without a care in the world.
With a squeal of tires, Mop made the turn.
“Boys!” Eshe yelled in frustration. “I’m trying to do CPR here. Please take the corners a little more
gently!”
The brakes
slammed, smashing her up against the partition.
Heavy was yelling angrily from behind, and the woman was now
shrieking. “I didn’t mean you had to
stop!” Eshe shouted.
Mop replied
calmly, “We’ve got trouble ahead.” Cars
were lined up in a zigzag pattern across the road and lit on fire .
“It’s a trap!”
Boom said.
Mop rolled his
eyes. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Six and Go pulled into view. They jumped off the bikes and began moving
through the cars, weapons at the ready.
“Get out there and help them, Boom!”
Eshe was
already back at CPR as she watched the boys.
Tears began coming fast and furious.
“Please,” she whispered. “We’ve
come all this way, Master, don’t let him die now.”
“The baby is
coming!” Heavy yelled.
“Relax, Heavy
I’m sure it’s not, OK?” gasped Eshe as she continued chest compressions.
“I can see the
head!”
Eshe’s eyes
went wide. “Disinfect your hands,
now! Hurry!”
Heavy tore
through the scattered supplies and cabinets.
“OK, got some disinfectant. Tearing
open the package, he wiped his hands.
“Hey, there is a box of latex gloves here, too!”
“Put them
on! Quick!”
Heavy ripped
open the box, sending half the gloves every which way. Pulling on a pair with a snap he said, “OK,
what now?”
“Let her
naturally push the baby out and wipe it down with something clean when it comes
out.”
“Do I have to
slap its bottom or anything?”
Eshes grunted,
“No.”
“Do I have to
cut the cord thing, because I don’t know if....”
“Just catch the
baby, OK?”
Bullets slammed
into the ambulance again, but the people inside were too busy to worry about it
as they zipped through about them.
“We’re almost
through!” Mop yelled.
Two started
breathing again.
Boom leaped
back in and Go climbed in, too. Six hung
off the side as the computer declared, “You have reached your
destination.” Ahead of them was a large
building. Across its large glass doorway
were a few overturned vending machines with goblins peeking over them. Although the goblins had noticed them, they
did not start shooting because they were over 200 meters away. Sounds of gunfire could be heard echoing from
inside the hospital, but the parking lot was unnaturally calm.
Eshe leaned over
the front seat and hissed, “I’ve been told this place is under heavy attack,
maybe we should wait for backup.” A man
in a renaissance hat appeared behind the crouching goblins. Eshe gulped.
“That’s a berserker! I really
think we should wait for help!”
Mop called out,
“Don’t expect this next part to be as easy as smashing goblins in a street
ambush.”
“Easy?” Boom
retorted.
“Six, get
off! Everyone else, buckle up!” Mop
ordered, slowing to a stop, but revving the motor.
“What are you
thinking? They know we’re coming! There is no element of surprise here!” Boom
wailed.
“Sure, it will be a surprise!” Mop growled impatiently. “A small rag tag force would not be stupid
enough to attack dark troops backed up by berserkers! But they don’t know that we are dC-3. Calvin could probably blow half of them away
himself!”
Boom stared at
Mop in horror. “We are not dC-3!” he
cried, lunging for the wheel.
“Assume the
position!” Mop ordered as he floored the gas pedal. The ambulance leaped
forward into the hospital parking lot, speeding past parked cars and heading
straight for the entrance. Boom and Go
screamed and threw their arms up across their faces. The last thing they saw were the goblins’
eyes bulging from their sockets. Eshe
dropped down and wrapped herself around Two and the stretcher, shrieking,
“Heavy! Brace that baby!” The boy cocooned the little body with one arm
while wrapping the other in a harness secured to the wall. He had just locked his legs around the young
woman when the ambulance hopped the curb and smashed through the glass doors in
a spray of glass and metal, crashing through the barricade. Sounds of gunfire erupted about them as C-3
piled out. Heavy handed the new mother
her baby, stripped off the bloody gloves and scooped up his gun. Fumbling with the back door for a second, he
jumped out.
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