The Ferd Stenta Invitational

Title: Ferd Stenta Invitational

Part I

When we first arrived at the invitational, it was a comfortable afternoon, with the sun peeking out.  Huge groups of teenagers with different uniforms on were warming up together and relay boys and girls were passing batons preparing for upcoming events.  The weather report looked grim but you couldn’t tell at the moment.  Autumn was putting her poles under a tent the home school had provided, when a brief driving rain hit!  Student athletes scattered everywhere, heading for their tents or cover.  A coach near the pole vault ran out to start covering the pit and I followed.  It was the weather’s shot across the bow.  By the national anthem the rain was gone but so were the warm temperatures.  A brutal wind began and temperatures started to drop.  By the end of the night snow would be in the air, swirling around. 

How bad was the wind.  It was bad.  In pole vault the wind was going right at the bar full force, forcing two men to literally hold it on with long poles before the vaulter hit the sky.  In the girls discus my wife said girls would throw and the discus would arc into the sky and then suddenly stop and crash into the ground to the point where it was half buried!  When Cash Perry was running the two mile it was at its worst!  At first Cash was able to tuck in behind other runners but as the field broke apart she found herself alone at one point.  She came around the corner and the wind hit her so hard it was like she came to a full stop for a moment and literally had to dig in to get moving again!  It was crazy!  (Fun Cash story **  Last night at practice Cash and I were verbally joisting about her doing the steeplechase.  “I don’t want to do it!” she stressed.  “Cash, I think you might be good at it!  I just want you to try it once!”  “NO!”  For the fifth time I was explaining why I wanted her to do this and she stopped me.  “Wait!  IF I run the steeplechase I don’t have to run the 3000?”  I smiled.  “Yes...  I’m not that mean Cash.”  Relief washed over her face.  “Oh, that is fine then!” she exclaimed.  I added, “Now when you are older you’ll be doing both....”  Two eyes narrowed dangerously. **)  By the time Leland was vaulting (the boys turn) the wind had died down and only a deepening cold with a constant breeze had to be dealt with. 

Remember that rain that came down hard in the beginning the meet?  It didn’t stay but it left behind a slippery surface... especially in the high jump!  I was watching a race when I heard people yelling for the Jasper-Troupsburg Coach.  That is rarely the herald of good tidings but dutifully I went to the high jump area and found Reese Draper sitting on the high jump matt blood coming out of his hair line.  He had slipped on the approach and slammed his head into the metal standard.  I thanked the official and moved Reese over to the benches near the end zone.  “I’ll get the med kit!” I told him running off.  A parent or kid (don’t remember which met me as I left the track area and I turned around and sprinted back.  His mother was soon beside me as I cleaned the wound.  “Do you think he’ll need stitches?” she wondered aloud.   “Maybe,” I said.  When we got it cleaned though we both were relieved that it didn’t look as bad as we feared.  While I worked I asked Reese questions testing his memory, watching for signs of a concussion.  He passed those questions but there were some other things that made me nervous.  “I think he should go to the hospital and be checked out,” worried that Reese might indeed have a concussion.  His mother was thinking the same thing.  She suggested I take him in the boys room and clean the blood off of his forehead with water and she’d get his stuff around... an excellent suggestion!  We walked in and found two teen girls waiting to use the stalls.  That surprised me but upon reflection I realized the line in the girls room was out the door.  Ah, 2019, what a time to be alive.  I debated saying something but no one was changing or using the urinals, so I let it go.  I turned my attention to Reese.  To the sink we went and cleaned his face.  The room was warm and for a few moments I warmed up before having to reenter the frigid night. 

Although the meet was not scored (even though fifteen teams were in attendance) you still want your team to do well and our best guy athlete was sick and our expert jumper was on his way to the hospital.  Not a great start to the evening:(  I hadn’t prayed with any of the kids and found my daughter immediately.  “Hey, can you pray.  Reese is heading to the hospital.”  She was “on deck” in discus but we paused by the netting and she prayed for our team and Reese.  I felt better after that.  (Good news!  Reese was ruled to be fine and didn’t need stitches!)  Praise the Lord some of our athletes did do well!  Devon Hawkins took third in discus, Lance Baumgarner took third in the 110 hurdles, and the 1600 relay team had a great third place finish in a tough race missing their best runner!  Autumn lit up the night.  She had come in second in the pole vault but in the hurdles she rocked the night!  She was lane three on the eight lane, so she was not top seed and it was a tight race through the eighth hurdle and then Autumn pulled away winning easily.  Autumn got over to the grass and suddenly Cash, Pink, and Dezie were hugging her tight yelling in joy!  It was a hallmark moment! 

In fantasy the reader wants a moment like that!  They are generally reading your book not to be intellectually stimulated (although that is nice too) but they are reading your story to escape the stresses of their life.  Perhaps they are on vacation on a warm beach, in their bedroom with a cup of coffee, or in a warm tub and they are trying to relax.  They need that moment where the hero wins!  Too easy and that win is boring or expected.  Too much of a slog and they might not care.  But like those girls, they want to rejoice in a triumph, and you can give the reader that!  I want my reader to like the hero and to be invested in their big moment.  I remember pacing while I was reading Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games I so invested in the story!

*** 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 ***