Wednesday, July 09, 2025

Run




Yesterday the temperature was near 100°. As I said outside the athletic field of the Taylorsville High School at the bus stop waiting for the 217 northbound. I had been trying to link up with my friend for coffee at the wrong Starbucks so I was backtracking in the silver bearing Heat. If I sat waiting for the bus, had managed to find some shade which meant a little prediction for the bearing Heat. I noticed there was a group of girls and what look like physical education PE garb running or jogging in the sports field. It's actually a huge field I never orange markers making a huge rectangle maybe a hundred yards on the side. I think you could actually stick two football fields in this area. There is 40 or 50 girls masked together jogging slowly around this temporary track. I got the strong impression that this was the beginning of a practice of some sort, a sporting practice like soccer practice or something like that. But mostly was soccer practice since that's what everything seems to be going to these days that and T- Timo ball or whatever it's called. Watching your kids make this run on this gloriously hot summer, July day took me back to my own youth when I was in the 5th or 6th grade and Little League baseball or whatever it's called. In those days there is never anything as organized as what seems to be going down as Sports these days. Who never was the cost associated with it either. In those days it was just a bunch of guys getting together to play baseball. We would snag somebody, an older kid who knew the game pretty well, to be our coach and then we would have one of the team members who had connections usually a dad who owned a business or knew somebody who owned a business that would be willing to sponsor our team you know provide balls and bats bases and everything you would need to run a scrimmage ball game. And what made me think of this was the running of the never-ending perimeter. It seems like we had to run something like five laps between home plate of this baseball field we acquired or took over to these goal posts which seems forever away and we would have to run at the beginning of each practice at least three laps and then there would be a lap for discipline if it was needed as well as a lap for errors when Fielding different baseball scenarios. Like if there's a pop-up fly- - and easy catch and you drop the ball there's a lap, you're playing shortstop the coach bats you a one or two bouncer and you miss it that's a lap. When you had to do a lap you dropped your mitt right where you were and took off to come back later to pick up your mitt and reenter the baseball practice. We got our coach in our case we got two coaches because Bruce Mccomb had twins for older brothers Larry and Gary who are also total athletes. I don't remember how many years those guys coached us. But they always did the same thing we had to run and we ran as a pack. And that's how we started each practice. There's also coach Smith in the 7th grade who seemed to take Delight in having us run laps at each PE class we are fortunate enough to have on the outside when it wasn't raining or snowing. We always did Laps on the big track before each regular class started. Must be an Unwritten rule somewhere and coaches jargon or practice. I'm sure it has something to do with warming up the body I'm getting the muscles ready for whatever torture they're going to through our way but looking back I wish now I'd enjoyed the privilege of running more than I did then

No comments: