I'm back

I had a text from a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago asking if I had been on vacation. I think that when you are retired you can never really say you are on vacation; you are simply doing something different that day. Some of you know and most everyone else will figure it out and someday I will write a column to explain, but just not yet.

Today I want to talk about the track meet that was held on May 13 at the high school track in Ritzville. This meet was the district championship meet which would have been followed by the regional, and the state meet would have been held this coming weekend; but not this year.

LRS didn’t get a chance to host the Undeberg Invitational this year or last year. When it came to volunteering to help with the championship meet a lot of people stepped up and were more than willing to help, even though the meet was changed from a Saturday to Thursday.

The Meyer brothers (Mark and Dan) made the trek over the hill to help me at the long jump and triple jump venue and it was a lot of fun seeing them again. It’s been awhile and we had a great time visiting, as usual. There were a lot of quality laughs, too.

We met a lot of fine young athletes who were excited about competing and participating in the last meet of the season. I had a chance to visit with several athletes from other communities and asked them what year they were in school. It is a shame when the 2020 track season was cancelled and this year’s season was shortened. This is the second year in a row where there was no state competitions. I’m not sure how many athletes were affected by this. I’m sure there were plenty of kids that made decisions that if there was no state championship competition then why waste time competing at all.

The field events were first and it was great to finally see the kids showing their talents. Most of the competitors are involved with more than one event and they are going from long jump to high jump to a race. We just make sure they get all of their allotted jumps in. We do a pretty good job of mixing them into some sort of rotation if they are going from event to event.

Some of these athletes finish a race and they are still breathing hard and they tell us they are back to finish their jumps. We tell them to take a breather, because we want them to get in a good jump. We want them to be at their best.

The triple jump competition was a real joy to watch because of the sportsmanship and support that these athletes had for each other. When a competitor would get on the runway, competing athletes lined the runway and would clap their hands in support. Whenever the two best triple jumpers finished, they all came down to where the jump was measured to see how far they went.

The competitors were hoping one or both of the jumpers would exceed 40 feet. When the young man from Chewelah went over 40 feet on his last jump, the kids from the other schools congratulated him like he had just hit a game winning 3-point shot to win a basketball game.

The great thing about track and field competition is that there is rarely a bitter rivalry in the competitions. Everyone wants to see the athletes perform their very best. Even a last place finisher can achieve their best time or jump at any given meet. The support they receive from others is extremely important and is usually measured in congratulations and smiles. Well, I’m back now; see you next week.