Illinois High school State Cross-country meet, 1992

 

 

 

The last thing Coach said was that it is important for all of his runners to check out the state meet, especially since it is held in Peoria. Most runners who are serious about the sport spend all four years of their high school trajectory dreaming to come down to Peoria to compete. The only people from our team who come are myself and Peacock. Hans Logrotto is at a swim meet. He goads me, stating that I should seriously consider coming out for the team.

“Mrs. Bruington said that you were pretty dedicated coming down to the pool every day to get rehabilitated.”

I tell him that running is my first love.

The next day Dad takes myself and Peacock to watch the state meet. The park is packed. We park Dad’s 79 dodge along I-29, near where the first mile mark is at.

“This will be a good chance for you to cheer on your friend Adam White.” Dad starts talking about Adam White as if we have some rapport.

Detweiller is packed. School buses are lined up in saluting fashion near the west drive of the course. There are seemingly hundreds of them. It looks more like going to a football game where every fifth individual is wearing the jersey for his selective team than going to a cross-country meet.

I am awed. The day looks like a dirty nickel fished out of a car ashtray, clouds bulbous chins pregnant with snow.   Even with the overcast day there is a carnivalesque atmosphere. What seems like hundred of yellow standard school buses are lined on the west side of the park in a sea of pee-stained dashes. Detweiller has morphed into a city. Athletes are stretching contorting limbs around the back of their necks. Some schools have even brought their bands to play on the side lines as the runners row past the starting lines twice.

Ahead  are two military jeeps plowing the course, the second has a camera affixed to the back and two commentators speaking into a microphone. Sports Channel is here to broadcast they event a week later on late-night cable. There is a banner proclaiming the name pinned against the trees as the athletes enter the triangle.  We arrive just as the Girl A is making the first  turn towards the half mile mark. A spritely blonde headed girl the size of a grade school fire hydrant has taken the lead. They are beautiful girls. It is class A. Country Girls who wake up at 4:30 in the morning and run past sleepy-eyed sockets of hay and dilapidated barns. Girls whose running shoes are incised with tattered country dust from running down dirt roads against the longitudinal muddy incise of oversized John Deere Tractor tires tattooed into the earth. Girls who hail from schools with names like Hersher and Ogden . Bumpkin yahoo inbred sounding syllables, Freeburg, Tolono, Winnebago, Bloch. Brimfield. Toga clad country cornfield Ben Hur sophist philosopher sounding names such as Seneca and Sparta. The rather  New Age nautical sounding Argenta-Orena, which is the pre-race favorite. I have never heard of any of these schools in my life, yet I have lived half an hour away from the vernal cross country flat surface coliseum that is the states meet, the course I agitated my right leg on the first time I ran a little over a month ago.

The girl ahead is paddling away from the pack as if she fleeing from a bevy of toothless county  lepers.  She is gorgeous. It is like she is a tug boat. She is leading them up the vernal incline of the heard November earth past the half mile mark.

 All the girls are beautiful. Manual has nowhere near the cross-country program of other schools in the state.

 

She doesn’t look back.

 

In a way she kind of resembles Kim Zmeskal. She has a forehead like Reane’s. The second runner from Princeville is only running her third race of the year. There are snow flurries. She is accelerating her lead. Her arms seems to take three up-and down parallel repetitions for every stride her legs take.

 

I am enraptured. I can’t move.

Two vehicles lead. Both are Military jeeps.  The second jeep stays appx. 200 feet ahead of the runners and has a crew in back.  The first meet is in progress. Twin jeeps shoot past Almost inexplicably Coach’s head  juts out of the first vehicle.  Peacock points.

“Hey that’s coach.”

From the ground coaches fiery almost Beaver like semi-spike haircut is visible. He is in the back of the first jeep. He appears to be pointing.

 

“What’s coach doing in the lead jeep?”

Peacock looks back at me and shrugs.  I am still enamored with the lead runner of the class A race. She is a freshman. The color of her jersey is the same color of Manuals. Orange and black. She is floating ahead. Her limbs look like they are contracted out of alkaline feathers.  She is not looking back. She continues to accelerate.  She is running as if she involuntarily harbors no control over her body—that all she knows is to zip ahead.  At the turn past the starting line she has a 20 meter gap. It looks like she is pulling a frenetic peninsula of agitated limbs behind her.

Occasionally it looks like she is stomping very quickly to put out a cigarette butt she just flicked into a weak puddle of gasoline.

“Let’s run to other side of the course so we can see the first mile.”

We take off. It is a jog. Half the crowd sprints to the east side of the course

The girl with the glinting forehead is sprinting ahead. She takes three steps to the nearest competitors two.  Her chin is held high as if she is balancing a book on her head and learning how to walk properly for a coming out party.

She pisses out the first mile at 5:42. She passes the miniature tree leading into the oblique thatch of land leading into the pyramidal turning point of the race known to spectators as the north loop and to hard core participating athletes as the triangle. Sporadically she pinches up the sleeves of her the long sleeve turtle neck clad like battalion armor beneath her jersey from a school labeled Trenton-Wesclin. She encroaches the triangle. She is entering the plumage of Euclidean botany ahead.

“Damn these girls can move.”

Peacock who doesn’t speak just laconically nods.

She exits the triangle on her own. She is a good twenty seconds  ahead of her nearest competitor.

 There is 800 meters of earth left to the opening of the chute.  She continues to book.

The whole race she doesn’t look back once. She runs as if she is pedaling, chugging. She looks like she is jumping up and down kicking out calisthenics, trying to put out a fire that is always a second in front of her shoe.

She looks like she is putting out a fire when she runs.

As she erupts through the chute she gives a subtle skip and pumps her hand before continuing to run while twenty second later her nearest peer will topple across the finish line exhausted. It is like she is not done. It is like she has just warmed up and is ready for the real race to begin

 

 A runner from Gardner Wilmington has the most beautiful name has one hell of a kick.

I am walking with Peacock. Girls are streaming through the chute. They are giving everything in the last 100 meters. They arrive at the finish line limp, keeling over, falling down into a puddle of spent limbs.

“Next year I’ll be here. Next year I’m gonna do whatever it takes. Next year I’m going to be here.”

 

Just wait. I tell Peacock.

 

Wait.

 

                                                       ***

When Coach Ricca sees us he shakes both of our hands he refers to us both as gentlemen.

 

“Gentlemen thank you both for coming out.”

 

Peacock is quiet. When we picked him up he was standing outside of the steps of his house on the corner of Latrobe and Ligonier. As is the case the entire season no one ever sees his parents. I am wearing my boots and not caring in the slightest. Coach asks me about my leg.

 

“It’s healing,” I say, I can’t help but wonder had it already healed if I would be participating in the event.

There is appx. 45 minutes between the end of each race and the start of the next. We go to coaches car with his girlfriend Bea.  Flurries are picking up. Coach jacks the heat in his mid-70’s Oldsmobile boasting about the integrity of the engine before asking  us a rhetorical question about whether or not we like the view he has of the race., stating that he helps out every year as a course consultant letting the driver and cameraman know how far away the lead pack is from the jeep.

“What do you gentlemen think?”

I want to tell coach that I have never seen girls in our conference run like that,.

“Its kind of funny in the first race nobody knew who the leader was? We kept thinking she was a rabbit and would fall back into the pack any second

 

“David, that girl who ran the first race is a freshman. What did you think about that? She has a chance to win State four times in a row.”

 

Coach says the word freshman like he is expecting me to walk up and ask her to some southern high school homecoming where everyone dances to George Strait. Coach tells us not to be afraid and to go up to athletes from different schools and to congratulate them and ask them questions about their routines.  Everywhere around us are different colored warm-up jerseys and correlating hats.  I have run on this course three times this year already. Growing up Detweiller was the park where all the rich kids went to play soccer. I want to tell Coach that I want to run up to the winner of the class A and shake her hand. I want to tell her that it was a thing of beauty to watch her float against the gravitational synapses of the earth on an early and overcast November morn.

 

After the first race the clouds loom into an overhead fjord of grey cobbled floes, pendulous and low. I wish I was somehow a part of this. I wish I could witness the summation of my hard work, the hours spent running around meadowed rectangles and through park hills. My leg is at 50 percent. I haven’t run on it since Regionals two weeks ago. I’m still allowed to go down to the pool every morning ad simulate running laps for another week since I’m still considered an invalid as far as participating in PE goes.

 

The second race of four is about to begin.

 

Rushville has the foreign exchange student that beat Adam White in the Canton invite earlier this year and has remained undefeated.  He is the undisputed favorite. Other schools call him the Aryan poster child with blonde, hair blue eyes. After witnessing him run the first time at Canton Hans publically grouses that Manual never gets any foreign exchange students who are athletic. He petitions to Coach that maybe we should get some foreign exchange students from say like Kenya.

 

Coach takes his position inside the lead jeep. Peacock and I walk along the side.  Runners are stretching and performing sprints.  Several are bobbing up and down as if tied to a noose made out of a slinky. The sky is a sea of tuft granite. The clouds are hanging pendulously low. It looks like one is viewing the earth through an upside-down 7up bottle held to the eye in the manner of a kaleidoscope. This is class A. We have run against some of these teams at the Morton Invite and in Mattoon but for the most part their names and visages are unfamiliar to us.  

The race begins with the crackle of a gun.

A freshman from Sparta takes out sprinting, lugging breaths, a rabbit rolling over with a nicotine –affected cough at the half mile mark.  The lead pack is a floating peninsula of crayon colored jerseys. As if by osmosis the freshman from Sparta is swallowed and absorbed as the surf of thrusting elbows and jousting fists, runners panting in the same direction.

A lanky scarlet tighter lad from just outside Amish country in Arthur flares ahead. At the outset of the horseshoe with Georgetown, PORTA and the German close behind.

The first mile of class A is 4:53.

I have never broken five minute mile in my life. Even pushing my fastest is around 5:05 in practice. My fastest as an 8^th grader when I was second in the state was 5:11.

The day is morose and used tea-bag dreary. It looks like anytime the clouds overhead could break into tears of ice and snow.

It is a stampede.

 The lead pack is pulsating with almost a healthy gallop. The German foreign exchange student from Rushville seems inordinately relaxed.  His form looks like he is treading water above land.
Their feet hit the grass like untethered mallets. There is a pack.  There are two runners from Georgetown Ridge farm and a buzz-cut runner hailing from PORTA who looks like a linebacker. The German foreign exchange student looks like he is ringing handbells, keeping his elbows and fists directly at nipple level.  The pack is five. The lad from Arthur leading at the mile lost the lead them moment he entered the triangle and doesn’t seem to have come out.

Even though they are single A and supposed to be bumfuck inbred county bumpkins the top five would place in the top ten if merged with the class above. They are pushing. Coach is visible on the back of the jeep. He is giving directions. He is letting the camera man know how close the incumbent runner is to the vehicle.

I wonder what the athletes must think, coming from small towns, working four years to get at this moment, only to have a foreign exchange student whose ancestors their grandfathers were fighting forty years ago come to this state and dominate.

I tell Peacock that it is weird because you never hear of foreign exchange students from the Unites States going over seas and dominating in basketball or anything like that.

At the two mile mark the pack is five deep at 10:04. The announcer talks about the reason the foreign exchange student is so solid is because he grew up training in an East German system in a country that no longer exists anymore.

The moment the German takes the lead the sky claps open in icy prisms and tears.

The pack is running in his draft. 

He has taken the lead. Georgetown and PORTA are sprinting to catch up with him. He continues to propel ahead with his stolid mechanics of his stride. The moment he encroaches the finish line he pauses and positions his limbs in victory stance, forming the first letter of the YMCA before slowly becoming sucked into the chute.  

His time is 14:53.

As he walks through the shoot he turns around and notes those he came across an ocean to defeat, watching them  swallowed by a chute bridged with lines fumbling over exhausted having sacrificed oxygen into early winteresque bulbs of carbon dioxide, fumbling pushing themselves through the elusive gates of IHSA chronicled heaven.

The snow is starting to pelt in crisp shards ice. It looks like the clouds are starting to cry.

 

 

                                                                           ***

I want to ask Peacock about Jose. I want to ask Peacock if he think he would be a faster runner if he had peers to push him like this in practice. Briefly I think about making small talk with Peacock since Peacock just doesn’t talk all that much anyway. I want to ask him about Mattoon and did he feel weird that he was the only one who voluntarily chose not to hang out in my room while everyone else was dry-humping the cheap shag carpet watching filched porn.

 

                                                                                ***

 

 

He is giving a live TV broadcast where he is being interviewed. He is being applauded. He is oblivious of his own mortality. He is being interviewed by a sexy newscaster. He is being lauded. He is being interrogated. It is a broadcast that it is being simultaneously promulgated and disseminated in class rooms across the country. The youth of today are asking Superman Questions.  They are asking him about Justice League. They are inquiring what Blue Beetle does in his free time. 

An adolescent horndog inquires about the Super hero Fire being a major babe.

 

When A questioned is asked of Superman about being a leader Superman pauses. He is showing deference to his fellow teammates.  He is seated at an oval-configured Arthurian table. he is giving them credit. He is putting their skills above his own. He is talking about the being a part of the Justice League America much like Cross country Coaches are talking about their fourth and fifth men. He is talking about being a member of a team.   

 

He is oblivious that the last time he will blink in and out of cognizance is less than six hours away.

                                                                            *** 

The third race of the day is Class AA girls.

They hail from manicured trellises of the suburbs where six-figured domiciles huddle together on wending cul-de-sacs like portly defensive linemen. Suburbs that are an endless cement parking lot of K-marts and Dominic’s and White castles.  Suburbs with names that sound like prize winning ferns. Suburbs where adults line up with trench coats and brief cases and face the same direction on a METRA platform as they are reeled into the geometrical architectural flora of downtown Chicago, Sears tower draping the city with a penumbra of tint across the serpentine creek of the Chicago river.

Suburbs where every other burb somehow manages to have the word ‘brook’ or “ville” as the latter part of its appellation.

A school called Palatine has won it back to back to back state championships and is going for its fourth victory in a row. The girls are course vixens. They are sirens in cleats They dominate. They run in the lead pack, the top three usually finishing in the top ten.

The course is caked in a rink of bridal white.

Runners are wearing hats and gloves. Many are also wearing tights correlating with the color of their schools jersey. Runners are warming up. They are doing the same kind of stretches and sprints we perform before races at Madison park. They perform the same sound of anal-tantric fartlek conditioning drills. It has started to snow.  It looks like the girls are running in the interior of a snow globe. The snow doesn’t flutter as much as if does rain, pelting the earth in sheets. The course is completely caked. It looks like a flattened golf ball.

With each race I become more enraptured. With each race I am vowing the future of my career. With each race I wonder what would have happened had I not gotten off track the first race of the season. I wonder what would have happened if I would have stayed healthy.

The concourse of the Detweiller is flooded with human beings clad in down coats and scarves cheering their respective teams on. There are hundred extra runners in the last two races.  Both the Richwoods  and Pekin Girls team participate. They are the only school in our conference to do so. They huddle like autumnal mums. They give high-pitched cheers. They field is packed. The Richwoods  Lady Knights are wearing electric green tights that look like a Leprechaun stuck his Irish pecker into an electrical outlet.

 

Because of the onslaught of the elements the gun sounds less like a portentous firearm and more like an ill-timed clap.  The field takes off through the static and sleet, forming a human peninsula in the first 300 meters. Slight before the turn a leader stretches forward. She is petite with licorice-black hair tied back in a French braid. She is wearing a fluffy white shirt under her Downers Grove jersey. It looks like she is doing aerobics in her pajamas, her French braid whipping behind the gentle groove of the back of her neck like a singular harness, and uncoiled strand of athletic DNA.

 

She is ahead at the first congested turn where some schools opt to take a delayed start so they don’t get mauled trying to het over. Like the leader of the Class A race she is running like she is completely oblivious of the continent of bodies huffing behind the gallop of her stride. She is beautiful. Her French braid continues to flounce along the back of her shoulders like she is keeping tempo to the cadence of her stride. These are the worst conditions of the day. Unlike the class A Zemeskalesque predecessor he pack is closing in. It is her first time on this course. The pack is a sentence of flagellating limbs pushing right. She seems oblivious of the first turn behind the starting line, leading up to what is known as the horseshoe. She looks like she is doing aerobic kicks while wearing a walkman. Again I am lost thinking that she is also a freshman, thinking that there are no females at Manual for myself to run next to.

“These girls are pretty hot.” I tell Peacock.

He is smiling. Peacock has been our fastest runner yet he has almost been more Taciturn than Taciturn Tim has during the season.

As much of a hypnotic deterrent prove Richwoods tights I can’t take my eyes off the leader. The girl with the pasty skin and the French braid. It is the moment I see the lead runner from Downer’s Grove North, the third freshman to take the lead in the opening stretch that day that I will myself to do it. That I will myself to finally turn to Peacock and inquire what exactly happened with Jose. To ask our standoffish captain who was purportedly Jose’s best friend at the birth of the season what exactly happened.

The far end of the course is known as the horseshoe, the turn heading toward the first mile a blonde-haired girl who looks like she could be a mermaid of ice takes the lead. She is from a school called Libertyville. Another girl with dark hair from Arlington Heights is running next to the earlier leader with the French braid.   For a minute it is a three women race and the pack melt around the parabolic curve of the horseshoe.

The ice-mermaid has a 10 meter lead.

The first mile is 5:33.

I could hang with fastest girls in the state.

“These girls can move,” I turn to Peacock. Manual’s fastest female runners usually only avg.’s 7:30 per mile.  I wonder what Hans would say if he were here. I wonder if he would keep requesting that I take out the picture of my now bona fide official girlfriend Renae out of my left pocket, my Gideon bible even today, always in my right pocket.

I have the word of God pressed against one thigh and the image of unbridled lust burning on the other.

The blonde haired creature floats ahead. She is running like a gazelle. After the first mile she blasts away from the pack.  She is athletic. I am entranced. The girl from Libertyville is pushing ahead.

 She enters the triangle alone.

Like the spritely class A champion her jersey is also orange and black.

The color of my high school.

A freight train of athletes enter the triangle. I see the girl from Decatur MacArthur. Her first name is Elizabeth. Since I started running track and field she has won and field she has won every  1600 meter for the girls on the Lutheran track circuit. She has dominated. In the paper earlier in the year was a picture of her running between the Skaags twins who dominate in Pekin. I feel like I have a bond with her since, for the last three years she was the female winner and I the male in the 1600 meters at the Bloomington invite.

The girls from Palatine are running in a frenzied pack. Three of them are in the top ten.

None of the girls in either of the classes adhere to the moniker of run like a girl. They are amazons. They are pushing. I make a joke talking about how double AA sounds like a bra size which Peacock doesn’t glean just to elicit some sort of verbal response to hold a potential conversation with him.

The Pekin girls are running together in an amoebic clod. They beat York female squad at the Central Invitational. They seem to be running slower. The twins look hollow cheeked and frail. They are further back than I would have imagined. The legume-flitted tights of Richwoods elite are all too easily visible in the overcast day.

By the time the lanky blonde haired ice mermaid exits the triangle she has dwarfed her nearest competitors. She is a senior from an affluent north western Chicago suburb. She finished 7^th a year ago. She has trained all summer for this. She is classmates with a boy who is one of the favorites in the class AA race. Her cheeks and forehead are scarlet from the cold.  With her white turtleneck neck she  is floating. There is a glide to her acceleration. It looks like she is about ready to flap into a frenetic cable-static of a blizzard. I turn to Peacock. We are cheering on schools we have never heard of before.  My eyes are still covertly glued to the French-braided runner who looks like she is running in her pajamas has fallen behind to third upon abandoning the triangle.

“I mean, can you imagine going to a school where cross country is taken seriously. No one at Manual with the exception of coach seems to care about us. Half the team at the end of the season except you and LoGrotto didn’t even seem like they wanted to compete. This is so cool witnessing this. It’s like, at other schools being on a squad like this is a privilege.”

Once again, Peacock nods like a punching bag shaped like a clown.

The girl with the blonde hair continues to glide in the snow.  She is ten seconds ahead of her nearest competitor. Her forehead looks like an iced over windshield. She is slowing down but only subtly. Her lower limbs seem to elongate and stretch as if playing twister, she is sucking it up, she is covering more ground. The girls from Palatine are on her tail. They fight with entitlement.  The ice mermaid is not looking back. She finishes the 2.1 mile Girls course at 12:06, flecks of iced caked sweat glued to the sheen of her forehead as if she is glowing. A dark-haired creature from Arlington finishes second. Two runners from Palatine finish three and four.

The girl with the flagellating French braid who I couldn’t take my eyes off of at the outset of the race finishes fifth.  Her hair is down. It is netted stairway, a drape to her occiput. She is numinous, it is like she made it a point to finish the race she led with her hair billowing like a cape below her shoulders She runs the same exact time as Sue Gibson, the winner of the Class A race. I am standing at a distance yet I am still looking at her. I don’t want her to see me.  Briefly she lifts her arms behind her neck in the universal posture of surrender and forms a Nintendo triforce with clasped palms and arms, placing her hair in  a ponytail again only it allow it to tumble stage-curtainish into the stage of her shoulder blades again.

The girl from East Peoria finished 16^th. The top runner from Richwood’s finished 25^th.The Pekin girls seemed to have an off day.

I will learn later that three of the top five class AA finishers are freshman.

I will learn that the girl with the French braid is a freshman. Had I gone to her high school we would have classes together. I would pass her in Lysol scented hallways of high school the first day of classes looking bemused as to which classroom mouth she is to entre before seeing her later that day running on the course.

 

I am witnessing freshman my own age courting the achievement I have lusted over succeed. 

 

                                                                           ***

There is one name in Illinois cross-country. One guttural phonetic, a Neanderthal sounding yawp capable of instigating awe; the galloping vicissitudes of the anatomical condition hurling over vernal pastures and sprawling g lens where it is man hustling his body against the pangs of the elements, against the lose-tectonic botany of the earth that is mostly water. Cross-country, the sport that is man conquering the geology of mass upon which he so momentarily subsides. In Illinois Cross-country there is Elmhurst York and there is everyone else. York: the emerald armada, a much touted long green line. A west suburban flotilla of skiing limbs and mystique clad in Spearmint flavored jerseys which look like an advertisement for caffeine free cola and the late-70’s hats poufy asterisk sewn on top, the punctuation to the greatest cross-country program the sport has ever known.  There is Elmhurst York whose has a area code is fifteen miles west of Downtown Chicago, perennially located on the first place platform of the winners dais conspicuously having won 16 State Championships in the last 30 years.  There is York, the monosyllabic crunch of blistering cleats over the shrapnel of autumnal foliage splattered across the Detweiller park in late autumn, the eight of a green flag with a white Y claiming territory for the most dominant team in the state, perhaps the most successful program in history of high school athletics.

York who has over 100-to 200 kids come out for the program every year even though only the top seven will participate in the state meet and only the first five are eligible to score. York, the school who has 2000 fans shuttle down from the West suburban locale to cheer on a fifteen minute race in a sport that out of 500 eligible schools at the seasonal outset of semester the York dukes perennially arrive through the aisles of the chute with the lowest calculated team score.

Once a Duke, always a Duke.

There is York. The indelible Coach who looks like he was chiseled out of Olympus granite.  The Coach who is both indefinitely lauded and envied by every other Cross Country coach in the state. The coach who wrote a book on coaching crossing country that is the New Testament and Gospel of our sport, arguably the best selling Cross Country book of all time. The coach who served as an assistant coach to  United Stets athletes in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul Korea. The Coach whose alumni come back every year for an annual alumni run.

 

The coach where opposing coaches say they are beyond honored to be competing in the same field as the great Joe Newton.

York who shaved their collective heads as a sign of either presaging middle age virility or unity. York that is starting out far left field at the sixteenth box after the draw. York who, along with Palatine has one three contiguous State meet, the different being that York has won more titles than any one else in the state, their top scoring runners turning in all-state honors year after year.

A long green line. An avocado latitudinal stripe painted down the battalion of the encroaching fence cheering  athletes into the womb-shaped chute of forever glory.

They are the New York Yankees of Illinois Cross country. They are the Yankees of High School cross-country. No other team in no other state dominates their individual athletic discipline as the York Dukes. No school in any states wins 17 titles in anything except for maybe like bridge.

They are perhaps the most successful XX program on planet earth.  They are York. They are gunning for their fourth straight title, their  13th since 1980, their  17th over all. They are Elmhurst York and they are hungry.  

They are ready to run.

                                                                      



                                                                        ***

It is the final race of the day. The snow from the women’s AA race has subsided. The day is still overturn ashtray grey. The course is damp and sodden.  It is hard to make out the white line delineating the course. Sometime during the sleet storm during the Girls AA the Sport Channel sign fell down.

 It is almost time. There is a collective sigh.  Teams are sprinting out huddling, lancing their arms into a pentagon, yelling out the name of their school.   There are twenty seven reams and twenty-five individuals.

Before Coach goes to the lead jeep he thanks us once again for coming out before inquiring if we need to meet back here and get a ride back home or anything. I tell coach that my father is here and that he is giving us a ride home. Coach tells me to tell my father hello.

Telling my father hello is the last bit of coaching I will receive from the incendiary haired athletic mentor I call Coach in my inaugural season in which somehow I failed.

Before Coach leaves I turn to him.

“Coach, next year, you won’t be on that jeep. You’ll be at mile mark and the two mile mark yelling out sprints as you watch me fight with Adam White for the title of fastest runner in the state.”

 

Coach looks back at me and smiles.

 

He tells me he can’t wait.

“Come on” I tell Peacock.

“Let’s cheer Adam on!”

 

                                                                 ***

                                                             

 

It is time for the big boys. The earth is a shattered snow globe flecked in patches of white. Teams are huddled together.  They are warming each other up. The temperature is 29 degrees. At the beginning of the race I see Adam White. I see the fastest runner form our Conference, our regional and our sectional. I see the runner my sister Beth who is an eighth grader has informed me plays her instrument, the cello, but wears a tux and plays in central Illinois Symphony while Beth plays in the  junior high sinfonietta .

Everyone is touting Pat Joyce who won the race last year from Lincolnshire as being the pre-race favorite.  He looks kind of like Robocop dressed in a green jersey.  He is taller than everyone else. It looks like you could toss him an alley-oop and he could easily dunk.

Tim Broe from East Peoria is also in the lineup.

York has a throng of emerald hatted students forming a battalion already lined up at the start of the Girls AA race. Their entire school has arrived. Their band is playing some sort of school fight song which sounds more like a polka on the sidelines.  Everyone is wearing a dated retro 1970’s hat that says York Dukes. They look like they are passing out green candy canes on St. Patrick’s day. They are battling for their 17^th title. Like Martians, everyone is wearing the green hats with the poufy asterisk affixed to the top like some sort of all seeing eye.

Much in the same fashion Hans Lagrotto turned to me after regional two weeks ago and we shook hands and, in a weird way, congratulated the other on a solid season I turn to Peacock.

 “This is it, man. This is the final race of cross-country in the state of Illinois.”

Peacock nods. He gave everything he had last week in our sectional.

York arrives with shaved heads.  They look like Buddhist monks who have achieved enlightenment before doffing the saffron robes for green Jerseys. Their fastest runner beat Adam White at the Central Invite earlier this year.  They are competing out of the 16 box and will use a delay start so that they don’t get mauled at the opening turn.

The start gun sounds like it is assassinating the flap of autumnal wind breaking into a searing stampede, sentences of kneecaps and spiked-cleats claws north down the 500 meter opening stretch of Detweiller park in and all out book ass corporeal regatta. It looks like they are running down an airport runway that has been transitioned into a PGA approved faraway. They are taking off. It is the crème de la crème. They fastest high school athletes in the state of Illinois. They are the Heavyweights. They are the schools that find themselves here on a yearly basis.

Schaumburg and Naperville and St. Charles and Moline.

It is a thing of beauty to witness bodies launch against the early November chill.

I think White has a shot man. He’s been a beast all season long. I really think he has a shot.”

As is typical with Peacock he nods in stoic rhythm all his own. I am waiting for the opportune time to ask him if he knows anything about what happened to Jose.

There is snow on the ground. There is mud. This is cross-country. This is man hurling his limbs at a ridiculous velocity in an endeavor to conquer the turf of the planet he finds himself momentarily inhabiting.

 At the first turn Pat Joyce takes the lead.  He is oscillating his limbs like an elementary school swing set. In a way he looks like sexually frustrated Gumby from Richwoods only less maladroit. Adam White looks like he is pawing at the premature arctic November air. Like he is tugging at the elements.  Chris Brown hails from the same jingoistic sounding suburban school where the icy blonde haired mermaid the class AA winner attended. He is in the top five.  Like the females who dominated class A and double A Joyce has not looked back the entire time although there is an intractable fierceness welded into his gaunt face.

Somehow I am cheering on Adam.

The crowd is raucous. Some kid from the Naperville is playing the bag pipes. Bands are playing. It is like attending a European soccer game. Everyone is going crazy for a fifteen minute race where forty percent of the view of the runners are obscured by either distance or flora or both.  There are between four and five thousand people watching the race. The sidelines along the course is flooded.

Some schools even have cheerleaders which I just can’t fathom.

I want to ask Peacock that isn’t it ironic since at homecoming, the Manual cheerleaders broke into the locker room and adorned it with placards directly solely at the football team and now, it seems like York has more kids watching the race than who attend our high school as a whole.

York is completely bald. Someone next to me says that they don’t know if York will be able to win it again this year since they only won their Sectional by just one point defeating Schaumberg.

 A runner from the high school where my cousin graduated from in New Lennox with a feint moustache and a mullet. He looks like he is doing porn with a soundtrack supplied by Billy Ray Cyrus.  He is next to Joyce.  At the half mile mark two African American runners are in the top ten, one from Rockford, one hailing from West Chicago. Even then it appears to be less than five for the entire meet. Our team was evenly split.  Forty percent Caucasian.  Forty percent African American. 20 percent Hispanic.  A runner from Libertyville is not wearing a turtle neck, cap or running tights. For some inexplicable reason he is wearing sun glasses on an extremely overcast day which makes him look like he is chasing after a seeing-eye dog.  He is jousting for position.

There is no sight of Tim Broe anywhere, ibid for York, intractable York, York which rumor has it runs twenty miles a day during the season. York where the team itself is the size of my freshman class.

Apparently sometimes York employed a delayed start as to run unobstructed around the first turn.

I am looking for bald heads.

At the 800 meter mark York is nowhere to be found. It is porno-mullet from New Lennox running in stride with Pat Joyce. Joyce looks like he is not breathing.  It looks like  he is performing a routine with 25 pound dumb bells. He is a piston. He is attacking the course. Adam white is inching his way up. He is gnawing at the tip of the lead back. At the horse shoe he is fourth.

Pat Joyce is a machine. His stance is not wavering.  The first mile mark is 4:38. Pat Joyce is starting to inch away from the second place runner with the Mullet. Behind him are Chris Brown and Adam White.

Pat Joyce enters the triangle as if he is trying to attack it. Joyce has a five second lead. Adam White is fourth. In a way he looks like an elf with his stocking cap and blue tights.

 

I turn to Peacock. We have not had a heart to heart all year.

 

 “So, I mean, I know we haven’t like talked about this or anything but do you think we would be here if Jose would still be with our team.  I mean, the first race the three of us really had something special. He seemed to bring out the best in all of us.”

Randy is silent.

“I know this is what he wanted since Robert Clark was here two years ago.  He always made sectionals every year.  Hell, your sophomore year you guys won the Morton Invite. This meet was obviously what he was gunning for throughout his high school career. Not just him. Both of you.”

 

Peacock is silent. He has not mentioned anything about Jose since they got into a verbal altercation before the Pekin meet and Jose was a no show

“I mean, you guys were like best friends. You were with Jose when the two of you drove down to Mexico last summer.  I mean, this is crazy but I ardently somehow believe that I wouldn’t even have gotten a stress fracture if Jose was still on the team. He was our captain.  It’s like when he fell apart my leg fell apart. The whole team fell apart except for you.”

Peacock is silent. Runners are pissing into the triangle en masse like a stream.

“I mean, not only that, Jose hasn’t been in school since. This is his senior year man and you’re supposed to be his brother! You’re supposed to be his friend.”

Pat Joyce blasts out of the triangle alone. His is a piston. Akin to the winners of the Girls aye and double-aye races he is not looking back. He has perhaps the most perfect Romanesque form I have ever seen.

“So?” I am being inquisitive. I have a right to know. I am not knocking Peacock skills or his success over the season. I just want to know what happened to a member of our squad who, in a way, I considered my brother.

Peacock’s lips are quavering. His whole body is beginning to shake. Finally I feel he is able to confide in me. Finally it feels like he is opening up. Just when I think he is about ready to talk to me, to confess what happened.

Peacock spreads his lips. He begins to shout.

Go Adam!! Looking good man! Go Adam!!!”

Adam exits the triangle third. He is running stride for stride with Chirs Brown.

Joyce still has a commanding lead.

I will never find out what happened to our captain whose year this should have been.

I will never find out what happened to Jose.

 

 

The second mile mark is 9:45.  Joyce is a machine. His arms looks like they are dyslexically saluting his waistline.

 

Near the final stretch down I-29 Chris Brown breaks away from Adam.  From a distance it looks like he is water skiing off of the back of pat Joyce’s jersey. Chris Brown from Libertyville is Battling. Adam White is to his right.  York still seems to be more spread out. Down the stretch no one touches Joyce. Brown distances himself from White.Tim Broe explodes throughout the second mile.  With 1200 meters left he has past 20 competitors. He is a sophomore. His view of Adam White’s navy blue IRISH jersey. He gets passes right at the finish by a senior from Willowbrook. Joyce is a sophomore. Adam White will later claim it was the toughest race of his life. He will finish with a time of 14:47. Had Adam run his time he would have easily beaten Christian Nautusch who beat him the Canton invitational.  Chris Brown will finish second, denying Libertyville their shot as a one-two punch as Victors in the Class AA boys and girls individual champion.

 

Pay Joyce will finish in first, a time of 14:30.

 

He becomes the first back to back champion since 1977.

 

The year I was born.

                                                                    ***

The entrance through the chute is the welcome mat to adulthood, the inscrutable birth canal to everything that is unknown and yet to come. After the first ten the chute is beginning to clog. Runners are sprinting. Runners are elbowing each other and sliding and marshaling to enter the final gap. Many are instigating what will be the final kick of their high school career. It has been four years and they have run every day and fought to get into this position. They have run twice a day.  They had don speed work. They have endured injuries and rehabs and dreams. Many will never run a cross-country race again. They are erupting. Juniors and senior bottle rockets. They are a consistent blur of streaming limbs aiming for the aperture known as the chute. They are vying. They are wielding their elbows like boomerangs. They are fighting, cleats prostituting the thoroughly trammeled land below.

 

 They are leaving everything behind for one final kick.

The York tops five are in thirty seconds of each other. They have two in the top fifteen.

 The York finishers have the same color jersey as the Gideon bible that I have brushed up against my thigh at all times. Limbs are losing their calcium, transitioning into aerated noodles of listless flesh, falling into their earth as if bowing on all fours venerating an unknown deity.

 

They have achieved glory for the 17^th time.

 

 

                                                                        ***

 

There is a push on my shoulder. I swivel around. There is an athlete who is out of breath. He is bent over at his waist. He is wearing a red jersey with a white long-sleeved shirt underneath and black tights. I first I think he is from one of the schools from either Chicago or the boonies I never knew existed until the race began and now.

 

“Hey man, thanks for coming out!”

 

I still do not recognize. I look again.

 

It is DiGreggorrio from Metamora, previously of Woodruff

 

I tell him that I didn’t realize he was running.

 

“Yeah, I saw you last week at Sectional only I don’t think you saw me.”

I hold out my hand in the fashion as I have been doing when I see an acquaintance. I tell him congratulations on making state.

 

“I wouldn’t have made it individually but the team made it. I wouldn’t have been running if I went to Woodruff.”

I tell him I wish I would have been healthy. I tell him I would have killed to participate in an event of this caliber with some of the best athletes in the state. Digreggorio then tells me that the only runner who made it from our conference was Adam White. No one from Pekin who were always issuing racist remarks. No one from shit-talking Central or even Richwoods who dominated the regional. Just Adam White, and overall he finished third in the state.

“That’s how tough this shit is.”

Just Adam White who finished third.

“That’s how hard our sectional is. It’s the most difficult outside Chicago especially if you are a five-thirty miler. You have to book.”

I ask Digreggorio how he did.

“It was the fastest race of my life.”

He tells me that he finished at 16:10. He tells me that he finished 121^st. That he is the 121^st fastest runner in the great State of Lincoln.

 

Sixteen ten. Ten seconds off my fastest at Mattoon.

 

I could have been next to him had I been healthy and progressed like every other top runner in the conference during the season.

He says that quite a few runners in the state run at a 15:30-16:00 minute pace and the chute just clogs back and team are just giving up everything the last 100 meters until they collapse into the welcome mat of the chute.

As he is walking back to his team he turns to me. He tells me something. I can’t hear because someone from York is making flatulent sounds with a tuba marching in the direction of their school bus en route to the award ceremony.

“What?"

He yells it again, Digreggorio then juts his thumb up like an ace fighter pilot before sprinting over to a post-race team huddle.

 

It takes me a minute to intuit what he said.

 

 

Good luck with the Young Columbus this year.

 

It is nearly a month past Columbus Day and no announcement of the contest has been mentioned at all.

 

 

                                                                                    ***

 

Afterwards everyone adjourns to trophy ceremony in Central High School even though it takes almost a half-hour to coast through semi-seedy vectors of P-town. They go to Central, the original Peoria High, plenary hosts of the State Cross Country Meet. They go to Manual’s perpetual rival. They go to the school of where Tina’s grandma lied about her address and the school of Sheep Dog Boy .They go to receive all-state medals.

 

They go to celebrate. They go to collect and host hardware above their heads.

 The girls are dressed to kill. They are wearing skirts and inky tights and high heels. They look like they are going to homecoming, turning heads of dates

 

I am ogling. They are the fastest runners in the state. They smell like an orchard. They are being honored for their unbridled commitment to the sport I so ardently love.

Medallions droop around their necks like alchemized chakras.

The top 25 go down to the right hand side of the basketball court. They are introduced in descending order one by one. They walk over to the IHSA commissioner, bow their heads as if receiving a papal blessing, receive a medal placed over their head and walk to the opposite side of the gymnasium where they stand on a three tier rafter. Pat Joyce is wearing glasses. He looks absolutely nothing of the titan who dominated on the field earlier in the afternoon. He is wearing a suit that makes him look like he is teaching Sunday school before serving as an usher during the 10:30 Lutheran service. He looks like a nerd. Like Clark Kent transitioned into an unfaltering cross-country Superman winning unprecedented back to back State Championships before donning his mild-mannered reporter guise.

 

This is amazing. They are dressed up like it is graduation. They are dressed up as if it is prom.

 

I can’t help but think about the Young Columbus. I can’t help but think about everyone dressing up in the Young Columbus competition.

 

Dad is looking at me as if to tell me that I will be here next year.

 

I have found my sport. I have found my calling.

 

The girl who won class A title is absolutely stunning.  Both her and the early leader in the Class AA race are freshman. If they attended my high school or I attended theirs we would undoubtable cheer each other on from the sidelines. The Palatine girls look like they are going to the Lyric opera. They are ravishing. They are wearing inky tights and high heels. Somehow in the two hours since the finish of the last race it looks like they each went out and got a make-over before the banquet.

My eyes flash to the girl with the French braid. She is now down slinked around one shoulder.\ She is in my same class. She is a freshman. If we were in high school together we would have the same classes, we would pass each other in the hallway, she would blush with her hair back and her trapper keeper nursed under her neck. If we were in high school together perhaps we would both simultaneously bitch about the tyrannical teaching methodologies of Miss Peabody and Cool Joe Thomas.  We would conjugate the eruptive beauty that is etre in Mme. Suhr’s French class. Perhaps we would walk in adolescent tandem toward the southern wing of the school

It is a gala. It is a masquerade. It is a celebration. The York champions arrive wearing tuxedos. In a way they look like they are attending a fund raiser for Chemotherapy victims. In a way they look like they are arriving at an opera. York’s top runner looks like a young Yul Brynner. Their top runner quashed Adam White in the Central Invitational. They used a delay start where they counted to 1,000 and one and then took off in a feral pack so that they could swerve around the first turn unobstructed.  At a half mile in their team was dead last. Undoubtedly some of the fastest runners would have vied with White and Brown and possibly Joyce had they not used a delayed start

I want to ask them about their workouts. I want to ask them what it feels like to work for something you have desired for so long and then achieve it.

 

                                      

Everyone in the stands is cheering. The York fans are tossing toilet paper. They are celebrating their Tenth title in the last 13 years.  It is their 17^th title since 1962.  In the past thirty years they have received either first, second or third place trophy all but twice.

No one at my high school gives two shits about Cross country.

 Outside of attending the Rivermen game three weeks ago with Renae and a bunch of her friends I met fifteen minutes prior this is the first-time this semester I feel that I belong.

 

 

I look at the  precocious blonde haired girl and the girl with the French braid once again. Even though they are in different classes and one finished first and fifth they ran the same exact time of 12:17. Again I think what it would be like if they went to my high school. I wonder what they would be like to date.I would have a female friend to go on long runs with. Every time I ask Renae if she wants to go for a run she says something about God creating cars before counting down the date to her sixteen birthday, the day she receives her freshly minted license.

As I walk out of the century old musk of central high school there is heaviness kicking and welling in the bottom of my chest. It is like somehow everything is punctuated. The running three times a day last summer throughout the hills of Bradley park. Salivating like a pavilion Chihuahua  every time the pasty white forehead of Kim Zmeskal back flipped across the screen last summer, somehow everything is coming to an end. There is the chlorine scent of Andrea mingled with the overhead Jetstream poofs of Madame Breton French sentences. There is 8^th grade graduation and finishing second in the state in the mile. Somehow I can see and feel Dawn Michelle even though I have no clue where the hell she is. I see the bucolic autumnal reflection of the movie screen showing Last of Mohicans reflected off of the thick triangles of Coach Mann’s glasses all of twelve hours past. I see the benevolent rye smudge that is the gentle smile of Jose, again, like Dawn Michelle he seemed to disappear.

I see Renae. I am walking out with my father, thinking about DiGrerggorio, thinking about perhaps I may have one more shot to win the Young Columbus contest which, like class A meet and the exchange student who somehow found himself in Illinois, you just never know on a yearly basis what the competition will be like.

 

“Well David you know what to expect now.”

On most teams I could make Varsity and be the 7^th man if I were healthy. I can’t imagine going to school where I could be shepherded and mentored by athletes of this caliber.

I want this. I want this career. I want this trajectory. I want this future the kids seem to somehow have found.