The sun disappeared behind the trees on the side of the bowl where we'd parked the bus and entered the grounds hours before. The day cooled off as the afternoon wore on, nothing like most of the days that preceded this one. We were still in shirt-sleeves and shorts with no thought of putting on our sweats. The team was starting to sag after being exhilarated most of the day. All our good cheer had mellowed and we leaned against the stone seats, watching the comings and goings of spectators, ready to get on the bus for a long ride home.

Whitey and Johnny sat at the Coach's elbows as Mulligan stood behind him looking over his shoulder at the clipboard that had yet to produce a final score because the last events had just concluded and the results weren't official yet. I looked down at the scorers' table and there was an equal interest in what was going on there.

The Catonsville team was all gathered next to the table, standing, sitting, and lying as they waited. Some sun still lingered at that end of the track. More men with watches and whistles strung around their necks leaned and watched as the final scoring was done. The crowd had all but disappeared and some of the teams had started to straggle out of the stadium, dragging shirts, bags, and various pieces of equipment up the long concrete stairs.

"Well, we have 43 points if none of the events have been contested or the results changed. I can track Dundalk up to 40 points. I still don't know if a Dundalk man topped Tom in the Triple or if they scored anything in the long jump," Coach Becker said deliberately, erasing something on the clipboard and putting something else in its place.

I yawned and was becoming anxious to get out of there. It was nearly three o'clock with over an hour ride home. I was going to Tommy's where my father would pick me up later because I had no idea what time to tell him we'd be back from so far away.

I had the need to tell Tommy all about my day, recounting each detail for him. He'd be glad to hear that I had finally had a good day with none of the usual foul-ups. After a few minutes he'd want to hear about it again and listen to me talk about Whitey, Tom, and Bob and how great they were.

One of the other coaches stopped and reached across the railing to shake our coach's hand and they chatted, after Coach Becker stepped out of the stands, and Johnny picked up the deserted clipboard.

"Damn, Dundalk is all over the field events. No wonder they scored so many points. We dusted them in most of the running, all the sprints, but Catonsville won what we didn't win. Looks like a three horse race but we beat the rest of 'em by a ways," Johnny surmised. "A good day for us."

Everyone was tired and ready to leave Catonsville. It had been our longest track meet by far and so much excitement during the day had us all worn down. You simply can't keep that excitement level for too long and it was fading along with us.

The grab assers were grabbing big time by now, and everything was a joke again. It had been fun for a change but the energy it took to be gentlemen was more than we could muster at this point.

This had been a superior effort for boys that had known little competitive success, residing near the bottom at every track meet we'd entered. We reached far beyond anyone's expectations or anything we'd previously accomplished. I suppose that's why you practice and run track meets. It's a learning process and at times everything that can go wrong does go wrong while you learn, but there comes a time when the learning is done and that's when you start to succeed. I felt like we had done that.

Everything had changed for me over the weeks of track practice. It had allowed me to understand why I ran now. It wasn't just winning either. It was being part of something and that something was winning, but it was more than that. It was Whitey, and Tom, and Bob. I didn't quite understand that part of it yet, but today we'd won big time. All my guys won every time they stepped on the track. Even though I'd never get Tom, I was happy for his success, because in some small way it was my success. Whitey was a guy everyone wanted to succeed, and he did, because he always gave his best and never realized the doubts and fears that ran through me.

"Get me the baton and I'll do the rest," Whitey said from a place inside my mind that would always be there from this time forward.

Bob was the medium that ran between us. He was more like me on the track team. We were never going to score the most points but we were going to allow Whitey and Tom to score the most points. Bob was the cement that held it all together and brought order to our team by virtue of his easygoing style.

The track team made sense to me now. I was the loner, which comes from parents who are cruel, intentionally or unintentionally so, and if you can't trust your parents, well, you don't trust anyone. Growing up means dealing with elements that go beyond your family, and trusting started with Mr. Q. and Mr. Warnock, who had never let me down, and then Tommy and now my guys on my team. It was still a tentative trust with a wariness that might change in time, but they were my guys and that's all I cared about then. That was what my team was about for me, a family of sorts, one I could trust to be there each day after school.

Wanting to quit was no longer an option for me.

Coach Becker stepped back up into the bleachers, after a group of coaches had gathered to chat once he had gone down to talk to the one. I was yawning and getting bored, and almost every other team had gone, leaving a coach behind to get the final scores, except for the host team.

"Gentlemen, don't leave any trash behind," Coach advised loudly as he collected his things and assigned each of his equipment bags to be carried to the bus.

Several guys collected their belongings and started climbing out of the bowl in search of the bus. We picked up our area to make sure we didn't leave anything behind and I was ready to go, and for one of the few times I followed the lead of teammates who weren't my guys.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you all for coming to the Catonsville Invitational Track & Field Championships," the speaker said, just like there was still a crowd to hear it. "I especially want to thank the teams that came to participate."

The speaker went silent.

"Come on," Bob said. "Race you back to the bus."

"Walk you back to the bus," I said as he passed me on the steps, done with racing for the day.

We followed a half a dozen other guys as we made our exodus toward the top of the bowl and the woods.

"In particular I would like to mention a team that came quite a ways to be with us here today. A Prince George's County team, Suit Land; a special thanks for their participation today. A small lazy cheer went up as we stopped long enough to cheer ourselves with a small amount of noise for such a big place.

And when I looked toward the scorers' table and the remnants of the now concluded track meet, the Catonsville team was standing and applauding, looking in our direction.

How weird was that?

"Now, for the final scores. Dundal ... Wait a minute," he hesitated and held his hand over the microphone as a discussion was underway and a new voice took over the microphone. "Sorry about that! The final score is, Suit Land 43, Dundalk 42 and one half, Catonsville …"

So much for scores.

None of us would ever know any of the other team's scores, maybe Coach Becker has them written down on some document somewhere at home in his study, but his team didn't care how many points the other teams had scored, because they had won.

It took us just that long to realize that Suitland High School came fifty miles to win their first ever track meet. It was a stunning victory after an exceptional day. No one thought we'd won, hoping for a second or third, which would have been nice.

The team immediately charged Coach Becker and mauled him. Boys who had been well on their way back to the bus suddenly came charging back into the stadium out of nowhere. In less than a minute most of the team was back at the bottom of the stadium, all acting quite mad, which wasn't as big a surprise to me as the win.

They screamed. I screamed.

"We won! We won! We won!"

Everyone had to say it at least once. For some of us it might have been a question at first, but soon the reality sank in. Most of us were recharged with energy and danced around our coach, who looked as shocked as we were. A few guys just sat gazing off into the infield. There were cheers and screams and insanity of various kinds from the rest of us.

Tom stood on the seat behind the coach and yelled, "We won. We really won a track meet. Will wonders never cease."

And we really did win, Tom, and it was certified, correct, and official, and the tumult started to wane.

"Suitland won!" Mulligan yelled, rushing down the stairs at us, and we all started screaming again. "We won. We won."

Mulligan was already on the bus when he got the news.

Everyone was jumping up and down, some threw themselves on the ground in delight. We were whirling dervishes and jumping jacks, yelling and screaming at the top of our lunatic lungs, athletes gone totally insane. Just when order was almost restored, it would start again with one shout or a word, "Suitland. Hail Suitland High School."

Never had there ever been a better day, never ever for me, and it had only gotten better from beginning to end, well, maybe not so much in the beginning.

Clothing lay strewn all around us. Everything anyone had in their hands went airborne as each boy tried to out yell and out scream the next.

"We won. We won," came the chant and with that the celebration got out of hand once again. No one from Suitland was going anywhere for a while. We wanted to enjoy this moment. There would never be a better place to do it as shade came to the entire bowl.

The Catonsville coach came to shake Coach Becker's hand, congratulating him on a fine victory. Everyone shut up, because we didn't want to embarrass the coach. Elbows jabbed ribs as the giggles and smiles predominated. We tried very hard to be gentlemen and that was never easy for our team.

We were inundated by competitors offering congratulations for the win. Sprinters stopped to talk to sprinters, field men to field men, even coaches came to tell us what a fine showing we had made. The entire Catonsville team had come over to ours, following their coach's lead.

I'm sure they must have considered that we may have escaped from an institution somewhere, because each time any of us had a moment alone, celebrating erupted anew. There was dancing in the aisles and howls of joy and Coach let us have our moment in the sun even though it was long gone behind the trees.

I don't know if the concept of so many people wishing us well was as strange to my teammates as it was to me, but I'd never had an experience like it. I'd never looked to outside sources for affirmation or approval. I was a lower middle class kid who didn't expect much of that, and it was amazing to experience for the first time. It was the sincere congratulations of the vanquished host team and they all came over to us to talk and wish us well.

To me other teams were the enemy, before, after, and during a track meet. How you got to where these guys were from where we were, I didn't know, but I couldn't see Suitland going up to a team that just cleaned our clock and saying nice things. I suppose that's the difference between lower middle class boys and upper middle class boys.

No one watching us could have known Suitland didn't win track meets. None of them could have guessed that the most shocked people in that place were the boys from Suitland.

After we got control of ourselves, we gathered our gear and started our climb out of the bowl. The laughter and the retelling of stories never stopped. The score was repeated over and over again.

Suit Land 43. Dundalk 42 and one half.

It could not have been closer, but the half point made the difference between a satisfying day and insane jubilation. One half point put us in the books as a winner. To a team that never won, that half point was sweet indeed. Coach could not stop smiling. It was his first win at Suitland just like it was ours.

So this is what victory feels like! This is what teams like Northwestern knew about. I reveled in my euphoria. Victory was sweet indeed. My thoughts were very private but we all shared the event. I can't explain it as I couldn't escape the insanity that overtook us all that day. We were swept away by the celebration. It was wonderful, this giddy feeling that put you above everything and everyone. For the team that didn't seem capable of getting out of its own way, we'd even amazed ourselves.

Winners!

First Place!

While I had always remained separate and insulated from people, I was as much a part of the celebration as anyone. There was no way to separate myself from it, because it lived inside me in some metamorphosis that had overcome me. It enveloped my being and linked me together with the team I'd never been linked to in any substantial way before.

There was no way any of us could step back from the victory. We were a part of something very special, an experience we each shared and could remember for all our lives with pride.

We had passed through a portal together and there was no going back. We'd been the perennial losers, the stepping stone for other track teams, going to each track meet a little ashamed of ourselves, but never again. Being losers was a thing of the past. We would never see ourselves the same way again.

There could be no way of knowing what a single victory might mean to the team's morale. What we all could be sure of was, something had changed inside of each of us that day in Catonsville. Just what that might mean was a mystery and only time would tell, but it was glorious on this day.

Certainly we would never win the best-dressed award but we had something more tangible than that within us now. If the coach had taught us anything, he taught us losers never win.

We arrived on the path that would lead us to the bus and there, as we gathered in the woods, it started anew. First it was the jumping and whooping and the recitation of the score. Perhaps we were simply reminding ourselves that it was real and perhaps we were a little bit mad, but whatever it was, the delirium took us over once more. We quickly rolled over Coach, who found himself in the middle of it all.

We ended up on the ground, rolling and laughing in delight until tears ran from our eyes. We shouted and screamed and let loose of every bit of frustration and disappointment we'd known as a team and we were never told to stop or to get control over ourselves. It was an unusual time that needed to complete itself before we could go back to being who we were individually.

His team cheered Coach with enthusiasm. None of us thought we could have done it without him. We cheered our school and started to regain some composure. It was glorious and at the same time, intimate in a way. We still wore our stretched out and faded torn uniforms but they fit us differently now. We filled them in a way it had never been possible to fill them before. We filled them with our pride. Never again could they mark us as losers. That time had passed.

We finished our walk in silence for the most part. We had finally worn ourselves out but the celebrating erupted again once we were on the bus. The poor bus driver had no idea what he was in for. He was lucky we'd already burnt off most of our energy by the time we got to the bus. We settled down into the luxurious seats as the bus drove away.

Sporadically we sang, we cheered, we laughed and shouted, until the bus driver threatened to get off his own bus and leave us to our own device. Finally, we were done. No one had anything left.

Coach Becker looked us over as we drove along the rural county road. He seemed pleased by what he saw. His eyes settled on the back of the bus as though he were searching for one individual, when he found him, his eyes focused. He had the most delighted look on his face as he radiated mischief and delight.

"Mr. Beaudreault, there was a question you asked me before I made you go up to make your last jumps. I'll answer that question now. Why did you have to make your jumps? Here's the answer" he said, holding aloft his clipboard before reading from it. "You finished third in the triple jump by virtue of your final attempt. That gave you one point. We won the track meet by one half point and a Dundalk man finished fourth behind you.

"Does that explain it? Do you understand now why I made you take those jumps?"

The bus erupted with jubilant laughter and everyone threw something at Tom as he ducked behind the seat in front of him only to be buried in shirts, towels, and sweats. He was the unlikely hero of the day, albeit reluctantly so.

As we passed a small store Coach ordered the bus driver to stop, then bought all of "his" boys a soda. Loaded up on sugar, the cheers and songs continued on and on until our voices turned to hoarse squeaking sounds, which at last brought a smile to the bus driver's face.

It was a beautiful day, the most beautiful day any of us could remember.

The sun was starting to set as we made the turn into the long driveway that ran up beside the school. Cars were parked all around from the baseball game that had just ended and with parents waiting for the bus that seemed destined never to return.

Coach stood and held on as the bus rocked and rolled over the potholes that had developed over the winter. He glanced at his clipboard before looking at us, giving us a happy smile before speaking.

"A few facts for you, gentlemen. We scored forty-three points. We won by half a point. Our sprinters scored 26 points. They swept the sprint events. Tom and Whitey are a huge part of the victory, especially Tom's point in the triple jump. "

The squeaky cheers got both of them to blush as they were cheered and a few more random pieces of clothing landed around Tom.

"The 4X400 relay team deserves a special thanks. These particular boys had never run together before and they too scored a point. We were respectable in the distance races and the field events. We scored points in all areas. Everyone contributed to the victory. There were seventeen events, we gave two events away, and we still won. That's impressive.

"Someone, get me a high jumper. Please!"

Everyone laughed because he asked for a high jumper after every track meet. It had never been a factor before. We'd always lost with or without a high jumper or pole vaulter until now.

"Thanks to each of you for contributing! Next week is the Northwood Invitational. I don't need to tell you how powerful Montgomery County schools are. We haven't had much luck against schools in our own county, and they'll all be there for this track meet.

"Enjoy the weekend and we'll start preparing for next week's meet on Monday."

The same baseball players who had always been there to receive news of each defeat during the week day meets, were walking along beside the bus as it turned to park on the small section of driveway just outside of the gym behind the school and they became the first to learn of our victory.

And with that telling the victory no longer belonged to us; it became a school victory and it now belonged to Suitland. The word spread fast and more baseball players came to shake our hands through the windows, some waiting for Johnny, Whitey, or Tom to come off the bus.

I had no desire to shower or to change. With pride and exhaustion, we parted with a few good byes and fewer waves, but holding tightly to that warm feel of camaraderie we were left with. It was never there before, but it would be with us forevermore, at least with me, the youngest member of the team.

Coach went home with a smile on his face and satisfaction in his heart. It had been a good day for him as well. It might be hard to explain to his wife what had happened to his voice and about the dirt and grass in his hair and on his clothes, but his team knew. For an instant in time, he became one of the boys again, being swept up in our euphoria.

Tommy and Richard were throwing the football in his front yard when I came down Shadyside Avenue. They both stopped and watched my approach and waited for news of our latest defeat. Tommy and I hadn't talked much about track in some weeks.

"Well, what happened?" he finally asked after I said hello.

"Oh, that? We won."

He hesitated before speaking, making sure I wasn't going to tell him it was a joke.

"You won?" he yelled at me. "Suitland won a track meet?"

"Suitland won. Both of my teams won. Whitey and Tom finished first and second in both open sprints, and we won the track meet."

"You won!"

"Yep."

"Good thing you didn't quit," Tommy said. "They couldn't have won without you."

"Maybe not, but my guys are pretty good. I don't do much."

"You do, too. Are you going to tell me about it or what? I want to know everything. Richard, tell mom I might be late for dinner."

"You didn't win," Richard argued. "Suitland's track team won a track meet? Not likely."

"Yep."

"All right," Richard said before going into the house with the football.

Tommy and I did what we did most often; we walked and talked. I talked anyway. He listened and didn't need to reassure me or take my side on anything. I told him everything I remembered and even what I had formed some impressions about by then.

"You should write a story about it," Tommy said.

"I wouldn't know what to say, Tommy."

"What you just told me. You should write about it. I want to read about it. You know, have a copy so I could look at it."

"Maybe one day."

"Cool," Tommy said. "Tell me about the 4X100 again. What was it Whitey said to you before the 4X200? What did Tom do at the starting blocks?"

That's the way it went. We were sitting on his front stoop still talking after his mother had called him to come eat for the third time. He sat with me until my father came. It was a perfect end to the perfect day.


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"On Winning Book One" Copyright © 2024 OLYMPIA50. All rights reserved.
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