It was a sprinter's spring, until the chilly misfortunes of May arrived, but in February I couldn't wait for the season to begin. I carried none of the doubt that came with me to the Suitland track team the year before and the excitement built as the time to rejoin my teammates approached.

The call finally came.

"Anyone wanting to join the Suitland Track Team, please report … dressed … in your gym clothing … to the hallway outside the boy's locker room after school today."

I had the feeling that my first season ended abruptly and without resolution. Just when we were learning to run together, and run fast, it was over. It left me feeling unfulfilled at a time when I wasn't even sure if I liked being on the track team. We were a small squad my first season and when Beaudreault went down the relay went bust. While one man shouldn't have made that big a difference in a four man race, losing him did and we all knew it.

This time around I would know what to expect and that had me ready to finish what we started. It was still questionable if we could work together or not and therefore there was no way to know how good we would become if we did. I wasn't sure if we'd pick up where we left off or if we would revert back to the bickering and arguing we shared so willingly last season.

The team as a whole didn't mean as much to me as my guys did. While there were some guys I liked and could talk to, most of the boys my first year were jokesters, taking nothing seriously, especially themselves. So it was difficult to see how we could achieve anything if that attitude persisted but that's not what I came back to find out.

As I sat in front of the same locker I had inhabited my sophomore year, I ran these facts through my brain. I didn't pay much attention to what was going on around me until Droter passed and patted my shoulder, smiling when I looked up at him.

"Hi, Charles. Good to see you."

Droter was the guy that handed off the baton to me and I had learned to trust and depend on him in a way I trusted and depended on few people. We hadn't seen each other since the track season ended the year before and I couldn't help but smile at the sight of him. It reassured me that our relationship hadn't changed.

"Hi, Droter. How are you?"

"Fine," he said and moved down to where he had his locker close to my other two teammates, Whitey Sheldon and Beaudreault. They were all seniors now and I was a junior and not quite up to their status.

When I looked up from tying my shoes, I glanced at the opposite end of the bench to see the three of them looking back at me.

"What?" I asked, unsure of what the problem was.

"Why so serious, Charles?" Beaudreault said, and it sseemed odd coming from him, the most serious person I'd ever known.

"Why not take a locker down here with us?" Whitey said. "Let's keep the team together this year."

"Okay," I said without hesitation.

I collected my things and moved the twenty-five feet to the other end of the bench to join my teammates. It gave me a warm feeling when I did. These were my guys and I wanted them to want me on the relay team.

It had taken us most of the previous season to learn to deal with each other without arguing about it but as I walked those few feet I closed whatever distance I thought might have existed between us. In the first fifteen minutes of my second season we had arrived at where it took us an entire season to get to the year before. There were handshakes and greetings as I transferred my street clothes into the locker I'd occupy for as long as I would run track at Suitland.

We were "The Team" in fact and not simply in my own mind.

"How are you, Beaudreault?" I asked, wanting his approval.

"Fine."

"How's the leg?" I asked, before thinking it ill advised to inquire about his season ending injury.

The last time I had seen Beaudreault, he was on crutches and in street clothes the Monday after he pulled his hamstring. His season had ended just that quickly. We'd all known it at the Northwood Invitational Track Meet on the previous Saturday, but seeing him in his light gray corduroys and print shirt, leaning on his crutches was convincing evidence of what we already knew.

"It's strong. I've been exercising. Getting ready."

"Me too," Droter said, smiling broadly as he placed an item of clothing into his locker.

"I haven't," Whitey said proudly. "I played a little football and got some exercise there."

"Yeah, you were awesome," I blurted out in the excitement of the moment.

"Not awesome enough to have a winning season," he lamented, leaning into his locker for his shoes.

It was a different start to a new season. I never saw my teammates because we were in different classes in different sections of the school. We never crossed paths. Juniors and seniors didn't mingle by nature and so having them include me was a strange honor for me.

I had run into Johnny Green in the student parking lot at the end of the previous year. He'd been the captain of the track team my first year. His words were pensive and full of melancholy as he expressed a desire to return for one more track season and the fact he was leaving at a time when he thought the team was coming into its own. I wasn't sure about all that but it was good to hear.

I would miss Johnny and his advice, because he had explained things to me in a way I could understand. I wouldn't miss his humor or the way he led the unruly boys that went with us to every track meet. Johnny represented the old way of doing things and while we had won a track meet with him as captain, we'd also lost all the rest.

I was anxious to move forward and see what my second season would be like. The questions were all answered for me before practice had actually begun. My guys were still my guys, although I had no idea what would come of it. Coach Becker put us together for a reason and he worked to keep us together when we were falling apart as a relay team. I had to think he knew what he was doing and I didn't mind going along with him.

I waited for my guys to finish dressing and we walked out to practice together. There were a large group of boys gathered there. There was half again as many boys as the previous year's team. While a half a dozen seniors had graduated, we added fifteen juniors, most of whom I knew from my class, and several sophomores had come out for the team.

That made another reality clear to me on the first day of a new season. The guys from my class, the other juniors, weren't my guys and never could be, even though I'd known some of them from as far back as grade school.

I had been the lone sophomore to stick on my first track team. I struggled to stay and to find a place. As a team we had struggled to overcome a loser image. We'd face defeat, humiliation, and embarrassment of monumental proportions, but in the end we had succeeded. That success created a bond we shared with each other but not with those who came after we'd realized some success. My classmates would never know about the bad times, the hard times, and losing big time.

Being the only one of something isn't any fun and it wasn't much fun being the only sophomore. Because of it I could never embrace the guys from my own class the way I embraced the boys left over from my first track team. Even with all of them graduating at season's end, leaving me alone as the only holdover from that first team, they were still the guys I related to best.

I did like and respect some of the boys from my class. Don Kennerly was an athlete, like Whitey, only he had long lean muscles that made him perfect for hurdling and jumping. He joined Ron Payne to strengthen us in the hurdles.

Ronnie Powell was Mr. Everything in my book and another sprinter, but more importantly, he was a long jumper. He actually enjoyed the long jump and he was very good at it, but Ronnie was good at everything, and while I was always suspicious of other sprinters who might be able to take my place, he was no threat to me.

There was Terry Huff, another good distance runner, who joined Todd and Merrill to strengthen us there. There were a dozen other guys who seemed hand picked to fill the weakest events we'd endured throughout last season. There weren't enough new guys to make us a big team but there were enough to raise us beyond being a small team.

Just like the first day my first season, it was another cold and brutal February day. I remembered my first day of practice the year before and it made me shiver as I looked around and greeted my old teammates before getting to the new arrivals I knew.

Coach Becker brought his smile with him. He greeted Whitey and Beaudreault first and he seemed pleased, recognizing other boys as circulated around his new team. Doing my usual, I stayed in the background, never knowing what to expect or what to do. Of course, all the holdovers were seniors that he'd spent the most time with. Then he spotted me leaning against one of the faithful heaters I adored that time of year when I was trying to forget the frozen tundra that was the outdoors.

"Charles, nice seeing you back," he said, shaking my hand.

"Coach," I said.

Okay!

It was different from the first time. Coach Becker had a twinkle in his eye after seeing all those new boys. While we still fell short of the fifty and sixty boys that inhabited the better teams we ran against, there were thirty-five competitors to cover seventeen events. The previous year we had barely twenty-five boys that could participate in track meets and never enough to cover all the events competitively.

We elected co-captains, one for field events, Mulligan, and one for the runners, Whitey. He was someone that most boys knew and admired. I'd halfway expected Beaudreault to be co-captains with Whitey but of course he wasn't a field man, except in Coach Becker's mind when he wanted someone to do the long jump and triple jump.

The team meeting became serious almost immediately. There were still stories and a shiver ran through me every time the doors open to emit or eject a jock from our midst. Coach Becker gave us a rundown on the previous season. He mentioned winning track meets and becoming a power in Prince George's County track and field. I wasn't sold but whatever Coach said was fine with me. It did seem a tad ambitious to me.

Ever the optimist.

I suppose Coach Becker and I had gotten off on the wrong foot. When I joined my first track team, it was loosely run and there was too much turmoil, especially in route to and from track meets. I held that against him, because he didn't exercise a tight rein on his boys and I thought he should.

Coach Becker also had big ideas about his team. His enthusiasm never seemed to subside. Even when we were in the midst of being trounced, as we were regularly the year before, he saw the light while we endured the darkness of defeat. He was always asking for more; further, higher, faster and up to a point I was with him all the way, but once he started talking about winning track meets and establishing Suitland as something other than a mediocre track team, he lost the believability factor. That might work on the new guys, but I had been there the year before and with the exception of one win, we'd endured the agony of defeat. I was sure this would be a better team than that one by virtue of more warm bodies, but I also thought that he was reaching a bit to the high side of reality as I listened to his optimistic predictions for us.

The second season had started off with Coach Becker taking more control and with Whitey as co-captain, well he'd certainly take the job more seriously than Johnny Green did. For one thing he brought something with him Johnny Green didn't have. Whitey was a well-known jock who had earned the respect of his team partly because he took it seriously and from the start he took charge of the team.

Since he was one of my guys, I didn't question his leadership. I know he thought I had a big mouth and that I spoke when I should have been listening, but mostly we got along and Whitey had always looked out for me in a big brother kind of a way. Being on the same relay team meant we had to cut each other some slack and so we did.

And so my second season had begun and in spite of all that I knew, or should I say, all that I thought I knew, Coach Becker was about to blow my mind. I don't think any of the new guys realized or understand the significance of what he did. They hadn't been on the team last year but I had, and I was curious enough not to miss it and when my teammates from last year heard the details of the deed, well we all had a new respect for our coach and what he said.

The thing about it is that he only did what he said he would do. I'd heard him say it more than once. Coach Becker told stories. Most practices started out with stories about him being a boy in New York City, about him running track in high school and college, and every once in a while, a war story would slip in there. There was a moral to the stories but they were still stories and some of them were hard to believe, even if they did have a moral and if they were meant to teach us a lesson he wanted us to know.

Sometimes I slept during story time. It was a great time to catch a catnap and it was one of the things I didn't understand my first season. By the end of my first day of my second season, I was ready to reevaluate my previous opinions about Coach Becker, but at first it was just the first day of practice, very cold, and it was good to be back with my team. There was no sign that anything at all was going to happen that day, but it did, much to my surprise and without most of us knowing what was happening at all.

Coach Daniel Becker knew about track and it took until the first day of my second season for me to become a believer, but I did.


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