DAY IV: The Biggest Gopher

After having labored for two whole days, waking up at 1 pm and such, to complete my crew feature, I thought that I would have a nice easy day four. And I did...until my editor told me I would be helping the man, the myth, the legend, Tom Kubat with a high school track article. It was the Regional meet, and several athletes from local schools had a decent chance of winning. Kubat was gonna need me to run around and get quotes.

Now, this was a mixed blessing. For one, I had just gotten done doing track articles for the last four months (see the Midas Touch post), and the last thing I wanted to do was write another one. On the other hand, this would give me a chance to watch my wunderkind cousin compete in the 800-meter final, in which he was the top seed. Not only that, but be on the field close enough to touch him or any other sweaty high schooler I wanted to...wait, that didn't sound right.

Well, regardless of my feelings, my editor told me to, which means God told me to as far as I was concerned. So I went around the time all the finals were going on and sought Kubat out on the infield.

He told me my main priorities would be the jumpers, both high and long. While Kubat was covering the runners, I was to watch stuff on the other side of the track to get quotes from local athletes, if they won of course.

Now, the annoying thing about track meets, and anyone who has been to one knows this, is that they take FOR-EV-VER. An eternity of sitting around watching preliminary heats and false starts and hurdle setup. The jumps are no different, with each long jumper getting SIX FREAKIN' ATTEMPTS. There was already a guy who had jumped 22'7", and everyone there was pretty sure no one was going to get close to that, but I didn't want to be the one who phoned it in and miss some Matrix kid jump 40 feet.

The long jump was a little better, if you messed up three times your done, but it still took forever. Especially after two kids got in a jumpers duel that lasted to 6'9". That means that if they tried that on me, their nuts would just slide across my forehead. Jesus, I considered it an achievement if I could jump over a shoebox in high school.

So while I was waiting for an 'coons age for the jumpers to finish up, I was able to tool around the infield, and was mere feet away when the gun went off for the 800 final. My cousin quickly got boxed in by a bunch of other runners, could make a proper move, and ended up finishing fifth. Shoot. And Kubat was actually going to let me talk to him, no matter how unethical that might have been.

So when the jumpers finally finished, I got some so-so quotes from them, then transcribed them for and got the hell out. Despite placing fifth, my cousin's time was still good enough to get him to state. I was gonna try to go, as long as I didn't have to cover it.