The Unlikely Letterman

It was the 1970-71 school year, my Junior year of High School. The first two years I did not get very involved in extracurricular activities. I decided this year I would do some things. I tried out for the Junior class play and got in, playing the part of “Baptista” in “The Taming of the Shrew,” a play by William Shakespeare. I was in the Photography Club. Some of the photos I took ended up in the 1971 Bloomington High School yearbook, “The Bruin.”

Then there were sports. Most of the sports require a “tryout” to see if you “make the team”. I didn’t do those. I joined the Cross Country team. I don’t remember any tryout. If you were willing to run two miles they were willing to let you. There were two teams, a Varsity team and a Junior Varsity team. I was on the Junior Varsity team. I remember the first time I ran the whole way instead of walking some of it. For me that was a big milestone. I remember the first competition I was in against another school. My time was a distant 17:17.

My goal was to beat my own time. Every race I ran I improved my time until by the last competitive race of the season I ran a still distant 14:14. This was not enough to earn a Junior Varsity letter. I never thought I would get any letter and was just happy to improve over my own best time.

I did learn something else running cross country events. There were times when I had an advantage. One school we visited had a two mile course that ran several hundred yards in a dry sandy riverbed. That slowed everyone down, but it didn’t slow me down as much as it did other people. I passed several people in that riverbed but once we got back on hard ground they passed me.

Another time we went to an Invitational meet, which meant many schools were there. This particular course had an infamous “killer hill” not long after the start of the race. It was about a quarter mile of steep, straight uphill climbing. Once again it did not slow me down as much as it did others and I passed about seventy people going up that hill. Going down was another thing.

Our coaches, and sometimes teammates would say “Put it in high gear!” to encourage us to run faster. Well my high gear wasn’t very high. Going down the winding downhill course on the other side of the “killer hill” I tried to let gravity help and I ran as fast as I could without losing my footing but everyone I had passed going up passed me going down. I started to think, “I have low gear legs.”

The Cross Country season preceded the Track season. When Track season started I learned most of the people who ran Cross Country had done so to get in shape for Track season! They weren't going to keep competing in the two mile event! In Track there are many events, Track and Field events. In competitions you could compete in three events and it didn’t make a lot of sense to train for and run the two mile race if you could train for and compete in three other events. I was the only member of the Track team who was going to run the Two Mile event. By default that meant I was on the Varsity Track team.

The event was run on a flat track, eight laps around, no uphills, no soft sandy sections, and for me, no advantages, or so I thought. Other schools usually had three two mile runners, so I would finish fourth. But sometimes there would be only one or two, which meant I would get a second or third place finish. Finishing in the top three spots meant you earned points for the team. First place earned 5 points, second place earned 3 and third place earned one. I remember one time when the other team also had only one Two miler, I went to my coaches and asked them if they had anyone available to put in who could just do the distance and pick up the extra point. (Actually if he beat me I would pick up the extra one point, but between us we could pick up four instead of three.) They found someone. He had not been training for the distance and he had already competed in other middle distance events that day but he did run and finish third and pick up the point for the team.

Another time I ran against one other competitor I had an unexpected advantage. There was a strong wind blowing. When we were running into the wind I would pass him, but when we were running with the wind he would pass me. The first four laps I passed him going into the wind and he passed me going with the wind. Something else unusual happened that day too. Normally I was running my race, but trailing everyone else and no one paid attention. When I started passing this other fellow, some of my teammates noticed and started rooting for me. Whether I was passing him or he was passing me they were encouraging me. On the fifth lap I managed to almost catch him, and on the last three laps I would gain on him, but eventually he finished first and I finished second. But my low gear legs proved themselves again when adverse conditions slowed down everyone, they didn’t slow me down as much.

I told my coaches that if they could find me a course that was uphill all the way, in loose sand and with a good headwind I could win that race. I would also have the slowest winning time on record! I never got to do that of course, but one thing I did continue to do was improve on my own best time. By the end of the Track season I had run under 12 minutes twice; 11:54 and then 11:50. I had two second place finishes and three third place finishes which meant I had earned 9 points for the team over the course of the season. I did this simply by being there and finishing the race, not by beating anyone. For comparison, our school record at the time for a two mile race was 9:28 and the California State High School record was about a minute faster than that.

Varsity Lettermen stood out on the Bloomington High campus with their jackets with the large “B” sewn on. Some of them had lettered in multiple sports and for multiple years. They had shiny gold colored pins on their letters, footballs, basketballs, tennis rackets or baseball bats indicating the sport in which they had lettered. The pin for a Track letterman was a winged foot. I was a teammate and friend with some of these guys. They were pretty nice to me. Team spirit meant something.

To automatically get a letter in Track you needed to earn 15 points for the team during the season. Some of my teammates who were very good and could compete in multiple events had that many early in the season. I attended the Awards Banquet where all the awards for all the sports were given for the year. I got to see my teammates get their Track and Cross Country awards. Then I got a surprise. The coaches had voted to award me a Varsity letter. They said because I had earned 9 points while competing in only one event, because I had improved my time every time I ran, (they noticed too?) and because I had helped the team by letting them know when there was another point someone could pick up for the team, they believed I had earned the Varsity letter. So I became a Varsity Letterman! I even got the jacket!

It was not something I set out to achieve. It was a most unlikely outcome, at least in my mind. I had a lot of fun. I made some friends. I improved my own fitness and improved my times over two seasons by almost five and a half minutes. I learned some valuable things about myself and about working to improve. Those were things I did set out to achieve.

I learned that if you are aiming for certain goals and putting in didn't work to get there, sometimes you get more than you could have hoped you would.