Okay, those of you that have known me for a while know I’ve never been much of a sports fan. Not knowing this, back in the 8th grade the school paper assigned me to report on the Brunswick High School football game. I went to the game. Well, it was the assignment after all. Besides, let’s face it, there weren’t that many viable social events in Brunswick for a 14 year old, especially in 1966.
So I went to the game. I saw my friends, ate hot dogs, checked out the action under the bleachers, the usual stuff. I had a pretty good time.
So, I wrote my article and turned it in on Monday, hours before the deadline.
They published it. And then they fired me.
Apparently my commentary on the food, the cheerleaders’s legs, and particularly the bleacher activities weren’t what they’d hoped for. I did report the score. I may have failed to mention who got which numbers.
I did participate in a sport while in high school, my junior year. I was even an assistant coach. Well, the assistant to the assistant coach. Yes, the assistant to the assistant coach of Brunswick High’s Cross Country Team.
“Wait a minute,” you may be saying to yourself, but directing towards me, “You went to Cloverleaf High School in Lodi, not Brunswick High School in Brunswick. How’d you pull THAT off?”
Well, I had friends on the team. I went to all the meets, with them, on the bus yet. I had to at least appear to serve a purpose. Besides, Cloverleaf didn’t have a cross country team.
1970 was a very good year for Cloverleaf sports. We had a winning football team, a winning basketball team. Brunswick, conversely, uh, well, sucked that year in both football and basketball.
Track season came along. There was one meet between Cloverleaf and Brunswick. I tried telling the jocks that Brunswick was good, better than what I saw them do. They didn’t believe me and didn’t like that I was telling that anyway.
Well, the day came. I was in the infield with the Brunswick team. And, as I told the CHS jocks would happen, Brunswick beat them in almost everything. My personal favorite was the long distance run. As I recall, Cloverleaf’s star runner was also the quarterback of the football team. He was Mr. Senior Jock. He was the perfect 70’s high school student athlete. And for Brunswick, there was this scrawny little geeky looking sophomore kid who was on the cross country team.
That scrawny little kid beat Mr. Senior Jock by a good quarter of a lap. Blew him away.
To top it off, as soon as he crossed the finish line, in front of Cloverleaf’s coaching staff, he threw his arms around me as yelled “I couldn’t have done it without you, coach!”
I was so proud.
