Tuesday, 9/02/08

After a long Labor Day weekend spent exploring a nearby State park and after a long-seeming first day back at school, Matt was on his way over to the locker room to join his squad of runners for the warmup over to "T" Park (as the locals called it) when he was flagged down by one of the front office ladies.

"Coach Adamson, you have a call in the office."

In these days of caller-id enabled cell phones, Matt found it disturbing to pick up a phone without any idea of who was calling him or what they wanted to talk about.

"Uh, hello. This is Matt Adamson."

"Oh. Hey Matt. I was trying to reach J.T. but I guess they couldn't find him. This is Steve Pasch, the A.D. over at Rose Hill. You guys are still coming over to race tomorrow, right? I was just calling to see if we were gonna have a JV race. You guys interested?"

"Um. No I don't think so. We only have 7 runners. Just a varsity squad."

"Ah. Sorry to hear that. Down year, huh? Seems like you guys used to have more, no?"

"Yeah. I'm not sure. This is my first year."

"Well would you guys mind if we have a JV race at 3:45, then we'll start the varsity race around 4:15? I figure it'll take you guys 'til about 3:45 to get here, so you'll need time for a warmup anyway. Does that work?"

"Sure. 4:15. That works." Matt replied making a mental note that the runners were supposed to warmup before the race. Seems like that would wear them out, he wondered to himself. "All right. Thanks. We'll see you tomorrow."

As he was hanging up, J.T. lollingly strolled into the office. Matt debriefed him on the conversation and J.T. told him where to find the keys to the school van and the associated signout sheet.

"You coming with us tomorrow to Rose Hill?" Matt inquired catching J.T. somewhat off guard.

"To a dual meet? It's 45 minutes away." Then, fearing he'd been a little too gruff, J.T. added, "Thanks though, not sure anyone's ever asked me to go a regular dual meet before."