Wednesday, 9/03/08 (b)

The last of the Rose Hill junior varsity runners finished the 5K course around 4:10 p.m. and the two varsity squads started to assemble behind the white, spray-painted line that marked the start and the finish. There were 28 runners in all; Matt's team was outnumbered 3 to 1. Coach Adamson called his team to circle up around him.

"All right, guys. Let's see what we got. Hands in. Cougars on three." Matt encouraged.

"One, two, three, COUGARS ..." they shouted in a discordant jumble.

"Aw. We gotta work on that." Matt mumbled as they returned to the line.

Less than a minute later, the Raiders coach sounded the bullhorn and the race was begun. The course took them into a strand of woods and out of view shortly after the start, before winding back into the open on the other side of the large field that abutted Rose Hill High School. The first runners to emerge from the trees were a pack of four silver and black Raider runners followed by a lone runner wearing the CVHS green and gold. It was Jorge and he looked happier than Matt had ever seen him as he drafted behind the main pack. That group of five hit the one mile mark at 5 minutes and 10 seconds. Behind that cluster of runners, a number of Rose Hill harriers past the mile mark in groups of ones and twos. After about a dozen Raider runners went past, Jake came galloping up with his long, awkward looking strides. He was followed closely by D.J. Matt thought at the last second to write down their times: 6:21 and 6:26.

The Rose Hill coach had by this time crossed back over the field to encourage his lead runners before they went back into the wooded section of the course for their second and final lap. Matt waited it out to encourage Kory (6:52), Joe (7:01), Nick (7:02), and Mark (7:08). Glancing over the field he saw that the lead pack had been trimmed to four and that Jorge was hanging in there, mere strides behind the leaders.

Matt felt a rising excitement he didn't expect as he and the rest of the crowd waited to see what the status of the race would be when the lead runners emerged from the forest.

"Hey, your guy's leading!" the Raiders coach remarked to him excitedly. Up to this point, Matthew had viewed his Rose Hill counterpart with considerable bemusement as this middle-aged man had spent most of the last 45 minutes running back and forth across the field to wildly exhort various members of his team. But now, Matthew was starting to catch the spirit. He ran up a 100 yards or so to catch Jorge sooner.

"That's it, Jorge! That's it! Looking good! Keep it up!" he shouted as Jorge passed, closing with a bellowing "RUN!" as the chasing pack of RHHS runners went by only seconds after.

Matt was torn between waiting for his whole squad, like he did for the first lap, and wanting to get over to the finish line. The Rose Hill coach and the J.V. runners watching the race had already started hustling over there, but Matt waited a bit before deciding he had to see the finish. He sprinted over to the finish line in time to see Jorge pulling away for a victory that the timer clocked in a time of 17:28. The second place finisher crossed the line in 17:37 which triggered a seemingly endless parade of Raider runners.

Matt caught up to Jorge breathlessly bent over but beaming and gave him a high five.

"Where'd that come from, my friend? Wow! You were flying."

They went back to the finish line to cheer on the rest of the squad. Finally, in 13th place came D.J. in a time of 21:12. Jake finished 19th in 22:03, followed fast by a hard-charging Kory in 22:06. Joe, Mark, and Nick were the last to cross the line and all three looked as if they would likely pass out before he could get them back on the bus for the ride home.

Matt congratulated the Raider coach who said he'd call in the score.

"20-35, right?"

"Yep." Matt replied, though he didn't have the faintest idea what that score meant. After having the three slowest runners, losing by only 15 really didn't sound that bad. "Jorge must have earned our 20 points."

The ride back was pretty much a mirror image of the incoming trip. Everyone had recovered from the race. The seniors were in the back; the close-knit junior trio was yelling and laughing at one another; D.J. had his earplugs back in ... the only thing that had changed was that Jorge talked pretty much nonstop to Matt the whole way home to Clover Valley.

First, he recounted the race and how he broke away from the pack around the two-mile mark and how good it felt to finish first. Eventually, he started talking about school and how he'd been to seven schools in his last 10 years but that he really liked Clover Valley and that he'd never been able to be on a team before because he was always working but his mom said this year he could and he'd been running all summer but he didn't think he'd ever win a race and his mom thought he needed to make friends this year but he hadn't really to this point and his favorite class was English but his first favorite part of school was cross-country and he wished that the team could race every day but that he was kinda sore already from the race and that he wished his mom had been at the race but he couldn't wait to tell her about it ...

Matt couldn't really get a word in past a certain point, but he didn't mind. He listened with a widening smile to his young runner let loose with a torrent of thoughts he'd obviously been holding in for a long time.