A Light in the Darkness

That 2004-05 school year, the one that was going to be our last one together, I fielded our first cross country team. I’d been wanting to try it for a few years—get our winter athletes in shape and maybe we had some really good distance runners in our midst.

For uniforms the kids wore unmarked reversibles someone had donated to the school years ago. I’d found them in a storage closet. I bought them gray basketball shorts from a discount store in the garment district. Back in June, our principal had said I could order new uniforms for the new team, but now, with it looking like this would be our first and last season, the local district had cautioned her not to buy any materials or equipment.

At the first meet, one of the coaches from Dorsey warned me that the cross country officials were fussy about runners being properly attired—said they would probably disqualify our runners—but no one seemed to care much about what we were doing, our small team in their raggedy anonymity.

The great thing about Cross Country is that anyone can compete and pretty much without the usual mortification that sports is so good at providing. The races for all the different leagues start every five to ten minutes—so that even a kid who is five or ten or fifteen minutes slower than the rest of the pack will still finish along with some other runners. Comically, a kid running the three miles in over 25 minutes will sprint to the finish line to hold off someone running the same race in under twenty. Afterwards, they often shake hands.

The third week of the regular season, our lack of speed was exposed when our girls varsity race was the last of the meet. Our girls, EG and RD, were so far behind the officials forgot about them (or just didn't want to wait) and packed up their finish line and headed for their cars.

EG and RD were running in virtual darkness—the sun having set behind the tops of the Hollywood Hill.

But they kept running.

Other teams were already on their buses, belching their noxious fumes into the air as they pulled out of the parking lot.

But EG and RD kept going—running toward the imaginary finish line.

We gathered around it and cheered them on as they made the final push and crossed it, collapsing on the scarred grass.

Inspiration— a reminder that we had to keep pushing to keep our school together, even if we couldn’t see or imagine how that was possible.