The heat slaps him as soon as he opens the door. Just walking the quarter mile from the locker room to the track makes his shirt stick to his back. His mile-long warmup run makes him feel like just lying on his stomach in the shade, picking at blades of grass.
But this is it -- his last high school track dual meet. It doesn't matter that it feels like a lazy August day. It doesn't matter that this meet really means nothing, that his team would win easily, that the week-away Sectionals are what really matters. His mom is here with a video camera and more importantly, so is Aaron Winkelspecht, his archrival.
He had never actually talked to "Winkie," and he wasn't sure Winkie even knew who he was. But he knew Winkie -- the best runner of Riverside's team, the pale, short-haired, cocky punk who wore tights under his shorts, always started out way too fast, and always beat him. He's going to be running the 1,600 today, and maybe Winkie would too.
*
I was absorbed in running four years ago as a senior at Delran (N.J.) High School, even though I wouldn't classify my ability as anything better than above-average.
Now I still run all the time and I'm still pretty absorbed in it, but I'm more absorbed in writing, or more specifically, sports writing. And the sports writer in me -- the one who was groomed here at the Daily Pennsylvanian -- can't help but look back at this Riverside at Delran track meet and wonder about how it would have been covered, and how it should have been covered.
How would it have been covered?
Probably with a focus on the score, the final records of Delran and Riverside, probably with a prominent mention of Ray Tomczuk -- the Delran guy who won that 1,600-meter race.
It probably would have been covered as if the meet meant something, as if the cold, hard facts meant something. But the truth is, it didn't matter. Most of what we sports writers write about doesn't matter. We don't deal with things like terrorists and murders and budgets and tax plans and Oprah's new haircut. We deal with things like a Lehigh-Penn field hockey game -- things that in the grand scheme of things mean about as much as a drag bunt in a 15-1 baseball game.
So why write about sports at all? Because it matters to that field hockey player or the high school version of Jason Bodnar -- the people who play or watch those games or meets.
And that's what matters. So don't write about the result like it matters in itself. Write about the people that the result matters to. Write about the field hockey player and her euphoric shouts after scoring her first collegiate goal.
Write about Winkie and me.
*
The official fires the gun and Winkie bolts to the front, ahead of Ray and him. But Winkie soon fades a little and by the end of the second lap -- the half-way point -- Ray takes the lead.
Then just around the first turn of the next-to-last lap, it starts happening. He starts to pick up ground on the fast-tiring Winkie. By the backstretch, he passes Winkie uncertainly, sure that the tights-wearing punk is going to surge at that moment, sure that one surge would kill any chance to beat his nemesis.
But the surge never comes. Less than five minutes after the starting gun fired, he crosses the finish line. Second place. Kicked Winkie's ass.
After some Gatorade, congratulations and an artful dodging of a cooldown, he sits Indian-style on the infield grass, surrounded by several of his teammates. His coach comes over, says Delran has the meet won easily and asks if he wants to run the 3,200 anyway since he'd have a good shot of winning it.
He declines, says he's already had himself a great day, why spoil it? He smiles and leans back on his hands.
It's the perfect time for a sports writer to come over and ask him how it feels to finally beat Winkie.
Jason "Boss" Bodnar is a 2002 College graduate from Delran, N.J., and former Daily Pennsylvanian Senior Sports Editor.
