It’s all my dad’s fault, really.

I grew up in a small town called Heber, Arizona.(*) It was (and still is) a friendly place on the outskirts of the Mogollon Rim, populated with juniper, ponderosa pines and decent, wholesome people.

I struggled to fit in. My interests did not include football, baseball, or any sport that I could think of at the time that my friends and fellow townspeople valued. Instead, I favored reading: Jack London’s Klondike adventures, science fiction’s great authors like Asimov, Bester, Ellison, Silverberg and Bradbury. I had plenty of time to read them all on the thirty mile bus ride to Snowflake High School in the town of the same name, shutting myself off from the adolescent drama that played out between all of us on that 45 minute ride. I spent evenings with my small telescope staring up at the universe. I was probably the only person in a hundred mile radius who knew who Carl Sagan was. Yeah, I was that kid.

So playing on the church softball team with other kids my age didn’t fit into my priorities. But my folks, being wiser than I, knew that I would really regret not playing on the softball team, and I, being far more naive than I could imagine, knew they were right.

I played, I got better, and I began to feel more accepted.

However, one day after striking out the three times I was at bat, I came home and told my dad that I wanted to quit the team. He looked at me and said, “one of the coaches (he named the coach) told me that you are an incredible runner, that when you get a hit, you fly around those bases.”

That stuck with me. I was actually good at something my friends and other adults valued. I couldn’t hit for beans (though that skill improved as I edged further into adolescence), but I could run.

I joined the track team my sophomore year in high school.

I focused on the 100 and 200 meter dashes and the long jump, since we didn’t have a “real” cross country program. Surprised myself that first year by clearing 14 feet in the long jump, and earning 0.5 points toward the eight points needed to letter.

Grew stronger in my junior year. Found some speed and ran the 200 meter dash and the 1600 meter relay, cleared 18 feet in the long jump, and lettered easily with 12 points. In my senior year, I cleared 20 feet twice, winning my favorite event outright several times and anchored the final 400 meter leg of the 1600 meter relay. Earned 72 points, lettered again, and said to myself at the district finals, “I’m going to the State Championships! This is going to be SO AWESOME!” And therein lies a tale.

My friend and fellow teammate Jeff Flake(**) occasionally joined me in the long jump. I was holding onto third place with a single inch advantage, and our coach gave him the chance to perform the event since my other long jump teammate decided to drop out of the event at the last minute.

He performed his first jump, and I died inside. He beat me by two inches, knocking me into fourth place, and out of a place in the state championships.

I was crushed, but I knew we had the 1600 meter relay coming up that evening, so I prepared myself, kept warm, and promised myself that a finish that guaranteed a place at state would make it all worthwhile.

Then the other shoe dropped. The 1,600 meter relay was to be run in two heats. The slower teams would run first, and the faster teams would run second. Fine. But despite coming to the district finals ranked first in our division in the event, some dimwitted official placed us with the slower teams.

I was running the anchor, or last, leg. By the time I got the baton, we were a full 200 meters ahead of the second place team in the heat.

I ran my guts out, finishing with a 54.9 second split time for the final 400 meters, but it wasn’t enough. Because we weren’t racing with the faster teams, we had no idea if we would eventually finish in the top three. And it gave those faster teams a target to gun for. And gun for it, they did.

We missed going to the state finals by 2.5 seconds, a gap we would have easily closed if we would have raced against the faster teams like we knew we were supposed to.

I locked myself in a bathroom stall and bawled my eyes out. It was my senior year, and despite all my hard work, despite all I had gained thanks to my dad pushing me out of my comfort zone, I would never make it to the State championships. My running career was over.

Later on, I realized that finishing high school was the end of the beginning of my life, and that in time I would become a much better runner than I ever imagined, and that I could push myself in ways I thought impossible when I was a high school senior. I could work for and achieve much bigger running goals.

But despite the fact that over thirty years have passed since that fateful day, my hands still tremble as I write this.

(*) Heber-Overgaard, Arizona, between Payson and Showlow on Arizona Highway 260. Population about 2,800 as I write this. A perfect place to grow up, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

(**) Yes, that Jeff Flake, the Senator from Arizona. Abysmal politics, but a decent guy. He actually apologized to me for edging me out of the state finals after the event.