Patricia's Track Meet

March 9^th, 2011: This last week end we spent the day Friday attending Patricia’s Track Meet in Apache Junction. Patricia is an awesome long distant runner. She runs the mile and the ½ mile. This year due to the poor economic situation of the state and education department, they are putting all schools together in the competitions. There is no longer 1A, 2A or 3A etc. Does not matter what the size of your school or the size of the students in your school, you all compete together.

 St. Johns usually can compete with the best of them though. We do not have as many big and powerful athletes, but we have enough. Patricia did very well with those bigger schools. She came in third in both races. We were proud of her. She is awesome to watch. She did have a hurt or pulled muscle. She has been putting ice on it and then heat every other 20 minutes for the past three or four days. Still is this week. Hopefully she will recuperate here soon. Just the same though, she still ran it like nothing was wrong.

 Yesterday though, she complained of getting sick with a cold. Hopefully she can ford it off. She says it is my fault. I’ve been sick for the past few months and especially the past two week with a comeback of a bad cold. When I have a cold, everyone completely stay as far away from me as they can and still live with me. I get to feeling a little lonely at times. It’s frustrating. We go through a can of Clorox wipes every week sterilizing behind me every day. The truth is, everyone at school is sick with this stuff. So it is possible that it could be anyone other then myself who presented the germs to them.

 I’ve been working on getting rid of this stuff real hard. I was supposed to have cataract surgery tomorrow morning at 7:30. But I cannot be coughing or blowing my nose at all after the surgery. So I had to postpone it for another date. I wonder if I will ever stop coughing or blowing stuff out of my nose. It seems to go on forever.

 Back to track though. It is one of my favorite sports. Patricia has been running the mile and 800 since she was in 4^th grade. I am really going to miss it when she graduates next year. Joe was also fun to watch in track. Joe did Soccer. Wrestling, Acadec, Track, and everything he could get his hands on. He was so busy that I’m not sure he had time to sleep at all. He was simply amazing to watch in any sport he played. He always gave it his all and made the sport just absolutely fun to watch.

 I still remember running out on the mat to help him out when he was about to be pinned (one of the few times he was pinned) to go help him out. It was exhausting to watch him wrestle because I felt like I was wrestling with him. However, he never let me live it down that I did that. That was way to embarrassing to him. They even had to do a write up of it in the newspaper. Needless to say, I refrained after that. I really didn’t even know what I was doing at the time. It was just second nature to go help out.

 Joe was something else to watch do the pole vault and High jump. That was his specialty until it came to state in his senior year. He had injured his knee during soccer I believe. It had not healed up sufficiently when it came to the state track meet. He waited till the pole vault got to a certain height, then went in, but was hurting too much to be able to be successful. It was quite the blow for him. So he had one final event left and it wasn’t even his event at all. He loved doing it, but it was not the one he felt that would give him state championship in. That was the 100 meter hurdles. The guy that was supposed to be the favored in the event was right next to Joe in the lineup. He fell right out of the lineup at the gun start. Joe decided that this was his last event and to give it all he could. He took advantage of the situation and came in 1^st with flying colors. That was so thrilling to watch. I can still remember the feeling. Everyone from St. Johns was sitting tight there close to the center of the hundred meter part of the field in the bleachers. We had such a good view of the race. We were screaming so hard, you surely could tell who his town fans were. It was quite the upset for the others. This is the view of his parents and fans of course. He would probably say differently as he was the participant.

 One advantage that I could see is that Joe and Mogli (Michael Madrid) were always good at the same sports. They would push each other in everything they did. Mogli got scholarships in track to go to school. Joe had acadec scholarships to ASU. They both helped each other out in the long run. Both were so much fun to watch. Well my day is over and I have to close for now.