It’s a beautiful evening for softball, and I’m watching my daughter and her teammates in the area tournament.

My mother had dreams of making a softball player out of me, but it was not to be. Yard ball, maybe so, but I still had better luck hitting gnats with a fly swat than making solid contact with a slow pitch softball. 

I was always one of the last ones chosen when my class would split up into teams at PE. 

My Red Rover skills? Zilch. Dodgeball? They could have used me for the ball. Kickball? I got my bell rung when one hit me in the side of the head. 

And then, in the 9th grade, I finally found some success after being forced to run at PE every day. 

You see, I was a band kid. We weren’t allowed, for most of my early band years, to participate in athletics. There were those who did, undercover, and ran the risk of drawing the director’s ire.

In my high school band, you lived, slept, and breathed band, or else risk a stoning. You might as well have made a blood oath to the director. If you told him you were quitting, you were required cut your ears off and turn them in as tribute.

At least, that’s how it felt.

But being in the band had its conditioning benefits. When playing a wind instrument, you can’t just breathe when you want to. Marching shows last around ten minutes, the amount of time in which most decently fit individuals can run a mile. The band’s multi-layered wool uniforms, in the sweltering August and September temperatures, made me exceptionally well-acclimated to the heat.

So every day during the required PE class in the 9th grade, I ran with the rest of my classmates. It wasn’t long before my potential, my athletic gift, was realized.

I’m not going to win the 100-yard dash, but I’ll never give up.

The other best female runner in the class, at least with our daily laps, happened to be a smoker. She lit up in the bathroom, behind the buses, and at the back of the ag shop. If you wanted a cigarette, you could count on her. She had smoker’s lines around her mouth at the ripe old age of fourteen.

A challenge: our PE teacher allowed us to run for one class period, just the two of us, to see who would win. 

I ran, and the other girl ran, and while neither of us stopped for 45 minutes, I had lapped her several times. 

I was declared the winner, glory at last.

“Who wants to run in the county meet this year?” asked my English teacher, who was also one of the track coaches.

 “You should do it,” somebody said, pointing to me. After beating Smoker Girl, I thought why not?

And so, the moment I will relive until the day I die happened in the two-mile run at the county track meet my 9th grade year.

After a few laps, it was already between me and a girl from another school. We had pulled ahead of everyone else, and eventually she drew a good length ahead of me. 

When she walked, I walked. When she ran, I ran. 

I’d always heard of saving strength for the end of the race. ”You’re gonna need enough for a kick,” the coach told me. I had never practiced for a full-length race. It was only in theory that I knew of these things.

After the race, witnesses said I was about fifty yards behind the leader going into the last lap. 

All I knew, at the end, were classmates I had known all my life, who had never picked me until  next-to-last, telling me one thing: 

“Kick in the nitro! Kick in the nitro!”

So I kicked. I picked up speed, and I began to gain on my rival.

I passed Smoker Girl, who was finishing maybe her 5th lap.

I continued to press. There were no spectators on the far side of the track. The motivation had to come from somewhere else.

I was both the killer, or else the slain. I was the hunter and the prey.

I ran disembodied, a cloud for a head, floating along while a foreign force propelled my body, which I could no longer feel.

By the final turn, I had caught up to the leader, and I had a decision to make. Cut inside, or go outside.

I took the shortcut.

I stumbled, but I did not fall.

She crossed the finish line just ahead of me.

I had to be carried.

I didn’t know how I would run the mile.

Shortly after the race, the completion of the meet was postponed until Saturday due to rain.

I beat her in the mile.

That was the last year my school won the all-county sports award. But going into the track meet, the award was still a close call. 

I, being a non-athlete, had not kept up with these developments.

One of the coaches told me about it, after our girls’ team won the track meet.

“You made the difference. If it hadn’t been for you, we probably wouldn’t have won.”

The coach, for years after, talked about my kick in that last lap.

In my mind, I will always, forever, go to the outside. I would have beaten her. 

The coaches tried to recruit me for track the next year, but my PE credit was fulfilled. All the band conditioning in the world would never be enough to  prepare me to run as I had the year before.

It was my one moment.

Fast forward to my first year teaching. It’s the yearly senior-faculty softball game, and I decided to play. Before the game, we were throwing and fielding pop-ups.

I saw it coming, straight down. My glove was up. I was going to catch it.

And I did, right in the eye. 

It was bruised for a month.

Lesson learned. I’m not a softball player.

But I am, indeed, an athlete.