So since we're remodeling the house, I've been going through a lot of stuff that I haven't seen in a long time. My daughters closet was full of stuff that we put in there when we first moved in over 8 years ago! One of these items was a chest of all my high school memorabilia, primarily my running stuff.
There were LOTS of pictures and news paper clipping and such. Maybe one day ill just start taking pictures and post them all up here, but below are a few of my favorites / more notable pictures.
Hope you enjoy!
Here I am in the 8th grade at my very first Cross Country meet coming through the chute at the finish line. The course was a 1 mile loop, I finished in first place with a time of 4:55!!! Second place finished in something like 5:30 or so.
This is our team photo from that first meet. From left to right you have Joe Archer, Jackie Seamens (not making that one up...), Jeff Ratliff, yours truly holding our trophy and wearing my first ever first place medal, my best friend Tony Frye, and Ryan Roth. Our team took home an overall team victory. We did this every meet my 8th grade year. I also saw a girl cross the finish line at this meet with her legs crossed. I thought she was a retard (if you read that like Zack G from the first Hang Over movie, I thank you) then she uncrossed her legs and let loose a flood of piss all over herself. I realized at that point that she wasn't a retard, just strange.
This picture was taken at the awards ceremony at our cross country meet at Claiborne Park, again in 8th grade. Here I am accepting my first place medal (with a 2+ minute victory over second place) and returning to the stands holding up the oh so popular at the time "Diamond Cutter" symbol made famous my Diamond Dallas Page of the WCW... We were a little special back then. Probably rode the short bus to the meet that day. We also took home another first place team win.
This is me coming into the chute at the finish line in our 8th grade district meet. I won by a margin of over 3:30 on a 2.5 mile course after running a 106 fever the week before the meet. I managed to go undefeated my entire 8th grade season with my narrowest margin of victory being 13 seconds. We won the team victory again at this meet (we also won team victories at every meet this year) and made the biggest ruckus you've ever heard at the awards ceremony. Lots of yelling and screaming and banging on tables and such. At this point in our running careers, Lumberton Boys Cross Country were well known and probably thought of as being a little off in the head. Oh how right they were....
This is a Cross Country team pic from my Junior year in high school. We had a pretty good team. No first place victories, but we usually finished in the top 5 teams. The other teams in the area had several runners that REALLY kicked some ass. One guy my age was running a 4:04 mile as a sophomore, what do you do against that? I'm on the far right side of the picture by Coach McCraw. He was the best coach we ever had. He pushed us beyond what we thought was possible. He took the little short guy on the far right in the blue uniform from being a pot head that threw up after running his first ever mile in 11 minutes, to a pot head that set the school record with a 4:29 mile just a year later. The rest of us improved drastically under him as well. I ran my fastest ever 5K in 17:10 under his wings. He moved on to a neighboring school to become principal and got fired and arrested for supposedly beating his wife...
Here's our Junior years track team picture. That's me in te front on the far left in the red leggings. I didn't enjoy track as much as I did Cross Country. I think its because there were more people involved, and I'm not what you would consider to be a "people person". The guys (and some of the girls) in Cross Country were a little off in the head, so I fit in great! I was actually "Team Captain" my sophomore, junior, and senior years.
If your noticing that the kid on the far right of the picture appear to have a beard, its fake. This is my good friend Scott Broome. He rubbed on some fake beard makeup to give the impression of having a beard in high school. Little did he know at the time that we squeezed some permanent marker ink into the jar of makeup and mixed it in real good. He had a splotchy fake beard for a few days. He went on to go to West Point Military Academy.
I was a little off too.... Yes, my hair was spiked. You can't really see it in the picture on the left, but I had a Mohawk in high school.
This is the picture of my very last cross country meet ever. District my Senior year. I'm the one with the war paint on the far left. Next to me is, again, my best friend Tony Frye, then Ryan Pruit, a guy I don't remember, Colby Woods (we told everyone we were brothers), Scott Broome (also in war paint, or it might be left over fake beard...?) and in front is Kent Bellows. I didn't finish this race. I rolled my ankle in a small hole with half a mile to go and had to drop out. I was in 8th place and would have gone on to district. This was also my last race in my high school career as I didn't run track my Senior year, much to the surprise of everyone that knew me. Truth be told, we had a shitty coach that asked for me to tell him what workouts I thought we should run, and he would tell us to do them. I knew I wasn't going to get a scholarship, so I quit. If we had still had Coach McCraw I'm pretty sure I would have stuck with it and went on to college. Maybe.
Well, that's it for now! Thanks for going through my memories with me. I had a great time with my running career throughout school. Looking back, its some of my best memories. The only thing from my school days that trumps them is when I met my wife (we were sophomores), those were the good old days...
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