Flashes of Panic

For various reasons which would require an more space than I’m willing to give them in this post, I watched a few races at today’s Hartford High School Invitational, at Trinity College. (Funny that I just mentioned that track earlier this week.)

In the boy’s two-mile, which was loaded with runners from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York, the crowd favorite was Gavin Coombs from Connecticut. But Coombs lost his right shoe within fifty meters of the start of the race. (I’ll never understand why the race wasn’t called back.) There was an audible sigh from the crowd.

Still, he stayed in the race. If the announcer hadn’t been harping on it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the missing shoe for a while. Running barefoot on a tartan track is a great way to rip up your feet, even heavily calloused runner’s feet, but for five laps I couldn’t even see any unevenness in his stride. He hung with the lead pack (being led by two Boston-area runners) and hovered around third to fifth. I was impressed. He looked smooth and strong, even relaxed, but he had a shoe on his inside foot and not on his outside. (If I was given a choice of shoe, I’d choose the outside shoe; he could not have been having a good time on the corners.) He has a classic runner’s build, skinny with long legs, and his form is remarkably good for a high schooler. The announcer was overusing the word “valiant.” (He used it twice more in the girls’ race. Maybe he was anticipating the Sunday funnies.)

In the sixth lap, he started to fall off the lead. I think when he saw them drawing away from him, whatever was blocking out the pain in his foot gave up. He didn’t make it around the start of the seventh lap; he stopped and lay down on the infield. I imagined what he could be thinking, and none of it was happy.

After the race, the announcer pointed him out, being tended by the trainers, and again lauded his valiant effort. I wonder if Coombs wouldn’t rather be under the stands somewhere. His in-state rival, Ahmed Haji, ran a Connecticut state record by seven seconds; Coombs would almost certainly have been under the old record as well, even half-shod.

It seems to be the way of things, in this sport, that you see an athlete who shows sparks of something great. In a lot of cases, though, something’s always in the way. Coombs was apparently too sick to run at the cross-country nationals last winter. Others have been brilliant in high school but fade out at the college level, weighted by their own expectations of improvement, and their perceived failure. While they’re struggling, their fans are just hoping they can run to the potential everyone thought they saw.

Sometimes it happens. Shalane Flanagan never made it to the national meet she was richly qualified for as a high school student. Finally, in ‘02 and ‘03 she won the NCAA meets by such commanding margins that the races were over before the first mile mark. She’s talking seriously about making the Olympic team. There’s hope for Coombs yet.