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Follow Ted Stewart and his Green Ridge track & field team as they vie for a state championship.
Ted Stewart is a runner at Green Ridge High School. The boys’ track & field team at Green Ridge won the state championship last year, but many of its stars have graduated. Now they are the underdogs, although Coach Bill Mallory is confident that Ted, Josh Johnson, and others can fill the gaps and compete with archrival Riverside High. Ted, however, will have to deal with his teammate Sonny Lamar who rarely has a kind word for anybody.

Sujets

Sports

Young Adult Fiction

Recreation

Informations

Publié par	WestBow Press
Date de parution	08 août 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9798385003655
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

RELAY
A Novel for Young Adults

Edward R. Koch

Copyright © 2023 Edward R. Koch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0364-8 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-3850-0365-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023913681

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/03/2023
DEDICATION
For my coaches, teammates, and fellow officials who taught me what I know about our sport;
And
To my late friend Larry James, the greatest anchor leg of them all.
CONTENTS
Preface
Preface to Second Edition
Chapter 1 November
Chapter 2 Early December
Chapter 3 Mid-December
Chapter 4 Holidays
Chapter 5 Early January
Chapter 6 Mid-January
Chapter 7 Late January
Chapter 8 Early February
Chapter 9 Mid-February
Chapter 10 Late February
Chapter 11 Early March
Chapter 12 Middle March
Chapter 13 Late March
Chapter 14 Early April
Chapter 15 Mid April
Chapter 16 Late April
Chapter 17 Late April (Continued)
Chapter 18 Early May
Chapter 19 Mid-May
Chapter 20 Late May
Chapter 21 June
Chapter 22 June (Continued)
PREFACE
T he characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Here are a few examples:
Sonny Lamar is not based on any particular individual, but I am sure most readers have met an individual or two like him at some time or another.
Riverside High School is not based on Riverside, NJ. I did not know that the real town existed until after I had written the story.
As for delicatessens, fictional and real, I should note that I am not related to the owners of Koch’s Delicatessen in Philadelphia, but I think their sandwiches are great.
Some readers may recognize my name from the positions I’ve held in USA Track & Field. The opinions expressed in this book are not necessarily the views of that organization, and are solely the responsibility of the author.
A note to the late author Clair Bee: you should have had Chip Hilton go out for the track & field team.
I would like to give a few words of thanks to many people.
I’d like to thank my family. My parents and siblings have always been supportive of my track & field endeavors. My wife Cora inspires me daily, and read the manuscript. My two sons keep me young at heart.
I’d also like to thank Pat Rico, who read the manuscript, and my many New Jersey Strider friends, who all gave me track & field insights along the way: Sean Albert, Ron Artis, Bob Ayling, Peter Cassotis, Tony Ciccone, Frank and Karen Collins, Chris Coughlin, Ed Dougherty, Tom and Lori Gerlach, Bob Hauk, Paul Jayson, Randy Krakower, Steve Lurie, Phil Moliere, John Oellermann, and Bill Pollinger. And a special thanks to Gerald Connell. Of course, any mistakes are my own.
Above all, I thank God for seeing me through the closest thing to childbirth I shall ever experience.
Edward R. Koch
January 2009
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
T his story was originally published in 2009. Unfortunately, the original publisher went out of business in 2020 and the book had been out-of-print in recent years. Since its sequel is to be published shortly, it was time to get the original book back into print. Hence, this second edition.
In 2009, smartphones and social media were not yet commonplace and do not appear in the story. I considered whether to update the story but decided to leave it as is.
While readers will not see smartphones and social media in Ted Stewart’s high school setting, they will see them in the sequel involving Ted’s much younger brother Artie Stewart.
Edward R. Koch
August 2023
CHAPTER ONE: NOVEMBER
“S ixty-four point eight.”
Coach Bill Mallory read the time aloud from his stopwatch as the six athletes stood beyond the finish line, trying to catch their breath, exhaling puffs of white in the cold.
Thanksgiving had come and gone. They were training for the indoor track season, but the first indoor meet was a month away. In the meantime, they had to bundle up and train outside.
The six athletes walked around the first turn of the 400-meter oval track on the outside lanes. The walk became a slow jog that would bring them around to the starting line again for the next interval. The sun was already low in the gray sky.
Ted Stewart was a fraction of an inch taller than the others in the group. His slender frame of six feet was covered by a sweatshirt and running tights, hiding the leg muscles developed from training under the tutelage of Coach Mallory at Green Ridge High. Stewart was once a sprinter, but he had learned all about difficult interval workouts ever since his coach had converted him to a half-miler almost two years before.
That last 400 really hurt, thought Ted, and we still have seven to go. And the next ones are going to hurt even more. We’re not even halfway there.
He quickly put such thoughts out of his mind. Experience taught him that a long-term outlook made sense before or after a workout, but intervals must be taken one at a time – especially in the early going.
The sophomores were to blame for the early struggles. Standard operating procedure called for runners to take turns leading the intervals. Sophomores usually led the early ones while they were fresh. They were often enthusiastic and inexperienced in their pacing. Coach Mallory wanted the intervals at sixty-five seconds or better, but Schwartz had zipped through the first one in 62.1, and Park led the next one even faster at 61.8. The group quickly paid the price. Ted’s classmate Brad Hanson had just struggled on the third interval, and there was still a long way to go.
Ted couldn’t really be mad at the sophomores. A year ago, he was the soph making the mistakes and learning from his older teammates. Jogging on the backstretch, his mind turned to a different issue: Who should lead the next interval? There were only three candidates. He moved alongside his pal Josh, and turned his head to ask the question. Josh, however, spoke first.
“Don’t look at me,” he said, shaking his head. “Ask Tony. He’s the senior.”
They both looked at Tony Mancini. Tony said nothing for a few moments, thinking it over. Finally, he spoke.
“I’ll take the next one, guys,” was all he said.
Tony was a senior, but had less experience with intervals than Ted or Josh. He had been a pole vaulter for a couple years at Green Ridge with middling success. Then as a junior, he went out for cross country in the fall to improve his conditioning, and he ended up winning the Most Improved Award. Tony quickly decided his future had more upside as a runner than as a vaulter, and continued to improve on the track and in cross country. As a senior, he had just spent the last couple of months serving as the critical fifth man on the cross country team.
The group finished their jog around the track in silence. As they approached the starting line, they looked at Coach Mallory, who nodded. Mallory didn’t have his runners stop at the starting line for each interval. Interferes with the flow, he would say. Instead, the group jogged into the start and took off, with Tony in the lead, Ted and Josh right behind him, and Hanson and the sophs bringing up the rear, all of them running more or less on the inside lane in single file.
Their legs were no longer fresh and already felt heavy coming out of the first turn. Then the wind hit them. Not a gentle summer breeze, but a nasty gust from the northwest, coming from Canada or the Artic. November was giving the runners a chilly preview of the winter months ahead.
More gusts hit Tony head on. Ted and Josh tried to tuck in behind him, but caught their share of it anyway, as did the others. Tony carried on. He hit the 200-meter mark and headed into the far turn - where an interval leader earns his keep. Setting an early pace is one thing, but maintaining it through the entire interval is entirely another. Tony was up to the challenge this time around.
Coming down the final meters, Ted thought the group was a shade quicker than the previous interval. Running the lap at about a sixty-five second pace meant that a tenth of a second equaled only a difference of about a couple of feet. An observer might think it difficult to determine such small gradations without a watch, but experienced runners can often sense it. Moments after crossing the finish line, Ted’s hunch was verified as Coach Mallory read 64.6 from his stopwatch, an improveme