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When I was a teenager, about Jannie’s age, I’d gotten my height but weighed about one hundred and sixty dripping wet. I had dreams of playing college football and basketball. So for two years, Nana Mama cooked extra for me, putting some meat on my bones. When I graduated high school, I weighed close to two hundred.
“Dad!” Jannie whined.
“Tell Bree we should be back before ten,” I said, and I hurried out of the house with my daughter.
Jannie was quiet on the ride over to Starksville High School. It didn’t surprise me. She is incredibly competitive and intense when it comes to running. Sometimes she’s irritable before facing a challenge on the track. Other times, like that morning, she’s quiet, deep inside herself.
“This coach is supposed to be strong,” I said.
She nodded. “Duke assistant.”
I could see the wheels turning in her head. One of Duke University’s assistant track coaches ran the AAU team out of Raleigh during the summer. Some of her athletes would no doubt be on the track. Jannie was out to impress them all.
I pulled into a mostly empty parking lot next to the high school. At a quarter past six on a Saturday morning, there were only a handful of vehicles there, including two white passenger vans. Beyond them and a chain-link fence and bleachers, people were jogging, warming up.
“You’re here to train, right?” I said as Jannie unbuckled her seat belt.
She shook her head, smiled, and said, “No, Daddy, I’m here to run.”
We went through a gate, under the stands, and over to the track. There were fifteen, maybe twenty athletes there already, some stretching in the cool air, some just starting their warm-up laps.
“Jannie Cross?” A woman wearing shorts, running shoes, and a bright turquoise windbreaker jogged over to us. She carried a clipboard and grinned broadly when she stuck out her hand and said, “Melanie Greene.”
“Pleased to meet you, Coach Greene,” I said, shaking her hand and sensing her genuine enthusiasm.
“The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Cross,” the coach said.
Then she turned the charm on Jannie and said, “And you, young lady, are causing quite the stir.”
Jannie smiled and bowed her head. “You saw the tape of the invitational?”
“Along with every other Division One coach in the country,” she said. “And here you are, walking onto my track.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jannie said.
“Just for the record, you’ll only be a sophomore in the fall?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Coach Greene shook her head in disbelief and then handed me the clipboard and said, “I’m going to need you to sign a few forms here, saying we are not in any way, shape, or form considering this a recruitment meeting. This is summer work, and it’s all about training. And there’s an athletic release form from the Starksville school system at the bottom.”
I scanned the documents, started signing.
“Why don’t you take a lap and get warmed up,” Coach Greene said to Jannie, all business now. “We’ll be working two-hundreds this morning.”
“Yes, Coach,” Jannie said, looking serious as she put her bag on one of the low bleachers and ran out onto the track.
I signed the last of the documents and handed the clipboard back.
“You’re here how long?” Coach Greene asked.
“Unclear,” I said. “We’re down on a family issue.”
“Both sorry and glad to hear it,” she said, and she shook my hand again before jogging back to several women wearing AAU and Duke warm-up jackets.
There were other girls and boys coming in now, younger than the college bunch already out on the track, some roughly Jannie’s age. Three of them wore Starksville Track hoodies. I took a seat in the stands, sipped coffee, and ate poppy-seed muffins while Jannie went through her prep routine: a slow lap and then a series of ballistic stretches and drills, increasing in intensity and designed to get her quick-twitch muscles firing.
The entire time, the other athletes watched her, sizing her up, especially the high school–age girls, especially the ones from Starksville. If Jannie noticed, she wasn’t showing it. She had her game face on big-time.
