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I was just on your web-site and it got me thinking about the first day of track practice, knowing of the excitement, disappointments, and the unknowns to follow. As I sit here now, I can hear you telling us your typical first day of practice speech. What you expect of us and how we cannot wear shorts until you tell us too. That didn’t go over well with distance crew year after year, but you were the boss and we listened, knowing there was some reasoning around it.

The reason why I’m writing you this email is not to reminiscent about the first day of practice but how I agree with you when you say there is a whole generation of athletes that are missing out on the excitement of the Hock relays. Back in 1993, I remember how we couldn’t wait for the relays to come. We took this meet as serious as we did the state relays. This was the meet to show the league what kind of shape you were in and hopefully psyche other athletes out.

I remember the day before the meet, when the lineup would be posted on the locker room window. I would be thinking to myself, I wonder if Malone, Mackie, or the Foxboro kid (can’t remember his name) are running the same relay that I am. Just hoping that I would have to run against them so I could show them who was the boss right from the beginning.

I can honestly say some of the greatest memories I have of my high school career are from this meet. It is just so hard to explain this meet because it’s a fun, non-stressful meet, but as an athlete you would lose sleep over.

Oh, one of my other greatest memories I have to you share with you is one that I don’t think you knew about. It was in my senior year, and it was “the day before the meet tradition”. Where we would run ARCO but when we got to Falls market, we would stop and buy ice cream and walk back to the high school eating it. We used this tradition all the way up to the New England meet.

By the way, you might want to ask Ethan about this tradition. He knew about the tradition. He might have not been on the runs with us but we didn’t leave him out of eating the ice cream part. We brought him back an ice cream the day before New Englands. That must have been the reason he ran the 1:58 that day.

I had to get the guilt off my back!!! Great memories and would like to thank you for turning me into the track guru that I am.