Hutch.

Spring 1999.  Freshman year of high school.  I’d joined the track team one year earlier, with my best friend Natalie Bacon.  We ran the 100 meter dash, threw the shot-put, duct taped our arms together, and ate Pringles.  That was track.  

In a very short time, the coaches realized my talent for the 100m dash was, well, limited.  I became a 400m runner with Mr. Clark’s middle distance crew.  I hated it.  

This was the year that Maine began hosting a new event at states, the girls 4x800m run.  The distance team was small at the time.  I mean, who wanted to run more than one lap around?  

Looking back, this was the day that changed my life.  They needed a fourth girl to form a team.  Ted Hutch, the distance coach, came up and said “Turner, we’re going to make you an 800 runner.”  And he did, and I started running.  And I never looked back.  

The York distance team has evolved over the years.  Hutch started a winter track program in 1999.  We had six members, and everyone thought we were crazy, running through the hallways of the school for practice.  Our parents drove us to meets.  By 2002, there were over eighty members.  Running was kinda cool.  We’d even stop for food on the way home.  York became a competitor.  Ted Hutch won his first state title, in 2012, with the boy’s indoor team.  

This weekend, I had the pleasure of going to the New Mexico high school outdoor track and field state championship.  My friend coaches at a local high school (lucky for his kids, he’s got Hutch’s spirit and humor).  Seeing those kids, in all the glory, drama, tears, naivety of what they have and what they can accomplish...gave me an appreciation of what I had then.  Life was simple and pure.  Pasta dinners, road trips, ice cream runs along the ocean, team parties, parades and firetrucks, support from all around.  Most importantly, we had a coach that made running fun, and gave us what we needed for success (even if it was that disappointed look when we’d hide in the bushes and skip out on miles...sorry Hutch).  

Hutch gave me the plate off his truck for high school graduation in 2002.  Three years later, my younger sister got the same gift, though Maine had changed the background of their plates by then.  I’d never realized, until now, that it’s come everywhere with me...eleven apartments in ten years.  Four states, even six months in Australia.  If you take something with you everywhere, it’s special, right?  I guess that means it’s one of the most important things I have. 

Thanks Hutch, for everything.