The best female athletes I've been able to cover

Today -- June 23, 2012 -- marks the 40th anniversary of the passing of what we've come to know as Title IX, which allowed women to play on the same level athletically as their male counterparts and ultimately gave them a chance to compete for college scholarships.

And trust me, there are enough stories I could write on each young lady who made their marks in high school and were able to literally cash in and make something of themselves in college and into a professional career, sports or non-sports. Those will always be some of the best stories I've written about.

So after 28 years and hundreds of games on basketball and volleyball hardwoods, swimming pools, bowling lanes, grassy fields and softball diamonds, you'd figure I've seen some great female athletes. And you'd be right. In that part, I've been blessed. So I sat down and thought about who the best female athletes I've covered are over those 28 years.

And I was able to come up with a list of the 10 best, along with their schools, graduation year and their accomplishments, some of which I've written about in these blogs before. Now before I reveal this list in descending order, I want to share some of the honorable mentions, young ladies who missed the list, but certainly deserve the credit for what they did in their careers.

There's Chris Forrester (Toms River South, Class of '85), Linda Kurtyka (Toms River North, '89), Lauren Wagner (Central Regional, '92), Rachel Goodale (Jackson Memorial, '93), Dana Jurczyk (Lacey, '94), Shannon Keelan (Toms River South '96), Erin Leonard (Jackson Memorial, '99), Laura Leigh Tallent (Marathon, '00), Lindsay Brown (Crescent City '04), and Jacqueline Fraga (Interlachen '11). All were fantastic athletes who made their schools proud and not in any particular order.

This next list, though, is in order, from No. 10 to No. 1. Now, let's set a couple of ground rules for being on this list. First, these young ladies had to excel in more than one sport. That's a big reason why they made this list -- because they could do more than one sport, more than one motion/activity, better than most others. And second, they had to be someone I covered at the newspaper I was working for at the time. I know women such as Jill Spaschak (Southern '84) and Michelle McCool (Palatka, '98) were terrific athletes in their own right in high school and certainly beyond in college and after (most pro wrestling fans know McCool's work on WWE over the years), but I never got to cover them in high school. That excludes them from this list.

Got it? Good! Now with plenty of thought behind it, here's that said list of the best I've seen in almost 28 years. And yes, I know some of the ladies here are married now and I'm using their maiden names (he says with raised eyebrows and eyeballs to the top of his head). My apologies for not recognizing your current life and married name, but this is how I remember you as a high school athlete.

10. Dawn Dickten (Lacey, '89): Dawn Dickten wasn't a boisterous or loud person when it came to personality. She simply let what she did on a field hockey field, basketball court and soccer field do the talking for her. And she was an All-County standout in all three sports her senior year as well, making the All-County soccer first teams three times.

It was in basketball as a senior as the team's shooting guard she helped take coach Mike Shern's Lions to the NJSIAA South Jersey Group III final where they lost. But before she finished her career, she scored her 1,000th career point. However, it was in soccer that she starred. As a sophomore, she was part of a Lacey team that went to the Shore Conference Tournament semifinals. Then in her senior year from her center-midfield position, she got coach Paul Groben's Lions to the semifinal round against top-seeded and unbeaten Point Pleasant Boro, which was a dynamo behind standout players like Kim Yankowski, Wendi Pearce and Jennifer Shutt. This should've been a Point Boro rout on Boro's field. Nope! Lacey rode a Sara Patiro goal to a 1-0 stunning upset as Dickten and her defensive mates did the rest. They culminated the program's first SCT championship on that same Point Boro field five days later by knocking off Middletown North, 4-1, in the final. Dickten basically did everything with her identical twin sister Denise (who played the same three sports with her sister), even going to Kean together to do big things and earn major accolades by her senior year in 1993 in basketball.

9. Jessica Jordan (Interlachen, '06): Ron Whitehurst knew Jessica Jordan was a pretty good infielder and could be a fantastic outfielder. So where did he put her during the last two years of her high school career? Yup, of course -- catcher! And she was fantastic there, too. But that was just scratching the surface of how talented this Ram was.

Jordan was an outstanding three-sport athlete from the Western Putnam County school, playing volleyball in the fall, soccer in the winter and softball in the spring. And in all three sports, she earned All-County honors. When Whitehurst took over as the volleyball coach in the 2004 season, Jordan took off as a front-line player. Then when Mike Stevens took over in the 2004-05 season, she really shined as a midfielder-forward and earned Player of the Year honors for that season, one that saw Interlachen win five games after it went a wretched 0-16-1 the year before. But it was the 2005-06 when Jordan helped build all three Interlachen teams. In the fall, the volleyball team went to the state tournament for the first time in 17 years as it finished runners-up in the district tournament to Keystone Heights. In the winter, the transformation from a winless team to a state tournament team in two years was complete when the Rams made the district final for their first time, losing to Keystone in that championship. And Keystone beat Interlachen in the district softball final, but the team was back in the state tourney for the first time since 1999. And it was in the state tournament game, a wild 11-10 loss at Umatilla, in which Jordan had a great game with four hits, including a home run. Jordan earned a spot on the St. Johns River Community College softball team, and though she did not have a starring role with the Vikings, she was still a part of the program's first-ever state tournament-bound team.

8. Wendi Pearce (Point Pleasant Boro, '91): In her three sports, Wendi Pearce got the most out of her talent. especially being only 5-foot-4. But what she did in her four years in field hockey, basketball and soccer -- as well as her quiet leadership -- was what got her on this list and ultimately earned her a soccer scholarship to play at Monmouth College.

In field hockey, Pearce was a facilitator, getting the ball up the field, then feeding off to teammates like Charisse Hopkins and Yankowski. As a junior, she helped the Panthers to their best season in 14 years when Boro won the SCT championship and to a place in the NJSIAA South Jersey Group II title match where the Panthers ultimately lost to a very, very good Moorestown team. In girls soccer, she put together one of the greatest statistical seasons no one ever heard of. On a team powered by superstars, all Pearce did was score 34 goals and hand out 26 assists as the Panthers went 20-0 and won the SCT title against Wall going away, 4-1. Boro outscored its opponents, 190-5, that season. In a much tougher division the next year as a senior, she still was a facilitator with 12 goals and 11 assists. In basketball, though, she had an enjoyable last two years as a guard. Her junior year saw her take the Panthers to the NJSIAA SJ II semifinal, where Sterling wiped up Point Boro, 86-46. Pearce and her teammates remembered that for the next year -- playing point guard, Pearce helped guide the Panthers to a 74-49 blowout win of Sterling at Pennsauken High to capture the SJ II title. The Panthers lost in the Group II semifinal to Manasquan in overtime in an amazing game. Still, it was her soccer prowess that got Pearce the scholarship to Monmouth, where she'd play her four years. Still, the best was yet to come from that family.

7. Consuelo Lezcano (Marathon, '03): This Middle Keys standout in volleyball and basketball stood tall among others. At 6-foot-3, it was easy to stand out like that. She once told me the hardest part about being 6-3 for her was dating -- all the boys taller than her weren't exactly rocket scientists where she lived and there weren't many guys as tall as she was. But she was a delight.

In volleyball, she was part of a couple of district championships at Marathon in 1999 and 2001 as the middle blocker and hitter. She developed a nice little game while learning it little by little each year. It was basketball, though, that she was dynamite. I can still remember in 2001 when Interlachen came into Key West High to play an awful Key West team. The Conchs' focus was to double- and triple-team her everytime the Dolphins had the ball and they darn-near pulled off that feat. She still scored 22 points and pulled down 14 rebounds in a Marathon victory. She was the four-time county player of the year, averaging nearly a triple-double as a freshman (18 points, 11 rebounds, 9 blocks per game). In her junior year, she and her Dolphins won the district title over tough Westminster Christian as she scored 22 points and pulled down 16 rebounds in the final. That, though, was the appetizer to the team's first-round state game at home on Valentine's Day 2002. Florida Christian came down from Miami with its tallest player being 5-7, so the team's strategy was to take the ball to her and draw fouls to get her out of the game. It was a poor strategy -- Lezcano practically blocked and took everything away from Florida Christian players. By the end of the night, Interlachen blew out Florida Christian, 66-31, and all Lezcano did was go for the single most amazing individual game I had ever seen -- 26 points, 35 rebounds and 14 blocks. The next year in the same first round of the state tournament, the team Marathon played double-teamed Lezcano everywhere she went. And I mean everywhere! She still put up 22 points, 26 rebounds and 11 blocks in another playoff win. She earned a four-year scholarship to UCLA -- yeah, that UCLA and found Los Angeles so much more to her liking than little Marathon, Fla. She was never more than a reserve player for the Bruins between 2003-07, but she's one of the two most gifted tall girls I ever covered.

6. Amy Eller (Palatka, '04): I only got to cover Ms. Eller only one year. But what a year of triumph it was.

In the fall, she won the All-Putnam County cross country championship in one of the most memorable races I've ever seen when she beat favored Talisa Bishop of Interlachen, crossing the finish line at the tough West Putnam Recreation Center course in 21:40, beating Bishop by 18 seconds. It was her third All-Putnam championship in the four years she ran the race. A few weeks later, she qualified for the Region 1-3A meet by finishing ninth in the district race at Middleburg High School. In the winter, she scored 14 goals, which was a program record for the Palatka High girls soccer team at the time and held up for seven years until Loran Strunk exploded for 28 goals her senior 2010-11 season. In the spring, she was a very good No. 1 singles player in tennis, but it was her teaming up with freshman No. 2 singles player Kristin Smith where Eller starred. The team went 16-0 during the regular season at No. 1 doubles, then won a pair of matches to capture the district championship. The pair then went on to win a state tournament match before finally losing, ending the year at 19-1. To this day, it's the last time any Putnam County tennis player or players reached the state tournament. And if you need to find Eller, who went on to play tennis and cross-country at Flagler College in St. Augustine, during the second Saturday in March every year, you can find her running in the 15-kilometer Gate River Run in Jacksonville, where she's been Putnam County's top female runner five times. Once featured in a February 2004 short story in Sports Illustrated, Eller is easily the personality plus winner of this Top 10 group as she's also done dinner theater work, too. Personally, I wish she'd do more of that -- she's the complete package.

5. Kim Traxler (Interlachen, '08): This young lady is a literal natural talent. Numbers don't necessarily tell the story, though.

She came into Interlachen High in 2004 and immediately made an impact in volleyball, where she would be an All-County player two times. In girls soccer, she was All-County three times at forward-midfielder and earned Player of the Year honors in the sport in her junior 2006-07 season when she scored 17 goals. And as a talented third baseman, she was a three-time All-County player and was a part of Interlachen winning back-to-back district softball championships in 2007 and '08. As a senior in volleyball, the Rams won 19 games and went to the state tournament for the second time in three years. As a sophomore, she went to the state tournament her only time in soccer. Her softball prowess got SJRCC's attention and in 2008, she signed to play with the local Vikings for the next two years. She was making an immediate impact as a contact hitter with amazing speed when she dislocated her thumb diving back into third base in an early-season game and lost most of the rest of that year. She came back in 2010 to have a very good season. And Kimmy Bloemers, the softball coach at Florida Atlantic and the daughter of Hall of Fame baseball catcher Gary Carter, took notice of Traxler's talents. They signed her to play her junior and senior seasons and that's where she finished her career just this past April.

4. Kim Yankowski (Point Pleasant Boro, '90): The moment I saw this dimunitive (5-3) blonde with the big hair and those blue eyes on a soccer field helping leadi Point Boro to an SCT title in 1987 as a freshman, I knew I was watching something very, very special. And Kimberly Elizabeth didn't disappoint either.

It was in that freshman season that she helped to fill out a talented Panther team that lacked one thing -- goals. She came in and took over the center-forward position like she had played the position all her life. In that freshman year, she scored 20 goals and added 11 assists in helping the Panthers to not only its divisional title, but the four wins in the SCT, including a memorable penalty-shot victory over defending champion Manalapan. In the final against Wall, she scored three goals in a 4-1 triumph on Wall's field to finish a 16-0-2 campaign. She would earn the first of four All-County first-team nods to become the second player after Kim Brickner of Monsignor Donovan to do that in Observer history in the sport. In her sophomore year, she continued to add on to the legend by scoring 22 goals in a season that saw the Panthers go 15-2. As a junior -- and in the extremely easy Class C division -- she tore open the county scoring record of 30 goals set three years earlier by Tricia Lattanzi by scoring 48 goals, though the Panthers were handed their only loss in the SCT semifinals to Lacey. And while she was doing this, she was having a stellar career in field hockey. In earning All-County first-team honors in her final two years, she scored a combined 36 goals, including 20 her senior year, in helping the Panthers win the SCT title in 1989 as a senior against Wall. She scored both goals in that championship game.

Now back to soccer and what would be one of the most amazing seasons I have ever seen on a soccer pitch. Yankowski once again took advantage of that awful C Division and scored an unheard of 61 goals and 34 assists!! Still, another SCT title seemed elusive after the previous year's disappointment. But not this time -- after wins in the first two rounds, the Panthers hammered Manalapan, 8-2, in the semifinals, then Yankowski scored three goals again in the championship in leading the way to a 4-1 triumph over Wall at Point Boro's field this time, culminating a 20-0 season in which the Panthers outscored their opponents, 190-5. After graduating from Point Boro, Yankowski went on to play four years of soccer at North Carolina State. Yeah, she was very, very special.

3. Carol Walters (Lakewood, '87): It didn't matter that Carol Walters played tennis, field hockey, basketball and softball well in her four years at Lakewood High. She could've played soccer and made it look easy. She could've ran track and found her niche. She may have even tried golf and beaten most of the boys. Heck, if there was lacrosse back in that time period, I'm pretty certain Carol Walters may have been the best athlete in the county.

That's because she was the best athlete I covered in the 1980s. Field hockey was not her No. 1 sport and Lakewood High did a lot of losing back then. But she still stood out and actually earned a second-team All-County honor on a team that won no games. By her senior year, she dumped field hockey and took up tennis. And as LHS' No. 2 singles player behind an established Debbie Shelton, all Walters did was win 24 matches and earn All-County first-team honors for her one year. No one comes in cold and wins 24 tennis matches that easily, yet she did. Her main sport, though, was basketball, where not only was she a 1,000-point scorer, but she was an integral part of coach Art Calabro's Piners winning three of four NJSIAA South Jersey Group III titles. Walters was the point guard for the first two in 1985 and '87. For as long as I live, I will never forget that night of Friday, March 8, 1985 at Cherry Hill East High School in the SJ III final against Collingswood when 6-2 center Faith Nafziger fouled out with 2:55 to go and Walters and junior forward Joanne Powell had to take over. Walters supplied two passes within a two-minute span down low in the paint that were picture-perfect to Powell, who caught them and put in for layups. Lakewood won that title, 51-49, and it was sheer joy. Two years later, Walters was a senior on the LHS team that pretty much dominated in Ocean County, then went on to beat county foe Central Regional for another SJ III crown. The Piners could never get past North Hunterdon, the state's best team for three straight years, but it wasn't from a lack of trying by Walters or her Piners.

Then there was softball, where in her senior year, Walters hit nearly .600 and was this county's most dominant player while starting at shortstop for coach Dave McKelvey for her four years. Her bat as a sophomore helped the Piners get to the Ocean County Tournament final as a surprise from the No. 5 seed, and in the final against Toms River South, she delivered two hits and turned in an amazing defensive play that culminated in a double play. Lakewood lost the game, 7-2, but Walters made a name for herself that night on that Winding River Park field. Two years later, she basically hit the snot out of the ball with seven home runs. The greatest example of what she was all about was in the OCT opening-round game at home against Lacey, the tournament's eventual champion. Walters was 4-for-5, and the one at-bat that she didn't get a hit was an error by the Lacey center fielder on a flyball that could have easily been counted as a sacrifice fly. But she banged two long bombs in that game for home runs and drove in five runs. And there she was standing on deck in the bottom of the seventh inning with Lacey hanging on to a 19-17 lead with one runner on base and two outs. If Kelley Edwards gets on base, the game could have likely been over. That, at least in the mind of Lacey coach Shern, was how he was looking at the situation. But Shern's pitcher induced a groundout from Edwards and no one will ever know how that last at-bat turned out. After graduating, Walters moved on to nearby Georgian Court College, where she starred as a point guard on some stellar basketball teams for coach Debbie Emery in the late '80s/early '90s.

2. Kayshia Brady (Crescent City, '12): For the last 19 years, I was convinced I would not be blessed by another amazing and terrific athlete in my career again after -- well, you'll meet her soon. Little did I know that the next best athlete I would see was being born a few months later. The wait was well worth it.

I can still remember Holly Pickens, Brady's coach in basketball, telling me of the great things she was capable of doing as a seventh-grader ... yes, a seventh-grader! In Florida, if you have middle school kids going to the high school (a joint junior high-senior high school existence), they could play varsity sports. And Brady did. And it was on Saturday, February 3, 2007 when Brady made her name known for the next five-plus years. With Crescent City leading 35-33 in the District 6-3A championship game at Palm Coast Matanzas High School over Lake Butler Union County, Union County's point guard started toward the basket as time was expiring. Waiting for her was Brady. The guard thought she could draw the foul when she put her shot up. Instead, she got stuffed by the nearly 6-foot Brady. No whistle. No foul. Crescent City had won its first district girls basketball crown in 22 years. Brady would go on to score over 1,000 points in her career at Crescent City, though her Raiders could not get back to the state tournament until her senior year and just like five years earlier, they were one-and-done there.

In track and field, Brady was the 16th and last (in terms of qualifying shot put throwing distance) in 2008 as an eighth grader at the FHSAA 2A state championship. But lo and behold, she broke off a personal-best throw of over 36 feet and finished in eighth place to take home a medal. I knew I was watching some more amazing magic. Though her mother didn't think it was a good idea for her to go back out as a freshman in 2009, she insisted on coming back as a sophomore for trrack in 2010, and she picked up where she left off, ultimately finishing third in the FHSAA 1A state meet. In 2011, she made the state track meet for a third time in both shot and discuss, but it was in shot that she shined again with another third-place medal. Then this past spring as a senior, she won both district and regional championships and was the favorite to win the state title in the shot in her fourth try. She had a personal-best throw of 43-foot-6 1/4, but Bolles School's Victoria Reiman, who Brady beat by nine inches nine days earlier in the region meet, unloaded with a personal-best 43-10 1/4 to relegate Brady to second-place status. Still, not bad for a last day in the sport to uncork your best throw.

Ultimately, though, it is volleyball that this middle blocker-hitter is going to Florida Southern College for on a full scholarship. For the last three years, Brady has been Putnam County's best volleyball player. The only thing missing in her resume was a title of some kind. That, though, came when she had 14 kills in the District 8-1A title victory over Pierson Taylor in a three-set sweep that gave the Raiders their first district crown in 19 years. But it didn't stop there. Brady continued to put up big numbers and ultimately, the Raiders beat Chiefland and Union County to capture the Region 4-1A title and earn a trip to the state Final Four for the first time in 25 years. And though the Raiders would lose a tough four-setter to Mayo Lafayette, the eventual 1A state champ, last November 15, Brady still delivered 23 kills, seven blocks and 22 digs, a Herculean effort that kept the Raiders in it. For the year, Brady finished with 402 kills, 135 blocks and 345 digs to go along with 28 service aces. She was voted by sports writers as the state 1A player of the year.

The best part about Kayshia Brady -- she's a better person than an athlete. And that's saying a ton.

1. Christie Pearce (Point Pleasant Boro, '93): As I watched older sister Wendi Pearce perform on a soccer field and have some good success as a freshman in 1988, my good friend Kelly Kise was telling me that Wendi was only the second best Pearce sister athletically. "Wait until her sister gets to Point Boro," she warned me that summer of '88.

Kelly wasn't kidding. Almost 25 years later, it's hard for me to even think that not only anyone is better than Christie Pearce, but I'll see another one like her again. Her impact was absolutely immediate. As a freshman on the field hockey team, she score 11 goals and was part of that Boro club with her sister and Yankowski that won that memorable '89 championship for coach Judy Goldstein against Wall and then went to the SJ II final before losing to Moorestown. Pearce just kept getting better and better with the sport and by her senior year, she was the undoubted leader of the Panthers. She put together one of the most dominant statistical seasons I have ever witnessed in my career -- of the 33 goals Point Boro scored in that season, Pearce had a hand in 31 of them, 27 she scored on her own and four that she assisted.

People seem to think I'm nuts when I say this -- for as great a soccer player as she has been her entire life, Christie Pearce is the best field hockey player I've ever covered. Yeah. I'm not kidding. She made a sport so complex look very simple and natural.

Then there was basketball. She was counted on to be either the No. 1 point guard or the No. 2 shooting guard and at times because Point Boro was never tall in her time with the team, she had to be the swing No. 3 player as well. But it was during that magical 1990-91 season in which Pearce took off in the backcourt with her older sister. In her freshman year, Pearce's Panthers lost that embarrassing game to Sterling, but when they got to Pennsauken High that night to play Sterling in the SJ II final, it was as if the youngest Pearce was already developing a long memory the way Michael Jordan would develop when someone did something to embarrass him or his Bulls. That night, Christie Pearce stole the show -- well, she stole almost everything that wasn't bolted to the floor. Pearce put up a triple-double in that 74-49 wipeout with 25 points, 12 rebounds and 13 steals. And she had 22 points in that overtime loss to Manasquan that night at Steinert High School. Though the Panthers would not quite reach the same heights as they had in the '90-91 season, it didn't stop Pearce from doing it all -- stealing, passing, driving to the basket and scoring. When she finished up her amazing career, she had totalled 2,190 points, the most in Ocean County girls basketball history. It almost seemed like every field goal of that 2,190 points was some drive to the basket that opponents had a hard time defending.

Christie Pearce could have gotten a college scholarship for field hockey or basketball. But it was soccer that was her first love -- and what has carried her since she was a pre-teen. Pearce set the county record for goals and points as a freshman in 1990 when she scored 49 goals and added 24 assists for 122 points -- an amazing second to the 156 points Yankowski scored -- on that Point Boro team that went 20-0 and won the SCT. She followed that up with 12-goal and 10-goal seasons as a sophomore and junior in the much tougher B South Division in the '91 and '92 seasons. Then the Panthers were dropped down to the C Division in the '93 season against lesser opponents again. And Pearce had a fiesta again. As a senior, she scored 51 goals and added 10 asssists for 112 points with a team that wasn't anywhere near as talented as that 1990 team, but there was no doubt her leadership skills were being honed for the next level. She finished her prep career with 122 goals, second in county history to only Yankowski.

When it was time to pick a college, Pearce had a choice to make between two schools -- Monmouth or North Carolina. On the surface, this was a no-brainer. As a matter of fact, Anson Dorrance, the legendary UNC coach told me in January 2008 that he really wanted her. She would have been a freshman at UNC playing with the great Mia Hamm as a senior. In the end, he understood why she chose Monmouth -- because of her sister being there playing already and family was always more important to Christie Pearce. And in college, she was the Northeast Conference's Player of the Year two times and scored 79 goals and 54 assists for 212 points. And in early 1997 after her college career was over, it was U.S. national team coach Tony DeCicco who called Pearce up and had her try out for the team. She made the team, has been a member of four World Cup squads as a defender. Turning 37 on June 24, Pearce has played on three Olympic teams and is about to captain the fourth team. She owns a World Cup medal from the memorable '99 team run as a reserve and two Olympic gold medals as a starting fullback. It is easily the greatest career I have ever followed in my 28 years.

Now as for Christie Pearce the talker, that didn't come about very easily. When she was beginning to start building a reputation at Point Boro, you couldn't get a single word out of her mouth. I tried. I think she was just being sheltered by the older players so she never had to say anything to us media types. But once Wendi graduated, I started noticing a transformation from this shy, quiet child to being a talkative leader. The true moment I knew Christie Pearce was on my side for the long haul was when I was over at Point Pleasant Boro High covering an Ed Carleton League baseball game in August 1992. It was just a week or so before I headed out on a 2,600-mile baseball trip that I was to detail each day in the paper which enveloped nine Major League ballparks in eight days and I was doing it alone in my 1977 Dodge Aspen, which could handle the trip.

Lo and behold I'm talking about this trip during the game and there was Christie hearing me. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, her reaction came -- "You're doing the trip in that car?" Yep. She had grown up just like that by mocking me. I smiled. Yeah. This job became easier.

It's been 10 years since I last saw her in person playing for the WUSA's New York Power out in Long Island, sitting in the stands at the game with her dad, Robert. It's been 13 years since I last interviewed her. Yeah, she's probably forgotten me. I'm easy to forget.

Interesting thing is she'll always be easy to remember.

Two games, one Tandy TRS 80 Model 100 ... good luck!

Boy did we all think on the Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend, 1988 that we were going into a new world of technology. When Steve Sosinski, our managing editor, told the sports department that we were going to go out on assignments with a new "toy" to send back stories, I thought this was heaven.

No more did we have to write our stories out on long-hand on road trips at some restaurant and then call the office collect and have another writer do the dictation over the phone as we read the story. No more racing back to the office after a night event and writing a story as fast as we could before deadline. And no more having our stories mangled by people taking the dictation over the phone, so much so that names were spelled wrong.

No, this was the moment of truth that we were graduating to "big-paper status." The so-called toy (which you see above) was this thing called the Tandy TRS-80 Model 100. And let me tell you, it looked easy. That is, it looked easy until you had to read the directions on how to upload a story and send it into our paper's computer system.

Cracking the code to get all the gold at Fort Knox seemed much easier. Inside the soft carrying cover of the machine was a photocopied handwritten piece of paper from the pen of none other than Sam Christopher, the legendeary longtime news writer from Lakewood whose son, Chris, was one of the two fulltime sports writers at the Observer. Now Sam, being the consummate note taker, wrote the directions like he was scribbling down names and places for a story, though I do admit, it was a step above maybe a doctor's handwriting. Translation: They were readable, but it sure took a lot to completely understand what he wrote.

We were winding down the spring high school sports season and still had numerous postseason events on the schedule. In our sports department, the first guinea pig to try the Tandys was our new assistant sports editor, Dave Tippenhauer, who had state track and field to cover that Saturday in South Plainfield. He ran through the tests and obviously got everything to go through.

Well guess who was next to try out the new toy? Yuppers, yours truly.

It was to happen on Tuesday, June 7, 1988 -- or as I sarcastically called it, the day I became a man. But I was about to take my "manhood" to a totally different level unlike Dave. Most everything Dave did was done by the evening the previous Saturday, so he had time to send his agate and story from the track meet. It got through without much trouble, but just in case, he had time to get it all done.

No, I chose the tougher route on this particular Tuesday. It was to be on that day that I would do a "day-night semifinal doubleheader" in the Shore Conference Girls Soccer Tournament at two different fields in two different counties. The first game was a 3:30 p.m. battle between fourth-seeded Toms River North and top-seeded and defending champion Point Pleasant Boro. The second game was a 7 p.m. start at a park field not far from Manalapan High School between third-seeded Jackson Memorial and second-seeded Manalapan.

So you can imagine that after the first soccer match is done at approximately a few minutes after 5, I have to get my interviews done, rush to a place that not only can I eat, but can also type away on the new toy, find the right-fitting phone for the couplers that held the phone to send the story, then make sure the story gets through, jump into a car and travel up Route 35 to the Route 34-35-70 circle, take Route 34 out to Route 33, somehow find my way to Route 9, then to a park that I've never been to in my life, cover that game, get the quotes I need, and then figure out where I could do that story and send it afterward.

Yeah, the only thing easy about this was just how I explained it.

I made sure to do tests the night before. I can still remember it -- I typed in "This is a test" into the machine, called up the number that was attached to our computer system, made sure I heard a fax-like ring, put the phone receiver into the couplers, hit a couple of buttons, watch the machine do its magic by uploading the story and then check the computer to see if it got through.

Miraculously, "This is a test" came up at the end.

This was going to be really easy.

Or so I thought.

Knowing I didn't have to show up at the office that day or night on this gorgeous 7th of June, I headed from my house in a T-shirt and shorts up Hooper Avenue, into Brick, then off onto the Route 70-88 circle (yes, there was still a circle there at the time) and straight onto Route 88 through Brick into Point Pleasant and onto the streets that forced me to park my car on a side road near the football/soccer field. Point Boro has always been one of the most unique schools in terms of location and as I parked my car and walked toward the stadium, I was ready to see North's Mariners, loaded with a lot of underclass talent at 14-3-1, taking on a Point Boro team that was 15-1 and still tremendously good after losing some key seniors to graduation the year before.

This game was a Who's Who of young ladies who would go on to play college soccer one day -- for North, there was Jill D'Alessio (Georgian Court) and the great Linda Kurtyka (North Carolina State), while for Boro, there was Kim Yankowski (North Carolina State), Jennifer Shutt (Virginia) and Karen Anderson (Green Mountain in Vermont). And a number of the young ladies who played for North's soccer team had some part in being on the NJSIAA Group IV championship and unbeaten field hockey team the previous fall like Katie Vignevic, Krista Saponara, Sue Gerbino and Lori Garrabrant.

But the one player that I thought North needed on this particular day was a junior named Dawn Ostrowski, whose college field hockey career was all but set for her after an amazing season as a catalyst on that championship team. She was a pretty darned good soccer player, too, scoring 11 goals and 10 assists for the '88 season. However, it was in the previous game, the quarterfinal-round matchup at home that Saturday against No. 5 seed Howell, that not only did North's fate change, but so did Ostrowski's as well. She ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament going after a loose ball and she was done for the rest of the year. She tried coming back from it in field hockey the next fall, but she had no lateral movement and it was quite obvious she was never going to be the same player she was.

Judging from that, I wasn't sure if the rest of the Mariners were going to carry the load for her. Figured all Point Boro needed to do was a pop a goal in behind freshman goalie Lynn Gesser and that was it.

But that didn't happen. Led by Yankowski, Andrea Mucho, Alaine Kamen, Shutt and freshman backup Wendi Pearce, the Panthers peppered Gesser and the Mariners with plenty of shots. They just couldn't penetrate her.

Then in the second period (back in '88, soccer was played in four 20-minute quarters, now they're played in two 40-minute halves), the Mariners pounced on one of their few opportunities. Kurtyka, North's sensational goalkeeper during the state field hockey championship run, was able to bring the ball into Boro's side of the field and pass off to Gerbino, who was able to find a hole and penetrate through. She lost the ball, but another freshman named Sharon Ruppe was opportunistic. She may have worn No. 13 on her back, but there was no bad luck in this situation. She slipped the ball past Boro goalie Jen MacIver to give the Mariners a 1-0 lead.

And though the Panthers kept the pressure on the Mariners, they never found the back of the net. North had persevered, 1-0. After the game, myself and longtime Asbury Park Press writer Tony Graham talked to North coach Jean Konyhas and Boro coach Bob Kulessa, two of the coaches who started with their programs when the sport became official in 1976. And I interviewed the shy Gesser as well as the very outgoing Saponara, who had to hold it together with her defensive teammates throughout the game.

It was about 5:15 p.m. and I didn't know many places that I could go to send a story. So I made it across the canal into Point Pleasant Beach and stopped for a sub at Jersey Mike's ... the original Jersey Mike's on Trenton Avenue near Arnold, looooooooong before the place became a national entity. And that's where I sat down to do the story. The hard part about writing the story was that if you see the machine above, it only allowed you to look at the story eight lines at a time. And if you needed to insert something into the story above, you'd have to put your finger down on the "up" arrow and wait until you got to the point you had to place your insertion. Talk about time-consuming.

The turkey sub was awesome as always. And by about 6 p.m. I had finished up my awesome story. Now I needed somewhere to send it. I couldn't get the people of the shop to let me use their phone to send it so I made the most of what I had to do. I jumped into my car and found Route 35. I headed north out of Point Pleasant Beach toward the 35-34-70 circle. Right at that intersection was an Exxon station.

Now it's close to 6:30 p.m. and I figured once I got to send the story through a regular phone, there'd be no problem.

The workers at the Exxon station were nice enough to allow me to use their phones. But there were problems. I swear to you I followed directions with the couplers correctly. But each time I tried to send the story ... nothing. Zippo! The handy-dandy Tandy was anything but handy-dandy, which wasn't making feel so randy at the time.

So I called the office from the regular phone they allowed me to use for a few moments or so. I got Chris.

"I'm having problems with the machine. It's not taking the story through. The story is done, just tell the boss that I'm going to have to send the story later. How much later, I don't know? I'll figure it out. I normally do."

Chris was understanding of the situation. I'm not so sure I was.

It's almost 6:45 p.m. and I still had a good half hour to go before getting into Manalapan. Thankfully, the directions the cops gave me the night before to this field were perfect. Getting there seemed to take forever and by the time I showed up in the parking lot to go to the only lit field in the complex, the first quarter was practically over and the second quarter had arrived.

I get behind the young man who was keeping the scorebook for Jackson and scribble down the names of the team on his side. I didn't even bother with getting Manalapan's. I figured, "What the heck. I'm already behind. The next story isn't going to exactly be a novella."

As I start walking away, I can hear the heart-warming and sarcastic voice of Jackson's longtime soccer coach, Mike Costa.

"Did you just get back from the beach?" he said, spotting me in the same T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops that I wore to the game.

"Yeah. Sorry you missed it, it was a beautiful day," I answered back smiling. That's the kind of relationship I had with that man for the 11 years I covered girls soccer with him as Jackson's coach. He was abrasive, but you had to get him and never be offended by whatever this good guy said. We worked together quite well.

Nine minutes into the second quarter, Samara Lenga took a pass and beat standout Jackson goalie Jeannette Nash to make it 1-0. And Manalapan's defense was such that it wasn't going to give away any freebies. It was 1-0 at halftime and already Jackson looked like it was in trouble. Jackson, though, had its opportunities, putting 15 shots on net. but the Jaguars never could get anything against Manalapan's defense. And when Doreen Gilbride scored with 4:16 left in the game to make it 2-0, the door was practically closed.

I interviewed Costa afterward in which he asked me, "Did North really beat Boro?" to which I replied, "Yes. They were outshot and yet they held it together." "Wowwwwwww," he said back. "I didn't see that coming. Good for Jean and North."

Then I interviewed Manalapan coach Bill Ciullo, a very affable guy and one of my favorite out-of-area coaches I've talked to in my career. I was going to see him again in the final against North. One thing about Bill Ciullo -- when he had a very good team, man was he a confident guy. He felt like he could beat North, even with the final on North's field that year. And his Braves did, but not without a fight, winning the title game, 2-1, two days later.

But that was two days later.

I still had to deal with the present.

It was just about 9:15 p.m. I had a second story to type into a machine that had yet to work for me. Some example I was setting on this day. Well, nonetheless, I called the one person at nearby Manalapan Diner who I thought could get me out of this quandary at this hour with a couple of hours left before trouble lurked.

"Hello?" "Hi grandma! How are you?" "Hiiiiiii Mark. I'm fine. And how are yooou?" "I'm just fine thanks. Listen I need a favor." "What's the matter?" "Can I come over to your place to write a story? I'm in Manalapan, it won't take long and it's sorta complicated because I'm working with a computer that I'm using for the first time."

I can almost hear the reluctance of my grandmother saying, "Come on over." But hey, I was blood, and she'd help me out in a time of need.

So it took about 25 minutes to get to where she lived on the Howell-Freehold Township border off of Route 9. I could get to her place with a blindfold on. She waited for me at the door. Hugs, kisses ... and, oh, by the way, I need a desk to work at.

Once I showed her the new toy I was playing with, I was able to actually send the story by using the other means to send it -- the wires that went from the machine into my grandmother's phone, which at this point was far easier than the the headache couplers were. Shazaaaam! The Boro-North story that I worked on four hours earlier had gone through at last.

I called up the office to make sure it came through. Got Chris again. He checked the story and then told me I had a message.

"Call Tony Graham. He wants to know who the name of the one girl you and he interviewed after the game was."

"Oh? OK."

Yes, even the great Tony Graham made the simplest of mistakes of not getting the name of the person he was interviewing. After smiling for a second, I called up Tony's extension at the Press. He explained in his rush to get out of Boro and back to the office in Neptune he had not gotten the name of the girl we were talking to and he didn't want to guess.

"That was Krista Saponara. I know her because she was part of that state champion field hockey team in the fall. Really cool girl, too." By the way, 10 years later, I did a feature story on Saponara while I was up in Bristol, Conn., covering the Eastern Regional Little League All-Star Tournament that Toms River East American was playing in. She was a producer working for ESPN at the time and got to meet ESPN football analyst and former Green Bay Packers wide receiver Sterling Sharpe while I was there.

"OK, I thought that was who it was. Thanks a lot for your help."

"No problem Tony. You've helped me before. It's easy to return the favor with you."

And it was. Tony Graham is easily the best sports writer from another competing paper I've ever dealt with in almost 28 years in this business. I just felt bad that I couldn't help him sooner, but remember, it's 1988 -- there was no way to communicate with one another back in the day since there were no cell phones.

Needless to say, I typed in the "easier" Jackson-Manalapan story as well as the agate from the game and sent the story, all within about a half hour.

And by about 10:15 p.m., my day was done. Everything worked out and my grandmother was the star of the night in the end. I stayed at her house until about 11. I knew I was pushing her bedtime, but I always told her that if I had enough time after an event ... or before ... I'd come to visit her. Of course, I never told her that when I came to visit, I'd have work to do, too. But she was always good about it.

By 11:45, I was back home, never once having to see the office and never once having to dictate a single word from a story I did to Chris Christopher or any other writer to take down on computer. The Tandy was a success and these would be the machines I would use for the "far-away" events I covered for the next 11 years while I was at the Observer.

No more dictation!

Before I knew it, June 7 was June 8. And I didn't have to be in the office to finish out the paper at deadline. I could come to the office right after the much-anticipated Ocean County Softball Tournament final between South Jersey sectional champions Central Regional and Monsignor Donovan at Toms river South.

Overall, it was a very good day. And night. And a successful day and night, too.

And I became a man that day.

 

Somewhere above, I know Amo has my back

It's been 28 years since Regina Ammerata, our class advisor and my junior year Algebra I teacher, handed me my diploma to confirm I was officially a high school graduate. OK, she really didn't give me my diploma. That was handed to me up in the cafetorium once I turned back in my cap and gown.

Still, it was a momentous occasion to say the least. But I can admit something today that I couldn't do 28 years ago. By the time I got to my junior year, I actually liked school. The first two years -- which I'm told are usually the two hardest years of high school -- were as painful as a trip to the dentist office for a routine root canal. Being picked on as a freshman by loser sophomore burnouts who don't really have much to offer in life and probably won't when time will tell unless they figure that being a bully isn't the way to go was not the bestest of times for me. I hated school.

But what got me through those first two years of high school were three friends that I will forever be grateful to have -- even if sadly one of them is no longer among us and hasn't been for nearly 20 years.

When I was a freshman, it was hit or miss as to who you were going to have around you at lunchtime, simply because you had no clue. It wasn't as if I had anyone freely to pass along the information to. I kept to myself for the most part. Unless it was people from the neighborhood I grew up in, I had no idea who some of these people were.

However, there was one person that I knew because he was in my eighth-grade class at Toms River Intermediate School East. His name was Chris Amoruso. Amo, as I called him, was friendly enough to feel safe around and outlandishly wild enough to squirm around, too. God knows what he might say or do to cause some kind of embarassment at any time or any place. That was Amo, and I accepted him for who he was. I always thought he was the second coming of John Belushi with the things he said and his actions. If our high school class had a superlative category of "Most Likely to Turn Out Like Senator John Blutarsky," it'd have been Amo.

Amo, to me, was the friendly face in a sea of faces that I had no familiarity with in seventh-period lunch.

Yet, there he was along with a friend he grew up on the island with across the Barnegat Bay. His name was Scott Abbott. Scott was one of the smartest people around. And it was amazing how the three of us hit it off as if we were all from the same neighborhood. I still remember a cold February 1981 day in which Amo invited me to come to Scott's place to play cards. We spent the whole afternoon just doing so, my mom dropping me off in the morning on a day off from school and her picking me up late in the afternoon. I felt safe among the two of them, but so isolated since they were on that side of the bay and I was on the other side of the Mathis-Tunney Bridge.

By luck come sophomore year, the three of us were put together again in the same lunch period. Someone must have been watching. But early in that sophomore year, Chris had brought a friend along who was shy and well, I wasn't sure if he was going to break up what Chris, Scott and I had as friends. He was pretty conservative, but Amo introduced us to the new guy. His name was Tom.

Tom seemed kinda shy at first, probably the feeling-out part considering he knew Chris and I think he kind of sorta knew Scott. He didn't know me. I was that guy that Chris could make fun of and knew I was not threatening in any way and I came in peace. By the time Tom -- it took me about a month or so to find out his last name was Yanna-something, I couldn't even tell you what I thought it might've been in November 1981 -- got comfortable around the three of us, we all saw a transformation that I didn't quite see coming.

If anyone did, they were just flat-out lying.

Tom, we come to find out, was a big fan of this British music act that I had heard of called Adam & The Ants. I knew "Dog Eat Dog" and "Antmusic" and "Stand And Deliver" when I was a freshman. I went to Listening Booth and Camelot Records in the Ocean County Mall a lot. He was living out being Adam Ant or one of the Ants or some facsimile of them. He got all punked out, which worried me a little. You don't go from conservative looking to a punked-out Adam & The Ants Meets The Clash Meets Madness look that easily.

But that, I still to this day believe, was the power of Chris' aura. It worked well for Tom. It wouldn't have worked well for Scott and it sure as hell wasn't going to look good for meeeeee. That's what Amo's personality was all about. The three of us just stood back and let Tom be this non-threatening individual and we actually enjoyed it.

I also had Chris in Rick Dispoto's geometry class that sophomore year. And the year before that, I had him in Warren Reid's physical education class. And in the latter class, there were three burnouts, two who were in that class taking it again. And one was a neighborhood kid who acted as if he was the bully of it. His role was to agitate me. It was easy considering his two burnout-bully friends were sitting around both Amo and I. Even though my name comes after Amo's in alphabetical order, I always got to sit in front of him in those two classes. One time, the said "bully" came in and whipped his burnout jacket right into my chest. I stopped for the moment as I looked at Chris and he looked back as in to say, "What the f**k, man?!"

But the looks we gave to one another were code ... as in "I got your back" and "Yeah, I know. Thanks." Chris had a way to pick his moments and nail the "bad guys" when they least expected it. He didn't nail the main agitator, but during a wrestling drill in Mr. Reid's class (Mr. Reid was the wrestling coach), we had one of those quick drills where you were matched up against someone who was opposite you on the wrestling mat. When Chris came out to the mat, one of the burnouts was his opponent.

No chance for the poor guy -- Amo took him down and wrapped him up like a pretzel. And when the other burnout conspirator/co-hort was in Amo's way the second time around doing those quick wrestling drills, he had him down quickly and wrapped up like a pretzel, too.

Needless to say within time, none of those guys were bothering me anymore.

That was Amo.

Amo and I had a blast in geometry ... not really by learning anything, but by watching Dispoto flirt with two of the girls in the class, so much so that he put their desks up practically near his desk, one of those girls being my neighbor. That was always worth talking about at lunch. Being a partial southpaw, I told Amo I heard a statistic once that left-handed people have an 80 percent chance of being less sick than right-handed people, in which Amo responded in the only way he could respond -- he breathed on me and coughed afterward.

Yeah, that was Amo.

Amazingly again in our junior years, the four of us were put together in the same lunch period. Of course, I always worried at the start of each of those years that if I saw one of those guys, they'd be sick and tired of seeing me. But that wasn't the case.

By junior year, Scott was still Scott -- witty, sarcastic and finding the right things to say at the right moment. Amo was still Amo ... and heck, I didn't ever want him to change. And Tom was becoming the individualist that most people may have bristled at. But he had the three of us -- and we were pretty darned acceptable to anything Tom wore to school, from the thin punked-out jackets to the red Converses on his feet. If Tom wanted to come to school dressed in a gorilla suit, we would've had a great laugh about it and still carried on the same conversation, though I will admit it might have been hard to hear him through the suit.

Unfortunately, by senior year, we were broken up as a quartet and put in different lunch periods. And it was hard for me to find someone who could fill in those six shoes. Admittedly, I struggled my senior year with lunch, mostly because anyone I knew who was a fellow senior was blowing the popsicle joint known as our cafetorium and going to Driftwood Deli for lunch. No one was asking me if I was interested in joining along and it bothered me a little.

After all this time, I still felt like an outsider ... except to the other three guys who got broken up away from me those last nine months of my high school life. I ate a lot of lunches alone and in silence my senior year among underclassmen that I barely knew. If not for John Morgan, a junior who was playing music at lunchtime upstairs, senior year lunch just may have been the crappiest time of my life. Good thing we both had a love for music, though I still believe to this day I must have been agitating the hell out of him.

Still, school was a lot better place to be my last two years. I missed only one day of school my junior year and four total my senior year. Junior year was the best year -- because of my three amigos who allowed someone who wasn't from across the bay to be part of their group.

On Sunday, January 22, 1984, I came to find out that the night before, Chris had gone to a school dance and was seriously injured in a car accident. I went to see him a couple of days later on a miserably rainy and cold January 24 at Community Memorial Hospital, and he looked the role of someone who was hit in an automobile accident on Fischer Boulevard. He was hurting, but he was in good spirits. He was able to joke about things during my 90-minute visit with him. Other than the aches he was suffering and the scratches on his face that made him look like a road map, he was fine. And I felt better for visiting him. He was soon out of the hospital and back at school the next week.

And so it was that Friday, June 15, 1984, I said goodbye to my three friends as I got my diploma and moved on to my next life. Tom moved on to go to the Army and I didn't see him again. Scott moved on to college and I never saw him again.

A year later in the summer of 1985, I'm at the Seaside Heights boardwalk with my friend Joe and we both see Amo. He was working at one of the game stands that summer, maybe moving around to different ones. I never really knew, though. He happened to have the "frog game" this particular night where you take the rubber mallet that is given to you and hit a metal pad and if the frog lands on another pad, you get a prize. My uncoordinated buddy decided to try it and wouldn't you know it -- he got the darned frog on the pad!! Since Amo knew Joe as well as he knew me, he announced, "This lucky bastard just won a prize," and handed him some stuffed animal.

Joe and I left Amo that night figuring we'd see him again sometime that summer. However, we never got back there and all of us had gone about our lives in different directions.

It's Wednesday, March 24, 1993. I was coming back from a high school boys and girls All-Star basketball doubleheader at Ocean Township High School that night. I turned on WOBM-FM to find out what's going on in the news world. The lead story was of a robbery and shooting the evening before at the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Lakewood. Well, robberies and shootings are going to get my attention immediately.

But then they named the manager of the store who died at the scene when after opening up the safe for the robber was shot in the back of the head -- it was Christopher Amoruso, 26. The age gave it away, especially knowing his birthday was July 14.

It was as if my world had just come to a skidding halt. By the time I reached the office, I couldn't go in immediately. For the next 10 minutes, I sat in my car and balled my eyes out. You reach as far as you can, wondering "Why? Why did this happen and happen to him?" The murder, come to find out, was an inside job since it came from someone who worked at that KFC and knew the store's makeup. And the murderer was not only found guilty in his trial, but sentenced to life in prison for his cold-blooded act of cowardly disgrace, especially against someone who detested violence so much.

It still, though, wasn't going to bring Amo back. I came to find out from the story in the Observer the next day after the murder that Chris was engaged to be married and he was working his way up through culinary school. His whole future was pretty much laid out in front of him. And one senseless act of violence ended that.

The viewing and funeral was four days later on that Sunday at the funeral home on the Manchester-Toms River border. Another grey, cloudy, yucky, awful day, just like the one that January Tuesday nine years earlier when my friend George and I went to Community to visit Amo. I'd been to services before for my grandfather and my friend Ted's father. That was two funerals in 12 days. They were pretty bad.

But they were older. They weren't a peer of mine. This was someone you joked with for four or five years of your life. This was someone who had your back when you didn't want to fight because you didn't want to. My mom went with me to the funeral home. I saw Chris' mom and his brother, Louie, a state trooper who had the unenviable task of carrying the casket along with other co-worker and friends, including a policeman named John Vierbuchen, who Amo and I graduated with at East. This wasn't where I wanted to see John again after about six or seven years.

And with the open casket, it just hit me. It took me a long time to move away from his casket as I looked down on it. I started thinking about the good times in eighth grade and again in high school. Then I started feeling horrible that I could not keep up with Chris for the next seven and a half years after I saw him last.

The things we always want to say to the people we care about -- the people we love -- we never truly get to say. It took me every ounce of my soul to keep from breaking down right there. I told him I loved him and finally was able to walk away.

The service was hard. I think it took me a few days to get beyond it. Then again, you never truly get beyond a service for a friend.

There are days I think about Amo. Three in particular -- our 10th reunion in 1994, our 20th reunion in 2004 and most recently, our 25th reunion on Friday, August 21, 2009. There is no doubt in my mind that Amo would have stolen the show at each of those reunions one way or another.

I am glad to have Tom Yannacone -- yeah, that Yanna-something individualistic guy I really didn't know his last name when I first met him -- in my life again as a friend that I enjoy talking with from time to time. Voted by his peers as top male individualist of our class (Scott, Amo and I would like to think we had something to do with just letting Tom be himself), Tom's got three kids of his own now, one heading off to military duty shortly just like he did, and is a Seaside Heights cop nearing the end of a long career there. Heck, he even gets to protect the "Jersey Shore" cast and once in a while gets to be in pictures as an escorting cop to one of the cast member's court appearances. That lucky bastard!

As for Scott, I never saw him again, but I am sure that he is doing quite well with whatever it is he is doing. Tom, from time to time, tells me where Scott is, but I always manage to forget after he tells me! I'm sorry for being a bad friend, Scott.

And when I get into Toms River, it's my friends and fellow TRHSE '84 classmates Bobby G. and Double-V that take the place of Amo and Scott when we hang out at some restaurant with Tom and myself.

I wish Amo were still here among us. I won't lie. The pictures I see of him and Tom together dressed up as the Blues Brothers or at graduation are still painful. But to me, lunches or dinners with Bob, Vinny and Tom are therapeutic. I know Tom is there and in some ways, it's still some of the same conversations, just nearly 30 years later ... I can still get him going with some Adam & The Ants' song.

I know Amo is there in spirit when the four of us start BS'ing about anything and everything. I'm pretty sure he'd be happy for how Tom and I turned out, as well as Scott. Same for Bobby G. and Double-V.

Somewhere up above, Amo is smiling.

And I'm pretty sure he's still watching my back, too.

Running a tournament for the first time

I look at what has turned into a soup sandwich with the mishandling of the 32nd annual Ocean County Softball Tournament up here at the Jersey Shore and think back to when I first helped run the tournament.

Yes, a schlubby writer ran this same tournament with the help of coaches. Did it for eight years, eight proud years as well.

Let me start by telling you about how I was able to gain control of the OCT. It started with the championship game of the 1991 final between Toms River North and Brick High -- easily the worst championship game in history with 22 errors made between the two teams in a 9-2 Brick triumph. It was somewhere around errors No. 13 and 14 that Dave McKelvey called me from where he was standing below me at Wilbur Thompson Park. My spot as the official scorekeeper and public address announcer was on what was a large makeshift dumpster that Dave turned into a storage room for his Lakewood High team and for fixing the field.

"This is it," he told me. "I'm done running this tournament. I just wanted to let you know that."

The mark of a class individual who to this day I have the utmost respect for. He could have told me this bit of information during the summer or I may have found out like a week before the 1992 softball season started. I made sure to ask him if he was sure this was it and he nodded his head. Said he was tired of it. At first, I thought he was just sick of watching this awful championship.

All through the summer of '91 and at various times that fall and winter, I was in close contact with various coaches over the OCT. At 25 years old, I wanted to take my turn at helping to run it. I couldn't run it fully, though. This is a school operation, an operation that I knew one of my softball coaches would have to be in charge of and I'd be the person putting down the rules and regulations after discussing it with my "partner in crime."

The one person who I really absolutely wanted to run this tournament with was John Natoli, who had turned Point Pleasant Boro's program from a doormat to a Class C championship team in his first year at the helm in 1990. His program won 34 games in his two years at the helm and in 1991, he helped Dave out by hosting the first-round and quarterfinal-round games at Point Boro. However, as the '91 season came to a close, Point Pleasant's Board of Education was getting ready to cut teachers as part of solving a deficit problem. Since John was in his second year with the school, he was on the chopping block. What a travesty this was -- his softball players arrived at the Board of Education meeting to defend their coach, asking to keep him, but those pleas fell on deaf ears. Natoli's final game was in the OCT semifinal, losing to North, 8-3, in a game that felt like a funeral for the man with players walking off that Lakewood High field in tears.

So no John Natoli to help me. The next step was asking his assistant coach, Ric Malta, who was to take over the program in 1992. He had an idea of how John had done things with the field in 1991 and he was ready to roll with the '92 tournament, hosting it.

When we met to set up how we wanted to do this event, the one thing he told me was that he could not host every game in the tournament. OK, so that was out. What we did was have the first-round games played on the higher-seeded team's field. And the winners -- along with the teams that got byes in the first round -- would come to Point Pleasant Boro's High School/Middle School field to play what we dubbed "Quarterfinal Saturday." We set the times up for the games to start at 11 a.m., then go to 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Memorial Day Saturday, May 23, and the 8 p.m. game would feature the tournament's No. 1 seed against the winner of the No. 8-9 matchup. We did it for three reasons -- one, the tournament top seed was our feature team and we wanted to put them under the lights in prime time on a Saturday. Two, it gave either the No. 8 or 9 seeded team a chance to enjoy a prime-time game and get some kind of a crowd. And three, I knew it might be the quickest game of the night if the No. 1 seed was on its game and had its way. In other words, there was the possibility of a 10-run, mercy-rule inning in 4 1/2 innings.

We set up all the ground rules, got confirmation from Dave, who was still willing to helping us by supplying the old white balls his slow-pitch softball league used for the tournament, and the entry fee -- which was fairly cheap at $65 per team for the tournament.

The next step was to put together all the OCT rules, which I typewrote (yes, I used a regular, old typewriter!!) on 8.5 x 11 paper into folders and hand-deliver these folders to all 15 high school athletic directors or softball coaches, usually the athletic director. Some athletic directors were somewhat excited to see me in their pleasant way. Then there were others who were colder than wet fish, some putting their hands on the folders I gave them like it would self-destruct in five seconds. It would be years later before I figured out the reason why some of these unhappy athletic directors didn't want anything to do with my work was because they didn't want to do any more work. But we had done the work for them.

To show you how thorough we were back in the day, one of my responsibilities for putting together this package was to make calls to all 15 high schools (at the time, there were 15) and ask someone there who had knowledge of the dates of important events when the junior and senior proms were being held. So come the night of the seeding meeting, which was at Toms River High School East, they had a full package of rules, and yes, prom dates. All I asked of the coaches was to show up for the meeting with a copy of their regular-season schedule. If they forgot, I made sure I had a copy of each schedule for the meeting.

The meeting was held on my day off from work, Friday, May 1, 1992, at East. I had made sure to secure East for the seeding meeting and, for the exception of 1994 when we had the meeting at the Best Western Hotel in Lakewood, the seeding meetings were always held at East.

As I was outside the meeting room watching the coaches come in -- and I had brought three pizzas from one of the fine establishments on Fischer Boulevard for the event -- I saw Central coaches Norm Selby and Gloria Garibaldi come in and Norm, the head coach, pulls me over to the side. Now I always listened to Norm, who told it straightforward and didn't mince words.

"Have you seen that Boro field?" he asked. I told him I had not covered a game at Boro's field all season.

"It's in terrible shape. I think you're putting people in danger by playing on that field, especially all the rocks out there," he continued. Now Norm had played on Boro's field just recently, so he knew how rough it was. I couldn't move anything off that field and he knew it, but I told him that I'd make an effort to ask Ric to see what he can do about getting the rocks off that field that might cause danger, as well as watering it. At least there I wouldn't have a problem. The field was rougher than it had been in years and I still guess that Point Boro's budget was such that they eliminated any overtime hours for groundskeepers. It's why when it came to night games, Ric himself had to do all the work.

As for the actual seeding meeting, all the teams involved were there except for Pinelands Regional, whose coach, Pam Boyd, told me she wasn't entering her team that year. I pushed her to try, but I couldn't twist her arm. It was always a rule in my time with the tournament -- we'd love to have all teams in there, but on the other hand, I understand why some teams couldn't go in. So they didn't.

We seeded the 14-team tournament and it was up to the coaches to make their cases for their teams and then after the coaches had their says, they were asked to seed the meeting on paper, No. 1 through 14. Once every coach had given me their sheets, it was my job as the math genius of the bunch to add all the numbers via the seeds. My main rule, and this was mostly to avoid the jockeying for positions by some coaches who threw radical numbers out there, was to cancel out the lowest and highest seeds for the event. That process took about 10 to 15 minutes once I got everyone's sheet. But once everything was confirmed, I was back in the meeting room to announce the seeds.

And I made one cardinal rule error that I never made again by doing this: "The No. 1 seed of the 1992 Ocean County Tournament is Central Regional High School. The Golden Eagles have earned a bye to the quarterfinal round, where they will take on the lucky winner of the game between No. 8 seed Brick Memorial and No. 9 seed Brick."

There was this look of wince from some of the coaches in the room and I can hear Norm saying, "Great, fella. Thanks!" I don't remember if I apologized to Brick Memorial coach Judy DeFrancisci and Brick coach Al Grove, but I do know I should not have gone there. They knew whoever won that game was already going to have this tough task at hand without it being mentioned.

No. 2 seed Toms River East also earned a bye and the Raiders would play the winner of the game between No. 7 Toms River North and No. 10 Toms River South. No. 3 Jackson Memorial hosted No. 14 seed Point Pleasant Beach, No. 4 Southern Regional had No. 13 Lakewood, No. 5 Lacey took on No. 12 Manchester and No. 6 Point Pleasant Boro hosted No. 11 Monsignor Donovan.

After the meeting, I had the coaches who had to play against one another team up to at least look at each other's schedules and prom dates to see what day they could work out to play their first-round games in the tournament. In 1992, this was more a coaches' event. That's why it was more fun to run this tournament in the 1990s than it would have been had I run it today if I were still involved in that capacity. Once the coaches came up with dates they felt were right, they put them past me to put down as tentative dates and then starting Monday, they would confirm having those dates with their ADs.

The coaches' and athletic directors' mission back in the day -- to play one single game in less than three weeks. Honestly, how difficult a task was that?

Starting with the May 7 first-round game between Manchester and Lacey, won by Lacey, 7-4, all six first-round games got done between then and May 20. We were set for our first Quarterfinal Saturday on May 23. My next objective was to put a program together that was representative of the tournament and the eight teams remaining. Never putting one of these together, it was very taxing. And one thing I wanted to do was write a feature story on what was the greatest final in OCT history up to that point, the 1988 finale between Donovan and Central that I covered. Got that done, but getting pictures was a task. Yes, I had collected pictures that our Ocean County Observer photographers had taken throughout the sports season to use for the program. And I managed to find file photos of others. One mug shot I did not have for the program was of Southern coach Dick Manzo. I asked my favorite AD, Kim DeGraw-Cole, if she could have one ready.

"Do you want one of him with a mustache or without? she asked. I told her without since he had shaved that thing off his face in 1989. I drove down to Manahawkin to Southern to pick up the picture in an envelope. I spent the better part of two days putting this together in between my regular work hours. It was not a lot of fun. I can still remember nearing the end of this thing at 6 a.m. Saturday when I did not have Donovan coach Tom Westen's college of graduation. I knew he had the first game of the day against Jackson Memorial, so I figured at 6:30 a.m., it was a perfect time to call him. I got him and he was wide awake. Once he gave me the last bit of information, I now had to go upstairs to the fourth floor and work on making copies of the program. I wasn't going to Staples to spend money on this project and heck, I could get them done on our copiers.

The problem was knowing how to do multiple copies. To me, it was like brain surgery for the first time. It was so bad and I was falling behind and I called my mother to come down to the Observer to help me with making photocopies. Not only did we have to get the photocopies finished, but we also had to staple the programs. And back in 1992, I was naive about this. I printed up 75 copies. For this 2012 tournament, which will now be sold on the Internet since the tournament final took place after I left to show you how poorly run it was this particular year, I only made 32 copies. Then again, it was just a final unlike the eight teams that were showing up 20 years ago.

It was almost 8:30 when my mom got to the building and it was 10 a.m. when I made the decision to get out of the office and head to Point Boro for the first game on the docket. What we did was she took the copies and, probably with my sister, put the programs together and stapled them all at my house, while I got to Boro at about 10:45 a.m. and rushed getting my personal public address system together for this game. Somehow, we made it work and the Donovan-Jackson Memorial game was off and running.

By almost 12:45 p.m., the programs finally were finished as my mother got to Point Boro and dropped them off with me to be sold. Ultimately, I got a copy of the program to Tom Westen, whose team was eliminated. We sold those programs for $1.50 back in the day and not only did the program feature the profile pages of all eight teams and the recap of the first-round games, but we also had that 1988 championship feature story along with all the tournaments from 1981-91 including the lines of all the finals. Trust me, it was well worth the $1.50 we sold it for ... maybe more.

It was a very warm afternoon for the first two games, the second being Toms River East's 10-run rule victory over Toms River North, 13-3. The beating sun was finally going down by the time we got to the two games in the other bracket. Southern knocked off Lacey and in the "prime-time" game under the lights, Central Regional had little trouble with 10-run ruling Brick Memorial.

And the day/night adventure was over. And I finally got sleep. A lot of sleep. And everyone could enjoy the rest of their Memorial Day off. The best part of all that -- no one complained.

Now we didn't have the semifinals set until Monday, June 1 at Point Boro. So we were doing just fine. And back at Boro I went for the first semifinal, slated for 5 p.m. between Southern and Central. Southern took an early lead, but by the third inning, I could see the storm clouds come in. The heavens opened up and let loose with a pounding rainstorm that not only didn't stop, but practically flooded the infield at Boro. Kiddingly, it probably was the softest the infield was all year.

It was decided that the game was cancelled and started over again the next day. I was a soaked rat because I had no umbrella. If not for the fantastic father of former Brick High standout center fielder Nicki Schley handing me an umbrella he had handy, it could have been worse. Needless to say, the field was in terrible condition to even get ready for a second game. Both East and Jackson Memorial had gotten to the field and immediately, Ric and I had to tell both coaches Debbie Schwartz and Al Aires, respectively, that they had to turn around and go home. The next step was having to tell the umpires for the second game they had to go home, too, after arriving.

The worst part, though, was that out of the money for the tournament, which, if you remember, was $875 for 14 teams at $65 a pop, Ric had to pay the two umpires for starting the first game, then pay the two umpires who arrived at Point Boro for the game that never started between Jackson and East as well. That was $192 of inactivity gone away.

So another $192 was invested to get the umpires back for the makeup, which we had stated on the rules sheets would be played the next night, Tuesday, June 2, an absolutely beautiful evening and night at Boro, almost as if there was never any rain there to begin with. Manzo and Southern assistant coach Bill McLennan left Boro's field upset they had to cancel the first game since their team was leading Central. Starting over again, Central jumped out to an early lead, then held off a Southern rally to win, 10-8, and advance to the final. Then the second game between Jackson Memorial and East, two fierce Class A South rivals, was one for the OCT ages. It was a back-and-forth battle that saw East take a lead into the seventh, but Jackson Memorial tied it in the top of the seventh to send it to extra innings where East won the game, 8-7, in bottom of the seventh when Angela Velardi singled with the bases loaded to bring home Vicki Guarneri.

The night was over and I went over to East's side to congratulate Debbie and assistant coach Dawn Dziedzic. It was almost at that point that I was intercepted by Vito Guarneri, Vicki's father, and actually a friend of my family since my sister and his oldest daughter, Dawn, who I graduated high school with at East, were best friends. He started talking as if I wanted Jackson to win. I thought the guy was going to either punch me or fight me! He started putting his index finger into my chest as if I was the bad guy and he was going to make a big deal about it. I have a little more integrity than that. He finally left me alone. I don't know to this day what got into him, but let's just say he was a passionate sports fan and what he did for his daughter. And other than that, he treated me with kindness and respect. It was just one of those moments.

Ric and I got through the semifinals nonetheless. Two games were still left. It was decided at the seeding meeting there'd be a third-place game along with the final on Thursday, June 4. As I got to Point Pleasant Boro again, I was met over there by Ric, who was doing some raking of the infield getting it ready for the two games at about 3:45 p.m. No more than 15 minutes later, Dave arrived with the trophies he had taken care of. He had the first-place, second-place, third-place and Most Valuable Player trophies with him. He dropped them off along with Most Valuable Pitcher, Top Hitter and Top Fielder trophies that the top kids got as well as smaller trophies the top two teams got for playing in the final. He handed Ric and I the bill.

It was $240. With five umpires to be paid $240 for the two games, we suddenly found ourselves in trouble.

"I got news for you there," Ric started. "We're in the red." He wasn't kidding. Because of the rainouts, we went from being ahead of the game to being very behind it. We started thinking about what the heck to do. Then the idea came to Ric.

"I've still got tickets and for both games, we can run a 50-50." Since I didn't have any brilliant ideas immediately, it was the thing to do. So the third-place game went off at 5 p.m. and Ric went around with the tickets selling 50-50s in the final. Glenda Calabro, Al Aires' able assistant at Jackson, looked at me as I announced the 50-50 tickets were on sale, and said, "You must be making up for lost money." Smart woman who had been around sports a long, long time.

By the end of the night, we were still behind and ultimately, I gave Ric some of my sales money from the programs I sold. It was a hard lesson learned for the tournament and we ultimately got back to even. As for the games, the third-place game ended up going to extra innings where Southern beat Jackson Memorial and took home the third-place trophy, the only one ever handed out in tourney history. In between games, both East and Central warmed up, the lineups were announced, the national anthem was played and the 10 previous tournament Most Valuable Players were honored in the pre-game ceremony with the first tourney MVP of 1982, Toms River South's Lynne Prudhomme, throwing out the first pitch -- a strike that I thought was going to take off Central catcher Amy McGowan's glove off her.

As for the championship, a game won by Central Regional, 5-0, over Toms River East, it was memorable. Central scratched out three runs in the first inning on former Golden Eagles pitcher Erin Tulko with Erika Applegate delivering the two-run single to highlight the inning. The game stayed that way until the sixth when Central scored twice more to put it away.

Tara Menschner, a fellow sophomore like Tulko and Applegate, had thrown the first shutout in OCT finals history. We gave out the second- and first-place trophies and the individual award trophies. And the honor for Most Valuable Player, which I announced, was a surprise. It went to Applegate, Central's third baseman and the first sophomore to win the honor.

And as both teams left, the sigh of relief I breathed might have been heard through all of Point Pleasant. We made it. Other than being in the red, the rest of the tournament was a success. And for that moment, we didn't care that we were in the red -- we had a successful day and night of softball. Everything ultimately got paid for and we had a template to run this tournament for the next couple of years at Point Pleasant Boro, then when Ric bowed out, Debbie Schwartz came in to run the tournament with me for the next four years.

We turned a profit the next seven years. Ultimately, we raised the price of getting into the tournament from $65 to $85 by the final year of my run in 1999 when I co-ran the event with Jim Christiano, the former Toms River South coach who ran it by his lonesome the first six years between 1981-86.

The main thing about this tournament as I always brought up was that this was a tournament involving the coaches -- the coaches had the interactions, they made things happen once we put a schedule in front of them and then everything went in motion. And very little did the athletic directors have a problem.

I leave Ocean County for this year feeling sad that the tournament has been ruined by people who couldn't take the bull by the horn and run it the way it should have been run -- for the integrity of getting it done before the Shore Conference and state tournaments took place.

This tournament has never ever been about ego. It's about letting those young ladies play and be their best. I'm proud of the fact that in my eight years of helping run the tournament, we did just that.

Even if we were unprepared and unaware of what pitfalls may have been ahead of us that first year in 1992.

But what a wonderful learning experience it was.

Playing 'Beat The Clock' on a light-less field

It is Saturday morning, May 12, 2012. A beautiful day at the Jersey Shore.

The Ocean County Softball Tournament continues today with a game at Toms River High School East's complex. East has one of the most unique dimensions for a softball field you will ever see. The team plays down in a little gully while fans can watch from the road above the field or in the stands just below that view. But almost a generation ago, it was a new field that begged to be noticed.

In 1994, East moved its softball field from the drab, bland side of the school to down behind the school in that gully. In 1994, I was a co-director of the county tournament with Point Pleasant Boro High coach Ric Malta. We had held the tournament exclusively at his field the previous two years.

However, Point Boro's field -- for its nice little location -- was pretty darned dangerous. I literally once watched a girl from Monsignor Donovan High tear her leg up and miss part of a season because of a slide into a base. It could be hit or miss whether that field got watered or not. And after hearing random coach after coach say they feared for their kids' lives playing on that field and seeing a final where there were no bleachers for people to watch the game, I knew I needed a change of scenery.

Ric agreed to host the tournament again in 1994, but this would be the last of the four-year run for Boro hosting. Meanwhile, East coach Debbie Schwartz wanted to get her new field some exposure for the tournament. So it was agreed that Boro would still host for the semifinals and championship, but the schools would split the 1994 quarterfinal games. At the seeding meeting, we gave coaches the choice of what field they would like to play on if they won their first-round game.

And somehow, we made it work.

So on Saturday, May 21, 1994, the annual Quarterfinal Saturday -- a day I still consider one of the most exciting days the OCT has ever had and I still wished existed -- had a new twist to it. We started at 10 that morning at Toms River East with East hosting Jackson Memorial, followed by top-seeded Central Regional taking on Pinelands Regional. Once those games were finished with East and Central victories, I gathered all my stuff that I used to run a public address system and headed from East to Point Pleasant Boro for the next two quarterfinals that featured Point Boro against Toms River North (the game that involved an inside-the-park strikeout) and Southern Regional against Lacey.

The day, in my opinion, was a success. And there was a lot of positive feedback from the two games at East. I kept this in mind as 1994 finished and 1995 approached.

By then, Ric had pretty much confirmed he did not want to host any more games at his field. The tournament was now all Debbie's from the quarterfinal round on at Toms River East.

There was one slight problem, though: East, which had been promised lights for the start of the season, still had no lights on it. Once Debbie told me before the '95 tournament that having the lights placed on her field might not take place until the championship -- and to me, that sounded iffy -- we decided to do away with that Quarterfinal Saturday for that year. Holding the tournament earlier than normal (with a May 20 championship) was not making me all that warm and fuzzy, either. I've never been for having the tournament start in late April because most of the better teams don't start getting better until just over one month into the season.

Still, we trudged on. For the quarterfinal round, we'd split the four games into two doubleheaders. We'd play two of the games on East's field on Saturday, May 6 with Toms River North playing Lacey and Manchester taking on surprising Monsignor Donovan with the games starting at noon. They went rather well in spite of Donovan's 26-16 long-winded, three-hour marathon victory over the Hawks.

The tricky part, though, would take place on Tuesday, May 9 when East hosted the other two games. Even in daylight savings time, you only have so much sunlight to play with. And if we started the doubleheader at 3:45 p.m. there was a strong chance that both games would not get in.

To make this work, it took cooperation with the two teams playing the first of those doubleheader games. With the urging I asked of two of the better athletic directors I've ever dealt with in my career -- Southern Regional's Kim DeGraw-Cole and Jackson Memorial's Ralph Carretta -- both teams were able to get out of their schools earlier than normal and make it to East by 2:15 p.m. for a 3 p.m. start. Normally, that starting time is frowned upon during weekdays, but without lights up on the East field, we sort of had an "emergency situation."

Both teams warmed up, the umpires arrived, and the game started at 3 p.m. The plan was to start that game at 3, get it done before 5, then have the East grounds crew work on the field, have Central and East warm up and get off playing at 5:30.

This was literally "Beat The Clock" with Mother Nature. I don't suggest any tournament directors attempt to run a tournament this way, but whatever means you need to get it done, you get it done.

Top-seeded Jackson Memorial and No. 8 seed Southern Regional were fierce Class A South rivals. And neither team was giving in to the other. But the problem was that there'd be sustained and long innings. By about the fifth inning, I started looking at my watch quite a bit more than I should have while doing my normal PA work. Jackson Memorial held on for the 7-6 victory and my watch read 5:10 p.m.

One game down, one to go. But how much daylight were we left with? I watched Central and East warm up and had to answer the question a few people kept hitting me with as daylight faded behind the dark clouds that began forming over the East field -- "What happens if we can't get this game in?" I told people they would finish the game up at another time that week, but honestly, I wasn't sure what was going to happen if Central and East could not get done before the daylight disappeared.

The Central-East matchup -- the two schools' first meeting against one another in the OCT since Central's emotional win over East in the 1992 final -- started at 5:45 p.m. I'll admit at that point it was 50-50 that the game would finish up. But things went quick in the first couple of innings. It was about 6:10 p.m. Someone scratches out a run or two, holds the other team down and we're out of there without incident. But in the third, those plans began to fall apart in a big way. Central scored ... and didn't stop! I sat next to a high school classmate of mine watching this (he was there because he was very good friends with East third baseman Vicki Guarneri from basketball) and I expressed my opinion that I could not believe how quickly this game got out of hand.

Soon, it became 7 p.m. And by the fifth inning, Central was close to winning the game early, via the 10-run mercy rule. When Central scored that last run in the bottom of the fifth (as the host team because it was the higher seed) to finish out an 11-1 victory, my watch read 7:35 p.m. It was not how I wanted to see this game ended, especially some pride as a Toms River East graduate.

Nonetheless, we got both games in before the brightness of the day faded out. Ironically, it was the last time East was mercy-ruled in an OCT game. Yet, we did it -- we doubled-down on these games getting in before the sun went down and won.

On Saturday, May 13, we went back to the noon time start for the two semifinals and Central beat Lacey and Jackson Memorial defeated Donovan to set up the May 20 final at East ... when East finally got lights put up.

I will never forget coming home from seeing my girlfriend at the time in Middletown the night before the final and stopping over at East to see light poles finally holding lights over the field. I remember looking out over the field on that dark night and thinking about how really cool this was going to be -- not just for the next day, but for the future of the East program.

The very next night, the lights went on and the first night game ever held on that field was the OCT final between Jackson Memorial and Central. Jackson, unfortunately, played like a team that never played a night game in its life, committing nine errors as Central cruised to its record sixth OCT title, 11-4.

For the next three years, East hosted the entire tournament from the quarterfinal round on with the lights shining brightly at night. It hosted the greatest OCT final ever when Cheryl Zellman hit the game-winning, inside-the-park home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to give Central its seventh title, 2-1, over Lauren Anderson and Toms River North in 1997. It hosted the greatest OCT game ever a few nights earlier when Central stormed back from a 9-5 deficit in the bottom of the seventh to score five times and win the semifinal game, 10-9, over Jackson Memorial.

And now, East has the premier program in the county. Its complex is a jewel, a sight to be seen. The tournament final is no longer there, but the state tournament finals are on that field, sharing the honor with Toms River North's field.

Things are so much different now compared to 17 years ago when East was getting its field notoriety. It was a good time then to showcase the Raider field.

And for one day, it got very scary. I still can't believe to this day we pulled off two games on that field in one late afternoon.

One save ... one playoff loss

For the longest time, I was starting to think Putnam County simply was not good enough to compete with any other school in any sport when it came time for the state playoffs.

Just didn't see it happening. Three years into the job at the Palatka Daily News and I started to wonder if Jeremy Criscione's dramatic state cross country championship in 2004 or his gold-medal 3,200-meter race in the 2005 track and field state 2A championship and Mickey Gilyard's memorable high jump win over three-sport start Jermaine Taylor at the same 2A meet in Coral Springs was about as good as it was going to get.

As a matter of fact, it had been three years -- three months before I got to the paper -- that Putnam County had won a team-against-team state tournament game or match. In the spring 2003 -- I was still living in New Jersey, wondering what my next job was going to be -- when Katie Brosky pitched Palatka High to a memorable, extra-inning softball victory over New Port Richey Mitchell High School.

I had seen my share of football state tourney losses, basketball state tourney losses, softball state tourney losses, soccer state tourney losses, volleyball state tourney losses. You get the picture.

No matter what the sport, I was leaving the venue having to write a "we fought hard, we just weren't better tonight"-type story by the end of the night.

In 2005, Crescent City Junior-Senior High School's boys soccer team had put together an unbeaten regular season, then went out and won Putnam County's first district championship in soccer, either boys or girls, with a 4-1 triumph at Pierson Taylor High School, a great moment for anyone's journalism career to be able to say they covered.

Well, I wasn't there that night at Taylor High. I was stuck having to lay out the sports section that Friday night as my boss took seriously ill for over a week, so ill as a matter of fact that he wasn't able to cover the Super Bowl in Jacksonville that Sunday night and I had to step in for him.

But he was able to get better for me to make a trip to Crescent City the following week and watch as the Raiders' season came to an end against Trinity Catholic of Ocala, 3-2, in the first round of the state 2A playoffs.

Now it was Thursday, February 2, 2006, a year later. The Raiders were the No. 1 seed in their District 5-3A tournament the week before and, in a three-team district, automatically was going back to the state tournament. But Crescent City lost the district final on its home field to rival Keystone Heights, 1-0. And with an overall record of 4-7-4 -- yes, you read that right, four wins, seven losses and four ties -- I wasn't expecting much from the Raiders in their state tournament opener and rematch with Trinity Catholic, this time the game on Trinity's field in Ocala.

The ride from Palatka to Ocala is just over an hour, depending on traffic, but Trinity Catholic is a tricky school to find because you have to take one of Ocala's diagonal-based roads and if you miss the turn for the field, you're driving around trying to find your way back. Fortunately, I had Mapquested the site for a state tournament game there the week before when I saw the Interlachen High girls soccer team get hammered, 8-0, by Trinity. I had familiarity.

So a quick stop before heading on the diagonal road at a nearby Zaxby's restaurant. Got the chicken strips. Mmmmm good stuff. However, I wasn't too careful of what I was doing in the quasi-dark of my car and found a big ol' barbecue dipping sauce mess on the passenger seat. That stain took a while to clean off, especially when I finally completely spotted the darned thing the next day in broad daylight.

Got to the field with about 10 minutes to spare, wrote down the lineups for both sides and waited as Trinity's public address guy ran through the lineups, played the National Anthem and then had a moment of prayer before the game. I was prepared for this since this was the routine a week before -- in 45-degree weather then as I nearly yelled out, "Goddamnit, get this game started!" All the pomp, prayer and circumstance did was delay the inevitable mercy-rule victory Trinity scored over Interlachen.

This time, though, I wasn't expecting a beatdown. The teams had played during the regular season to a tie. And though Crescent City had a 4-7-4 record, it was a deceiving record since they were playing some of northeast Florida's better programs.

The coach of the Raiders, John Thomas, is as laid back as any coach you are going to meet. His coaching mindset is pretty simple -- winning a game starts with winning in preparation. Though he would raise his voice from time to time, he knew it was up to the players to execute the game plan he and his assistant coaches had put together beforehand.

The normal makeup of Raiders players is of Hispanic or Mexican descent. They love the sport as much as the sky is blue and the day is long. The leaders of this Crescent City team were goalie Arturo Martinez, defender Cesar Hernandez and forwards Ivan Robles and Carlos Villegas, who would be our paper's two-time Player of the Year in the sport, including this particular year.

As Thomas gathered his players together before the start of the match, I can hear him in a subtle, confident tone tell his players to dictate the tempo of the game and take it at Trinity. And so the Raiders hit the field against Trinity's Celtics ready for anything. Unlike the girls game the previous week that I did at Trinity, it was a much more balmy 66 degrees at kickoff, making for a far more comfortable event to be at.

And just like the first regular-season meeting, the game became a midfield battle with neither side's defense giving in to the other. And with the game scoreless at halftime, I wasn't sounding so positive with my boss about this thing being settled in regulation time.

"I might be here awhile," I told him at the first break.

I was right. The second half was almost an uneventful as the first half. Whatever shot either team had on the other, it never threatened to break the scoreless tie. Any dangerous opportunity that opened up Martinez was stepping in the way for Crescent City, as was goalie Aaron Watkins for Trinity on the other side.

Eighty minutes and still no score. Now came the two 10-minute overtime sessions. And it became apparent from the way this was going, both team's defenses were playing for the right to decide it with the dreaded penalty kicks.

So my third update to my boss was to tell him we were going to penalty kicks to decide this one and I'll update him when it's done. The Raiders had done everything they could from the midfield back to the goalie to frustrate the Celtics, who came in with a 13-6-2 record. On paper, this game should have been a mismatch by all rights in favor of Trinity, but they couldn't get anything in on Martinez, who made 12 saves.

Now as the penalty kicks were being set up, I tried to settle in my mind who would be the better goalkeeper, Martinez or Watkins, who had nine saves. In 1988 as a field hockey writer in New Jersey, I figured Toms River North and goalie Linda Kurtyka would have their way in a one-on-one shootout with Shawnee and a backup goalie who came into the game only for the shootout. Wow, was I wrong that day as Shawnee won the shootout and won the South Jersey Group IV title.

That memory stopped me at that moment. Whoever was going to win was going to need a break ... a save perhaps or a well-kicked ball bouncing off a goal post or crossbar or flying over the crossbar.

After Thomas and Trinity Catholic's coach submitted their lineups, the first kicker up was Hernandez. He calmly kicked his shot into the net to make it 1-0. That brought up Cho Hyun-Jick for Trinity. He laced his shot high and out of the reach of Martinez to tie it at 1-1.

Next up for Crescent City was senior midfielder Patrich Buenaventura. I had gotten to know this fine young man when he won a local contest a couple of years earlier after writing an essay about what it was like to be an American and how good he had it in this country. It was a well-written, well-thought essay written by a young man born in the Phillipines -- on the Fourth of July, no less --- and who also spent time in Texas and Canada before settling down with his very wise mother and Crescent City teacher and stepfather in Crescent City.

Buenaventura lined his shot up and looked at where he was going with his kick. He approached the ball and nailed his shot. Watkins, however, guessed right on where Buenaventura was going as he dove low and to his right, the sound of his hand hitting the soccer ball and deflecting it away still resonnating in my mind even today.

Buenaventura, a diminuitive 5-foot-4, 139-pounder with a heart that could practically match his frame and who played center for the football team the previous fall if you could believe that, put his arms back behind his head as he walked away from the 1-1 tie at that point.

Jason Anderson nailed his kick past Martinez to give Trinity a 2-1 lead. Crescent City's third kicker was Robles, who nailed his kick past Watkins to tie it at 2-2, but John Paglia sent the Celtics ahead with another high shot out of the reach of the 5-foot-7 Martinez. Crescent City's Ernique Benitez stepped up and he delivered a penalty kick goal away from Watkins to tie again at 3-3. Still, Martinez was not stopping anything and when Mike Zacco sent a screamer out of the reach of Martinez and into the net to make it 4-3, the clock was nearing midnight in Crescent City's season.

It was up to Villegas to keep the season going. He surveyed the situation, then drilled a shot past a helpless Watkins to make it 4-all. Villegas had done his job. Now it was up to Martinez to do his.

The last kicker of the regular round of shooters was steady defensive player Austin Ankney. Martinez was still jumping around, getting himself motivated -- and maybe trying to psyche out the last Trinity kicker. Ankney stepped up, delivered the kick and, boom! It went out of the reach again of Martinez to his right. The ball tickled the netting behind.

Trinity Catholic players stormed the field to mob Ankney, then Watkins, who made the one save possible for the Celtics to move on to the next round of the state tournament.

Raider players moped around the Trinity field afterward. The one who hurt the most in the end was the likeable Buenaventura as the tears showed. For that moment, he felt as if he let his team down and was the reason why it lost. No, that was not the case. Crescent City never took control of this game and never put a threat out there in the 100 minutes it did play to even think it had a chance to advance.

The record will always say the Raiders lost the game on penalty kicks, 5-4, and that Buenaventura was the lone shooter who didn't score. But that's not the whole story of this one.

Trinity Catholic just wanted it a little more on this February evening. And Thomas sounded as ever hopeful for the future of the program, rather than despondent at that moment. After all, this was not how John Thomas did business.

"I thought it was a great game right to the end," Thomas would say afterward. "It's a bitter pill, but I've swallowed it before. But something like this is going to add to the kids' lives. It's something they'll never forget in their high school lives. I remember seeing tears in the eyes of our players after the loss (to Trinity) last year, too."

No emotion when he said that. Just realism. Almost anyone who has ever played in the Raider program and for Thomas has the highest respect for the man, and understandably so. Thomas is that example of what happens when you take a kid as a kid and let him develop into a young man.

"I gave it my all, my teammates gave it their all. we came up one goal short," Martinez said afterward. He never pointed blame at any individual. He was a senior who understood that this was life. And sometimes life isn't going to be fair, but you roll with the punches and how you respond from the adversity tells a lot about who you grow up to be.

No one would see, though, that it would take four years -- and a German transfer student named Veit Couturier who would add a little something to an Hispanic- and Mexican-based group of players -- before Crescent City would be back on top again, beating Keystone Heights, 1-0, to capture the District 4-3A tournament.

And Buenaventura? Well all he did was graduate No. 1 in his class at Crescent City that spring, then go off to get his degree in chemical engineering at North Carolina State. I felt horrible for that young man that night in Ocala, but it turns out that setback was only minor in the grand scheme of things in that young man's life.

Thomas is still the program's coach and recently, the Raiders won their third straight district championship. And with a 5-2 win over Gainesville P.K. Yonge in the opening round of the Region 2-2A tournament, the Raider boys became the first program in Putnam County history to win a state tournament game.

As for waiting for a state tournament win by a Putnam County program of any kind, I didn't have long to wait ultimately. In late April, almost three months later, Palatka High's softball team broke the skid at 21 straight games Putnam County sports teams lost in the state tournament, by not only winning a first-round state tournament game with Belleview, but following it up with wins over Groveland South Lake and Zephyrhills to make the state 4A Final Four in Plant City, a dramatic way to break the skid.

Fate was cruel that February 2006 night to Crescent City's young men, especially to an amazingly intelligent young man such as Patrich Buenaventura. The loss served as a life lesson. If this was the worst thing that happened to this team, bigger things were going to happen to them in life.

I'm sure they were better for that, too.