middlesex junior high and sports and 1966-67 and darien connecticut

Until my career-diminishing knee injury in junior-year football in California (September 1968), I took pride in my sports accomplishments. I played the standard big three during the school year in Darien--Football, Basketball, Track--and then played Babe Ruth Baseball in the summer. Darien, however, had a proud gymnastics tradition, and each year athletes from the high school would come over and demonstrate their prowess on the still rings, pommel horse or balance beam to an awestruck throng of junior high wannabees. I still recall the visit of Randy King. He was a senior, as I recall, at Darien High School, and had suffered with polio as a child. I never really realized how fortunate I was to have been born in 1952, for the kids born even two or three years before me were in great danger of this crippling disease. Well, Randy King shuffled along and limped as he walked, but his upper body looked like Hephaestus at the forge. He skillfully glided around the pommels and then, to the stark amazement of all the junior he-men guys, was able to do an iron cross on the still rings. I still recall the experience with shivers, and we boys who had previously rolled up our short-sleeved shirts quickly hid our puny biceps.

Perhaps to emphasize the importance of conditioning as well as gymnastics, we were given a gym teacher my 9th grade year named Mr. Battino. Like my music teacher, Mr. Laube, Mr. Battino (I think his first name was Isidore--a name which, in my Protestant upbringing, I had never heard. We just referred to him out of earshot as "Joe") thought that America was losing its toughness and it was his duty to restore it. While Laube put us through our musical paces and had us memorize the third/fourth stanza of the Star-Spangled Banner, Battino subjected us to lots of lectures on toughness. He told the story once of the value of gymnastics. He was in the navy in WWII and was on the upper deck of the boat, when he was hit by some object, thus causing him to fall 30 feet to the deck below. Because he knew gymnastics, he treated it as a "dismount," he said, and lightly landed on his feet and did a rear summersault, emerging unscathed. It seemed to me that the toughest people always ran into the most enormous physical obstacles. I, who didn't plan to get knocked off upper decks of ships, politely declined his invitation to take up tumbling.

Football

Tons of guys went out for football, and I made the team in 8th as well as 9th grade. I forget the name of the coach now, but his assistant coach was Mr. Kirk. I remember this because I played End and wore # 6, and at one of the practices when Mr. Kirk asked the quarterbacks and ends to come for a meeting, I shouted to a quarterback: "One more pass." I think I was trying to demonstrate my zeal. Instead, Mr. Kirk (no relation to the guy on Star Trek) thought of it as insubornation, and balled me out before God and everyone. But he didn't know my name. All he said was, "Who do you think you are # 6? etc. etc." I thought it was pretty cool that my coach knew nothing about me (I wasn't a starter at that point)..

I had a much more illustrious 9th grade season, though I think we only played about 5 games. I began to like defense better than offense, and often would give a crushing tackle (which would probably have seemed to the crowd to be a gentle nudge) on an opposing running back. But my football career took off after that, and I was named an all league defensive lineman for my sophomore league in CA when I moved there the next year.

Basketball

I was cut from the team in my 8th grade year, after announcing to all who would listen to me that I thought I was "sixth man" after the opening practice. By 9th grade, however, I had honed my skills and made the team. We had a real star in Peter Weller, who had transferred from someplace else (I think in Illinois), and most of the rest of us stood around flat-footed while he pumped in shots from all around. I was the defensive "enforcer," even though I didn't enforce much, and we managed to lose more games than we won. My game high, I recall, was 4 points. Our coach was my biology teacher, Mr. Platenyk (that may be misspelled), who was not much of a coach but knew all the rules of the game. He took a rather biological approach to the game, expecting us to be able to define terms like flagrant fouls, so at least we knew what we were doing when we committed one.

Track & Field

But it was track & field that was destined to catch my attention. I wasn't very good in 8th grade, but decided in 9th grade that I wanted to be a champion shotputter. During my 9th grade year (Spring 1967), we had a very good putter, Chris Teague (about 43'), and I only threw the 8 pounder about 39 feet. But I worked on throwing the shot almost every day I could in the next year, and by the time the Spring season had ended in sunny CA in May 1968 I had thrown the 12 pound shot a school record (for sophomores) 45'10 1/2". I thought I was destined to be a great shotputter (though the knee injury in Fall 1968 ended that hope). I think I was drawn to track & field because it was a place not only where individual effort was rewarded, but where that effort was the only thing that got you points. It didn't bother me, really, that few people showed up to watch my event, and that no girls were panting over grunting guys whose claim to athletic fame was to push a ball out farther than their neighbor.

Conclusion

And so I finished at Middlesex Junior High School in June 1967, fully expecting to move on to Darien High School in the Fall. But life has its twists and turns. My father was transferred from the NYC branch of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. to the San Francisco branch. It was good-bye to Darien, and I have scarcely returned in the last 40 years. Yet, as you can tell, the place is indelibly fixed in my memory.

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