Freddogg Off The Chain

There may have never been a better week in Indoor Delaware Track and Field than the one “picked up and lay down” by fulltime basketball player and part time winter runner Lance White in January of 1978.
I had borrowed defensive specialist White off the basketball team and trained him for two weeks to compete in the basement on the wooden track inside the Philadelphia Civic Center. Lance was entered in the two mile and was the reigning Division Two Delaware State Cross Country Champion.
I also brought a mile relay team as the fastest five Delaware times would run at the Philadelphia Track Classic at the Spectrum that Friday night.
We arrived way early on Tuesday so I took the athletes for a subway ride to center city. They walked around awe struck and I asked veteran Curtis Johnson if he knew how to get back, showed him the entrance to the subway, gave him 20 dollars and just disappeared like I had gotten lost.
Ten minutes after I had returned to the basement of the Civic Center my team walked in telling me "I was wrong” to leave them out there like that and “who ever told me I was funny other than my wife?”
Robert then went over to a pay phone and no joke called information trying to get the phone number of Seventy-Sixer Darrell Dawkins. “He’s up here somewhere,” Robert said, thinking proximity by phone increased the likelihood that Chocolate Thunder would hook up with a fan from Slaughter Neck.
There were three heats of the two mile and Lance was in the medium one. I quickly went to work to move him up to the seeded heat and with the help of Chris Dwyer whose brother Fred was a former Villanova star Lance was placed in the seeded heat as the Meet Director told me ‘My kid” may be the best distance runner in Delaware but was sure to “Get smoked” in this star studded field.
“That ain’t ever happening in a high school meet on this planet, ”I told him. “Tell your hot coppers they can run but they can’t hide.”
I happily informed Lance he had been moved to the fast heat and he happily informed me that I was out of my mind and why should he trust a coach who earlier left him stranded in the middle of the city.
We walked over to the banked wooden “old school before old school was cool” track.”I have a couple coaching points for you. The number is 22 as in times around.”
Lance said something like boring and he couldn’t last 22 times around anything. I then asked him if he wanted his quarter splits or perhaps a banana split then told him the quarter mark would keep changing and I was too dumb to figure it out.
The real strategy was to hang back but maintain contact and to avoid the silly surges like 65 second quarters thrown in by the front runners to break down the pretending contenders.
“Move up with two to go and take it over on the final lap,”I told Lance. "The only “high schooler” who can break your heart is that girl who said ‘No’ to your prom date request.
Coach Chris Dwyer went to the quarter marks to give me Lance’s splits. At the mile Lance was 4:48 and just cruising in a daze. Villanova assistant Jack Pyrah came over to me and asked if Lance was an African?
“He is so smooth and consistent, ”Pyrah said. “Don’t call Lance an African or a dark horse,”I said. ‘He’s still coming to terms with me naming my bobbed tailed white cat Lance.
Mark Beam from Springfield Montco or Delco with long blond hair was controlling the race. With two laps left Lance moved to the front. I was hyperventilating because I knew it was “Showtime before cable”
Gun lap and Slaughter Neck was “in the house!” Lance blistered the last lap “slapping the boards” crossing the finish line in an incredible 9:29.
I returned to Lewes and discovered on Wednesday that there was an Invitational Mile at the Track Classic Friday night. The Mile run in the basement was the qualifier.
I called the Philadelphia Department of Recreation and Meet Director Jim Williams to lobby for Lance’s admission into that race. Williams had just publicly refused to pay Filbert Bayi’s, a 3:50 miler, plane fare to Philly from California but had no problem allowing Lance into the meet.
The strategy was the same as the two mile run on a new blue track 11 times around. Lance popped onto the track at the last minutes the only runner of color ironically named White.
Out went the pace and Lance was almost broken and looked like he was losing interest but on lap 10 he made up the gap and with the gun he was gone. The race was won in 4:27 a decent indoor time for a kid that never ran an indoor mile in his life.
Three years later when Lance was an All American Runner at Edinboro University three girls from Slaughter Neck walked by my classroom just before the first bell. They were crying as they looked in the door when upon seeing me they screamed then ran in a hugged me.
“Fredman, we thought you were dead. That’s what everyone on the Slaughter Neck bus was saying this morning?”
“What exactly were they saying?”
‘They said Fredman got run over by a car last night and he was still lying out there in the road because nobody wanted to pick him up.”
Fredman was Lance White’s black cat and the circle was completed as the final lap always belonged to Lance White.