Kicking the Bucket ...

And on the night after Christmas …

Uh. Nah. I’m not gonna try something creative like that.

However, I will tell you about a grudge match race at the Armory … on the night after Christmas.

On Monday night, the Armory Youth, Open and Masters Classic featured a race between an old coach and his former athlete: Mr. Bucket (some know him as “David Swift”) and Mr. Fresh (some know him as “Billy Hild”). As many of you know, Bucket coached Fresh at nearby Spackenkill High School; Bucket ran at Marist on my first teams back in the early 1990s; Fresh is a current sophomore on our team.

This battle for mile supremacy (1,500 meters, actually, but who’s counting?) was months in the works. Mr. B is becoming a masters competitor in April (holy smokes! One of my former runners turns 40? I’VE BEEN COACHING A LONG TIME!) and he wants to rekindle the old track flame burning inside of him. He admittedly started from scratch a few months ago.

Fresh? He just wants to show Bucket that he’s got more wheels than his old coach.

And that’s exactly what he did on this night. The young legs prevailed. The results will show that Billy Hild (unattached) placed 33rd in 4:26:32, while Jerome Bucket (Marist TC) was 36th in 4:31.08.

From this old coach’s perspective, it shows two things: 1. Fresh has a nice, fancy mile PR to brag about; 2. Bucket has a long way to go, but it’s a good start nonetheless after a long hiatus from true track racing.