Lehighton Cross Country versus Pocono Mountain East and West - September 29th, 2010

Jen Beers, Amanda Acabou, Alyssa Schleicher, Emily Oldt



Brian Piekarski, Dave Magyar, Chris Bosco, Ryan Coulter, Shaun Mann, Jeremy Rehrig, Daulton Radler, Josiah Evans (Missing: Jeremy Gornick)



The Lehighton Cross Country Team continues to enjoy their 2010 season.

Amanda looks intense as she rounds the corner.  She also competes on her U18 Soccer team.

Coach Blaugh of Pocono Mountain East gives runners final instruction.

Coach Blaugh must be talking about the generous amounts of food the PME Parent's Club is setting out once again.

Coach Blaugh discusses the acorns near the first mile turn.

The team's senior leadership is comprised of 3rd year senior and former MVP Josiah Evans, 2nd year senior Jeremy Gornick, and 1st year senior Brian Piekarski.  Last year's MVP is junior David Magyar.  Underclassmen are Daulton Radler, Ryan Coulter, Chris Bosco, and Shaun Mann.  The boys are beginning to gel as a team with one victory over Pocono Mountain West earlier in the season, the first win over that team in several years.

The Lady Harriers lost much in last year's senior class with few ladies willing to step in.  The ladies are led by 2nd year junior Alyssa Schleicher and 2nd year sophomores Emily Oldt and Amanda Acabou.  Unfortunately, without the minimum of 5 runners, the girls are unable to compete as a team.

The Lehighton Area Middle School is represented by Jenifer Beers, who is having much success. 

Josiah knows how to use the hills to his advantage.

A solid group of Lehighton runners.

Daulton led all Lehighton runners heading into the first mile.

Emily charges Mya of PME on the uphill finish.  Emily finished 6th among the girls.



Not many things are as intense as the moment before "GO!".

BOYS:  Lehighton Vs PME:
Though the LAHS boys have shown steady progress the last few years, the shear numbers that PME brings is much to overcome.  With 8 of their 22 boys able to run the 3.1 miles of this hilly course under 22 minutes, Lehighton can do little to hold off East.  Dave Magyar finished 5th against East as Lehighton's only scoring runner.  Magyar finishes 6th of 37 runners, following by Radler 13th, Evans 17th, Coulter 21st, Piekarski, Bosco, Rehrig, and Mann (also battling a nagging injury, returning in this his first race in 2 weeks). Lehighton loses 16 to 37.

BOYS: Lehighton Vs PMW:
Though Lehighton beat West in the first half of the season, West took the win as they caught Lehighton without their #3 runner this week.  Jeremy Gornick was unable to compete due to a strained back.  Get better soon Jeremy!  As a result, West wins with a slimt margin of 26 to 29.

GIRLS:
Forfeit to both East and West due to only 2 Lehighton girls in competition.   Oldt finishes 6th of 21 runners followed by Acabou 14th.


Jen has represented LAMS well.  Here close to the finish at the Middle School race.



The Twenty Minute Before Midnight Man - By Ronald Rabenold

This is John Parker who passed away earlier this year.  An austere, great man with humble dirt-floor, coal-patch town roots.  He is not the Twenty Before Man, but he'd agree.  You lived well Uncle John.

The Twenty Before Midnight Man:


The hour did not divide them in a biblical brother way.

Rather, it was an artificial line that began to diffuse their identities:

Born exactly twenty minutes before midnight, the other twenty minutes after,

The dates would become the preoccupation

That would outlive them all.



He awoke from a deep nap, saying “…my angel…my angel…my darling angel.”

When she was gone, he set to the clouds, “This is the story of my life,”

Though he didn’t feel a thing.

He recalled the boy, who pierced his stomach with the pencil tip,

It remained at two o’clock upon his naval,

Buried beneath thirty years of layered skin.

Later he caused a second piercing, this time to himself,

Onto his own stomach, with his father’s own revolver.

The lead introduced his guts to the light, heat, and dust of the outside August world.

The Twenty Before Midnight man went back there again,

To the place of dusty shale, a path of Staghorn sumac, between river and canal.

He knew it by how it tested his patience,

The bluegills and the day of countless casts.

He never asked, “When is it enough?”

Though years later he wondered why he had

Foraged for grubs in the decayed logs of this channel,

Reaching it again, thinking, “This place has changed.”

This is the spot of Heath’s raft of unraveled logs.

It was said, when his face emerged, pulled up from this very water

That it still bared the smile of a boy in the midst of a summer day.

Gone, never hearing Gabo say, “A fear of death is the ember of happiness.”

That was the story of his life.

He did wonder how it occurred this way.

How he was given more time to ponder their deaths,

Than they had been given life to live.



When he crossed the line from twilight gray onto the rest fantastic,

He found his humility divided from fear, his consequence from obligation,

Unsettled as the clouds separating the gray from the blue,

He had not thought to thank them for the contrast.

He did not realize the covers coming down to meet the sheets meant

Her legs were gone, forever, from their bed.

He did not realize all the time he spent on longing,

Awaiting the arrival of the sensation

That would bring the smile

That would finally part his lips.



Ronald Rabenold – February 7, 2010 (Revised September 6, 2010)

I Look For Walt at the Bottoms of My Shoes - By Ronald Rabenold

I look for Walt at the bottoms of my shoes, while I move along,


I wait for Emily in white.

I cannot love them all,

I can only love part of myself.

My heels scuff along those drafty cracks along the wooden slats.

Opposing my own nature, I resist the chemicals in my blood,

I find no comfort in capital.

Take the hammers, sledges and saws, search on,

Look for the warmth that is there.

Go look on the blood splattered altars of Leviticus,

Go among the concubines and eyes for eyes,

Go, look for them, faded as pink as the scars from eons of treading,

They hide like grapes beneath their phalanx of leaves,

I search with my tongue, the progeny they protect,

They urge to press on, urging more to move on.

Look for comfort there

It is there,

Always moving along.

By Ronald Rabenold - Sept 2010

Acrylic by Randolph Rabenold (my Dad)- Late 1950s
Thank you Dad for your gift of your own kind of expression.  You're one of a kind.