I went to the park Sunday with my youngest son for his first cross-country meet of the year. It was another beautiful day, the sun still strong enough for a tan but a cool breeze stirring whenever a cloud moved in. 

These meets are great events for kids from six to 14. They are run by the CYO, the Catholic Youth Organization, though you don’t need to be of any particular religion to join. My oldest son ran track for one or two seasons before focusing on baseball and basketball. This is my youngest son’s sixth year in track. By the way, the rabbit in the headline refers to a person who leads the runners on the race course through the park.

I volunteered to help out, something I’ve done in the past. You get a close-up look at each race. The kids’ faces are great to watch as they finsh - some are super intense and all business, even at 10; other kids are smiling and waving; and the last few across the line are exhausted and need you to cheer them to the finish. It certainly beats standing around waiting for your kid to run and then waiting again for the meet to end.

My youngest son didn’t immediately take to running. That changed when the weekly practices shifted to the hilly and beautiful cross-country course at Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. Track meets there draw high schools from around the NYC area and from colleges across the Northeast. My son’s atttitude toward track changed somewhere after the series of hills known as the roller coaster; He found a burst of speed and started passing other kids. It was like a switch being flipped; He decided he liked the feeling of passing other runners.    

When I volunteered Sunday, I was handed a Seiko Stop Watch System 2129, with lap/split/reset function, a timer lock and printout. I needed 10 minutes of instruction to figure it out. But it’s a cool little machine that beeps when you hit the button for each finisher and whirrs as it prints out each finisher’s time. 

Now I had helped out in the past, but was equipped with only an ordinary stopwatch if I was a timer, or just my eyes if I was a picker, a job I will soon explain.

To run a track meet right you need a timer and a picker for each contestant running in a heat. That typically means eight timers and eight pickers – each assigned to time, or pick the person who crosses the finish line in a particular place.  For instance, timer two times only the person who crossees the finish line second; picker four needs to identify and then grab the ID tag belonging to the fourth-place finisher.

That system won’t do, however, in a cross-country race when you have anywhere from 30 to 80 kids at the starting line for an event. That’s where the Seiko Stop Watch System 2129 comes in. All I had to do was hit the button for each finisher. Other volunteers keep track of the finishers and funnel them into the chute to maintain the order of finish until his or her ID tag can be pulled.

Who knew a race for a bunch of little kids could be so complicated? I’m hooked on track for kids, though. No one sits on the bench; everyone participates; and there doesn’t seem to be any of the crazy behavior from parents or coaches that sometimes spoils other sports for kids. 

My son and I both had good days. He  finished 16th out of 53 in his race and got a medal. And I got play with the Seiko Stop Watch System 2129.