I have two very clear memories of Joey – one from Hill Country band (HA – I bet he doesn’t want anyone to know he was a band geek once upon a time….) when a new student/band member joined us mid-year during our 7th grade year. I don’t remember her name, but Joey and I sure thought she was hot. We had a good bit of fun with that.

The other memory is from senior year track. We (mainly the cross country team) went out for one of our more difficult runs and Coach told Joey to go with us to get some good distance conditioning. Joey ran the 400 and 200 I think, so he was more accustomed to sprint conditioning, not distance. This run had some pretty tough hills about 75% into it, so it could be rough at that point cuz you had already been running for at least 6 miles by then. By the time we got there, the overall group had split up into similarly-paced groups and Joey and I ended up running together.

I had the benefit of an entire cross country season beforehand where we made this run at least weekly but this was Joey’s first time. Throughout the whole time, Joey is keeping up step for step with no apparent labor. I noticed that so I picked up the pace a bit and Joey matched it without a grunt or missed step. Now come the hills and I hadn’t realized how fast/hard we were running but we were moving pretty darn good, Joey quietly matching me step for step.

Finally, we crest the last hill and kinda cruise down the backside to the flat. I turned to Joey and said something like “Man, you did great for your first time. We were cooking.” Joey then exhaled loudly and responded with something like “Yeah, I was hoping you would slow down”. At that moment I realized that had made that run on sheer determination. We had taken things far more aggressively than we should have for his first time and he had been hurting for a long time. But he NEVER said a word, never looked anything but relaxed and comfortable, and he simply WILLED himself to keep up the pace and finish. And that is what happened that day.