Is My Track Captain A Drug Dealer?

“He’s not one of your captains, is he?” My athletic director asked me this quite disdainfully as my tracksters warmed up before our workout on a recent weekday. Kicking aside a shattered glass bottle and the cigarette butts littered on my track, I looked up at her and said, “Yes, he is.”

“Oh. Coach Gibbon, I don’t know about that. Who do you think sells all the drugs around here? We need to set an example,” she continued.

I looked back at my track team, as if to prove my point without saying anything. All the athletes were counting proudly and painfully as they did their second set of 20 push-ups. One of the young men I named co-captain this spring has twice been sent to detention centers in the city for selling drugs, as recently as last summer.

He is a triplet, and one of his brothers has been in even worse trouble than him. I teach my track captain and one of the other three (the other goes to a school up the street), and the cops were recently scouring my attendance records to see if my captain’s brother missed enough days to warrant a violation of his parole. He had, and was locked up later that day in the hallway in plain view of everyone.

Their mother died after giving birth to the triplets. The boys live with their father and their older sister, who I taught last year. She is recently pregnant and apparently the baby’s father is threatening to ditch town before it comes to term. She and the father had also thought seriously about getting an abortion, but the young man I’ve chosen as my captain told me that he talked her out of it. “Mommy could have easily chosen to kill us and none of us would be here,” he said of him and his brothers. “She died having us, but we lived.”

My track captain’s father told him that he already has coffins picked out for the three boys – he believes they’ll be dead by the time they’re 18.

My track captain also has lead poisoning, which causes him to act out in class and in the hallways. He’s good-natured, but there’s a side to him that he says he is proud to be able to hide from people like me. I’ve learned that gangs seek out the kids with lead poisoning or learning disabilities because they’re more easily manipulated. “People underestimate me,” he said. I’m not sure I know in which way he’s talking about, but I think I have some idea.

I chose him to be a co-captain because he’s there everyday on time, determined to get faster and a very vocal leader who can rally the kids to do their best. He’s been giving the same great effort for two years in a sport that gains little recognition in the inner city. From the conversations I’ve had with him, I can’t tell if he still sells drugs. I like it better that way, you know? I can’t tell these kids how to get through life. I lead by example all day, but at the end it, I drive my car out to the county. My kids live in the hood.

All I know is he is a good track runner, gets on very well with his teammates and is helpful in every way for my team. Yesterday, he won the 800 meter run and anchored the 4x800 relay team to victory.

I don’t know what my kids do in their spare time – how many really sell drugs or just like to put on a hard front. I do know that many of my athletes and students support their families by working in the evenings. One of my athletes, who hardly reads or writes, takes the train all the way out to the airport to work for minimum wage at McDonalds as a janitor and still shows up for school in the morning. I don’t even want to imagine that commute, all via public transport and in the middle of the night. Last year, that young man was locked up for selling drugs too. Imagine his life prospects. It’s sad, but man, he’s doing his best right now.

And so is my track co-captain. As an athlete and a competitor myself, I look for someone I can trust to run my team. Often, the best athletes and leaders are the ones who’ve been through the most or are most willing to sacrifice for the sport. If he’s out on the corner selling drugs tonight, I hope my boy is fast enough to run away – I think he is. But I pray that he’s not out there – that he doesn’t have to be - and that someday he and his brothers can get away from all this mess before their father’s prophecy comes to pass.