Evan Jager, Track Star

We are LOVING watching the Olympics—we watch the Today Show in the morning to see all the recaps and stories, and after dinner, while Henry colors and Mac bangs pots and pans on the floor, we watch swimming and gymnastics. 

It’s especially fun to watch all the coverage of the city, having just been in London last month. Henry yells, “Big Ben! The Eye!” We were there for two days, and now we’re local, pretty much. 

We pick favorites and yell at the screen when the commentators ask ridiculous questions. (Example: “Were you disappointed that you didn’t win gold?”  “No, ma’am. I’m an Olympic athlete who has worked all my life for this, and it was my plan all along to not win. I’m thrilled right now.” Also:  “What were you thinking about when you crossed the finish line to win the gold medal?” “Oh, you know, my cat. Politics. How I like BLTs. I WAS THINKING ABOUT HOW I JUST WON A GOLD MEDAL. What else would I possibly be thinking about?”)

But I digress, certainly. 

My point: one of the most exciting parts of the Olympics for us and for our friends and family is that Evan Jager is competing in the Steeplechase as part of the US team. I wrote about Evan in a chapter called "The Track Star" in Cold Tangerines, in 2007, when he was a high school senior on his way to UW Madison.  And now Evan is an Olympian, and he just destroyed the American record for the Steeplechase in Monaco. Heavens. 

Here’s that story:

My dad went to kindergarten with Joel Jager, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They grew up in the same small town, the same church, the same school. When my dad moved to Chicago, he moved with Joel, and they were roommates for years. In the photographs of my first birthday, Joel and my dad’s other friends were playing with all my toys, mugging for the camera, scruffy, bearded men in their young twenties, all of them single but my parents, and certainly childless. I was their first little person, first niece or approximation thereof.

In the earliest days of the church they started, when it was a fledgling youth group renting a theater on Sunday mornings, Joel was the first tech director—the only tech director for years and years. He loaded and unloaded the truck thousands of times, getting up while it was still dark on Sunday mornings, waiting till the last person left on Sunday afternoons to tear down the equipment. He’s been an audio engineer now at the church for over thirty years, and when I worked there, sometimes we sat together in the booth when he was mixing and I was producing, and it felt like sitting with an uncle, someone who knows your history better than you do, someone who was there for the stories you just hear after the fact, like folklore.

This year, Joel’s son, Evan, is a senior in high school. He’s a runner, which is putting it mildly. He’s a star. He has won every conference meet, every regional meet, and every sectional meet he’s run. He won state four times, set several course records, and is fourth in the nation in both the one-mile and two-mile this year. The Chicago Sun-Times called Evan quite possibly the best athlete Jacobs High School has ever produced. My husband is a little hurt by this, as a Jacobs alum, and, in his memory, an unsung hero of his sophomore basketball team, but when he heard that Evan ran a 4:05 mile, he grudgingly conceded the title. Evan is a phenomenon, that rare combination of natural talent and determination and discipline and sportsmanship, and because of those things, has become one of the most chronicled and celebrated high school athletes in the country.

This is the thing: his father, Joel, has never run a day in his life. Joel had polio as a small child and walks with a pronounced limp. I remember when I was little, feeling very sad and angry about Uncle Joel’s legs, because I wanted him to be healthy and strong, because I wanted him to be happy, because he was so good to me and made me happy.

And now, Evan. What must it be like for Joel to watch his son run? What must it be like for him to look at his son’s strong fast legs? How proud and moving it must be for a father to watch a son live a life that was so wholly unavailable to him. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be Joel. I don’t know what things are the most difficult to do without, whether it’s running or downhill skiing or ballroom dancing. Okay, I know Joel well enough to know that it’s not ballroom dancing. I bet a few of the most painful moments might have been when he wanted to play with his kids, to run around with them in the backyard playing tag and hide-and-seek. I know that when he overexerts himself, he pays for it with a lot of pain for several days afterward, and I bet he did that over and over again to play with his kids, and I bet that sometimes the pain was worth it. I don’t know. But I do know that Joel is proud of that kid. And that he loves to watch Evan run.

Life feels so tedious sometimes, so lacking in poetry and beauty and connection. We’re just ticking away time, waiting for spring, waiting for a sale, waiting for vacation. I was driving, absentmindedly, feeling bland and ground down, near my hometown one day when we were back for a visit. And on the side of Randall Road, almost swallowed up by the glare of parking lot lights for an eternal stretch of Meijer and Petco and Costco and OfficeMax, was a sign. The sign read, Algonquin, Home of Evan Jager, State Track Champion, 2006, 2007.

And life clicked back into color, and tears sprang into my eyes. Evan Jager is a track star. How’s that for beauty and intervention and sacred hands working behind the scenes, weaving poetry into our lives? It makes me believe in God anew today. That my friend Joel, my dear uncle-friend Joel, has a son who can run. Thank God.

Thank you, God, for the things you heal, the things you redeem, the things you refuse to leave just as they have been for what seems like forever. Thank you for Evan, and for giving to Joel a son who runs. The poetry of that stuns me, and reminds me once again that just when I think we’re ticking off days like a to-do list, we’re not. We’re living the bright, beautiful stuff of movies and love songs, in our backyards and at high school track meets and right on Randall Road.

                                                                                                                    (Cold Tangerines, Zondervan, 2007)

 

I very rarely ask you all to share, repost, link, tweet, etc., but I love this story, I love the Jagers, and I would love for Evan to feel as much support as possible going into his race at the end of the week. Please pass Evan’s story on to your community, because this is what the Olympics are about: about hope and hard work and families who love and support their kids as they do truly amazing things. Follow Evan on Twitter and send him lots of love, and be sure to watch the semifinals Friday and the final on Sunday. Check here for the times in your area.

Evan, your hometown and your church family loves you, and we’re cheering for you all the way!