Minot, ND

Sertoma International Keith White Sports Complex

Running Time: 56:47.5 + 2-minute kick

An unplanned bonus run. I made a 3-day trip to Saskatoon for a trade show. I flew into Minot Friday, drove to Saskatoon, attended the trade show on Saturday, stayed in Regina Saturday night, then drove back to Minot Sunday to fly home. Then my flight home was cancelled.

I drove to Minot, found a hotel within walking distance of the airport, dropped off my rental car, and then went for a run. I first tried to find a trail around the airport – no luck. There was a sport complex with 8 ballfields right next to the airport, so I ran around the perimeter of each field, inside the fence.

It made for a nice run. Very flat, and the grass was cut relatively low. It looked like there have been some teams running laps around the perimeter as well – you could see a defined trail along the inside of each outfield fence. I was a fair distance from any traffic – if you can call what Minot has traffic. It was a sunny, breezy, beautiful North Dakota day.

North Dakota makes for nice driving, at least the part from Minot to the North Portal border crossing. Rolling grasslands, two-lane county roads, some rivers and wetlands, sunflower fields – if all of my trips were through that type of country, at this time of year, I would be content.

I enjoy being around ballfields, especially empty ones with no over-involved parents present. After my run, I went into my Dropbox account and found some documents I wrote for a school district baseball program several years ago. I think I will rework the plan and submit it to the local school district where I now live – see if it catches anyone’s attention.

Parents are by far the worst part of a youth sports program. When I was little, of course my parents came to the baseball games I participated in, and parents coached the teams and ran the leagues. When I went to middle school, however, the school had teams, and parents were nowhere to be found. Our games were right after school – all the parents were at work.

Our coach was a local teacher who did not have a kid playing. The only people at the games were a few cute girls from school. It was a dream. Everyone who went out for the team made the team. We had fun, and we got better at the game, and we did not play year-round baseball. When the season was over, we had summer break and went out to the fields to pick strawberries.

My youngest son played organized baseball from kindergarten to seventh grade. He had no opportunity to play school ball. He gave it up before eighth grade season started – it wasn’t fun for him. It hadn’t been since third grade. I told him about my experience playing school ball. His reaction: “It sounds like a dream!” That was about the saddest thing I every heard him say about baseball. It hadn’t been a dream for me, but it was a dream for him that he would never experience.