Below a dark and sinister sky and a drizzling rain, Zack Torres makes his final turns.
He glances occasionally at his watch. Time is running out.
On a Crescenta Valley High track that his feet have pounded countless times, he rounds it for the last few as a Falcon.
With the 2009 season a few months away, the football team, in shorts and T-shirts, is in the middle of spring practice. For these Falcons, spring is the beginning.
But, as Torres runs circles around them, this spring is his end. The softball and baseball diamonds are empty, the volleyball court silent. Torres is the last Falcon standing, the last athlete going.
And today, he will run one final race as a Falcon.
“I think when that race is over, it’s gonna set in,” he says.
With the running of today’s 3,200-meter race at the CIF-State Track and Field Championships, Torres will conclude his rich and storied athletic tenure at Crescenta Valley. Left behind are a slew of accolades, stellar times, medals and titles.
But as Torres’ legs carry him to the next level, the legacy he hopes to leave behind is simpler than all that.
“The times to me don’t matter, the records don’t matter, I don’t care about anything other than my teammates remember me as being a good teammate,” he proclaims. “I really want people to remember me as someone who wanted to win more than anything and would do whatever it takes.”
But, perhaps more than anything, through his own determined eyes, Torres will remember himself, in the simplest terms, as a Falcon.
As young as 6, Zack Torres recalls his first days on the baseball diamond with the Crescenta Valley High baseball team. He was a bat boy and his father, Phil, was at the genesis of what has transposed into a long and successful tenure as Falcons coach.
Some 12 springs later, Zack played his final baseball game as a Falcon at a distant Yucaipa High, with Crescenta Valley falling to a heavily favored and heavily powered Thunderbirds squad.
As he walked off the field for a final time, tears running, Zack was hugged by his longtime coach.
“He told me, ‘I’m just your dad now,’” Zack says. “That was different, he was always my dad and my coach.”
