A Southwood High senior whose wrist was attacked by a rogue javelin at a track and field meet recently was lucky — as lucky as you can be when impaled by a long pointed stick.
"Some people hear the story and start laughing and some go 'Oh my God!' and some people say, 'You're supposed to throw it, not catch it,'" said Canaan Molock, a hurdler and javelin thrower for the Lady Cowboys. Next month she'll be the graduate with the school-color bright orange cast on her left wrist.
A teammate tossed the javelin toward Molock from about 50 feet, hoping to land it near her so Molock could make her final throw in the meet. Instead, she turned and never saw the javelin until after she'd felt it. It stabbed her and fell to the ground, hoping not to be noticed. (You know how javelins are.) A pencil eraser-sized hole is in her arm bone and her season's over, but the javelin hit no nerves or tendons or an artery.
Lucky Canaan.
My point: It's a tank-topped jungle out there.
"I've seen some crazy things," said Gary Stanley, for 26 years the Louisiana Tech track coach. He's seen the good — his women's teams the past three years have won five of six WAC indoor and outdoor tiles — and the bad.
"One year at the Texas Relays during warm-ups an official got hit in the head with a shot put," Stanley said. "Caught him and bam!, put him down. They had to bring an ambulance and cart him out of there. Square in the face."
If you're unfamiliar with the shot put, it's a 16-pound ball. "In the Civil War they were shooting those things out of cannons," Stanley said. "So you can imagine, if a shot put's coming at you out of the sky, it's not a very good day."
Though people assume the javelin to be the beast, Stanley is more concerned about the hammer (not thrown in high school), the shot put and the discus. "You've got the wind, and then the discus is flying around here, there, everywhere," Stanley said. "You're not careful, you've got some problems."
A Big 10 indoor meet was cancelled in mid-meet not long ago when a pole vaulter landed awkwardly and died. Crazy things. ...
Though the javelin is thrown competitively in just 17 states and in Stanley's opinion poses less of a threat of catastrophic injury than the put or discus, it has its moments. A high school coach from Stanley's past "took one through the shoulder competing in the javelin at Tulane," he said. "A javelin pins you to the ground like it did him, you're probably going to vote it No. 1. I understand that."
Coaching the cross country team on the Tech golf course, he received his only injury. "I used to scream at the guys like I owned the place," he said. "Then one day I got hit with a golf ball. Probably on purpose."
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