“You cannot handle these trophies.” In a sports facility lined with glass cabinets, a woman in navy confronts an older man holding a small round object. “I came for the coach,” he replies.
“He does not meet strangers.”
“Show him this stopwatch.”
“Leave!” The man keeps the stopwatch in his palm as people pass behind them. An older man in a dark jacket approaches from the far end of the corridor. The clip stops before he explains whether he recognizes the visitor or the watch.
The story continues:
The coach stopped halfway through a greeting. “Does it still stick at forty-two seconds?”
The visitor smiled. “Only when you’re trying to impress somebody.”
They shook hands, then abandoned that formality and embraced. The stopwatch had belonged to the visitor, Mr. Ellis, when he supervised a youth running club. Thirty years earlier he had timed the coach as a gangly teenager who arrived late and apologized more often than he spoke.
The woman beside the trophy case stepped back. Mr. Ellis introduced himself to her before she could disappear. “He used to leave his kit on the bus. Once I timed him in school trousers.”
The coach groaned. “Please tell everybody.”
That was how they ended up in front of a group of young runners. Mr. Ellis showed them the old stopwatch. One child asked why he’d kept something that sometimes failed.
“Because I learned when to trust it and when to check,” he said. “And because he bought it for me with his first wages.”
The coach looked at the watch again. He’d forgotten that part. He remembered choosing it from a shop window, but the years had turned it into an object Mr. Ellis had always possessed.
After the children left, they sat in the empty stands. Mr. Ellis admitted he had been nervous about visiting. He’d seen pictures of the new facility and all the awards. He wondered whether the man he’d coached would have time for somebody from so long ago.
“I’ve got half an hour before the next session,” the coach said. Then he looked at the old watch. “Unless that’s stuck again.”
The woman from the corridor brought tea and apologized for dismissing him. He accepted, then asked her to take a photograph. Both men wanted one, and neither could work out how to use the timer on their phones.
Later, the coach placed a copy near the trophy cabinet. The caption named Mr. Ellis and the years he’d volunteered at the youth club. Beneath it, in smaller writing, was the question he used to ask every child who arrived at practice.
How did it feel today?
The coach started asking it again. Some answers concerned sore legs. Others concerned school, home, or the simple pleasure of running fast. He listened to all of them, holding the old stopwatch carefully in one hand.
