Tom Archdeacon

6 days ago | daytondailynews.com | Tom Archdeacon

Coming into Wednesday’s game with West Michigan, Luke Hayden was the Dayton Dragons’ most successful starting pitcher this season. But he quickly found himself in a jam with the Whitecaps. Although he usually opens with his fastball, the 22-year-old right hander opted to greet batters with his cutter, which so often is his go-to pitch in the course of a game. He thought the change in routine would throw off the hitters.

1 week ago | daytondailynews.com | Tom Archdeacon

He’d been injured before in his extensive ultrarunning career. He’d taken the lead in a 100-mile race in Idaho once, but as he came down a mountain at 2 a.m., he fell and hit a big rock face first, breaking his nose. When he finally got to an aid station, they tried packing his nose so he could keep going and he did for another 12 miles, but finally, because of the time he’d lost, officials made him retire. At another race, he broke a finger. But the spill on Sugarloaf was the worst.

1 week ago | journal-news.com | Tom Archdeacon

He’d been injured before in his extensive ultrarunning career. He’d taken the lead in a 100-mile race in Idaho once, but as he came down a mountain at 2 a.m., he fell and hit a big rock face first, breaking his nose. When he finally got to an aid station, they tried packing his nose so he could keep going and he did for another 12 miles, but finally, because of the time he’d lost, officials made him retire. At another race, he broke a finger. But the spill on Sugarloaf was the worst.

1 week ago | daytondailynews.com | Tom Archdeacon

“She said, ‘Julie I don’t know if this was you or not. I was just watching this old Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment with Norm Macdonald, and he talked about this Julie Waszczyk going on a trip to Paris from Enon, Ohio. Was that you?’“So, I had to explain the whole thing to her. “After I got the call, I dug out the scrapbook my mom and I put together after everything was said and done 30 years ago.

1 week ago | daytondailynews.com | Tom Archdeacon

“It wasn’t an evil, demonic darkness, just a heavy, sad, empty darkness. The kids were devastated. Throughout the hallways you heard the sobbing. “Everybody had the same question: ‘How could this have happened? Not him. He always had that big smile.’”Early that morning, as his father was about to drive him to school, a popular, 16-year-old sophomore basketball player for the Wolverines asked his dad to hold up. He got out of the car, as if he was returning to the house for something he‘d forgotten.