Last week we welcomed Paul Wilcox to the Rose Cafe. Being a bit of a video game nerd who was forced into sports earlier in my life, I am personally not very interested in sports, so I was not expecting the talk to solicit much interest from me. I personally could not really care less about the dynamics of a team sport, and ones training regime. However, I was very excited to learn not only that that his presentation was about track and field (the only sport that I have ever participated in since I am uncoordinated), but the presentation also didn’t really focus so much on the sports itself, but more the history and culture exchanged from these sports, and how participating in these sports affected the athlete’s lives.

I ran cross country in high school, however I was only good enough to be the slowest person on my high school’s team to make it into the state competitions. Therefore, hearing about the cultural exchange going on between the athlete’s competing at a collegiate level really drove home how different sports are from a high school perspective and a college perspective. As a high school student, participating in a school sport just meant going to practice and dying for 2 hours. However as a college athlete, so much of ones life at that level revolves around the sport, since being that good at a sport allows an athlete to get more opportunities than they otherwise would be able to get.

When he was talking about the effect that the sport itself has on athletes, I was reminded of the athletes from England in the United States at Cornell last week. He had mentioned that the athletes need to prepare for finals as they begin right after they return. I cannot imagine the stress of having to prepare for finals while also being abroad for a sports meet. I wonder what they will get out of their time in the US other than stress. Personally, if I were in these athlete’s circumstance, I would be too stressed to sleep.