Appreciating Vess

Usually, when my cell phone buzzes (text) or rings (call) with an incoming text or call from team captain Adam Vess, I have to admit that I brace myself for some sort of calamitous news. I love Vess. I really do. But it has been one thing after another with our hard-luck and star-crossed school record holder during the past four years.

So last Wednesday afternoon, as I sat in a New Jersey hospital room where my father was recovering from surgery (he is home now, doing well, a modern medical marvel at age 82), when my cell rang and I saw it was Vess calling, I picked up. He had been nursing what we thought was a bad quad/hip flexor injury, and I figured he was calling with an update.

Oh. He was calling with an update, all right. From another hospital, in another state … where he had just gotten an X-ray that revealed a stress fracture of the femur. The femur! For those keeping score at home, that’s the LARGEST BONE IN THE BODY.

How? How can this be! Poor Vess. He’s been trying to ramp up his training volume, but it always seems to get curtailed. How does a stress fracture occur, when the training stress in terms of pounding hasn’t even been that great? Really. We strongly believe that “training error” was not the cause here. What was or is the cause?

Well, these are questions and mysteries for another day.

For today, we must cope with the sudden shock of this season-ending – and, yes, sadly, Marist career-ending – injury. Femoral stress fractures are a big deal. You don’t take four weeks off and then come back quickly, like you might with a metatarsal stress fracture or similar injury to another small bone of the lower extremity. He’s shut down completely for months. Not weeks. Months. Check your calendar, boys and girls. Outdoors will be here before you know it, and over soon thereafter.

Done. Vess’ bizarrely truncated but highly successful Marist career has come to a close. He has run his final lap in a Marist singlet. It makes me incredibly sad to type those words. At the same time, we can be proud for what he did accomplish when he was not hurt, sick or otherwise sidelined with a laundry list of runner’s maladies.

Four years ago, I was warned by family members – Vess comes from the Swift pedigree, one we know and respect very well – that Vess would be a handful. I said I would take my chances, and I’m glad we did.

Sure, Vess WAS a handful. There were many issues to deal with. However, I would like to term his issues more as bad breaks, bad luck or just a tendency toward that and more.

Vess worked hard. He never gave up. When he raced, which was not nearly as much as we would have liked, Vess raced with heart and guts. He was and is an excellent, loyal teammate, and a great team captain.

And hey: He has brewed and fetched more than a fair share of coffee for this coach that he likes to call “old man.’’

Has it been frustrating that he has been inactive for a variety of reasons for more than half of his Marist career? Of course. But again. It happens. Mostly through no fault of his own.

When he was on, he was ON. His records are strong – in particular, his 8:05.82 for 3km indoors is out there. How can we ever forget his IC4A victory with that very same 8:05.82, two years ago at BU?

So that’s it. No more Vess. His running is not done, though – at least, we hope that to be the case. After he graduates from Marist in May, he plans on going to grad school and, God willing, completing his collegiate running eligibility elsewhere. We will be rooting hard for him to succeed, to continue to grow as a runner and to lower his pretty fancy PRs.

And here’s hoping that when my cell phone buzzes or rings in the future, and it is Vess, he is not reporting any more bad news from X-rays, bone scans, MRIs or blood tests. Rather, it would be great to hear that he ran a PR or did something amazing, of which I know he is fully capable.

From a few thousand miles away, that would make this "old man" smile.