Alumni on alumni weekend

Obviously, we missed most of Homecoming Weekend due to Paul Short at Lehigh, followed by an unplanned visit to the Emergency Room -- and really, how many visits to the ER are "planned" right? But we did have a few pleasant surprises over the weekend:

--The first person we saw out of the thousands in attendance at Paul Short was 2013 alum Rachel Lichtenwalner. Great to see Rachel L and her support was truly appreciated!
--While at Paul Short getting the team ready to race, a handsome middle-aged guy comes up and says "good luck, coach" and I did a double-take. Wait. Holy smokes! It was my old college teammate and fellow 1986 alum Mike Murphy. It had been probably 20 years or more since I had seen Murph, who lives in Erie, Pa. He has aged gracefully, with far less gray hair than his old teammate. So ... what was he doing at Paul Short? His daughter is a freshman XC runner at Niagara University, another MAAC school! So, hopefully, we'll be seeing a lot more of our old friend, who says he regularly reads the blog.
--Lastly, at noon Mass at the Chapel, we ran into the oldest and most loyal Marist Running Alum of all, Marty McGowan and his wife Annie. Marty was back for his 40th reunion (insert Old Guy joke here). Because of our late return on Saturday, I feared we would not see him, but I'm glad it worked out. Marty graduated from Marist nine years before I arrived on campus as a skinny freshman, so we have no direction connection to each other -- other than his amazing loyalty to our team and to our program. And, I KNOW he is a loyal blog follower.

Good stuff, all around. Next year, we'll try to avoid ER visits on Homecoming Weekend ...