Recapping Yale: The beginning of the end

Today's meet at Yale was a study in contrasts. After a sweltering few days at Penn Relays (and really, almost everywhere in the Northeast, where the delightful warmth was welcome), Sunday's weather at Yale was cloudy, windy and brisk. "Out like a lamb" ... not so much. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't pleasant either. Despite this, there were enough positive efforts and performances to make this a worthwhile endeavor at the end of a long and busy week of travel for many of us. The persistent breezes out of the southeast made achieving excellent times a difficult task for sure -- the meet officials turned the sprint races around because of it -- but there were still some good late-season efforts for us across all disciplines -- sprints, hurdles, middle and long distance.

And now we round the corner toward the end of the season, and the beginning of many endings for our graduating seniors. I tend to make an immature habit/joke out of it ... "this is the last (fill in the blank) of your college career" ... I will repeatedly remind the usually annoyed senior class. This, of course, is my goofy mechanism for coping with the fact that we are losing yet another group of wonderful seniors to graduation and the real world. While we are proud of their many accomplishments, for those of us who stay behind and watch this cycle repeat itself year after year, it is an annual source of melancholy for sure. The beginning of the end starts with our final week of "regular season" activities -- practices and meets -- before final exam week. The beginning of the end has a formal beginning to it on Monday night with the senior awards banquet. The fancy awards banquet program is a reminder of the many wonderful men and women who have preceded their wonderful men and women -- stretching back to the prehistoric era when some dude named "Marty McGowan" from the track team won the sportsperson of the year award, the first year it was awarded. More than 40 years later, we get ready to honor another group, and start the clock on the beginning of the end of another great four-year run.