Exposure

Recent developments have led me to a very obvious conclusion, one that I’ve probably been aware of for a long time but only recently can put into words here (hey, I’m not that smart, OK?): Our sport, and the way we go about our day-to-day activities, leads us to be exposed to all sorts of liabilities and dangers each and every day – far more so than any other intercollegiate sports at Marist. Again, you’d think after 28 years of doing this, I would have come to this conclusion sooner. First of all, it should be noted that getting up and out of bed and starting our day exposes us to all sorts of potential calamities. As I like to say, like professional athletes on an injury report, we’re all listed as “day-to-day.’’ So this concept of “exposure” is really elemental to our daily existence as human beings in the realm of free will.

But let’s get back on point here. In the realm of intercollegiate cross country and track, at Marist College, where, as you might be aware, we do not have track or cross country facilities on our campus, our day-to-day operations exposes us to more risk factors than any other sport we have. Go ahead. Name a sport. Tell me which one of these sports has to drive vans to off-campus practice facilities most days, or on the days when we train from campus, must navigate roads and sidewalks very much open to the public? The answer, my friends, is almost none. Driving vans on the roads exposes us to the risk of traffic accidents, one of which happened at our women’s XC practice on the way home on Thursday morning (Marty! Don’t worry! Everyone is OK! No need to call!). Our van was damaged; fortunately, our van passengers were not damaged, other than a few minor bumps and bruises. All were at practice and in vans, business as usual, the next morning. Through the years, several of our athletes have been hit by cars while running; several of our athletes have been subjected to scorn, bad attitudes and more while out running on roads and sidewalks. Comes with the territory. All of these occurrences are the direct path to insomnia for this old, long-time coach.

Listen. I’m proud of our athletes, past and present. More than any other Marist athletes, we are ambassadors for our athletic program and our school, for the very same reasons and risks of exposure we face on a daily basis. We’re out on the roads, the tracks, the trails, the parks, every day – whether we run from campus or not. More than 99 percent of the time, everything’s A-OK and we’re good to go. But on that less than 1 percent of the time when something goes wrong, boy do we long to be one of those sports that lives in the safe cocoon of a court, a field, a pool or even a river, usually with a sports medicine professional at the ready, and certainly no traffic or angry general public to deal with, where exposure exists but is limited to that relatively safe cocoon. Tomorrow’s another day, another long run. We’ll continue to live our athletic lives in vans, outside and off-campus, and we’ll continue to pray that most of our exposure is positive and doesn’t involve police reports, insurance cards, tow trucks, ER visits, or anything else that we don’t want to deal with out there.