Full circle moment

This is not your typical “graduation story,” because these have been far from a typical four-year cycle of collegiate education (and athletics).

 

On Friday morning, a segment of the men’s track team met for their final full-team practice. The last few weeks of senior year in college are a series of goodbyes, and this was one of them. The men’s distance team, meeting for one final practice run together. Only thing is, it wasn’t a “normal” practice. Just like a little less than four years ago, when they started as freshmen in the late summer of 2020. Remember that time period? Anything but normal, right?

 

Well anyway, back in August/September 2020, like so many others in higher education, Marist – and Marist athletics – was trying to figure out how to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Should we be in person? Should we be able to practice? Compete? What are the risks? How often will we test? Those questions led to exclamatory statements. We can’t practice inside! We have to wear masks! We can’t have games! We can’t have meets! We can’t practice as a full squad!

 

All of these urgent questions and equally urgent answers led us to … a parking lot. A simple corner of the McCann Center parking lot. That’s where we met for practice. In pods. Remember pods? We met in small groups. Outside. Over there. Did our warmup drills on the sidewalk next to the turf room window. I drove my minivan to that corner of the parking lot, sat on a lawn chair, pulled out my laptop straining for the Wifi. And that’s how we operated for all of 2020-2021. There were no vans to cool off-campus XC venues or to the Vassar track. No tubs of Gatorade. No group photos on the top of Minnewaska. And certainly in 2020, no meets. Just a parking lot.

 

Fast forward to Friday, May 3, 2024. Nearly four years later. Those freshmen from 2020 are now seniors, weeks away from commencement. Again, it's a four-year cycle we’ve seen for several decades now, one that goes so blindingly quick that sometimes alums wake up 10 years later and realize how fast it all was. On this warm spring day, most of these guys were doing a pre-meet run and some drills. The McCann Center was completely shut down for team usage, taken over by the Silver Needle fashion show later that night. We could practice, but we couldn’t meet outside.

 

Pax texted me around 10:45a. “We’ll meet for practice on the side of McCann. The COVID spot.”

 

The COVID spot. Of course, I immediately knew what he meant.

 

And so it was. The guys drilled up. The seniors reminisced about who was part of their pods – and the roster of names brought back memories, not all of them cheery. Stories were told about what it was like here, back in 2020. The underclassmen – they weren’t here in 2020, they were in high school -- yawned, talked about their upcoming races, what they were gonna do for lunch. In other words, a typical Friday pre-meet practice. Only it wasn’t. It was a full-circle moment, one that seniors often have. And one that only these seniors could have.