COLUMN: Taking a little stroll around the inner loop

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by Chuck Whitten

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Yet, I have to get this off my chest:

I don't know everything.

I know, this is hard for me to believe, too. This revelation occurred sometime around the first Chem 101 examination and has bounced around in my little head ever since. The more I thought, the more I realized that there are not just a few things that I don't know.

The real truth is that there are lots of things that I don't know. I became a tad depressed after realizing this and decided to wander around. As I meandered around the inner loop, I observed many club sports around and felt the onslaught of what I like to refer to as the Second Great Awakening:

I don't know everything about sports.

This hit even closer to home since I am expected to turn out 800 words about athletics every two weeks or else receive a beating from Tony Tran. As a Thresher reporter, I am expected to have a superficial knowledge about most athletic contests around campus.

Yet, as I traversed the campus, I saw a variety of sports that I never saw back home in Nebraska.

I know many of you are sitting there saying, "Geez! I was under the impression that Nebraska was recognized internationally for diversity in sports."

Well, I held the same misconception. But the real truth is that many things around campus are foreign to me, sports included.

College, however, is a time for learning and individual growth. Since I am for growth in all its forms, I decided to investigate each sport that I did not see back home. Granted, some of these may be easily accessible via cable TV. But, to be honest, we didn't have cable TV either. Or running water.

I started with rugby. All I knew about rugby was that it lent its name to a type of shirt at the "Gap." I walked a few doors down and asked my friend, Greg Wozniak, about this sport. "

He told me that rugby was a game played much like football in that the object was to try to force the ball (which looks like a bloated football) across the goal line or kick it over a crossbar. Players can run forward, pass backwards or kick the ball.

There are either 14 or 15 players on the field (Waz couldn't remember) but with that many, does it really matter? If play is interrupted, a "scrum" takes place. This involves eight players in a 3-2-3 formation. The players push each other and the ball is dropped into the middle.

The players then attempt to "heel" (or kick) the ball to open teammates. A score is called a "try" even though you are actually done "trying" and have actually put points up on the board. A try is worth five points, a conversion worth two and a drop kick from anywhere is worth three.

I asked Woz about how rough rugby was since there is a distinct lack of any padding. Woz said it was not that rough, but it was very skilled. I told him about the time I was playing football and was hit so hard that I ran to the wrong huddle and passed out. Woz told me that I couldn't play Rugby because I was a "girlfriend."

I am not sure if that is a rugby position or not, but I thanked him for his time. Later in the week I heard someone remark that, "The drinking team has a real rugby problem." I am not sure what this means but I'll be sure to ask Woz the next time I see him.

Having conquered rugby, I moved on to lacrosse. I approached senior John Hunter about this sport. He told me that lacrosse is played on a 110-yard field by a team of 10 players.

Three players are attackers, three are mid-fielders and three are defenders. The goalie, the only player allowed to use his hands, guards the goal which is centered in an 18-foot circle called the goal "crease."

Players attempt to push the ball into the goal. Contact is allowed but only if you are five yards from the ball. The sport seemed straight-forward enough, so I decided to experiment with it.

I borrowed this stick-thingy with some netting on it (for our purposes, we will call it the "thingy") and began slinging balls at the side of Wiess College. I caught maybe three out of every 30,000 balls and quit in disgust. I found that lacrosse is a highly-skilled sport and concluded that catching balls with a thingy is very hard indeed.

Next I observed crew. My fellow this year, Preston Evans, was always harassing me about joining crew. "Ex-basketball players make the best rowers," Preston always told me.

I told Preston that I always used to fall off the rowing machine in the gym and Preston understood why I was not really interested. Yet, the way he raved on and on intrigued me. Wasn't crew just hopping in a boat and paddling along?

Well, actually, no. The real truth as that crew involves more time running and lifting than rowing. A girl on my hall who is on the crew team is always running here or there and lifting something or other. I guess crew requires a great deal of conditioning before you row out into the middle of a water mass. This is all I was able to learn about crew.

One side note, however, is that Preston quit crew and join rugby. I am sure that this is not a condemnation of crew in general, but I'm not sure what it says about Preston.

Now its time for my brief moral. Although I was ignorant about many sports, it is a true testament to the diversity of Rice athletics that I was able to learn as much as I did without leaving campus.

How many of you have sat down and thought about how many opportunities are available to Rice students to participate in athletics? Well, kids, there are lots.

Trust me. I can now safely say that I know everything about sports. From scrums to net-thingys to crew and beyond, I am the master of my domain, so to speak.

Now if I can only do the same with Chem ...

This item appeared in the Sports section of the October 6, 1995 issue.

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