The perfect player
"You know, Marty, the last time I asked you what you thought about sports, you said you didn't know anything," Alex Chapman, the Thresher sports editor, said. "And you wanted me to quote you on that."
But the more things change, the more they stay the same. And now Marty is quoting herself, or being quoted by Shay.
OK, so we received our directive for this week's column: "Go for it; just don't do anything stupid, boring, trite or uninteresting," Jeff Mercer, the other, taller sports editor said. So here we go, rising to the challenge. Surprised? That's the point.
What we figure the sports section really need is a dose of the unusual, maybe even the goofy -- you know, like seeing Joey Olivier naked on a bicycle. We don't feel that the sports columns have paid enough attention to club sports at Rice. They're cool, or at least they'd like to think so.
So we, in the grand tradition of underdog- lovers (see last week's sports column), have decided to take on the club sports scene here at Rice. For this week's column, we offer our vision of what the Rice club sports players can aspire to become: Rice Club Sports Pentathletes.
In creating the perfect Rice Club Sports Pentathlete (RCSP), we wished to incorporate elements of the best of the best, the creme de la creme, of rugby players, lacrosse players, soccer ladies (oops, we mean "laddies," damn spellchecker), Ultimate devotees and of course, those unforgettable members of the crew team.
We enlisted the services of Biochemistry Professor John Olson in this unprecedented and probably illegal, albeit theoretical, enterprise. Our hope was to piece together the perfect almost-varsity athlete.
We looked at each of the club sports and what they had to offer, player-wise, and we came up with this combination sketch which we think will be a devastating force in front of empty stands everywhere.
From rugby, we chose the hard-beaten brawn of Pete Marketos; he remains unmatched in taking it as hard as he can dish it out. The lucky lacrosse player we threw into the primordial brew was Andy Doran.The dreaded, dreadlocked Ultimate player Emeca represented those disc-o-philes who, believe it or not, are attempting to break the record for the most people barefoot and moving at one time, currently held by a dancing troupe of trailer-park residents in Arkansas. Mike Tuckman, everyone's favorite headballer, made our pick for the soccer delegate, and, as expected, Preston Evans was deemed as the best representative of Rice's cocks, oops, we mean cox, of course.
Now, we didn't let the fact that we don't really know any of these guys hold us back in our selection; besides, we have it on good authority that all these guys are really sold on the whole Rice club sports thing. This is why we chose them: dedication, commitment, stamina, an undying devotion to playing with all the heart in the world, even when all the world couldn't care less.
So the real question to be addressed is where can we find this paragon of Club Sport prowess? How can we take the brainchild of our brainfreeze and bring him out into the real world to face Rice's athletic apathy? The answer, we think, is suprisingly quite simple. See, the Rice Club Sports Pentathlete exists in all of us. Anytime you feel like jumping all over and on top of members of the same sex or chanting "Stroke, stroke" incessantly, you've begun to exhibit the trademarks of the Rice Club Sport Pentathlete within. So anytime you get the urge to run around and act like what you're doing is somehow important or anytime you just feel like the rest of campus really doesn't like you, don't fret, don't run to your therapist; run instead to an open field and set free the Rice Club Sports Pentathelete inside you.
This item appeared in the Sports section of the April 19, 1996 issue.
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