Oct. 31, 2007
PREVIOUS STUDENT-ATHLETE BLOGS:
October 29 – Kaitlin Reynolds
October 12 – Adrienne DiRaddo
October 9 – Adam Banks
September 23 – Austin Williamson
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Sophomore runner Thomas Davis gives a cross country update as the team prepares for the NCAA Regional Championships.
Hey Vanderbilt XC Fans!
Well, it’s been a full three weeks since our last post. We competed in the Chile Pepper Festival race in Arkansas in mid-October, followed by Fall Break, and finally traveled to the SEC XC Championships in Lexington last weekend. It’s best characterized by lots of fun and a few laughs due to pre-race mishaps.
So Coach tells us we’re a smart group of guys, and supposedly, our team GPA ranks 10th in the nation. Yet sometimes, I wonder how smart we really are. I guess it all goes back to the book smart vs. street smart dilemma.
First, it all began in Arkansas. The day before leaving, Coach gave us some smokin’ hot black see-through running shorts for when we run the course the day before our race. Apparently, our senior captain Austin Williamson didn’t get the memo. Instead, he only brought the black shorts to Arkansas and left the gray uniform shorts back in Nashville.
Then, as we’re pinning our numbers onto our racing singlets, Austin frantically searches for his singlet until he realizes that he left it back at the hotel. Fortunately, this wasn’t a postseason race, so Austin was able to get away with being a disjointed member of the team, wearing black shorts and a Vanderbilt t-shirt.
Then came SEC’s. We were heading up to Kentucky for the race, which clearly fired up Rick Semones (aka the “Kentucky Laser”) since he ran so well at the Horse Park during the State Championships his senior year of high school. As the Kentucky Laser once explained to me, “It’s kinda like a dog that smells chicken blood. You want some more of it.”
Shoes seem to be an unfamiliar commodity for Semones. While I get ready to head out to the course, I get a call from the Kentucky Laser asking if I had an extra pair of trainers–he packed two right shoes.
To his defense, the Kentucky Laser’s team, which included two other engineers from the women’s XC team, won the 3rd Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest over Fall Break for the second year in a row. The winning image included a stunning skating lift from the movie Blades of Glory.
Hasta la próxima!
Thomas Davis
