COLUMN: Spring athletes have the love

From Adam Steinmetz's "Wide Open," Fall '95 No, the Penn spring sports scene does not offer the buzz of the Palestra, or the clinical precision of Al Bagnoli's troops carving up another opponent. But it is not worth disposing of so quickly. Consider pole vaulting. Greg Schroeder recently set a personal best when he pole vaulted over 16 feet, the fourth best vault in school history. But why would anybody ever want to become a pole vaulter in the first place? Who in their right mind says, "Yeah, what I want to do is run full speed carrying a large flexible pole that I have to then stick in a tiny hole in the ground to lift myself up and contort my body over a 16-foot bar. "And, if I miss the hole, I will get breaks and bruises that will not go away for a long, long time." Why don't they just add one more degree of difficulty and have vaulters land on a bed of razor blades? Who started this sport? The high jump, yeah, that sounds logical. And my guess is that some ancient laborer started the hammer throw when he walloped his pinky with a hammer, and threw the damn thing so far that his buddies said, "Whoa, look what Fred just did, I wonder if I can do that." But how the heck did pole vaulting start? A fellow sports writer suggested perhaps some knight or soldier needed a clever way of getting over a castle wall, so they invented the pole vault. Sounds good to me. Nevertheless, I can imagine the thrill of pole vaulting making it an exhilarating sport once you get past learning the technique. And how, like other track events, you could grow addicted to it. The position that truly boggles my mind is lacrosse goalie. The premise is as follows: 10 large men with big sticks try to whip, slap, poke and blister a ball past you. And if the ball hits you it probably makes a welt. Personally, I would stay out of the way. My rule would be simple: My body and that ball would not occupy the same space at the same time. Not these guys. They throw a mask on, grab a stick of their own and make like clay pigeons, their sole purpose being to absorb shots. People call a baseball catcher's gear the tools of ignorance, which probably makes the lacrosse goalie's gear the tools of just plain stupidity. You would think by the time the game was over these goalies would have the personality of transport union boss Harry Lombardo, only without the charisma. The remarkable thing, though, is how well these guys do their jobs. In fact, Princeton's goalie limited the Quakers to just two goals last week, and none during the final 50 minutes. These are surely some of the most courageous athletes. And even if the Penn's men lacrosse program is on the downswing, in no other sport do the Quakers play such high-caliber competition. What about crew? Haven't those guys and gals heard of a motor boat? And, if you were them, wouldn't you just want to break the coxswain in two? Here is some little twerp telling you to do all the work, while he gets a free boat ride. Not only that, but you do all that work just to end up back at the boat house where you started. To top it all off, you wake up before dawn for practice. These students in the spring sports, the sports that we do not understand so well, still work hard, sacrificing their bodies, minds, grades and time as much as the football and basketball players. And maybe, because almost everyone at an Ivy League school is so used to winning in life, we put too much of an emphasis on it. But these athletes play for the love of sport. And that should be saluted as well. Adam Steinmetz in a Wharton senior from West Palm Beach, Fla., and a sports writer for The Daily Pennsylvanian. Wide Open appears alternate Tuesdays.