I apologize in advance for both the indulgence and getting in the weeds. But last weekend, I went to Ithaca, New York, to watch the Indoor Heptagonal Track and Field Championships, which ran about five hours both Saturday and Sunday in Cornell’s Barton Hall. For the vast majority who don’t know, Barton Hall is a massive Armory on Cornell’s campus that hasn’t changed much since its opening in 1915 and is probably most well-known for a Grateful Dead concert in 1977. The Heptagonal Championships, or Heps for short, had historically been held at Cornell more frequently than any other Heps member, which used to but no longer includes Army and Navy before becoming only the Ivies. That was largely because Barton Hall used to have an eight-lane track and could accommodate the meet better than other schools, even if it was far from pretty much everyone else. That calculus changed over the past 20 years, as the sport gravitated towards banked tracks so athletes could run faster times for nationals. All of which meant that the Ivy League decided this would be the last Indoor Heps held at Cornell until it had a banked track – something that’s not imminent for a long list of reasons.
Anyway, with the last Indoor Heps for the foreseeable future, Cornell Track and Field invited all alumni to watch the meet. And, as one of those people, I made the trek to Ithaca to see folks I haven’t seen in decades and reminisce about glory days, all while watching athletes who admittedly now are faster than we ever were. There were over 300 track alums across years and eras, which is a lot considering the effort it took to get there. I’ve kept in close contact with a small group of teammates over the years, doing things like family vacations together and road races. But nothing like reconnecting with dozens of people I used to spend hours with every day going through the agony of training and racing. For the sake of efficiency, I’ll simply say the weekend was a blast – both watching the meet and seeing folks – and we all left wanting to do it again soon.
I know, that was a lot of personal detail. So, what I won’t do know is give you my perspective on increasingly intensified landscape of college athletics, even in the Ivy League, where a need to post competitive times supersedes everything else. I won’t even talk about the increasingly national schedule for track athletes, or the impact of technology on the sport. While that might be interesting to those few track fans in the listening audience, I’m guessing most of you have heard enough about the nuance of the sport.
What I would like to talk about for the remainder of this time is family. Or more specifically, its relationship to sports and teams. The most exciting and revelatory part of this past weekend was reconnecting with folks you haven’t heard from in decades in the place where you used to run miles every day and feel like you never left and haven’t missed a beat. And meeting new folks from years, well, in my case typically after you and being connected by a thru line of life experiences. Spending four years with Cornell Track wasn’t just the pursuit of faster times. It was about creating personal bonds that endure, perhaps because of the challenge and even trauma of the experience, one we all both loved and hated with equal measure. And I am 100% certain that feeling isn’t unique to Cornell Track. The reality is, being a part of and committing to a team, something larger than yourself, is one the strongest arguments for team sports, particularly those in schools that should be as accessible as possible. When I think back to college, I have a hard time remembering which classes I took, probably something I shouldn’t admit as a dean. But the lessons of my co-curricular time endures.
I’d hope this is something people consider in the rising arms race of youth, club, and certainly college sports, one where athletes might spend four years playing at four different universities. And I get that the world changes and NIL is the currency of trade. And that traveling club sports are far more important for kids chasing a scholarship. It’s just that after last weekend, I do wonder what we’re giving up in the name of progress. Including holding Indoor Heps at Barton Hall.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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