Staying Active at SLU

A day after I summited the second highest peak in New York State, I sit sore and tired. My legs ached from miles of walking uphill, and I am exhausted from waking up at 6 am to leave for the high peak region of the Adirondacks. As I nurse my swollen feet, a map lays open upon the table. The ache has not yet gone away, and I am already planning my next trip, this time for the highest peak of Mt. Marcy, which I stared at in jealous want from the top of Algonquin.                    

                                            The Admissions Team on our climb of Mt. Joe (Matt, Monty w/ moustache, Ben, Noah, Sam and Kate)

After a series of concussions during my time in high school I was advised by the head specialist, who I spent significantly more time with than I would have liked, to hang up the helmet and end my time as an athlete of contact sports. Prior to this advice I had actively entertained the idea of playing lacrosse at the college level. I attended camps, spoke with coaches and played guest to several teams for overnight visits. I was fully immersed in the recruitment process, and then it all went away as I called various coaches to tell them my time as a college athlete was over before it had actually started.

After my recovery, my focus shifted from finding a place where I would be an athlete to somewhere that would allow me to continue to be athletic. Eventually, I decided on St. Lawrence for reasons outside of sports. Since then I have found myself diving into a wide berth of physical activities that, had I been restrained by a sport, I may not have otherwise explored. I use the traditional workout room mostly just to recapture my high school routine, but right across the hall from the room is the Munro Rock Climbing Wall which provides an equally challenging and fulfilling workout. The weight room overlooks the Newell Field House where I recently found a passion for the game of tennis. I have also found great enjoyment in squash and golf, two sports I had not experienced before my time on campus. Hiking in the Adirondacks proves to be equally as great of a mental and physical workout, and the drive to climb a peak helps me to revisit the competitiveness I once drew from organized sports.

As Admissions Ambassadors we are constantly concerned with learning facts and figures: the student to faculty ratio, the number of public access computers on campus, the percent of senior class who enter graduate school following their time at St. Lawrence. One of the numbers which always seems to stand out to me is 90, as in 90% of our students played at least one varsity sport in high school and only 29% of the student body play a varsity sport at St. Lawrence. Within the student body there is a great appreciation for physical exertion and the rewards it provides. We are fortunate to have very competitive sports teams who draw large crowds of students who can appreciate the intricacies of various sports. I like to imagine our student body as in many ways similar to how the ancient Greeks are viewed with importance on the cultivation of the intellect alongside the need to keep a healthy and engaged physique. However active students are they don’t seem to think about it, they just do it; on the whole we would rather be outside running around than posted on a couch.

                                          From the top of Mt. Marcy, the highest point in New York State (post-moustache)                        

With this in mind I have two pieces of advice for the young athletes immersed or entering the college search process. You may have heard these thoughts on one or several occasions but I hope they may sound slightly different coming from someone who is not a coach. The first is actually from a coach who offered me much support both on and off the field during my high school year. He told me that coaches change more often than we would like to believe, and injuries can never be planned for, so make sure the college feels right even if for one reason or another the athletic side did not exist. Inevitably in college, student athletes will spend more time in the classrooms and library than on the sports field, so the importance of each in the college search should be adjusted accordingly. The second piece of advice is simply not to pigeonhole oneself, as college is an expansive process and the opportunities to try new sports and just about anything else are numerous. And who knows, maybe you will start climbing mountains. With hopes of seeing you all on the top of a peak in the near future, until then keep reading.

-Monty