On The Pegs March 2020 - Volume 5 - Issue 3 | Page 81

On The Pegs
VOL. 5 ISSUE 3 - MARCH 2020
81
There were also some concerns about the college sports amateurism rule be-
cause I was a technically professional athlete, just in a different sport. The athletic
director was suffering though a lot of paperwork and arguing with the NCAA to
make it possible for me to vault and made it clear that if I hurt myself racing and
didn’t get to compete, he wasn’t going to keep putting in this much effort on my
behalf.
Of course, knowing my luck and the dangers of our sport, me getting hurt racing
was a very re-al possibility. And sure enough, the weekend before one of our im-
portant conference meets, I hit my foot on a stump in the final test of the Rad Dad
Enduro. I limped my way to the finish, and my first emotion after being mad at
myself for blowing the race was panic over what the AD was going to say. I pulled
off my boot back at the van and sure enough, two of my toes in-stantly started
to swell. My big toe had taken such an impact that it was split open like a grape
somebody stepped on and was about the same color as one too. Even before I
found out for sure that those two toes were broken (and would require two exter-
nal pins) I knew there was no way I could compete.
The whole drive home, sitting in the passenger seat with my foot elevated, I
racked my brain trying to come up with a solution. Then it hit me – the AD only
said he wouldn’t keep lobbying on my behalf if I got hurt RACING… not if I hurt
myself competing for DePauw in the pole vault. I decided I didn’t want to im-
plicate my coaches in my scheme, and figured since the meet was on Tuesday, I
would just tell them I was sick and hide in my dorm room all day Monday.
I got to our locker room at the last possible minute, so it was less likely that I
would be seen. I had borrowed a pair of running spikes from a friendly (read:
someone who would keep quiet) teammate with feet two sizes bigger than mine.
I wedged the swollen and disfigured foot into the right spike, then stuffed a wad-
ded up sock into the left so it would fit. I chewed up a lefto-ver hydrocodone from
when I had my wisdom teeth out and steeled myself for something real-ly un-
pleasant.
I walked out, trying very hard not to limp. Or have a grimace of pain on my face.
I think I held my breath all the way from the locker room to the pole vault run-
way. I grabbed my pole off the cart as my coaches came over, chewing me out
for being late and warning me that I only had about three minutes left remining
for warmup jumps. I gripped the pole tightly, trying not to show any sign of pain.
With a deep breath, I took off and did a six-step run toward the mat, successfully
choking back a scream all three times my bad foot connected with the ground.