Caltech

Wrapping things Up

Hey all,

As I wrote about last time, my race last Saturday was the final one for the season. With that, I will be wrapping up my blog with this post. I think I'm supposed to do some kind of reminiscence or whatnot, but I'd like to keep that short, because I did manage to get those pictures taken! (Well actually, a super-cool ChemE friend of mine took them because he's that awesome.)

Looking back on this season, I'm mildly amused. Due to conflicts and other circumstances, I only ran three of the six scheduled races this year. {Last year, I ran every one.} However, this 50% participation rate is not too bad. I joined the team for the experience of being with a group of smart people who like running, not to do races. Sure, racing is good - and I'm pretty competitive when I want to be!- but I'd rather enjoy being with my teammates than be caught up in the race.

When I started off, I had pretty normal hopes for how things would go. However, my workload soon caught up with me, and I struggled some to find a balance. Thankfully, things got better when I started running on my own 3 days a week. So this season was a learning experience, I suppose. I like having those, even though they aren't pleasant when they occur. Therefore, I'm pretty content with the way things went.

Coming soon, as promised, pictures!:

EDIT: Here are the pictures. Sorry for the delay.

  On the Caltech track. I do not recall how long it has been since we've hosted a meet there, though. However, I like to run there sometimes early in the morning and watch the sun rise over the trees.

 Another shot of the track, this time showcasing the soccer field. 

  ~Our amazing basketball court. I've watched a couple of volleyball games there, but I'm sad to say I have yet to see a basketball game.

 ~Outside Braun Athletic Center, which houses our gym and basketball court. We also have a couple of racquetball courts inside there also, as well as a multi-purpose room for classes such as dance and yoga.

In closing, I just wanted to say thanks for reading. I hope I have conveyed a little of what it's like to be a Caltech athlete. I will admit that finding a balance can be difficult, and it's something I had to work through this year. Nevertheless, I am still glad I participate in athletics here at Tech.

Ciao.

"It may sound strange, but many champions are made champions by setbacks." ~Bob Richards

Being on the Team

Hey all,

For about the last week now, I have not been running with my team at practice. Due to my workload, Scott (the head coach) and Ian (a Caltech alum who runs with us) let me train on my own Mon/Wed/Fri. On Tues/Thurs/Sat - when we do our interval workouts - I go with the rest of the guys.

At first, I thought this would be a great idea. My hope was that by tailoring practice on those days around my working schedule, I could be a bit more productive. (I mean, who wants to do homework over lunch? So instead, if I went for a run, that would take care of my practice for the day, and free up a large chunk of time in the afternoon for me to study. Or perhaps I choose to get up super-early {that's before 7 o'clock for college students!} and go out. Either way, I get more continuity in my blocks of time, and that's especially great.) 

I have been doing this for a couple of weeks now, and I will admit it has helped. I'm still spending the same amount of time doing homework, but I'm not staying up until 3 in the morning to finish it. So on the academic side of things, this idea was smart. Also, having good sleep is definitely a plus!

On the other hand, I see less of my teammates. And that's something that is concerning to me, especially after last week. As I mentioned above, I usually do intervals with the team. Recently though, I accidentally slept through practice on Thursday and Saturday. So from last Tuesday to yesterday, I had not been training with the team. This in and of itself is particularly concerning, but when coupled with the fact that we have our conference meet this Saturday, well....then the situation does look worse. I have to run with my team at that meet, and if I don't run with them at practice, we become out of sync, so to speak. During the race, we tend to run in groups, and so practicing with the group I'm in is critical if we are to do well (as a group) at the meet.

However, that's not what I'm particularly concerned with. Sure, races are important, but I feel being a good team member means more than just racing. Our team is so small that everyone is pretty decent friends with everyone else; a good teammate does their best to be a good friend. Thus, I feel my lack of presence in the last week is bad because I lose touch with my teammates when I'm not physically at practice. (We're a diverse group of people, so we are not in very many classes together; therefore, it's hard to find time to meet up. Practice is, for all intents and purposes, that time.)

Moreover, I do enjoy being with the team. We talk about some interesting topics, we joke around - it's "all good", so to say. Just yesterday, while we stretched, we were discussing how to communicate the idea of left and right to an alien civilization. (...only at Caltech!) It's very difficult to get bored when you are around such bright and engaged people. 

So I guess I'm going through a kind of withdrawal. This last week has shown me how important a team is, and I am quite grateful for the teammates I have here at Caltech. 

Ciao.

"Together we stand, together we fall, together we're winners, and winners take all." ~Unknown

Who's Who: The Athletic Trainer

Hello everyone. It's been a busy week, and I had wanted to write this post up earlier, but homework got in the way. Sorry. However, two weeks ago I went down to Brown gym to talk to our head athletic trainer, Andres, about his experiences at Caltech.

Backstory:

When Andres went to college (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) he wasn't entirely sure what he wanted to do. His coursework was quite diverse, bouncing between the normally-required math class to an esoteric course on horticulture. One semester, he decided to take a class on athletic training, and he loved it. In fact, he enjoyed it so much that he decided to transfer to CalState Fullerton, where he majored in athletics training. While at Fullerton, he enrolled in an internship program at Mt. San Antonio College so he could get more hands-on experience helping athletes. After spending time at Fullerton, he worked at Claremont Mudd-Scripps for two years.

About eight years ago, a position opened up here at Caltech for an assistant athletic trainer. While Andres continuted his job here at Tech, he attended graduate school in Long Beach, and finally obtained his Masters in Kinesiology. With graduate school under his belt, Andres was ready to set out...

....or stay here. During the time while he was completing his degree, the head athletic trainer position opened up. Seeing this great opportunity, Andres leapt at the chance to take charge in helping athletes. 

Of course, making the jump from assistant to head trainer was not without difficulty. Andres commented that the hardest part of being the head trainer was taking care of the administrative side of his work. As an assistant, there was somebody else to worry about things like that; when these tasks fell onto his plate, he felt a little daunted. Regardless, those types of things got hammered out eventually.

Being at Caltech:

For Andres, helping athletes is the prime motivation for becoming a trainer. (He mentioned that he preferred to take the internship-based approach to schooling as opposed to a coursework-based one because he wanted as much experience as possible.)

With Caltech students though, there still is that need to be on top of his academic game at all times: whenever he is treating someone, they are always asking questions, so having those answers on hand is important. The curiosity of the athletes who come though the training room is a "unique" feature of Caltech, according to Andres. Not that he is bothered by our questions; on the contrary, he says it "Makes me feel I become a better trainer."

However, Caltech is definitely a small school, and many other schools have far superior athletic programs. So naturally, I was curios as to what Andres connected with here at Caltech. He confided that, practically speaking, "an injury is an injury - no matter where I am." Regardless of location then, Andres would be doing (roughly) the same work as his job here. This piqued my curiosity, and really made me wonder what Andres enjoyed about this place.

He told me there were two things. One is the students themselves - Andres said that one of the best parts of his job is "seeing freshman come into the training room who are quiet and shy, and over time, develop into leaders of their team." The second is the fact that while we may not be very good athletes, we aren't terrible. Some of Andres' best memories of his time here are our wins, as well as our losses. The wins - because they are a rarity, and the losses - because we keep losing by a smaller margin over time.

Parting thoughts:

When I first met Andres, I must admit I was a little intimidated. I never had a dedicated athletic trainer back in my high school, so I was a bit perplexed as to the nature of a trainer/athlete relationship. However, my injury earlier this year showed me there's nothing to be intimidated of: Andres is a great fellow - willing to explain what needs to be done, and excelling in his ability to help make those pesky pains and sprains go away.

Ciao.

"If you are ever going to achieve as much as you can in a sport, you are going to have to be willing to make a leap of faith to learn how much your body can handle." ~Meredith Rainey Valmon

Odds and Ends

Hello everyone! If you remember, I was rather sick the last time I wrote to you; thankfully, I have gotten much better. No more freshman plague for me. Also, with Andre's help, my hip is feeling much better - a definite plus. Now, if I could just get my homework to solve itself for me... :)

I had been wanting to do a post on the actual facilities here at Caltech, but the weather has been quite dreary and grey, so any photos taken would not do the campus justice. So instead, I wanted to share from the weekly training plan my coach sent to the team:

Monday: Long run from campus; drills; core; weights

Tuesday: Intervals (this is different between the men's and women's team)

Wednesday: Moderate length distance run; core; weights

Thursday: Intervals (see Tuesday's note)

Friday: Pre-race run; drills

Saturday: SCIAC Mutli-Duals

Do you see what I see? A LOT OF RUNNING!! You could say I signed up for this by joining the team, and I would agree. My point is not to complain, but to point out that doing a sport at Caltech is not about slacking off. We may not have athletic prowess (that is, when Hollywood makes a movie about you....), but we do have determination and spirit. So even if it's a lot of running, I'm glad to go out and hit the pavement. Not only because I enjoy running, but because I want to know if I can match what my coach expects of me. It is akin to doing that homework-I ask myself whether I will be able to solve the problems the professor has put before me. (Only my homework, as you can tell from above, is to go out and try not to get hit by cars as I'm jogging along!)

Anyway, those were the odds and ends. Like I said, I hope to do a "picto-post" on the facilities here at Caltech, and I also will interview our athletic trainers to get a picture of the people Techer-athletes rely on when we are injured.

Ciao.

"Run Forrest, run!" ~ Jenny Curran from "Forrest Gump"

Who's A Caltech Athlete?

"Alright," you say. "Enough about telling me how diverse these student-athletes are....show me!" 

"Well," I reply, "simply hop into my teleportation machine and get out here!"

Unfortunately, that exchange probably will not happen for a while. Until that time, I guess the words I write will have to suffice. In particular, I was perusing the Athletics website, and I came across an interesting page called "Meet the Beavers" (not this Beaver, mind you). It's a compendium of students here at Caltech who do athletics. So, in true Caltech-scientist fashion, I sat down to take a hard look at this data. After a semi-rigorous analysis of the answers the students provided, I think I found some interesting things. (Note: the sample size was 23 students, but not all students answered a given question. Also, the webpage was for 2008/2009.)

First, let's look at matriculation year:

2009: 6
2010: 3
2011: 10
2012: 4 

These numbers could mean is sophomores are more likely to participating in athletics in general, but since I know a lot of incoming freshman who do athletics, I do not think this result is particularly valid. It is interesting that sow few juniors participate in sports. Perhaps some of the stresses related to completing major requirements and getting to graduate school means they have less time to devote to other things. The seniors, obviously content with where they stand in the Registrar's eyes, probably spend more time doing things they would like since they are almost done with their coursework anyway.

So then, what about majors? Here's the breakdown:

Chemistry: 2    Geology: 2 Biology: 2       Computer Science: 2
Math: 1 Physics: 1 Applied Physics: 1    Electrical Engineering: 2
Mechanical Engineering: 3 Chemical Engineering: 2    Applied Math: 3

Based on these crude numbers, it would seem engineering is the favored major. I do not find this particularly surprising, but I don't think we can read too much into it. Some of my friends who do athletics are engineers, and some are more "theoretical". (Of course, as a physics major, I'm sad to see just 1 fellow physicist in the group!)

Next, I looked at the actual sports the students participated in:

Track: 8 Fencing: 1
Cross-Country: 2        Baseball: 2
Tennis: 4 Volleyball: 1
Basketball: 2 Soccer: 1
Diving/Swimming: 2

 The prevalence of track athletes in this sample is beyond me. This may be due to when the survey was taken. (I know some of the athletes listed as Track also do Cross-Country, and there are definitely 'crossover' athletes here.) However, I think it's pretty obvious Caltech students participate in a wide range of sports. This is one of the nice things about going to Tech - you can come here with absolutely no experience in a sport, jump right in and participate. You can't do that at some larger schools.....

How about these athletes' preferences? When asked "What do you think is the best part of California?", they replied:

~ the warmth (10)
~ things to do (2)
~ able to be tan year-round (2)
~ good food (2)
~ the ocean (1)

As you probably guessed, everybody who comes here ends up falling in love with the sunshine. There are a lot of other incentives as well to not go to the East Coast Schools as well, but the sun is primary one!

Many athletes have to juggle a full schedule. Therefore, it's natural to ask what they would do if there were no schoolwork to complete. When asked "If you had a day with no homework, what would you do?", there were responses of:

~play (3)
~sleep (4)
~read (4)  *not* a textbook!
~relax (6)
~change nothing (1)

Sleep and read. Sounds pretty typical to me. Put the neurons to good use even on a day off-that's a Caltech student for you!

There you have it- one snapshot of Caltech student-athletes. We are a diverse bunch of people united by our curiosity about the world and our desire to compete. 

Ciao.

"I wasn't a very athletic boy. I was once lapped in the long jump." ~ Ronnie Corbett

Being Sick and Injured is Hard to Recover from

So... somehow during Rotation, I ended up sick. Nothing too serious, though, but it is still annoying. [Perhaps the presence of the all the prefrosh gave me the proverbial "frosh plague".] The being sick part of this experience is not that bothersome- I can still go to class and whatnot, but cross-country practice got harder to do toward the end of last week. This was particularly concerning since the team had a meet on Saturday, and a sick athlete should not compete.

However, the fates looked upon my situation and apparently felt compelled to intervene. While running on Wednesday, I felt a sharp pain in my hip. After talking with the trainers, they felt I had somehow inflamed my hip joint. They told me to stop by before practice on Thursday so they could do some pre-practice treatments to see just how bad my hip was feeling.

At this point, I must confess that a good student does not a diligent athlete make. I completely forgot to go to the trainers, and went off with the team to practice. Our workout that day was some kind of interval workout- and we were going to repeat it 3 times. I could only do it once, and had to head back early. As you can probably imagine, I had to go to the trainers and own up to my mistake. Thankfully, both Andre and Erin were understanding, and made me sit in the ice whirlpool for *only* 15 minutes. When they told me to come back on Friday before practice, I made absolutely sure to do so.

As it turns out, their analysis has so far proven correct. With some heat treatments and icing, as well as an insert in my shoe, I've been feeling a bit better with respect to my hip inflammation. (The insert was to help remedy the fact one of my legs is "visibly longer" (Andre's words) than the other - something I never knew!) I'm hopeful once practice resumes on Monday I can keep up with the heating and icing, which should help me get back to competing condition soon.

Unfortunately, I had to miss Saturday's meet. Having the plague and being injured spells disaster where being in a competition is concerned. Regardless, I am really proud of the Cross-Country men and women- both teams beat another school! (This is always a cause for celebration where Caltech Athletics is concerned). 

On an unrelated note, I based the title of this post on a phrase which I no longer recall. If you can help me out, that would be great!

Ciao.

"I've always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn't have a chance to win." ~ Arnold Palmer 

Preseason Athletics for Prefrosh - What's it Like?

*Note: This entry was started before school began. I hope this doesn't make it too antiquated. ~Travis 

As many of you probably know, Caltech starts school in late September. This does not stop the Athletics department from beginning its year a bit earlier, though. In particular, while all of your friends probably head back to school sometime in late August, most Caltech athletes head back to the Institute around that time for preseason athletics. For about a month, we runners, soccer players (why is there not a name for a person who plays soccer?),volleyball players (uhh....volleyballers?), and water polo players (poloers?) get together with our respective teams and practice, practice, practice. Of course, that's not all we do. We hang out, chat, go on trips - all those good things. (For those of us who did a SURF, this time is also spent winding down our research and preparing a report and presentation.) We also like to sleep. And maybe eat something from Chandler Cafe.

The purpose of preseason is twofold:

1) Even though classes start later than other schools, sports competitions are already going on before we Techer-athletes ever set foot in a lecture hall for the school year. Thus, we need to get ready earlier so  we can compete better.

2) During the summer, athletics training may take a lower priority on to-do lists than other things. For some, trying to get a SURF done means spending a lot of time in the lab, while for others, a relaxing summer means not doing much at all. Thus, preseason is like a mini "boot camp" (but not for the Mac users among us) which helps us get into competing shape. This is why many sports have two practices each day.

So what is it like to be a prefrosh who comes early to do preseason? I sat down with some of the prefrosh on the Cross-Country team and talked a bit about their preseason experiences.

Previous Experience

If you recall from my last post I mentioned that athletes here at Caltech are a diverse bunch of people. The prefrosh I sat down with came from a variety of backgrounds: some had never participated in official athletic extracurriculars, others had quite a bit of experience in their respective athletic fields, and one prefrosh, while never having ran, had been involved with several different athletic groups, including horseriding! Even with this variation in backstories, all had joined the team out of a desire to be part of the group. None felt that they were pressured into doing athletics, but many did want to continue their high school experience of being on a team. The short story - they were here because they wanted to be.

Why Caltech?

Caltech is a Division III school, which means that the school's focus is less about athletics and more about learning. I asked the prefrosh about why they joined a Caltech team, what they thought about the school's athletic requirements, and their overall impressions of Caltech Athletics.

For those who had previous high school experience, they saw Caltech as a way to transition from high school contests to collegiate competition. For others, being here early was due to a "lack of options". However, all felt that coming out early was a great way to meet new people, see the school, and get a feel for Caltech before the hectic hustle of classes commenced. The most positive comments I received were about the people and facilities; several mentioned they felt coaches, teammates, and athletic trainers genuinely cared about each of them as a person, and all of them felt the facilities to be great. One phrase that stuck out to me was Caltech is a "step up" from their high school experience. 

(Personal thought: The people here really do care: with a student body of just over 900 undergraduates, the people in your life-even coaches and trainers- are sincere and are looking out for you.) 

We also talked a bit about the school's Core requirements, specifically the physical eduction requirement. The students I talked to expressed an appreciation for Core, and felt that a more diverse range of options, coupled with an increase in the number of physical education classes that should be taken, could better serve Caltech students. (However, there are a number of clubs and classes that can be taken in addition to athletic teams, so there there is already a wide range of options for students. ~Travis) This being said, none of the students I talked to told me they joined the team because of Core; once again, they liked being here, and so they came. 

Day-to-day-stuff

Finally, I asked the prefrosh about their day-to-day activities. One word was used rather frequently - "quiet". (Since school had yet to be in session, the majority of the student body was away. This word more describes a lack of people than a physical phenomena.) Even without people, it was possible to have some fun. Going to Los Angeles, talking with new friends, and just hanging out can fill an entire day. Also, sleep - a precious commodity during the school year - can take up quite a bit of time.

Projecting how things might change once school started, they expressed a concern that they would be busier and need to be more focused on schoolwork than athletics. Some showed optimism that with more people around, there would be more opportunities to do neat activities and have great conversations. 

Wrap-Up

Overall, the impression I got from these upcoming freshman is that they are glad to be here; meeting new people, getting comfortable with the team, and seeing how collegiate athletics is different than their high school experiences provides them with a few things to do. However, they all expressed a desire to get out and see more, and I suggested they learn to use the LA metro system to do some exploring. All in all, preseason is a pretty relaxed time, and being a prefrosh, coming out early is a great way to ease into going to Caltech.

Ciao.

"Olympism - exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, mind, and will." ~ Pierre de Coubertin

First post!!

Please pardon the noob-ish title. I know the internets are wide, vast, and probably have some kind of standards, but it still makes me giddy to type that infamous line. Back when I read the MIT Admissions Blogs*, I would always laugh to myself when I saw that line in the comments section. To me, it meant that either someone was on their RSS feed reader way too much or just happened to get lucky. 

However, this title is really appropriate for this post. Obviously, this is the first post on my subsection of the Caltech blogosphere. At the same time this is also the first time you guys are reading my blog. Actually, if you think about it, this is the first time you are reading this word. Or this one. Or this whole sentence. (Of course, this is not true if you are re-reading this post; doing so is very thoughtful of you. So where I wrote the word "first", please insert the ordinal number (not this ordinal number, though!) corresponding to the number of times you are reading this.) 

Those "firsts" examples may be trivial, but the process of going to college is not. You are reading these blogs because you want to know more about Caltech, its culture, and its students - in short, what it's like to be a Techer. So the admissions office has put together these blogs to help you see what Caltech is like (hint: "There's Only One"!). In my tiny little subsection of these blogs, I am going to write about things that involve the other 640 muscles in your body, and talk less about your best muscle. If you've read Caltech's Core Requirements list - the standards that all students have to meet to graduate - you'll see you have to take nine units of Physical Education. These nine units can be satisfied by physical education courses and sports. What I hope to do then is show you a little bit of the world of Caltech physical education. 

Some of you may have no athletic experience. Others of you may have been doing athletics so long you could outrun Usain Bolt or outswim Michael Phelps or outstrike Babe Ruth. I intend to write to all of those types. Comments and inquiries on these posts are particularly important, because I want to write about athletics-related things that you want to know. Want to know why our mascot is a beaver? How Caltech football played in the Rose Bowl? Just ask!

If you want to know more about me, my bio may prove useful, but again, maybe not. In a nutshell, this is me: I've been doing Cross-Country and Track since 7th grade, which means I have been running consistently for the last seven years. For all four years of high school, I was fortunate enough to go to the state meets in both sports, but I never competed very well at that level. I completed one marathon, but I have goals to run ten before 2013 and five ultramarathons before 2018. The idea of running across the Sahara (or Antarctica) is fascinating to me. Yeah, I guess I am a runner at heart, but rest assured - I plan to cover all aspects of Caltech athletics, not just Cross-Country!

Ciao.

"A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world" ~ John Locke

 

*You didn't think I would really link to an MIT page, did you??