Four exceptional years
By Jeremy Root | April 24, 2007As many fourth years are doing this time of year, I've done a lot of reflecting upon my time at Virginia.
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As many fourth years are doing this time of year, I've done a lot of reflecting upon my time at Virginia.
Maybe I should have seen it coming. They have a $36 million dollar payroll -- almost half of their 2006 budget and the third lowest in Major League Baseball.
Iremember it like it was yesterday: standing in the student section at University Hall during Gillen's last season with my head in hands as senior power forward Elton Brown missed another free throw.
I had no idea what I was in for.Before last week, the most I had run consecutively was six miles, but I decided it was time to do something to take advantage of my athletic prime and I signed up for the Charlottesville 10-Miler, which was held Saturday morning with nearly 1900 participants. I spent the entire week leading up to the race peppering my roommate with questions: could I go out Thursday night, how much do I run on Friday, what do I eat on Friday, when do I go to bed Friday night, what do I eat Saturday morning, what do I wear for the race and what do I do with this black thing that apparently goes in my shoe somehow?
Organic chemistry lab was the bane of my existence. Despite the fact that students averaged around a 50 percent on the finalexam (isn't that a delightful exam to take) and the grading system is designed so students are rewarded for the failures of their lab partners, we're repeating the same experiments done by thousands of students for the past century.
I don't know where you were Thursday night, but at my rambunctious house of 16 testosterone-filled men, you would have thought the Cavaliers were playing their opening round game Thursday evening instead of Friday midday. The loud claps and screaming at the television -- I have yet to accept that the players can't hear us -- were not for the Virginia Cavaliers but for the Virginia Commonwealth Rams. My intuition tells me it was not so much an expression of love for our fellow Commonwealth brethren, but rather our hope that the No.
Remember sneaking around during breaks between periods in high school to catch a few minutes of an NCAA tourney game on television, and if you were lucky, seeing a last second buzzer beater?
I don't know about the rest of you, but the second half of the Virginia-Georgia Tech basketball game Saturday afternoon just got me livid. Those of you watching on television probably missed it. I was just waiting for it to happen.Four minutes into the second half, nothing.Eight minutes, nada.12 minutes gone by, zippy.
Don't those ACC basketball standings look pretty? I think I could stare at them all day with No.
As President Casteen gave his State of the University address last week, I began to reflect on the state of our athletic conference, the ACC. It seems like only yesterday (July 2004, actually) when the league expanded to 11 teams, bringing an end to the beloved home and away series in basketball and the chance to play each team in football every year. No longer could Virginia fans count on the opportunity to scream at Coach K every season or keep up with all of ACC football.
