New Beginnings

8-28-89

Perspective:

New Beginnings

It looks like a pretty good year for Cobber sports. The campus has once again exploded with life as both new and returning students wade through registration lines, find their dorms and settle into the rhythms of school again.

Optimism always reigns supreme here at this time of year.

Like at baseball's spring training, all the coaches and players get a virtual clean slate and are at liberty to dream their most outrageous dreams of success.

Coaches are breathing their secret sighs of relief as each of their players, veterans and recruits alike, plop down their tuition for the year and announce they are ready to get started.

As happens every fall, some of those who were being counted on didn't show. Family problems, athletic burnout, and simple youthful wanderlust take their toll on each coach's anticipated roster.

But for those who are here, there is a bounty of buoyant excitement that comes with all new beginnings. It is a chance, for many, to carve out a fresh identity. For others, a chance to build on what they have shown in the past.

As the various teams come together, veterans, newcomers and coaches creating their mini-communities for a year, they will play out a host of private and collective dramas on their road to the end of the season. Who will make the team and get the playing time? Can former high school stars compete at this higher level of competition? Did the coach recruit wisely? Will the team function as a cohesive unit or will it be divided by internal competition and petty jealousies? Will untimely injuries shatter their collective dreams? Will players come to see the coach as an egomaniac bent on personal glory or a wise teacher who shares in the life of the team/community? Some of these dramas, especially if the team is winning, will achieve a degree of notoriety through the press.

But the notoriety achieved will not, in the end, be the measure of the experience. The lasting memories that each of the players in these dramas will retain will have little to do with the press coverage received.

Lifelong friendships will be formed. Lessons about the complicated relationship between work, success and dumb luck will be forged into players' psyches. And a lot of the experience will, we hope, be recalled as just simple uncluttered fun.

For the press that will cover Cobber sports, and those of us here who try to help them do that job, there will be news stars to get to know, contending teams to cover, and the agony of finding something nice to say when Cobber teams fall on their face.

The 1989 fall season opens with a nice collection of storylines to explore. The football team has legitimate hope of defending their MIAC title. The volleyball team tries to improve on last season's outstanding success.

The men's soccer team finally gets to play the season they have been waiting for, with the most talented senior class in school history. The women's soccer team struggles with limited numbers to contend with the MIAC's soccer powers. Two new cross country coaches, Marion Strand and Mike Paul, will be pushing to get their women's and men's teams, respectively, into the upper echelons of the MIAC. And Cobber golfers will labor on in relative obscurity amid the falling leaves, seeking cures for the anguish the links inevitably inflict. (Yes, I had a bad summer golfing and I am still a little bitter.)

There are other stories and angles to pursue as well.

For the hometown papers of Cobber athletes there is the task of keeping up with their athlete's progress in the "local hero makes good at college level" columns. On the broader level there are stories to do on the proper role of sport in higher education at a time when collegiate sports seem constantly under harsh scrutiny.

There is also a new athletic facility in the works at Concordia that is the source of an intriguing debate within the college about priorities and student needs.

Looking ahead only slightly, if one can, there lies the question of whether men's basketball can parlay a good recruiting year into a return to the MIAC's upper division. And can Lady Cobber basketball sustain their position as one of the best programs in Division III? All in all, it looks like a pretty interesting year for Cobber sports. We look forward to you joining us on the trip through the seasons.

These pages are maintained by Jerry Pyle pyle@cord.edu. These articles are copyrighted © and may not be published or reproduced without the express permission of Jerry Pyle.

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