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Bellarmine Magazine_Fall2012

reMeMBeriNG JiM SPALDiNG the-art “energy and fitness” beverage that tasted awful even then that this was truly a man with nerves of steel. and had a nauseating viscosity, and that when ingested one Saturday morning when we had an away meet with donuts pretty much guaranteed a queasy stomach scheduled, i picked up a teammate, Gene Weis, and come race time. Nevertheless, Coach was always push- was headed down Norris Place in my 1965 Volkswa- ing the stuff. evidently he had invested heavily in this gen when we collided with a Ford Galaxie 500 that particular training-table product and he was not about turned left in front of us. The driver told police he was to let limited athletic department funds go to waste. it coming home from third shift at Ge and just didn’t also may simply have been that he was used to coaching see us. i’d managed to veer left myself just enough to much larger athletes and felt that the entire cross coun- avoid a head-on impact, but the whole front end of try team needed to put on a few pounds. either way, the VW was still entirely flattened. Gene hadn’t seen he was always looking out for us. it coming and knocked the windshield out with his i remember one year we had a dual meet at Centre head. Afterward, he could walk around, but he was College scheduled on a day that had been designated as woozy and had blood in his mouth. The wrecker tow- a nationwide “moratorium” against the war in Vietnam. ing the Volkswagen to its final rest stopped in front Students planned to boycott classes that day to protest of Knights Hall long enough for me to unload all my the war. This was very serious business. Back then it gear out of the back seat. Team members helped me seemed like every class i took at Bellarmine was – in stack sweats, shorts, books, basketballs, tennis rackets, one way or another – about the Vietnam War. Certain track shoes, notebooks, etc., in a pile at the curb while of my classmates suggested that it would not be appro- Coach Spalding examined Gene, asking him who he priate to run a cross country meet or play school sports was and holding up fingers for him to count. Coach of any kind on the day of the moratorium. The guys on then aborted the road trip, and we all went downtown the team talked it over, and as team captain i spoke to the hospital to get Gene X-rayed. Gene survived with Coach Spalding about our concerns. (Coach had to later become a Bellarmine track and cross country appointed me captain at the beginning of my sophomore coach himself. year after no other runners from the previous season College was like that for me, at least during those showed up at the first team meeting.) early years. (i started in 1966 but didn’t graduate Coach Spalding felt that it would be oK to partici- until 1977. Collegewise, i guess you’d say i took the pate in the meet, but he said he’d leave the decision up long way home, a pattern i seem to have followed in to us. ultimately, we did go to Centre and run. i don’t most areas of my life.) Crazy, unexpected, dangerous, remember if we won or lost. i do remember running disheartening and disjointed things happened back through their campus in the late afternoon, with every then, as they do now. Life-and-death issues, events possible color of fall leaves drifting from the trees and and disappointments threaded their way like shouts of covering the ground. The course took us right by the can- laughter across green playing fields and wound their dlelit altar where student demonstrators were keeping a way like sad voices through red and gold autumn trees. vigil, reading aloud the names of soldiers killed in action. Fortunately, there were many good people at Bellar- After the race we swam in Centre’s new indoor mine who provided a steadying influence, who seemed swimming facility and ate supper in Centre’s dining room, to know what they were doing, and who would always which Coach Spalding knew would be a lot cheaper than offer – sometimes simply by their demeanor – a sense eating at Jerry’s or some other restaurant on the way of reassurance, an indication that things would work back to Louisville. By then it was dark, and we piled out, that difficult, seemingly impossible decisions into one of the enormous 1960s-model Montgomery could be reached, and that eventually you’d make it Chevrolet station wagons that Bellarmine used to tran- through. Admittedly, some of us needed more reassur- sport student athletes on road trips. As he often did, ing than others. But for me, Jim Spalding was such a Coach picked whichever one of us looked the least man, one who could provide that kind of reassurance irresponsible at the moment to do the driving while he even if he was only napping in the front seat beside you napped in the front passenger seat. i remember thinking as you piloted the team home through the night. fall 2012 41


Bellarmine Magazine_Fall2012
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