This has been a great week for Raider Athletics. Football practice started on Monday and Golf started on Wednesday. A lot was accomplished to get our other Upper School teams facilities and equipment ready for Monday. I appreciate this gradual transition to the beginning of school in order to get final details settled. But I am a little late with this post today. Here are my five reads for Friday this week.
This week has been a tough week for track and field. This week, there has been a uniform issue on the USA Track & Field team that may impact marketing and branding around the world. There have been revelations of performance enhancing drug usage of possibly some of the biggest names in the sport. And there was the disclosure of a death threat on one of the leading club coaches in the country from one of Nike's top executives. If you like soap operas, track and field had it this week. So much was written on these issues, I could write five posts with five reads each. Instead, I will give you what I think have been the most important articles of the week. Here is a series of articles published in the Japan Times interviewing Victor Conte -- the man made infamous from the Balco incident -- on doping in sport. There are so far four parts.
The Doping Epidemic -- Victor Conte interviewed by Ed Odeven -- Japan Times
There are still lots of inspiring stories in track and field and here is the best one I read in the last week. Legacy of a Survivor -- A Stanford Hurdlers Family Saga
My hope in the next two years is to get back in good enough shape to compete in the World Masters Athletic Championship. I have been inspired by one of my summer reads as well as this report from Lyon France on this summers World Championships Race A Clock While Scoffing At Time -- NYT
Enough track and field, though. Here is the best article I read from another sport -- basketball. I grew up watching the Harlem Globetrotters on Wide World of Sports. They always played the same team, the Washington Generals. The Washington Generals always lost. But their losses meant so much more. I am sad to see they are no more.
Losers Lament -- Washington Generals Folding by Joe Posnanski
Lastly, this is a more personal article. In 1975, my family moved across the country from -- the most beautiful city in America -- Portland, Oregon to Baltimore, Maryland. The move changed the course of everyone in my families life. The move happened for a variety of reasons but probably none more so than the then Dean of Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Richard Ross, persuaded my father to uproot his family and move. I don't know how many times I spoke to Dean Ross in my life. Maybe 50 times. He occasionally came by our house for a social gathering. I worked in a lab at JHU and saw him in the halls for two summers. He was my Dad's boss but also a mentor for my father. He is also a prototype of the really good people I have seen in schools throughout my career. He had this incredibly positive aura. He wanted everyone who worked for him to be successful. He exuded selflessness. Even though I was just a kid, he always remembered me and asked what was up in my life. He was an incredible people person. He was from Indiana and there was an obituary in the Sun Times today about his life. He died earlier in the week. Here is a longer one from JHU. There is also a great quote I saw on his theory of running a school -- find "the best students possible....put them together with a faculty who enjoy teaching, and provide good facilities. Then leave it alone. Let the process work."
Richard Ross, Longtime Johns Hopkins Medical School Dean
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