It's still cold. Just an update in case you've been mid-term camping in the library. I thought that the spring was supposed to come after the first drunken chant echoes across the frozen tundra of Homewood Field. I was there on Friday, I heard the cheers - they weren't funny, but I listened anyway, expecting the wind to lose its biting cold. It didn't happen. Our offering of slightly ill-timed taunts and sips of hidden beers must not have been deemed an acceptable sacrifice. What the hell...
So I stood in the cold surrounded by heavy breathing and slurred speech with a decently sized crowd all offering our Friday nights to the lacrosse gods in the hopes that they would smile upon us and usher in the season of warmth. But it's not here, and according to the upcoming forecast it's not coming.
And yes, I am aware it is still only February, but we all were teased and then deceived with a glimpse of what is to come. I feel like a character in The Republic after emerging from the cave of winter, and now I'm going mad after having seen the light and felt the warmth. Slight stretch, but to be fair, I am going stir-crazy. To think I almost went to The University of Hawaii at Manoa . . . the beaches, the sun, the sand ... As for our Mid-Atlantic home, the breath of spring we enjoyed a week past was as fleeting as it was enlivening.
The Hopkins spring is by far the most pleasant season in an otherwise unspectacular calendar. The winters are dry, bereft of any real opportunity to consistently enjoy the winter delights associated with snow. And for anyone who lives in McCoy and has walked out into the icy wind tunnel between it and Wolman or has passed through the breezeway in December or January knows that Baltimore winters are windier than old-time Chicago politicians. The summers are tolerable, if you're wearing briefs and sitting in front of an industrial-sized fan. The autumnal season is so short it might as well be called pre-winter, with all of the same unfortunate weather patterns and without the typical holiday cheer.
But with spring here comes a new breeze. On the heels of our New Year's resolutions confirming that this semester we will right the ship academically and attend every class without fail, comes the only true collegiate experience we can claim at our prestigious university; our only Division I sport and one in which we are perennial powerhouses: lacrosse. And while I don't quite understand all the peculiarities of the game, nor do I particularly care to (again, I grew up in Hawaii, though obviously now I'm just rubbing it in), it still provides an avenue to express all my hibernating collegiate impulses that students at schools like the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill or the University of Florida get to show off year-round. Carolina blue-painted (not baby blue, just for the record) faces with a navy colored foot stamped across, it's like college heaven. Nothing like that devilish school down the old tobacco road where they pervert "fandom" to an unhealthy fervor. Here at Hopkins, at least for a season, we cease to be the place where the collegiate spirit goes to die as we join the multitude of drunken co-eds across the nation screaming obscenities at the refs and opposing players for no good reason other than our affiliation with our respective University.
In grander terms, Hopkins lacrosse embodies the last vestige of hope amidst all of our reservations about coming to a university like Hopkins. It helps justify the decision to attend for any student who wanted a real college athletic fan experience. It's the reason we agree to stand in the cold and brace ourselves against the bitter wind. It's the reason we get up at 7 a.m. to start tailgating before the noon game. It's the reason we wear Nest T-shirts on gameday. Some of us are able to get a tampered version of the "fix," attending games at other schools or watching our other favorite teams on television. But it is not nearly the same experience. We all want that thrill associated with being a college fan. Fortunately for us, we have that opportunity.
