This is supposed to be a column about sports at Marquette, not about Hunter S. Thompson or national sports. Thus, when the Division I sports teams flock away from Marquette to various games, tournaments and invitationals, I am left to wander the pavement, in search of any sport I can find.

I called a member of the curling team, but he didn't return my calls. I checked the schedule again and again to make sure it was true; without a car, I was doomed. In desperation, I reached out for the most obscure sport-like event I could possibly think of.

Which is how, at 7:35 a.m. Monday, I wound up the sole spectator to the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps training exercises in the Old Gymnasium. In this weekend of few organized sporting events, I was being what I could be. I was an audience of one.

The exercises themselves are like some kind of high school gym class on 'roids, absent the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative lab workers distributing fistfuls of cheerful multicolored "vitamins."

This doesn't mean that the people in the physical training are on steroids. It means that if one of the participants can't touch their toes, one of the neon yellow belted instructors will "assist," which mainly involves pushing their shoulders and back into a position where they can touch their toes.

It means a continuous thumping from the squads of runners doing "Indian runs" around the elevated running track. For the uninitiated, an Indian run happens when the farthest back in a column of runners sprints ahead to the front of the column, and then the new runner in back sprints ahead of him and the cycle continues that way for as long as 20 minutes. I used to do them in high school cross-country. They hurt.

The single most impressive exercise has to be the wind sprints across the floor of the old gym. To make things interesting, the trainees carry one another on their backs across the floor, then switch to carry the person who had been carrying them at the end of the court.

'Capitol!' I thought to myself. 'This is the true essence of sport. Certainly, I have never seen anything as brutally impressive as this. In terms of sheer endurance, this display beats soccer, basketball, football, anything you can name.'

My momentary elation subsided when I realized that this was nothing like sport; this was a career. For example, carrying someone across a basketball court could be preparation for someday carrying the wounded across a battlefield.

The line between sport and warfare was suddenly right there in front of me. Whatever twisted war policies the beltway boys in Washington D.C. could cook up in the interests of national defense, these runners, stretchers and carriers would have to carry it out someday.

When the squads started playing pickup basketball after the exercises were done, the shadow of this revelation lingered over the baskets. It seemed there was some kind of sinister undercurrent to the basketball games.

It made every two points seem to matter that much more.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Mar. 1 2005.,”Brian O'Connor”

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