Category: Track & Field

Virtually, the world’s only coeducational sport!

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Level the Playing field!….. 5th Year of Eligibility is Fair

Here I am as a young track & field athlete.... if you look closely, Laura is in the stands!It does seem like a lifetime ago that I was a scholarship athlete at UCLA… but I do remember coming home, eating my dinner and then falling asleep. Somehow, I still managed to graduate in 4 years.

Since then, times have really changed for both students and student-athletes. Today, graduating in 4 years is a real challenge for many. It could be that economic times are tougher or maybe students are just dragging their collective heals; however, more often than not it is the university itself that slows the graduation rates. Sometimes, just getting 1) the required classes in majors whose unit requirements have inflated over the years and 2) obtaining the prerequisites in a timely manner slows the process to a crawl.

When I was at UCLA, I almost completed a triple major but opted to graduate ‘on-time.’ It is clear that by today’s hurdles and requirements, I would never have been able to be so adventurous and my graduation date would have been stretched out. With students taking longer and longer to complete their degrees often due to no fault of their own … it seems only logical that we reevaluate the support we offer student athletes with a fifth year of eligibility. Here’s a link and a copy of a letter I wrote to the Daily Trojan:

 Unequal standards

A favorite topic – by some – is to pick on athletes who struggle through the academic requirements set by the NCAA (Athlete graduation rate lags, Oct. 6, 2006). I always ask myself, “How many ‘regular’ students make progress to degree completion in the time allotted by the NCAA?” You’d be surprised to know the answer.

In the non-football powerhouse, academic community in which I live (San Luis Obispo), the “average” student graduates in 6.5 years. This is more of a pain to the parents than it is to the university or the NCAA, but it points out the fact that athletes everywhere are held to different and, in my opinion, unfair standards.

The unintended expectation of the NCAA academic progress regulations is that athletes are required to outperform their non-athletic peers, but this is unreasonable given the time, energy and recovery demands of Division I athletics.

Every effort should be made to aid athletes and non-athletes in earning their bachelor’s degrees. A big, positive step for athletes in reaching this goal would be in offering a fifth year of eligibility.

Roger Freberg
San Luis Obispo, Calif.

This is not to criticize the NCAA. The NCAA has made great strides in supporting athletes over the years… in particular , allowing athletes with remaining eligibility to continue through graduate school ( as did my daughter Karen) is a wonderful tweak to the system for the best students in the student-athlete mix. The addition of a fifth year would help everyone else towards earning their bachelor’s degree… which is the point, isn’t it?

As for me, I really did have an unfair advantage… I married my tutor.

Roger Freberg

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Athletes do better before, during and after college

Preparing athletes for their next life

 

There has been a discussion on college campuses on what is considered a viable major for students and student-athletes. It is basically a smokescreen for falling standards overall.

There have been majors that many athletes gravitate to…. it may be because the subject is interesting… such as Psychology or Business…. or maybe…. gasp!… because it is easy.

USA Today reported that athletes do tend to congregate in certain subjects:

“When the Auburn football team’s defense heads into the huddle, the players probably don’t talk sociology. But seven defensive players on Auburn’s 2003 football roster are majoring in that field. Overall, 10 of the 38 Tigers football players whose majors appear in the team’s media guide are in sociology.”

Another article describes a similar tale:

“A review of ASU’s 2003 football team revealed that the most popular major is interdisciplinary studies, a degree program widely considered by students and faculty to be among the university’s easiest. A full 18 percent, or 17 of 94, team members were in the program this past fall.”

Some folks on and off campus grumble about any efforts to give athletes what they consider ‘preferential treatment.’ You know these guys, they were picked last in grade school:

“NCAA Commissioner Myles Brand announced sweeping academic reforms, aimed at increasing dishonesty, cheating, and preferential treatment for student athletes.”

Well, bad stuff happens….. but for most student-athletes this is a rare experience. With the changes in NCAA rules, athletes can continue their athletic performance in graduate school…. for those academically gifted to continue.

It should not escape anyone’s notice that many of the top academic schools in the country are also the top athletic powers as well. The reason for this is obvious, a rich alum makes a donation to their athletic program and then turns to donate funds for a new Physics building. it happens all the time. Some of the best college presidents have recognized this from the beginning… athletics brings in the supporters that can be massaged into donating something more.

Take a trip on U.S. News and World Report and check out the top colleges… you may be surprised to see how many big bowl colleges are top ranked academically!

Research Medical Schools:

# 3 — University of pennsylvania
# 6  — Duke university
# 7 — Stanford
also #7 — University of Washington
# 10 — Baylor Continue reading “Athletes do better before, during and after college”

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Hey, brother, whatcha taking to get so…. bullish?

Somehow I like this guy

 Athletes are clamoring to discover what they can do to look like this handsome fellow… the guy on the right.(Looking like the guy on the left is a lot easier…. eat heavily at a place with arches and you’ll get there. Sorry, guy, you need to live on a ‘stepper’ for a while)

In fact, go to almost any weightroom and ask around — and after a time — people will generally let you in on their ‘secrets.’ Some of what the ‘professionals’ will tell you is fact, some will be superstition and some will just be bunk. However, it is always fun to hear the latest craze.

Sometimes, someone will walk into the weightroom looking a little ‘super’ natural like my buddy above and this will cause other lifters and athletes to freak out… it’s really not too unusual… it happens to me all the time.. heh heh. Actually, at 54 years old, I am still fairly strong … but it’s a family genetic thing.

Some families have a non-fatal version of muscular dystrophy that gives you roughly the same effect….. in fact, it has been hypothesized that many top athletes have some naturally occuring myostatin inhibitors ( allows for muscle growth )… but there are less genetically endowed athletes working hard on getting at these secrets… they’re throwing away their EPO, Steroids, Hormone Precursors, HGH and the like and looking at something that will propel them into the ‘big time’…. it’s called gene doping. Look for it in the next Olympics, I am sure we’ll see some real surprises!

As I mentioned before, there is a strong feeling on the part of many scientists that a number of top athletes carry a gene for increased muscle development … naturally. However, we’re bound to read more and more about IGF-1.

The interest in understanding the actions of myostatin inhibitors and myostatin inhibition has less to do with finding the ‘new secret’ for the world’s top athletes, as it does for finding a treatment for muscular dystophy. Increasing the potential lifespan and quality of life for someone with MD is a worthy goal.

One young boy being observed today is from from Germany. He has unusually large muscles since birth… and… the hope is that by studying him, possible treatments for MD can be developed. Wyeth Labs is looking at such treatments for humans after successful experiements in animals.

Well… the tests ( referred to as ‘human trials’) by Wyeh have been going for a year or two now and I can only wonder if some of the ‘samples’ have been deengineered by some of the mad scientists of the athletic community… hmmmm. The problem as I see it for the athlete — besides all the ethical considerations — is that most of these types of drugs are fairly general… and — I would have to ask – what would prevent the drug from causing potentially life threatening side effects , such as enlarging the heart in the man or woman not stricken with muscular dystrophy?

News is already out that this drug exits the human system after 28 days ( becoming nondetectable from the athlete’s perspective)…
Cybex Stepper... very cool

As for me…. I’ll keep lifting weights the old fashioned way and… I’ve started using this thing that my daughters and my wife call a ‘stepper’… I think it has something to do with eating green vegetables!

Somehow I feel better if I imagine that I am stomping grapes to make wine… but I feel drenched when it’s finally over…. yep, I am losing weight and it makes a great warm down from my weight lifting regimine.

Finally, I have to admit, it doesn’t take a huge amount of time to get a great workout on this thing… and with my stereo blasting… well… it’s kinda like vegetables… after a while, they aren’t too bad.

 

Roger Freberg

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the Parent — the first and most important teacher

Hey Guys!
Have you ever noticed some of the criticisms directed at parents from the halls of academia? Parents are supposedly ‘too involved’ with their adult college children, too interventionist with their children’s teenage friends and appear to be looking over the shoulders of their child’s grade and middle school teachers?

Why do parents do this?

Obviously, because getting involved gets the results all parents want… better performance. It reminds me of the saying-or at least my version of it:

” if you let the village raise your child…
don’t be surprised if you end up with the village idiot.”

1997 Laguna Middle School Throwers

Most parents — if they try a bit — can find ways in which they can teach their children or help them ‘be all they can be.’ Ask youself: what do I know that could help my kids reach the next level?

Were you an athlete? artist? musician? good in math? Or are you a good observor of people? Can you protect them from ‘bad associations”? Can you offer advice? Can you help them avoid the mistakes we all made at their ages?

I was an athlete, and when my children decided that they wanted to participate, I offered to help them learn some of the skills, send them to camps and pop for whatever equipment they needed. The parent is the support unit… but the child has to do the hard work. As a ‘supporter’ you can teach, cheer and offer encouragement when they don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The photograph you see above is from 1997. I volunteered to teach some young male and female middle schoolers how to throw the shot and discus… part of the fun was coming up with a design for our ‘shirt’. It stated ‘Laguna Throwers tc’ (tc stands for ‘track club’). I really wasn’t feeling too good here, physically, I weighed about 427 lbs and I was about to go into a diabetic shock … in a couple of years. That is a story in and of itself. Anyway, it was a way to help my daughter… in a way that was meaningful to her…. the rest was history.

So, don’t worry about ruffling a few feathers… after all, none of your child’s friends or teachers have to live with your kid… if things go bad. Studies show that a man in your child’s life is what they need to stay focused, besides, if someone needs to be the ‘bad guy’, it might just as well be you! Remember, your time and investment to get your kids on the right road early on when they are young is so much less than waiting for a problem to develope when they get older…… then, it takes so much more effort and so much more money to help them get back on that road if they ended up following a unhappy path.

Good Luck,

 

Roger Freberg

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Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports? … are you really surprised?

Roger Freberg UCLA 1971-1974 NCAA Runner-Up Discus, Pac 8 Champion in the Discus and Runner-up in the Shot Put, UCLA Discus RecordholderThe story of athletes ‘from the dawn’ of time attempting to enhance their performance is a colorful history. Recorded history speaks of ancient Greek athletes munching on animal testicles to extract testosterone or athletes taking small doses of various poisons as ‘stimulants.’ In 1927, the Nobel Prize was won by a German — Heinrich Weiland — discoverer of ‘steroids’ and athletics has never been the same …until now.

Today, there are rumors of ‘gene doping’. Simply stated, gene doping is the insertion of a performance gene into the athlete via a virus. So far this has proven to be a dangerous process with some non athletic deaths from introducing genes into the human body. The one of the genes likely to be introduced is is associated with EPO. The other gene — associated with certain rare strong athletes — is a form of non fatal muscular dystrophy.

Trying to ‘get an edge’ over a competitor — by any means — is certainly not new and working to provide ‘ a level playing field’ is certainly a worthy but somewhat unrealistic effort. The ‘solution’ to this problem will come from the athlete. The question each athlete has to ask themselves is how good do I want to become and at what cost? There are plenty of athletes who appear to be suffering from the effects of anabolic steroid use of 20 or 30 years ago. Some of the apparent problems that have developed with athletes who dined on steroids are liver & kidney problems and joint replacement and death. Some of these same fellows often find themselves in wheel chairs. Do they think it was worth it now? Continue reading “Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports? … are you really surprised?”