The Birth of an Everyday Athlete
February 1st, 2025 was a cold Saturday in Boston and Cambridge. When I stepped out of the warm lobby of my Kendall Square hotel, the cold stung my face. I began the 15-minute walk to the MIT campus, windchill in the low 20s. It reminded me of my first Boston winter in 1967. A naive Hoosier starting freshman year at MIT, I pledged the SAE fraternity and lived at 480 Beacon Street in the Back Bay. I first felt the penetrating Boston cold when I walked to morning classes across the Harvard Bridge and the usually frozen Charles River.
I had flown from Oregon to attend an MIT reunion. But not with other 1972 graduates. Much more important to me, I was heading to the Zesiger Sports & Fitness Center and the 2025 MIT Basketball Reunion. After a three-year varsity career, I had continued to play full court hoops until hip and knee replacements began at age 66. Now 75, was I really going to suit up for the alumni game and step onto the court again?
I connected with basketball buddies and two friends I hadn’t seen in 40 years. Alumni met members of the varsity squad. We celebrated Head Coach Larry Anderson’s 30th anniversary at MIT. I suited up, joined the pregame shootaround, and ran the court a few times. No orthopedic or head injuries. A wonderful weekend indeed!
But the 2025 reunion moved me more than I expected. Like never before, I understood how experiences during the late ’60s and early ’70s are at the core of who I became as a person, a physician, and an everyday athlete. I grew up in Indiana but I came of age at MIT.
Playing MIT basketball started me on the path of the everyday athlete. Suiting up for the alumni game reawakened that playing days’ joy of getting ready for a game. I loved putting on my home or away jersey, slipping the sweatband onto my right wrist to protect my Hoosier shooting hand, listening to the coach’s pep talk, then busting out of the locker room ready to play. Simply put, I felt at home again. I was not a starter on my very good Hoosier high school team, spending hours on the bench (“riding the pines”). MIT was certainly no Big Ten powerhouse, but making the freshman team was a big deal. This scrappy guard was playing small college basketball! I was participating in enjoyable physical activity, the essence of an everyday athlete.
Academically, MIT was hard! I really struggled in my first two years. I grew up in a General Motors town of 60,000. A vibrant big city like Boston was unfamiliar territory. At an excellent public high school, I punched the needed tickets for admission. But MIT was a whole new ballgame, with a much heavier workload and really smart classmates. I studied hard but always felt behind. I pulled all-nighters in quiet corners of the fraternity house to catch up on that week’s assignments (not just finish the procrastinated term paper due in 10 hours). I’d nod off in morning classes, try to catnap at lunch, then struggle to stay awake in the afternoon’s last class. I was a pro at not asking for help. MIT mailed my first-semester grades to my parents: 2 Bs and 2 Cs. This former valedictorian was discouraged, scared, and ashamed.
But after a less-than-stellar day in the classroom, basketball practice was a vigorous reprieve. Running up and down the court, practicing hard against teammates, passing and shooting, diving for loose balls, yes, playing the sport I love…I was fully present on the court. Stress and fear decreased. As I improved as a player and showed I could perform in the clutch, I did better in the classroom, in daily life. Basketball rescued me. No basketball, no MIT degree.
Athletics and activism connected within me. Sophomore year I shed the clean-cut look of my high school yearbook and was sporting a Medusa head of long, black curls. Raised in a conservative Republican family, my political views were shifting. I believed the Vietnam War was wrong and became active in the anti-war movement. Playing sports helped me keep my equilibrium and gave me added courage to go against the grain. Athletics and activism became connected within me. They complemented and clashed with each other by turns. That intertwining of athletics and activism forged the foundation for the public health advocacy I’ve done as a physician. Advocating for oneself and others is at the heart of the everyday athlete.
Swim 100 yards for that MIT degree! In 1967 I swam the needed 100 yards, a graduation requirement. Fifty-eight years later, it still is. At a prestigious university known for intellectual rigor, the requirement might seem curious, even quaint. But it reflects an abiding commitment and culture at my alma mater. You want high-level intellectual performance? Follow the ancient Greeks’ example of training the body, mind, and spirit together. MIT provides physical activity, recreation, and sports opportunities regardless of athletic talent: high-quality physical education classes, a vigorous intramural program, club sports, and competitive intercollegiate sports. Creating an activity-friendly community is the essence of active living. At the basketball reunion, I reconnected with how much my time at MIT shaped who I’ve become.
