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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Athlete^3

The lives of IU athletes look a lot like ours: They eat in dining halls, obsess over Xbox, and procrastinate doing homework. Three friends show us how their world isn’t as glamorous as we might think.

Athletes

Devin Pipkin, Chris Adkins, and De’Sean Turner have never been apart for too long.
Devin, a junior track and field sprinter, Chris, a redshirt sophomore football player, and De’Sean, a redshirt sophomore cross country runner, grew up in Indianapolis. The athletes were teammates on the Warren Central High School track team and, come senior year, led the team to a state championship.

Devin and De’Sean have always attended the same school. They even went to the same daycare as toddlers. When it came time to search for colleges, the two visited schools together. Coaches tended to look at the duo as a package deal. When the men visited IU, both had a feeling that this school and these teams were the right fit.

“Honestly, if he would have decided to go somewhere else, I probably would’ve looked into going where he went,” De’Sean says. “But it was like he wanted to go here, and we looked at the other guys that were coming in, and we thought, let’s do this.”

Today, the athletes continue to compete at the same high level. Their lives are linked through history, success, and a passion to excel. But the lives of collegiate athletes are a mystery to the rest of us. Here, the three friends invite us inside.

•••••••

De’Sean sits at a round table surrounded by fellow cross country runners. To the right of them is a table filled with track and field athletes, behind them, football players.

It’s dinner time and the athletes are hungry. About 15 tables and several buffet carts fill Training Table, the athletes’ dining room under Memorial Stadium.

Athletes in every varsity sport have the option to pay for a meal plan that lets them fill up on pasta, meat, salad, and dessert Sunday through Thursday.

The dining area has the feel of a high school cafeteria. Just eliminate the band, theater, and computer wiz clusters, and multiply the jock table by a few.

The volleyball players come in threes, says De’Sean. The female-filled table over there? Probably rowers, who typically sit together. The guys sitting at a nearby table are swimmers and divers — De’Sean has seen them before. Sometimes it’s sports gear that gives players away. Body types and recognizable faces help, too.

De’Sean and his friends discuss the new dessert, Blue Bunny ice cream bars. They crack jokes with other athletes walking by. One runner writes, “Do you like me?” on a napkin, with “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” boxes to check, and hands it to a blonde athlete piling food on her plate. The note is intended to be from the writer’s teammate, a joke that occurs against the teammate’s will. The rest of the runners watch and laugh as she reads it.

•••••••

On the gridiron, players decked out in pads and uniforms scramble as a football flies across the field. Amid the flurry, No. 29 stands still on the sidelines. A rolled-up sleeve reveals a bandage that runs from mid-arm to under his jersey.

Three weeks ago, Chris injured his elbow in practice. This is the first season since third grade that he will not be on the field.

Now frustration, not excitement, fills his fall Saturdays. As the team left Friday afternoon for Iowa, Chris stayed behind with his family to watch the team on television.

“The fact is that you only have so many opportunities to feel that way on Saturdays,” Chris says. “I’d feel bad if I missed one week. To be out every week, it sucks.”

That made watching the Hoosier’s 14-point lead slip away in the Iowa game especially hard for Chris. The final score was Iowa 42, IU 24.

Devin understands how difficult it must be for Chris to watch from back home.
“He hates losing,” Devin says. “He’s been winning his whole life in everything he does. We never lost in high school, really.”

When Chris arrived back at the apartment, the two friends shared thoughts on the game, like usual.

•••••••

It’s Monday, and De’Sean’s cross country practice consists of staring at a blank wall. Only the hum of a treadmill and his thoughts keep him occupied as he runs three miles. Athletes stroll in and out of the trainer’s room, filling bags of ice and hopping on tables for treatment. But De’Sean is lost in his own world.

He is preparing for the cross country Big Ten Championships on Nov. 1 in Pennsylvania. De’Sean consistently runs in the front pack of his team, but an injury could change that. He’s been struggling with his knees. This is the first run he’s completed in four days.

A trainer checks on the lone runner, raising the intensity on the treadmill. De’Sean’s legs stretch farther and move faster to keep up.

“Does it get worse yet?” The trainer asks.

“No,” De’Sean replies, staring straight ahead at the wall.

“It just stays the same?”

“I mean, it doesn’t feel very good,” De’Sean says. His soft voice trails off and disappears under the machine’s noise.

Leading up to the meet, he stays positive. Normally, he wouldn’t worry about his chances of running in a meet. But today, he has doubts.

“I guess it’ll just be a meet-time decision.”

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