Track and Field, motto: "Need more mottos!"

Date it ran: 06/04/07
Headline: 'MOTTOFEST' LEFT A LOT TO BE DESIRED

BLOOMINGTON -- They sure like their mottos in track and field.

This much I've learned.

Every team seems to have one. They range from the overused (“We bust ours ... to kick yours”) to the lengthy (“Pain is weakness leaving the body. I have endured the pain. Now, I have no weakness).”

Believe it or not, that entire cheesy thing actually fits onto the back of your average T-shirt with room to spare. Why not just put a whole paragraph on there?

Something like: “My feet hurt. My back hurts. Even my pinkie toe hurts. My hamstring feels like it’s been run through my dad’s paper shredder. Sometimes, after I run the 3,200 meters, I have bodily fluids coming out of every exit point. Why do I run? Well, that’s a good question. Sometimes, I wonder myself. And you know what? I have no answer. I just have this T-shirt. And so does my whole family. Who knew they made these things in XXXXL?”

I kept hoping to see something like that at this past weekend’s IHSAA Boys and Girls Track and Field State Finals. It was a virtual Mottofest down here, and I’ve got to be honest -- most were pretty lame. The closest for originality was one that read: “It's not arrogance. We're just better than you.”

You'd better be with a shirt like that one.

Another of my favorites scored points for its brutal honesty. It read: “Running won’t kill you. You’ll pass out first.”

The guy wearing it was about 285 pounds and sweating profusely (not from running). That one made me laugh, though, because it reminded me of what a former boss used to say. I worked for a gutter company as a summer job. We’d get way up on these steep roofs, leaning out over the edge to hammer spikes into gutters.

Occasionally my boss would catch me looking at the ground, eyes glazed.

“Don't worry,” he'd say. “The fall won’t kill ya ... but the ground probably will. Ha!”

He should have put that on a T-shirt. Then my whole family could’ve had one. Which brings me to the other thing I learned about track this past weekend: the motto-wearers aren’t just the athletes.

Parents also strut around, wearing these silly slogans. I saw one guy Saturday who wore a shirt that read: “Trample the weak. Hurdle the fallen.”

This guy couldn’t have hurdled a crack in the sidewalk, let alone the “fallen.”

But I suppose it made him feel like part of the team. And who knows, maybe a shirt like that could also come in handy while Christmas shopping or waiting for Stones tickets. What scares me most, though, are the dads.

This is because I am one. And I’m afraid that some day, I will become just like them -- stomping around, chest puffed out, wearing a shirt that says: “Some people wish for it. We work for it.”

There were a couple of dads wearing that shirt Saturday, and I wondered what “work” they’d actually contributed. Maybe it was driving a van full of hyper-giddy teens through many construction hassles just to get there.

That is definitely work, not to mention a great new slogan for track dads.

Something like: “I drove my whole family four hours down here in a minivan, just to watch my daughter win a state track title ... and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

Hey, I'd wear it.