What I Did Over My Summer Vacation, by TUXC

(9/13/2010 6:57 AM) See more Photos    

In more ways than one, the men of TUXC epitomize the values of their school. They perennially have a team GPA above the University average. As tour guides, RAs, and pre-orientation leaders, they are active citizens and leaders both on and off the track. They arrive on campus in August from near and far, from Concord to California, and bring their diverse personal experiences in pursuit of a common team goal. This past summer was no exception. The Jumbos scattered far and wide—from East Africa to the Arctic Circle to the Comp Sci department on campus—traveling, volunteering, researching, growing food, and training with World Record holders. All in ten weeks’ time.

Given the leadership he’s shown as a member of TUXC, it’s no surprise that Scott McArthur spent him summer establishing a new project for the Tufts’ chapter of Engineers Without Borders, a student group of socially conscious engineers. EWB works to create a more stable and prosperous world through sustainable engineering projects on basic human needs like clean water, power, sanitation, and education. Scott first traveled to Uganda in 2009 and set up a partnership with the Foundation for the Development of Needy Communities, an NGO in the community of Shilongo. This summer, he returned with EWB and collected data on water quality and flow rates, met with local government, and held community-wide meetings. After weeks of research, they settled on a clean water storage system at the community’s main water source to be the highest priority. When asked, Scott emphasizes that EWB focuses on working with the community, not for it. Indeed one of Scott’s biggest strengths is his ability to communicate openly. All his teammates feel they can approach him with anything. The same qualities can be seen here, as he and EWB will continue talking with Shilongo leaders, and will spend the next nine months designing the water storage system they will install in Uganda next May.

In true team fashion, four members of the TUXC squad undertook their summer adventure together. Seniors Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot and Andrew Bellet, junior Connor Rose, and sophomore Dan Kirschner ventured to nearby Kenya’s Rift Valley to work as mentors with KenSAP. Known as the Kenya Scholar-Athlete Project in full, KenSAP helps promising Kenyan students gain admission to some of the most selective universities in the US. Students in the Project work athletic training into their prep for the SAT and TOEFL exams. Several have developed into some of the top runners in NESCAC. The TUXC group spent time talking with these bright kids about the application process and life at an American university. When young men can travel several thousand miles, have a conversation with Kenyan students about college life, share what they love about fall in New England, and go for a run on the trails the students in the Rift Valley call home, it shows the potential for connection between people from all walks of life.

Next year’s preseason camp should probably be in East Africa since about half the squad spent their summer there. Sophomore Luke Maher also traveled in Kenya, spending his time in the hallowed town of Iten working with the organization STRIVE. Each summer, STRIVE brings a group of American high school distance runners to the Rift Valley to explore the region, volunteer at local schools, and train among the world’s best. Luke took on two service projects during his two months in Kenya. At Kamirany Primary School, he and his group set their sights on expanding classroom space and finished the summer with four fully completed new classrooms. At Iten’s other primary school, Kiptabus, Luke provided lessons to 7th and 8th graders on a range of subjects. Range is really an understatement, as he coupled the typical subjects of math and science with lessons on the World Cup, Barack Obama, and Facebook. In between meals of ugali, rice, and beans and working on his Swahili, Luke lived at Lornah Kiplagat’s High Altitude Training Center and ran the hardest tempos of his life while new 800m World Record holder David Rudisha cooled down.

While these five hovered around the Equator, recent graduate and current Assistant Coach Nick Welch spent the summer at a far more northern line of latitude where the summer sun never dipped below the horizon. During his time in Sweden, Nick spent three weeks WWOOFing, or exchanging his labor for room and board, on an organic farm in the province of Småland. Between weeding, planting, weeding, fixing up a barn, feeding animals, weeding, slaughtering a lamb, cooking meals, weeding, haying, and weeding, he went on some short runs through the pastoral countryside of southeast Sweden and felt truly a part of the family of seven. It was the hardest manual labor he had ever done, but in the company of new friends from around the world helping to produce food for a self-sustaining family was one of the more rewarding experiences of his life. After the farm, Nick spent time in Stockholm and its surrounding archipelago of islands, and endured an 18-hour overnight train ride that brought him north of the Arctic Circle where he backpacked under the eternal daylight of the midnight sun. The solitude of hiking alone in the Arctic brought him ample time to draft workouts for the fall.

But the men of TUXC didn’t all have to travel abroad to do work with global implications. Senior Corey Melnick worked in the Mechanical Engineering department researching how semiconductors can operate more efficiently. Across College Ave, senior Greg Pallotta and sophomore Sam Haney were given the opportunity to do research in computation biology. The As biology and math/computer science majors, the projects they worked on—coding for lethal genes and protein folding—were a perfect combination of their skills and academic interests.

Finally, junior Erik Antokal spent both last spring and this past summer planning and coordinating the entire Freshman Orientation for CommUnity Service program, or FOCUS. One of five pre-orientation programs at Tufts, FOCUS brings together incoming freshmen for five days of community service and forging lifelong friendships through the vehicle of active citizenship. Chosen as one of just three program coordinators, Erik managed to train a staff of over 70, establish relationships with on- and off-campus officials, build schedules for a few hundred incoming freshmen, and balance the organization’s $40,000 budget—all while having the best summer of training of his life.

It is experiences such as these—whether through summer travels, work during the school year, or the wealth of interests that the Jumbos bring with them to campus—that make being a part of TUXC so much more than a cross country team. Knowing the men of Tufts XC—learning from them—makes both daily training and the journey through college the most exciting and fulfilling experience of many Jumbos’ lives. The turnout each year as graduates return from far and wide to join their friends for the Alumni BBQ and 5k is proof enough of that.


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