A Tale of Escapes From a Veteran Escapee

You can always pick them out of a crowd; all you have to do is look for anyone who can’t conceal her near total confusion and dismay.
And I write ‘her’ here because when I sat down to write this, I decided to chuck my concern for freshman males and create a quasi- guide for all of UCI’s new female athletes.
I was a freshman once, not to mention an athlete. And being such, I think I may be able to dispel some of the myths you most likely already believe to be the case surrounding your future team and your future experience as an athlete at UCI.
First of all, people come to our school from all walks of life, and this means your team will most likely have some atheists, some Christians, some Buddhists, some virgins, some sexually free, some hard-core students, some partiers, some science geeks, some literature buffs and some other individuals that I don’t have the experience to classify.
This motley mix of personalities probably won’t meld into the Brady Bunch, and it’s safe to assume that not everyone on your team will become best friends.
Although it is true that distinct factions of your team will consider themselves ‘families away from home’ and that your team might harbor fewer cliques than most do, there is also a reason why Sally Smith and John Parker never talk to each other and are usually found sitting on opposite sides of the room.
For example, between my freshman and sophomore years, my teammates/roommates and I were housing a freshman girl because she didn’t have a place to stay during our early September training sessions.
Shortly after she arrived, one of my teammates and I started to get on each other’s nerves, and one night, things just got out of hand.
He and the new ‘shman’ were sitting on the twin-sized bed that served as our living room couch, and he said something to me that sparked a verbal tirade that would have embarrassed Bill and Hillary Clinton. The episode must have lasted for a half-hour, and as the doors slammed and our apartment building shook to its foundation, I could hear the freshman girl ask another roommate, ‘They weren’t really fighting, were they? They were just pretending, right?’
Her freshman innocence simply wouldn’t allow her to believe that, at that moment in time, we simply didn’t like each other.
Thankfully, this roommate and I patched things up. We even laugh about it today. But sadly, I can’t say the same is true for some of the other teammates I (unfortunately) had altercations with over the years.
Just keep this in mind