Not too long ago, our university’s very own women’s soccer team upset the No. 5 team in the country Boston College Eagles. They are a great group of girls doing a great service for our school by representing us so well both on and off the field.
But there’s something I need to get off my chest. It’s been bothering me for the past year, to be honest, and I’ve just now worked up the courage to stand up and say something. Most of you know I got written up a couple of weeks ago for a noise complaint stemming from speaking outside during “quiet hours.” You may be glad to know nothing came from my own run in with the law.
But the experience has awoken within me a vigilante spirit propelled by the unsung cries of Greek Row and Lower Dorm Road. And so, once a sound-prey, I’m taking the opportunity to evolve into a sound-predator.
The women’s soccer team is too damn loud in the morning, and I’m not going to stand for it anymore. Last year I lived in the Shafer dorm right next to the track, so I’ve persevered through those hopeless mornings before. Now, my brethren, sophomores and freshmen, are struggling through the process on their own. I want them to know they have a voice here at the Rogue Wave column.
I will not pretend I know the women’s soccer practice schedule, but I will say it’s always super early in the morning during the week and on the track. The track is like a Shakespearean amphitheater that works to distend any noise coming from its field like a natural megaphone across the hills of this campus. Each morning the soccer team practiced last year I would wake up well before my alarm and stare at the ceiling for an hour, contemplating whether I should throw on my slippers and robe and walk outside, wiry hair and all, to tell them all to “KEEP IT DOWN!”
The quirky dad in me would always deflate under the notion that these poor girls were out there working their butts off way before anyone else, bettering themselves physically and emotionally while others tried to sleep, all partially against their will.
I get that. But what I will never get is their need to sound like the seagulls from “Finding Nemo” for two hours before the sun is up. I can’t describe how many times I woke up in a sweat last year to the tune of “MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! BALL? MINE!”
It was at those times I got right with God and understood my demise would come at the hands of a flock of animated seagulls. And yet still I’m here.
Listen, I’m all for Title IX and athletic competition on the collegiate level, and I think those girls make the whole school look good when they win games. But the rest of us need to sleep. Maybe the mornings are the only time you guys can all come together to practice, but could you maybe, just maybe, for the sake of all things sacred, keep the shouting and bellowing affirmations to a bare minimum?
Signed,
Ben Holcomb, Sound Police
