Mark Madsen Diary #7 - 2/16/00Being a college athlete takes a lot of committment. During the season, our strength coach Mike Bradley puts all of the players through an intensive strength maintenance program on a weekly, personalized basis. Curtis Borchardt (frosh forward/center) and I meet with Mike on Monday mornings at 6:30am to kick off the week right. We then meet with him later in the week on an individualized basis. It is amazing to walk into the weight room so early in the morning see so many athletes from other teams hard at work trying to condition and strengthen themsleves. This last Monday we saw Troy Walters (All-American wide receiver) in there running at the fastest levels on the treadmill. Troy is about 5'8" which some people consider to be short for playing wide receiver. The amazing thing is how Troy has been able to dominate the entire Pac-10 and country despite the fact that he is not as tall as many other receivers. I'm sure that Troy has heard all of his life from people who said "Troy, you'll have a tough time playing at the college level because of the height thing." Well Troy is one of the finest athletes ever to come to Stanford in the history of the school and he is walking proof that if you put in the time, work, and effort anything is possible. Troy will be drafted into the NFL in a few weeks where I believe he will have a tremendous career. Troy refused to listen to the people who didn't believe that he could be a world-class football player and he just went out there and did it. He believed in himself in the classroom and on the playing field. Troy runs the 40 yard sprint at extremely low times (even judged on the NFL standard) and has spent many long hours in the weightroom, and working on his receiving skills. He wasn't even supposed to play in the Rose Bowl because of a major wrist injury, but somehow found a way to go out there and make amazing catches even with one hand in a soft cast and all bandaged up.Being a member of the Stanford athletic community is like being part of a big family. A lot of the members of other teams really support us at our games and we appreciate it. We look at what they are doing with their teams and it makes us want to work hard in basketball. Getting back to our own team, Curtis is out right now with a stress reaction in his foot and that is a huge blow to the team. This whole season, we have relied on Curtis to come into games and basically dominate defensively while being a scoring threat inside and at the top of the key. He has done that and much more. In our win against Auburn, Curtis went for 15 points including the clinching three pointer with about a minute left in the game. To be 6'11" and so versatile makes Curtis very difficult to play against. Curt always jokes around about things and is always smiling. Guys on the team call him Mantis because a few years ago he and some of his friends were watching the nature channel and saw a preying mantis. All his friends looked at the preying mantis and then at Curt and just gave him the nickname. We're hoping that he's only out for a week or so and that we can get him back for the Washington road trip, which has been a very tough trip for us over the years. Other than having some unexpected injuries, the team is in good spirits. We're just trying to go out to practice and improve every day with hopes that we can win some more games. Something really funny happened the other day in practice. David Moseley was setting a screen and somebody twisted his elbow pretty badly by accident. Dave went down for a second in pain and then bounced up as we kept on playing. He was holding his elbow because it hurt. I had the ball and passed it to him. Once he got the ball in his hands, the pain in his elbow seemed to go away and he launched a three pointer. After the play, Mendez said "Wow Dave, your elbow got better pretty quick once you got the ball in your hands." Dave started laughing and we all started laughing pretty hard. We've got a tough game coming up against Cal this Saturday afternoon. Last time we played Cal, it was a very close game and they played us really physically. Coach Braun has his team playing well and it will be a battle. Our campus normally gets pretty fired up when we play against our rival. I'm sure that there will even be students sleeping out in the rain to get good seats for the game. We have the best fans in the country! |