Koerner: A Jock of A Different Ilk

To the non-jock, football players and hockey players, soccer men and wrestlers all seem to blur into one, large hunk. But cross country runners always have seemed different-somehow not your basic jocks.

For one thing, as a friend who several years ago walked briskly once around Holyoke Center, has pointed out, "it's just not natural." His point, I think, is that football and soccer are the kind of things everyone engages in at one time or another. But whoever heard of a Sunday afternoon pick-up cross country meet? There is a professionalism, a pure individual drive, built into the sport.

Sophomore harrier Mike Koerner finished first in his varsity debut this fall against Northeastern. Since that initiation, he has never come in worse than second.

Born in Hamburg, Germany, Koerner was known at his high school in Michigan as "the Hun with a Gun," because when he wasn't running, he liked to organize the student body into vast war game simulations.

"When he wasn't running." however, was and is almost never. "I'm not a natural athlete." Koerner admits. so he just runs and runs to make up for it. He has had to take things easy this season because of an injury suffered a year ago that could flare up at any time. But he still worked out at least twice a day throughout the summer, giving him a jump on some of the other members of the team during the early part of the season.

Why does Koerner do it? Is it ego? What possesses the man? Koerner himself is confused.

"I enjoy feeling power over myself. I like some of the people on the team, and I can't do anything else around here." he says. "I was going to quit running after my senior year, but I wanted to break 4:20 in the mile, so I ran all summer and I was hooked again. It goes in four-year cycles, and once you're trapped, you're trapped."

Further clarification: He tells his non-jock interviewer with disdain, "Never in your life have you had to suffer any physical pain."

People quit football because they find it is swallowing up their life while there are more important things going on. For Koerner, cross-country is-if not a spiritual experience-at least something that has "nothing to do with the rest of the world."

A self-styled radical (beard), he skipped class but worked out on October 15. In "real life," he is majoring in Biochemistry, having switched from government, and does not go to football games. He rooms with two other runners and enjoys operating a bulldozer.

Race Today

In this afternoon's Big Three meet against Princeton and Yale. Koerner and cross country captain Keith Colburn face a tense four-way competition with Rich Stafford and Eamon Downey of Princeton. In last year's freshman Big Three meet his first after recuperating from his injury. Koerner came in second to his present roommate. Bob Seals.

Koerner claims he really would like to play football or hockey except that "I'm too small and uncoordinated." But, he admits, "I'm really not a jock. It's just that some people are into music, some are drug dealers-I'm a runner."