10/25/2002 (O.S.H.I.T. article from Mike)

This is not one of my articles this was my roommate who took over the sports editorship for a year I thought it was quality.
 Is it just me, or is this campus filled with gimps and handicaps all of a sudden? I must have had at least eight sightings of people on crutches as of late (including myself), and an uncountable amount of people limping around. It started Sunday, the 13th, when the Pikes played Lambda Chi in flag football. Two Lambda Chi players were taken out within two drives of each other. The next day both men were on crutches. As the week progressed, more and more injury-prone students found themselves dependent on some sort of walking aid, from crutches to various braces. The injuries continued through last weekend; IM soccer team International Fury suffered a costly loss when one of their players had to be taken to Holms Hospital during their game against French Connexion when he and a French player collided midair and he landed horribly wrong. Even Florida Tech varsity teams have been plagued with injuries the past couple of week. Volleyball coach Cody Hein has commented on numerous occasions about the team’s key players being nagged with injuries and pains. It seems that it is still safe to play IM volleyball and water polo. Volleyball is starting to wear on students’ bodies though, as the appearance of various braces and pads are becoming all more frequent. One volleyball player went to a game, crutches in hand, played a little (more like limped around the court for a while), and than staggered home on the crutches after the game. Crutches were once used to be a great sympathy attractors, where guys would get girls attention and help by simply letting out a deep breath and slight sigh of pain. Now we have to come up with a different, more original way to get girls interest which makes life even harder, plus we still have the crutches to deal with. Note for the curious: having crutches is NOT fun. When you do not need them you wish you had a pair, so you could race and fence with them, but once you have them you would rather stubble around in pain than rely on them for support. They are clumsy, hard to control in the beginning, and give you never ending wedgies in your armpits that drive you crazy! If you have not noticed, this school is not exactly handicap friendly either. The dorms in dorm quad do not have elevators, only a seemingly endless amount of stairs that lead to bolted doors. How are the gimps of Florida Tech expected to not only walk up staircase after staircase but to also, when they are out of breath and sweating, manage to handle the clumsy crutches and get their keys to unlock the door? The greatest fear of any gimp (speaking out of experience) in that situation is dropping the keys before you open the door, because once they are on the ground they might as well stay there. It takes too much time and effort to attempt to pick them up. If you find yourself in this situation, just let the keys go. Your best bet is to make a lot of noise in hopes someone will come to your aid. If this injury trend continues through the rest of the semester, the school could sponsor a Florida Tech IM Special Olympics as early as Thanksgiving. Soon enough our student government will have to organize shuttle trips to the pharmacy and hospital, for students to get checked out and pick up their pain killers and medicine. There seem to be enough injured students out there now that they could ban together and form their own student organization. Florida Tech has CSA, as well as various sororities and fraternities. Soon Florida Tech will be blessed with the newest student organization, the Organization of Students Hurt Injured or Traumatized.