Simeon Lane ’19 is a defensive lineman on the football team. Off the field, he is concentrating in philosophy and getting a certificate in Chinese language and culture. We caught up with Lane on a Tuesday in October as the team was preparing to face Brown (the Tigers won, 53–0). Here’s how he described his day.
Meeting We have early-morning meetings every Tuesday, so I was up at 5:45. The whole team has to meet at McDonnell, and they have D’Angelo’s breakfast wraps for us. We usually talk about the game the weekend before, things we have to get better at and correct. We break up by defense and offense, so it gets a little more specific with what the defense needs to do this week. I had to give a scouting report on the Brown center — his height, weight, some of his tendencies when he plays, ways that we can take advantage of him. We’ll watch film, talk about the other team — what they like to do, what kind of plays they like to run. We put in some new plays that will help us against Brown, and then we had a walk-through of the plays outside.
Lifting weights From there we usually go right to the stadium for lifts, and that usually starts around 8:30. Tuesdays are usually upper-body lifts, so we’ll do bench presses, pull-ups — everybody does their own thing. On bench press I can lift around 390 to 395 pounds.
Chinese 403 I took Chinese for four years in high school, and I thought I would just do the three semesters I needed and be done with it. My freshman year, I took it both semesters, and then I did Princeton in Beijing. I definitely got a lot better when I was in Beijing and just kept going. I like how the classes are taught. Our topic on Tuesday was China entering the World Trade Organization and how globalization has helped China’s economy. I would say right now I’m definitely conversational, but I would need to go back and probably live there another month or two before I can confidently say I’m fluent.
Cottage Club Lunch was chicken parm, and we ate outside on the patio. I did eat with my teammates, but there’s more than just the football team out there. My closest group of friends, we all decided together that we would do Cottage. Most of the team goes to Cannon, which is fine, but it seemed like we would get to meet a different variety of people if we joined Cottage. It’s pretty friendly; I mean everybody seems to get along with everybody no matter what their affiliation is. Right after lunch, I did [class]work at Cottage. It really is a good place to get work done because it’s usually pretty quiet.
Rest I walked back to my room and took a nap. I take a nap pretty much every day, unless I just don’t have time. I set up my schedule so I can nap just before practice. I just feel like I perform better at practice, I remember things that we talked about in the morning a lot better, and I have more energy to work hard the whole practice. Practices are really fast-paced, so it’s pretty important to be well-rested coming into them.
Taking care I rode my bike down to the training room at Caldwell [Field House]. I usually stretch and get some ice if I need it, and then I’ll go back to the locker room and get ready for practice. It’s a normal thing to prevent injury, make sure I’m healthy and everything is loose going into practice. We definitely do a lot of things [to take injuries seriously]. We have these monitors that you wear around your chest and it tracks your heart rate, your max speed during practice, how far you ran, different things like that. Every morning, we have a daily survey and it tracks how much rest you got, how sore you’re feeling, how hydrated you are, if you’re feeling fatigued. The coaches use that information to track how we’re doing in practice, make sure they’re not overworking us, make sure they’re not going too easy on us.
Practice The offense and defense always have a scout team, younger players who aren’t on the travel rosters. They’ll run the other team’s plays, and we’ll practice those plays. Practice is usually two hours. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are our tougher practices: They’re full pads, and we’re all-out during those practices. It’s definitely a focused environment because you’re trying to perfect your technique for the games. We all understand that working hard at practice is what’s going to make us good in games and will lead us to win the Ivy League.
Evening I walked up to Cottage with a few teammates — dinner was salmon and mussels. After dinner, I went to the East Asian library to work on a philosophy homework assignment. I’m in Philosophy 313, “Theory of Knowledge.” It’s basically talking about: How can you know if you’re right in certain situations? How can you give your judgment or your rationale? I’m also in my junior seminar for philosophy. I feel like this seminar will really help me be familiar with this one philosopher, Kierkegaard, and understand his thoughts and philosophies. Hopefully, from that I can have a junior-paper idea. Then I went back to my room and chilled out with my roommates, played some video games, then went to sleep around 11 p.m.