(Writer's Note: First off, Happy New Year! I can't believe that I'm writing this now - 25 years after graduating from college! It's been a while since I wrote a blog entry, and this is one that I think of when I look back at my college years.)
I have mentioned it before that doing a senior thesis on sports, in art school made you feel like you were left alone on an island, sort-of-speak. While I found a handful of professors who loved sports, no one possessed the ability of 'lacrosse talk'. I couldn't blame them and always knew what I was dealing with. But thinking back on it carefully, I don't think I really told this part of my experience.
Back in art school, my fraternity (yes, we had a Greek system in art school) required all fraternities and sororities to have faculty advisors. Our advisor was the assistant to the Dean of the Library named Vincent Valenti. While he wasn't an art professor, or had any artistic skills to show off, he happened to have played Division 1 Lacrosse at Towson State University (now called Towson University). A native from the lacrosse-hotbed of Baltimore, he played his high school lacrosse at Calvert Hall - a nationally ranked program. Regardless of him not being an art professor, I asked if he could advise me on my senior thesis - lacrosse art.
Going into his office on a weekly basis to show the progression of my lacrosse art/senior thesis was always full of positive energy - ALWAYS! It was lacrosse player to lacrosse player. He knew everything that I was trying to communicate to my art professors. It felt liberating not to have any debates and the pure enjoyment of just speaking lacrosse enabled that ability of 'locker room talk', which I greatly missed, back then! One of the really cool things is that there were a couple of times we would have a catch on campus with my sticks that I had with me.
While I've said that I felt that my senior thesis fell on 'deaf ears', Vincent Valenti's unofficial 'art advising' made up for it. After graduation I went on with adult life like you're supposed to, and didn't really keep in touch or visited campus often. But, I don't think I ever thanked Vincent Valenti enough and I really regret not doing that before graduation. I'd love to show him what that senior thesis eventually became, and finally thank him.
If anyone knows of Mr. Vincent Valenti (Baltimore, MD. Calvert Hall HS, Towson State University Lacrosse), please feel free to get in touch. Thanks in advance!
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