Penn Relays

He's not the kind of person, I think people think he's got his crew or his whatever, but he is a generally kind and accepting and thoughtful person.

It's just when you get him in front of the camera and he's excited because he just won a big race at Penn Relays and that's his dream has been to run at Penn Relays and to win and he just did it.

What do you expect? expect a kid to do like

no and and again i aspire to be like marco and you're asking me questions i'm pausing to like say the right word and he doesn't do that we should all be like that like he's just he's just speaking he's

I think it was Graham Blanks or something or Colin Solomon.

But, you know, now they're good friends because the thing about Marco is that, you know, Marco will give anybody a chance like he he does not he's not the kind of person I think people think he's got like his crew or his his like you know he's whatever but he is like a generally kind and accepting and thoughtful person and it's just when you get him in front of the camera and he's excited because he just won a big race at Penn Relays and that's like his dream has been to run at Penn Relays and to win and he just did it what do you expect the kid to do like

no I know and and Again, I aspire to be like Marco.

You're asking me questions.

Where is it?

I wonder why, um, the Penn Relays don't get as much acknowledgement, like, or I feel like I haven't seen that much change or people...

I feel like the Penn Relays used to be really, really big.

It, it, it did, right?

Like, people used to-

I remember people used to travel into, um-

For sure.

I used to be at Penn Relays every single year.

Penn's greatest athlete with the problematic nickname.

When I first looked for the final resting place of Major League Baseball player, college football All-American, Penn Relay decathlon champion Joseph Howard Berry Jr., a member of the University of Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, I felt as if I'd stepped into an escape room.

The Laurel Hill app and Find a Grave both place him in niche 67 of the tower room.

That's an aptly described place.

That career carried him to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1964.

Barry played his Penn football at Franklin Field, already one of the country's great athletic stages.

Opened in 1895 for the Penn Relays, and then rebuilt between 1903 and 1905 with Waitman Hall, permanent grandstands, and stadium features designed by Frank Miles Day and brother, Franklin Field had become the natural home for Penn football, track, and spectacle by the time Berry arrived.

There was even a brief 1916 proposal that was led by university officials and city planners to abandon that setting for a 100,000-seat, half-sunken stadium at Woodland Ravine, complete with ambitious rail and transit connections.

You know, we talked about, you know, my dad running for Adidas, my mom, you know, she's Big East champion, national champion.

You know, I was going to Penn Relay since I was, gosh, probably had to be six years old.

You know, I've been going to track meet since I was two.

I grew up, you know, the UF track was my playground.

And I guess, like, there's, it, it, it's so fascinating because there's so much philosophy that you nail down in just sort of how you've examined what running gives people all throughout, just sort of the activity, just sort of, you know, when, when they're racing, when they're training.

But at the same time, it's like you also write about so many shortcomings, whether it's, you know, Penn Relays, sub-four.

So what was sort of the hardest part in trying to be, uh, to, to nail down, like, this is what running has given me, but at the same time, like, these are also the other harder moments that, uh, running has dealt me?

Yeah, the hard parts weren't hard to write at all.

Like, yeah, it broke my heart, but I mean, it also was a safe place to do it.

Sport is a great place to be vulnerable and have your heart broken and still be protected in many ways.

So if you understand that, then it's gonna help you when you leave Penn Relays with a broken heart, and you're gonna realize, "Okay, you know, I, I can, I can come back and I can race again." Now, if, if you don't let that bleed into the rest of your life, I mean, I think you're missing so much of what this sport has to offer.

What was the moment in the recording studio that, do we get a, a choked-up moment, like some, uh, some quivering? Uh, like what-