By Scott Olberding
October 31, 2017
The Man, The Myth, The Legend. My college roommate, Robert Cosby, completed his 2010 season at the WCC Cross Country Championships at Crystal Springs. As the fourth, fifth and sixth Pilot harriers crossed the line, the University of San Francisco fans started chanting “USF! USF!” and we assumed that they had won. We had held out 4 of our varsity athletes and we were charged by Coach Rob Conner to win the conference title. It turns out that UP still squeaked out the victory 36 – 43. I finished 27th as our team’s sixth man.
One unique thing about that race – 10 minutes before the race, Rob Cosby realized that he left his singlet at the hotel.
We stood in our pre-race tent, frantically ripping the sleeves off of his purple warm up while Rob Conner ran to the official’s tent to procured a new bib number for Cosby.
Rob ran the race in his new kit, he finished as our fifth man, and we won our 32nd consecutive Conference Championship.
Soon after the race, Cosby found his original singlet in his backpack, folded nicely in a separate compartment.
Scott Olberding
Full-time accountant, amateur marathoner and statistics editor for Citius Mag. Focused on creating arithmetic visualization and writing narrative for data-centric athletic ideas. Founding member of the JBAC and University of Portland Alumnus. Hosted Paul Snyder on his recruiting trip to UP, taking him to an Astronomy class. Although Paul did not commit, they have since become great friends.