My role as a multi-sport star at Jesus College in the early 1980s may have gone largely unnoticed by anyone but myself, but since I did notice, and since sports were pretty central to my Jesus existence while I did a DPhil in Modern History (specifically, Anglo-Norman Warfare), I thought I’d share.

Sadly (or perhaps luckily!), almost no photographs exist to document these feats (can you believe that there were no cell phones in 1980-83?), but what is narrated here is totally true, even if seen through a somewhat self-regarding set of eyes.

I arrived at Jesus for the Michaelmas term in 1980. By the spring, I had joined the Jesus rowing collective and rowed in the 1981 Eights Week at #5 in the fifth boat (rowing Smaug, the heavy-as-&%#$, clinker-built shell reserved for the bottom of the collective). We were myself, an American who had never rowed before, and seven undergraduate lawyers. Naturally we called ourselves the Legisleight.

 

The following year, I moved up to the second seat in the second eight, a boat which earned three bumps in Eights Week, was denied a fourth – our oars only by a bump in front of us on the final day; we missed the overbump by mere feet. This proved particularly frustrating when I took a professorial job at Wabash College in Indiana and discovered, in the attic of my building, an oar won decades before by Jesus College man Lew Salter, the then recently-deceased former President of Wabash. A bump short of a tradition!

I rowed with a Jesus College intramural team for a bit and more recently , in 2019, helped Jen Kiesling, a fellow American Oxonian, coach the US Military Academy crew on the Hudson in West Point. Rowing thus constitutes probably my most “real” Jesus sporting legacy.

But while at Jesus, I also put together a Jesus intramural basketball team. I advertised our team slogan as “Jumpin’ for Jesus!”

I also organized a Jesus College softball team, and made extensive use of the Jesus grass tennis courts out by the married student housing.

But most importantly, in my mind anyway, was my cricket career at Jesus. Again, I’m an American. I had no familiarity with the great game before arriving at Oxford. But I’m a sports omnivore and a quick learner, and it was during my first term that Admiral Jamieson walked into the SCR to find me following a test match between England and the great Viv Richards West Indies team (England were getting thrashed, as I remember) on the SCR TV. He asked me, clearly amused, how the match was going, and I surprised him with a cogent report. I was hooked (I remember listening on BBC overnight to the amazing Fourth Test Ashes match that England won by 3 runs when they finally put out the Aussie wicketkeeper, who had led a last-wicket comeback, in 1982.) So naturally when the Jesus cricket team was organized that Spring, I joined up.

The highlight of the season was when the GCR organized a “Wales vs Rest-of-the-World” match. I led off for Rest of the World… and carried my bat through the innings, 37 not out. Which, if you think about it, makes it unsurprising that Rest of the World lost the match pretty badly. I mean, 37? (“I coulda scored more if my teammates had been able to at least defend their stumps!” – post game quote I didn’t make at the time).

Unwilling to give up the game when I moved back to New Orleans in 1983, I founded the Crescent City Cricket Club, on organization that still exists, thanks mostly to local South Asians and West Indians. And then I also put together a cricket club at Wabash College, where I finally refined an almost-barely-adequate off spin delivery. Both clubs’ origins were at Jesus College, and this, above all else, speaks to the importance of the College’s Sports and Wellness grounds and programs.