There is no good way to start this column.

I tried a million different ways to begin before I finally settled on what you just read, and I settled because I realized that what you just read is painfully true. There is no opening that adequately represents the beginning of the end.

This is the final column I’ll write for Pipe Dream. This newspaper has meant a great deal to me, and even though I came on board later than I should have, I learned a lot. And if there’s one thing I really did learn in my time at this school, it’s the following:

You don’t have to play for a varsity team at Binghamton for athletics to be the launching pad to your success as a Bearcat.

My four years at Binghamton have been a crazy ride, as it has been for all of us. And suffice it to say I was fortunate to be at a school where the opportunities never stop presenting themselves.

I didn’t do much freshman year, so I’ll jump to the spring of 2005 when some interesting stuff finally started to happen. I took sports writing that semester. I kept talking in class, intriguing some and annoying most. Green Day also came to campus. The concert was great, and I stood in that long-ass line with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while.

So how does this all come together?

Well, when I got back for my junior year, I got an e-mail requesting my presence at a Pipe Dream general interest meeting because apparently the people I was in sports writing with remembered that I had some clue about what I was talking about. I was also given a seat on the Hillel-JSU leadership council as sports programming coordinator, after the friend who I waited on line for Green Day with suggested it.

That’s when everything took off. Working for Hillel, I made enough of an impression organizing athletic events that the outgoing executive board asked me to run for treasurer, a position I still hold. That led to a position as this year’s treasurer for the Student Association.

Working for the paper, I was able to benefit the campus. I became assistant editor this year, and I used skills I learned here as editor of the sports section of the yearbook for the last two years as well.

I also held a sports marketing internship as a sophomore, and even if I didn’t see how much it helped at the time, my involvement with all this other stuff led me back to those same people at the Events Center. They became a part of my family here in Binghamton, as did everyone who I worked with in any of the positions I held.

So you can see that whether through class, the Events Center, this publication, campus recreation or even just operating a student group, athletics at BU can open doors for you that you would have never realized.

I never wore a Bearcats uniform. I never tried out. I never put on batting gloves, stood in goal or took the court.

I never wanted to either.

I was content to live my life at college as an obscure kid in Hinman, the one who carried that Olum’s chair onto the court for contests and put together volleyball teams for intramurals.

But somehow that led to bigger things. I achieved a lot here, and it all started with the athletics. It’s the foundation that my growth here was built on, and it led me to great jobs, and more importantly, great people, which is what made college the great four years it was for me.

On that note, I’d like to thank a group of people that doesn’t get thanked enough, and that’s all of you, our reading base. We work like hell to put out two issues a week, and we do it because we appreciate the fact that you guys pick up the paper every time we do it.

You can think some of the things we print are nuts, you can second guess us and call us crazy, and that’s only fair. But when I walk around campus on Tuesday or Friday and see someone reading something I wrote or helped lay out, it means that my time was worth something. And feeling worthwhile is all I ever needed.

And with that, I’d like to thank you all. You made my experience as a Bearcat an incredible one, and it is that, above all else, for which I am most eternally grateful.

Good night, Binghamton.

BOXXXX

Special thanks to Doc, D.O.B., John Hartrick, Anthony, Sue, Eric and everyone else who helped on game days. Also Bette Anne, Dave Simek and Erin Rurey who bleed green and black. Also a big thanks (seriously) to Zeidel and everyone else who made PD production nights proof that this paper truly does gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober. Biggest thanks go to Sean Lishansky who got me in here and taught me a ton, and Mark Macyk, who helped me fine tune my writing and made me realize you can say more in 700 words than you can in 1,500. The last thank you goes to Michael Borress ‘ there’s no one better to share an office with, and even though the stuff he says is insane and he almost ruined my life, all’s well that ends well. I’ll always have your back, son.