hbfs

I have a teammate, T.
I was a freshman with T. We're from the same state, and honestly, I think she's a sweetheart. But she has an incredible number of issues.

Freshman year, T had the most visible eating disorder on the team. And that was the year of the eating disorders. She ate raw fruits and vegetables, soy milk, and tea. Before coming to school, she had never visited. She went to a boarding school, and she figured she could be happy anywhere (and we had given her the best aid). She was miserable. She quit in the middle of indoor track.

She rejoined sophomore year. We had thought she was going to transfer, but she opted not to because her major wasn't offered at the other school. She still didn't eat. She also was overcommitted and kept terrible hours. When you don't eat AND don't sleep, you break down really fast. She wasn't as fast sophomore year. In fact, I beat her at every race we ran, except for the one where I had food poisoning and barfed, literally, at the starting line. Incidentally, she quit after that meet. Coach didn't tell the team that she had quit until after a week had passed.
I felt really betrayed by that. I did a lot of training with T, and she disappeared, and she let me down. I communicated that with my coach at the time, but all he said was, "Maybe I should ask her to make a statement to the team."

She spent all of junior year abroad. From the sound of things, she enjoyed her time studying away. From the look of things, the issues did not resolve.

I think she is an INCREDIBLY sweet girl, but I haven't been able to shake how I felt let  down by her (twice). And I really, really don't have the mental or emotional energy left to deal with her food issues again. It is SUCH a terrible situation. And it's like as young women, we're programmed to compare our dinner plates' to our peers and place value on who is eating less food than us! And being PC and liberal and whatnot, NOBODY stopped and said, "Wait, this behavior is abnormal and it concerns me." No one had ever acknowledged T's problems to me until THIS SPRING. THIS SPRING, we were sitting at dinner - one of my former co-captains (K1), my new co-captain (A), and two of our newer runners, freshman A and sophomore L. And K1 acknowledged to me that there WAS in fact something profoundly wrong with the way that T ate. I told K1, "Someone just told me she had severe dietary restrictions, and I never even questioned it."
For this reason, body dissatisfaction and food issues are SO contagious on women's teams. T's eating disorder spurned on one of my other teammate's (I think because K2 viewed it as competition) - but because my other teammate's eating disorder was more established, T's slipped by the wayside, despite being 100% more visible than K2's. At least Katie MADE a plate and pushed it around with her fork, even if all she did it was cooked cabbage, maybe the steamed vegetables. T infected some of my perfectly healthy teammates. One of the other girls in my class, M, is naturally very thin. She ate french fries, drank regular soda, and never ate salads. And I'm not just blaming T here, I also blame a few of M's other friends from her floor, but through those influences, M lost some of that. She eats salads with balsamic vinegar, and she hasn't had a "regular" soda since preseason of our freshman year. I don't think it was out of jealousy or a desire to emulate her peers - I think she felt badly about being effortlessly thin.

This is just awful. I feel like I'm reacting emotionally and not logically. Logically, T would be a good addition to the team. T is fast and will almost certainly score points for us. T is sweet - though we actually started off on some rocky notes, we get along fine now. But I can't help but feel like my personal judgment is preventing me from reacitng to this situation rationally. But on the other hand, I feel like my concerns ARE valid. T starves herself, and she's quit twice. What will make this time different?

I feel like as a captain, it's my job to PROTECT my team. We have eight freshmen right now. They're babies!  They are just as susceptible to the same old shit that infected the team when I was a freshman and sophomore. I don't want them to feel betrayed by a teammate. I don't want them to compare their dinner to T's and cast off their dessert in favor of lettuce, grapes, balsamic vinegar, and green tea. Last year was a building year. The foundation is in place. Now we want to GO somewhere with it. I don't want us to go taking steps backward this year. I was MISERABLE freshman and sophomore years on the cross-country team.

I voiced my concern to my coach, and I'm sure we're about to be in a fight over it. I emailed T and directed her to the team's summer website. I emailed A to tell her to expect me and Coach to be in a fight.

God. I don't have the energy for this.
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