Far, far, far above Cayuga’s waters there is a brick and wooden building known as the Africana Center. To get there you must first journey over the bridge connecting North Campus to the rest of the world, past the collection of freshman dorms, up past sorority houses, Jessup soccer fields and then, just when you think you must have gone too far, taken a wrong turn, something, you see the sign welcoming you to the Village of Cayuga Heights. Now go past that sign, and there, on your left, stands your destination. The distance of this building would not seem relevant to this column — with the obvious exception that it has noticeably increased my physical fitness — except that every Tuesday and Thursday, in a little basement classroom, five students gather to discuss something very relevant to this column, they gather to argue and read about, to live and breathe about nothing but sports.

Professor Grant Farred is a man of average height and weight. He favors three-piece suits, speaks with a slight accent and gold hoops glitter in both earlobes. His seminar, ASRC 2505, Literature, Sport and Ideology, is quite possibly the best class on sports writing you’ve absolutely never heard of. And that, in all seriousness, is a tragedy.

The modest classroom requisitioned for the six of us is mustard yellow in color, with a fireplace in the back (I have no idea for what reason) and a large window that takes up almost the entire left wall, giving the class an absolutely surreal view of a grassy field and beyond that woods and the occasional family of deer. For that hour and a quarter, the world as we know it literally disappears.

In this class, sport is not an afterthought, it is the only thought. In this bastion of sporting fervor, it does not matter that most of my friends care next to nothing about the results of the weekend’s football game, or volleyball tournament, or dramatic, overtime field hockey victory. I can shout about my deep-seated dislike for Alex Rodriguez and no one will look at me like I’m crazy — although they will shout right back.

On the first day of class, Professor Farred walked into the room and immediately started firing off questions and facts and quotations — the man has an incredible memory. One minute he was relating the details of a basketball game he’d watched in the 80s and the next he was quizzing us on our worldview as it related to our favorite baseball and football teams.

My professor’s unbridled enthusiasm and passion for competition of all kinds was on my mind this past Saturday as I walked towards Newman Arena for the culminating match of the volleyball team’s Invitational. As I passed through the engineering quad I was astonished to find a lively game of cricket had sprung up in the middle of the grassy space. Enthralled, I forgot about volleyball and sat down on a bench to watch. The men had a full set up, complete with wickets and cones marking off the boundaries. As an added coincidence, we had just finished a book about cricket — Beyond the Boundary — in Farred’s class. Reading about the action that author C.LR. James described growing up in the West Indies took on an exotic feel somehow — who plays cricket in America, anyway? — here was a game in full swing, here were the batsmen, the fielders and the pitchers, with their funny shuffling style so unlike baseball technique.

The fading sun glinted off the windows of Duffield Hall as I sat, transfixed, watching the players run and hit and catch while around and through the game walked bemused students, hurrying home for supper or to prepare for a night out and completely unprepared for the crack of the bat and the flying projectiles now imperiling the walk home.

Sadly, the peace was eventually broken as the game ended, leaving me alone again on the quad.

Next, I continued up to Bartels Hall to watch the volleyball team compete against a tough Buffalo squad, eventually falling to the Bulls in straight sets. It was not a banner weekend for the club, which had already lost earlier in the day to St. John’s. And yet never once did the players look defeated, even as they started to fall behind in the third and final set. Sophomore Kelly Hansen, dressed in warm-ups due to injury, kept the energy on the sidelines high, and each player coming off the court was subjected to a full gauntlet of encouragement and high fives. Here, again, was why I love covering Cornell sports. There may only have been 100 people in the stands — including, I was interested to see, women’s basketball head coach Dayna Smith, showing her support for her comrades in Red — but the energy level was high and the pep band was rockin’. It was everything that collegiate sports should be: dramatic, hard-fought and exciting (the loss be damned).

I left Newman intending to hurry home at last, but yet another distraction slowed my step as I walked past Schoellkopf Field. The football team was long gone, but the field lights burned brightly in the chilly air and I swore I could hear the faint echo of an announcer.

Intrigued, my feet pulled me inexorably down the ramp and into the stands, filled haphazardly with a motley crew of parents and small children. I had wandered into the middle of a Small Fry Senior League game between the Lansing Bobcats and Trumansburg Raiders. Without quite knowing why I was doing it, I took a seat next to a family of four. The mother was wrapped tight in a flannel blanket and reading a book, while her two small boys paced the railing restlessly. It wasn’t the most even contest; the Bobcats were administering a serious beating to their peewee counterparts.

A group of cheerleaders stood facing the crowd, their blue and gold pompoms poised for the next cheer. The girls ran the gamut of sizes; they had not yet been forced to collide with the stereotypes and insecurities inherent of future cheer squads. Their innocence was endearing, as were their cheers: “… When I say boogie, you say down!”

Some of the 6th and 7th grade boys on the Lansing team were so small they appeared to be swimming in their pads and helmet. When they took field goals, the front line of the kicking team fell flat to avoid being hit in the head by the low-flying PAT attempts.

Maybe it was the way the lights were reflecting off the windows of the field house, or the faint haze that was rising from the grass, but there was something amazingly poetic about the scene. Whenever one of the boys had to be helped off the field after a particularly hard tackle, the echo of applause — from spectators on both sides — caromed off the stadium walls.

From a pick-up cricket game to a Division I tournament to a contest between grade school boys, my night had come full circle. As I walked home, finally, I reflected on the evening and something that Professor Farred had said on our very first day.

“Sport doesn’t have an afterlife,” he told us, with a completely straight face. “It lives for an eternity.”

Now that’s not something you hear very often on the Hill. But Saturday night as I watched the newest generation of little athletes run and catch, perfect miniatures of the (comparatively) hulking athletes who’d occupied the field not six hours earlier, I couldn’t help but agree, smiling and nodding to myself as I walked home in the gathering dark.