SPC athlete bitten by snake
by Caroline Basile, staff writer
A member of the South Plains
College track and field team was bitten by a snake
recently.
Christopher Johnson, a native of
Okinawa, Japan, was bitten on the leg on Sept. 5 as he was
walking off of the grass infield and onto the track.
“I was walking,” Johnson said. “and I
thought I was stepping on some sticks, and then I looked
down and saw the stick moving and realized it was a snake.”
“It was definitely an odd thing,”
Coach Chris Beene said. “In my entire coaching career, I
have never seen anything like this happen at practice.”
Beene added that some of his athletes
were afraid the snake was a rattle snake, but he identified
it as a bull snake.
“I was just holding my leg,” Johnson
added, “because I didn’t know if it was poisonous or not.”
Johnson is doing well. The snake bite was not poisonous, and
he returned to practice when the team met again on Sept. 7.
