Few cross country runners know home course better than Nicholls’ Futey
Perhaps no collegiate cross country runner knows his home course more intimately than Lucas Futey, a member of the men’s team at Nicholls.
That’s because no one spends more time running the course and studying its environs than the junior marine biology major.
The Nicholls Farm is a 277-acre farm three miles south of the Nicholls campus in Thibodaux and serves as an environmental research and education center for Nicholls and other partners. It consists of labs, classrooms, greenhouses, shade houses, storage barns, and a 7.5-acre pond for wetland plant production.
Known simply as The Farm, the site will be the course for the Nicholls XC Invitational to be held Saturday morning.
All the time spent on the course and at The Farm, Futey said, should prove helpful come race day.
“It definitely helps to be out here so often, seeing not just the area of the cross country course, but all the areas that are surrounding it,” said Futey. “There’s definitely a thing of home-field advantage. It’s hard for us to train here, so I know when other teams come out here and run, it’s like, ‘man, it’s kind of hard to run out here.’ The grass can be kind of hard to run in. The ground can be a little bit uneven. So there’s definite a benefit to running the course and even just driving around the area to know what it looks like – to know how to approach the situations and terrains as it comes.”
As a budding scientist, Futey’s particular interest is herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians. It’s an interest that traces back to his childhood in New Mexico.
“Since I’ve been little, I was always about snakes and frogs and turtles. I was always trying to grab the frogs on the playground, insects and stuff, too – which that’s not included in herpetology. Just looking at all that stuff, I always thought it was cool. I thought snakes were cool. Other people didn’t think they were cool,” Futey recalled.
Futey drifted away from his interest for a while as his track career was developing.
“I actually started college as an exercise science major to become a cross country, and track and field coach. Most of that time, I was like, ‘I’m not having fun with this. I want to go back into my interest in reptiles and amphibians.’ I had always been but had never really dove into, so when I was at my old school, (Pueblo Community College in Colorado), I did some research on box turtles, and when I transferred here, I emailed Dr. (Quenton) Fontenot in the (biology) department and asked him if anyone was doing any herpetology research that I could get involved with and got in contact with Dr. (Timothy) Clay. I went over to his office almost immediately and he got me started on the coverboards out here right away.”
“He had told me the story about working with box turtles,” said Clay, recalling his first encounter with Futey. “I remember we actually talked about that project because I actually independently knew about that project that Luke was working on. I didn’t know Luke, but I knew that research project. We talked about that and we talked about how we were doing something similar here with turtles, using the same sort of stuff.
“Then we got to talking about what he would like to do with his undergraduate career. What he was expecting and what he wanted to do with it. That’s how he ended up coming to be part of my lab, doing the research he’s doing right now at the farm. He kind of took over that, which was an undergraduate project as well.”
In the research world, a coverboard is used to help create an artificial environment for animals to take habit under. Coverboards are typically sheets of plywood or sheet metal, typically two feet by three-and-a-half feet or so and can easily be flipped to see what animals are using the habitat.
Usually once a week, Futey’s job is basically to check out what’s going on beneath the coverboards located in several different locations on The Farm.
“I start by just doing general statistics of the day. I take the UV (ultraviolet rays). I have a temperature gun and I take the temperature at the top of the board, lift up the board and take the temperature under it. While I’m taking the temperature under, I am counting the species of herpetofauna (reptiles and amphibians of a particular habitat),” he explained.
Futey said he has his favorites among reptiles and amphibians.
“I’m a big snake guy,” he declared. “Snakes are really what I want to go into in the future. Say, off the top of my head, my two favorites are hognosed snakes and king snakes.
“Hognosed snakes, we have them here in the U.S. There are three different species, arguably four. They are the southern hardnosed, which we have here (in Louisiana), but not in this area. The eastern hognosed, and the western hognosed, which I have back home in New Mexico. We have the southern and eastern here in Louisiana, but not in this specific area.”
A lot of people have a fear of snakes, but Futey is quick to defend what he feels are misunderstood creatures.
“The first reaction I usually get when I tell people, ‘oh, I’m really into snakes.’ I get, ‘oh, man, that’s scary,’” Futey said. “It’s just misconception in so much of our culture and the conversation around snakes and what dangers they actually can pose.
“The first question I always get is, ‘well, is that one poisonous?’ I always harp on it and people give me a hard time for it because it seems like semantics to most people, not common at least, no poisonous snakes. There are some that are around but you’re not really going to find them. Pretty much everything you are going to come into contact that’s dangerous is a venomous snake.”
“The example I always give for venom and poison to people is poisonous is if you bite it and you die. Venomous is if it bites you and you die,” he chuckled in a Sheldon Cooper-type The Big Bang fashion
Futey continued on what he called his ‘little side tangent.’
“I think it’s important,” Futey said, “because most people have the concept that every snake that you find is going to be venomous and it’s dangerous and if it bites you, it’s going to hurt you and if you get bit, you are going to die right away and not be OK.
“The biggest thing that I have to cover is that nowhere near are all snakes venomous. Most of them are very harmless and very beneficial. All snakes are beneficial to environments. When you do come across a venomous snake, it’s important to understand that venomous snake is not out to get you. It’s important to know that venomous snakes are very afraid of you.”
Futey went on to expand upon the benefit of snakes to an environment.
“Any snake at all is going to keep rodent populations under control. They are really good at occupying empty habitats left behind by other animals, gopher holes and stuff they go in,” he explained. “It’s really important because they keep other populations of animals under control. That includes themselves.
“One of my favorite animals is the king snake. They are called king snakes because snakes are part of their diet. King snakes are well known for eating other venomous snakes.”
Luke, the student, is dedicated to academics, just as is Luke, the athlete, according to Clay.
“Luke, I’ve only had as a student for one course, and that’s the course I am teaching right now – evolution,” said Clay. “He is doing great. He is active in the class. He answers questions. He sits in the front of the class. We just gave the first exam and he was in the top tier of students.
“The homework assignments, I often use his homework assignments as, ‘this is the 100 percent because he’s done everything that is asked for and how the other students have done compared to Luke. He is excelling in class.”
“He’s very interested in evolution and ecology, which is a welcome addition as a teacher to see a student that appreciates what you are teaching,” added Clay.
Futey is likely to be an involved type of scientist, Clay surmised.
“I think he’s interested in continuing this career path of working with wildlife in some sort of hands-on capacity. Whether or not he wants to go on to grad school or not, I’m not sure yet, but he still has a couple of years to figure that one out. I think he’s going to be out there in the field doing work, boots on the ground,” said Clay.
Futey’s time at the cross country course has given him a perspective that may be a bit different than that of his teammates.
“We come out here and do a workout, and it’s hard. It’s like, ‘man, I hate going out to The Farm. It sucks.’ It is hard going at The Farm. I love running, but it’s not always a good time to go. You hurt really bad out here at The Farm. Then I’ll get another appreciation because I also get to come out here once a week and just see how awesome it is to be out here. Enjoy nature, be out here on my own, hear the birds, hear the bugs, see the snakes and frogs and lizards and everything.”
The chance to be around the birds, bugs, snakes, frogs, and lizards helped to bring Futey to Nicholls in the first place.
“I entered the transfer portal for running and I knew I wanted to go somewhere that had a good wildlife biology program,” he explained. “I knew, for sure, that’s what I was doing. Even if there was a real good running program, I didn’t want to sacrifice the wildlife biology side of things for that.
“It was actually the old assistant coach, Coach (Alexander) Bruno, that reached out to me originally. I had a meeting with Coach (Stefanie) Slekis and really, really enjoyed my talk with her. I really liked what she was doing with the program out here.”
“I got all signed up for an official visit, came out here, got to see the school, got to see The Farm, and meet some professors,” Futey continued. “As soon as I left, I pretty much knew this is the place I was going.
“There were some other really cool schools that were offering me an opportunity to go there too, but I just had a feeling deep down that I feel like this is the place I want to go. I’ve been here ever since. I love it here. I just appreciate all the opportunities I get here in running, my academics, and my research. I can’t say enough how awesome the coaching and professors are at this school.”
Slekis is not only Futey’s cross country coach. She also is the coach of the women’s XC team, along with serving as the coach for both the men’s and women’s track and field teams at Nicholls.
Like Futey and herpetology, Slekis has an infectious enthusiasm about her favor topic of track.
“He loves his major. He talks about that kind of stuff in practice,” Slekis said of Futey. “I learned more about his research the other day. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can gather half of what you are saying.’ I was on the bike and we were doing cool-downs when he was talking about it and the research project he is working on this fall.
“I just signed him last year. I just think he is one of the pieces we have been missing in our program. All of our returners are really into their major, into being a good student and an athlete. Luke just exemplifies that.”
While it may be hard for some to see on the surface, Futey has found a bit of symbiotic relationship between running and his looking for reptiles and amphibians.
“I run a lot. You need to find a way to enjoy what you are doing,” Futey said. “I just enjoy being able to go out. One of the reasons I like running out here so much, and also where I’m from back in New Mexico, is I love running in nature. It gives me much more appreciation of running. It’s a lot more enjoyable to run when I have a good view to do it.
“Where herpetology comes into that is just while I’m running in New Mexico and here, it’s so common for me to run into reptiles and amphibians on my run. A lot of times I will just bring my phone and if I find something, I’m like, ‘oh, look, let me take a picture of that. Let me get that.’
That habit led Futey to start his Instagram blog, herpingwithluke.
“It just kept making it more and more opportunities for me to share my encounters with the animals I am super passionate about,” he said.
The symbiotic relationship, Futey said, has spread to the Nicholls track program and the biology department.
“There are so many schools that don’t have an opportunity like this area. Even just thinking about it, the school having this area, the bio department doesn’t have to let use it,” said Futey. “They choose to have a cross country course mowed out that we can go run on.
“Even Dr. Fontenot, I know some of the other biology professors, will come out here some days, the days leading up to cross country meets or before workouts and help us mow our course out. It’s not even just letting us use their area, but helping us use their area, too. It means a lot for me to be able to do both aspects of pretty much my entire life in this super, awesome area of land.”
