Emory Plays for National Championship Monday

The Emory University volleyball team will play for the NCAA Division III championship on Monday after beating Washington University 3-1 (18-25, 29-27, 25-21, 25-20) on Saturday.

Emory lost to Wash U in five sets on Oct. 16 and beat the Bears in four sets in November for the University Athletic Association title.

Emory plays Calvin College at 3 p.m. ET for the national title. Washington won the national championship last year, and Emory won in 2008.

Check the Emory Athletics website for live video and statistics.

Soccer: The Emory women were the only other UAA school still alive for a national title this weekend, but they lost to Hardin-Simmons 2-1 on Saturday on Hardin-Simmons home field. The Eagles ended the season 16-2-4. No. 2-ranked Hardin-Simmons is undefeated. Match story.

Men's cross country: All five UAA men's teams finished in the top 20 in the Division III championship meet on Saturday: 9. Washington; 10. NYU; 16. Brandeis; 17. Rochester; 20. Carnegie Mellon.

The top five UAA finishers were:
23. James Vavra, Jr 24:50.1, Rochester
24. Michael Burnstein, Jr 24:51.8, Washington
29. Andrew Zitek, Jr 24:57.9, NYU
30. Sebastian Schwelm, Sr 24:59.4, NYU
45. David Hamm, So 25:11.9, Washington


Women's cross country: Washington University finished second in the championship meet, eight points behind winner Middlebury. 2. Washington; 10. Chicago; 18. Case Western Reserve; 26. Emory; 28. NYU.


The top five UAA finishers were:
4. Elizabeth Lawton, Sr 21:22.0, Chicago
6. Taryn Surtees, Sr 21:26.1, Washington
8. Justine Jeroski, Sr 21:28.6, Case Western Reserve
23. Elizabeth Phillips, Jr 21:49.1 , Washington
30. Jessica Londeree, Sr 21:58.2, Washington

Complete results.

NCAA Volleyball Tournament Starts Friday

Emory's volleyball team celebrates winning regional championship Sunday.

Volleyball
Here are the matchups for the volleyball championship this weekend at Washington University, with each team's national ranking in parentheses. Wash U, Emory and NYU are all in the same bracket, so there won't be an all-UAA final.

12:30 p.m. Friday - University of St. Thomas (12) vs.  Juniata College (3)
3:00 p.m. Friday - Calvin College (10) vs. University of Massachusetts-Boston (24)
5:30 p.m. - Emory University (1) vs. Christopher Newport University (5)
8:00 p.m. - Washington University in St. Louis (3) vs. NYU (15)

Check the Wash U web site for more information and live coverage on Friday. Washington University Athletics

Soccer
Emory will play Wheaton in the next round of the NCAA women's soccer championship Friday in Abilene, Texas, at 2:30 p.m.

The teams do have at least one common opponent in the regular season: The University of Chicago. Emory lost at home to Chicago 1-0, and the Maroons lost on the road to Wheaton 1-0.

Check the Emory web site for more information and live coverage on Friday. Emory Athletics

Emory, Wash U, NYU Advance in Volleyball

All three UAA teams in the NCAA volleyball tournament have advanced to the Finals.

No. 1-ranked Emory beat Cal Lutheran in five sets, while Washington swept UW-Platteville and NYU swept Stevens.

The championships start Friday at Washington University in St. Louis.

In women's soccer, Emory is going to the Sweet 16.
The Eagles beat Lynchburg 1-0 in the second overtime period in a very physical match that included three yellow cards.
The Brandeis women's team lost 6-0 in a second-round match against Williams.

In men's soccer, Wash U lost to Loras in a shootout at  historic Francis Field in St. Louis, and Emory lost to Lynchburg 2-1 in Atlanta.

•  Cross country: Five men's teams from the UAA qualified as at-large teams for the national championship meet: Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Rochester and Washington University.
On the women's side, Emory and Washington University earned automatic bids.
Case Western Reserve, Chicago and NYU all earned at-large bids.
Individual qualifiers are: Hillary Snyder of Rochester; and Emily Wobb and Cortney Baker of Carnegie Mellon.
The championship meets, hosted by Wartburg College, will take place in Waverly, Iowa, on Nov. 20. The men's race starts at 11 a.m. ET, with the men's race at noon.

Update: Chicago Wins UAA Football Title

Emory women celebrate win over Maryville -- a long, long way from my camera.

The University of Chicago Maroons beat Washington University 13-10 at Amos Alonzo Stagg Field to win the 2010 UAA football championship.

The Emory women's soccer team scored two second-half goals to beat Maryville 2-0 at home on Saturday. Brandeis beat Castleton 2-1. In second-round games, the Wash U women lost 2-0 to Otterbein, and Rochester lost to Oneonta State 2-0.

First- and second-round soccer action takes place today in the NCAA regionals. In volleyball, three UAA teams have advanced to today's second-round matches. And UAA cross country runners competed at meets around the East, Midwest and South.

Here are Saturday's matches and times. Results will be updated during the day and on Sunday. Schedules for next week's rounds will be posted when they become available early next week.

Thursday
• Volleyball
University of Chicago 0, Hope College 3

Friday
• Volleyball
Emory 3,  Piedmont College 0
Washington University 3,  Beloit 0 (25-18, 25-13, 25-11)
Case Western Reserve 2,  SUNY-Cortland 3 (26-24, 25-18, 23-25, 17-25, 15-11)
NYU 3, Westfield State 0 (25-10, 25-9, 25-18)

• Women's Soccer
Washington University 2,  Allegheny College 1
Rochester 1,  Western Connecticut State College 0
Wartburg beat University of Chicago in shootout

• Men's Soccer
NYU 2, The College at Brockport 3


Saturday
• Women's soccer
Emory 2, Maryville (Tenn.) 0
Washington 0, Otterbein University 2
Rochester 0, vs. Oneonta State 2
1:30 p.m. - Brandeis vs. Casleton State College (first round)

• Men's soccer
7:30 p.m. - Rochester vs. Medaille (first round)

• Volleyball (second round)
4:30 p.m. (CT) - Washington University vs. Wartburg College
6:00 p.m. - Emory vs. Washington & Lee
7:00 p.m. - NYU vs. Clarkson University

• Cross country
Atlantic: State University College at Oneonta, host
Central: Wartburg College, host
Great Lakes: The Case Western Reserve women finished 3rd with 115 points. The men's team finished 7th with 220 points.
Mideast: Carnegie Mellon University, host
Midwest: Wash U men 4th, 122 points; Chicago men 10th, 244.
New England: Williams College, host
South/Southeast: Rhodes College, host

Sunday
• Men's soccer
1:00 p.m. CT - Washington University vs. Loras (beat Greenville on Thursday)
6:00 p.m. - Emory vs. Lynchburg College (beat Transylvania on Thursday)

• Women's soccer
1:00 p.m. - Emory vs. Lynchburg.
1:00 p.m. - Brandeis vs. Williams

Correction: This post has been corrected to reflect that the Washington University women's soccer team plays Allegheny College on Friday.

A Very Good Day for the UAA

Waiting for the NCAA tournament field at Washington University.

The NCAA announced tournament selections Monday in men's and women's soccer and volleyball, and once again the University Athletic Association came out very well.

Five of eight women's soccer teams  made the D3 field of 64, a record for the conference. The teams are Chicago (conference champion), Emory, Washington, Rochester and Brandeis.

In men's soccer, four UAA teams made the field, including conference champion NYU and Emory, Washington, and Rochester.

In volleyball, another record for the UAA, as five teams were selected: UAA champ Emory, defending national champion Washington, NYU, Chicago and Case Western Reserve. The bids are the first ever for Chicago and Case Western Reserve. It shows how far the conference has come after the recent dominance of Emory, Washington and NYU.

In St. Louis this morning, Washington's women's soccer team showed up early at the athletics complex to watch the scheduled webcast, but they ended up having to wait and wait and wait.
The Bears, who finished second nationally last year,  were on the bubble.
The team, coaches and Athletics Director John Schael gathered in the lobby of the athletics complex for what was supposed to be an 8 am CST live webcast. After waiting a half hour, they were informed that the webcast was canceled and that the field would be released at 9, St. Louis time. They filled the time studying, joking, braiding hair, drinking orange juice and chocolate milk and eating bagels and muffins provided by the athletics department.
No one seemed surprised that the announcement was delayed.

When the field was finally announced, just after 9, I could hear their cheers all the way from the basement office of women's basketball coach Nancy Fahey, whom I was interviewing. (Her team won the national championship last year and in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. They reached the Final Four in four other seasons, and nine trophies crowd the top of a cabinet on the wall behind her desk.)

Now it's time for the Wash U women's team to schedule practices and make travel plans, something every UAA team is used to.

The volleyball team, ranked No. 1 nationally for much of the season, knew they would make the tournament and would have to travel for the regionals because they are hosting the national championship meet this year.

And the men's soccer team earned a bye and will play at home, at least for the first round.

It will make for a busy weekend around the UAA, with seven of eight schools competing in regional tournaments.

Tests and Quizzes at Washington University

Jeff Stiles and his wife, Heather, herd children Saturday night.

In the University Athletic Association, the "tests" are on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, between the lines.
And believe me, test results are important here at Washington University.
 But there are also quizzes, and some of them are fun.
Early Saturday night, Jeff Stiles hosted a fun, intra-squad meet for his cross-country and track teams.
It's become a yearly thing at Washington and included some unusual events, such as "how far can you run in 45 seconds," a 1200 meter race, and what was announced as the "Intergalactic Two Mile."
Jeff had charge of his own children, as well as the runners, early in the proceedings until his wife, Heather, took them off his hands. (Kids and dogs are standard at most UAA events.)
He would introduce the runners -- to each other -- before every event with jokes, nicknames and mock announcer  grandiosity.
During the races,  other team members jogged in packs (at least one was wearing a tutu) or worked out on the football field and cheered on their teammates. Jeff called out splits as the runners passed.
Coming one week before the NCAA regional cross country meet, the qualifiers didn't run, but it's a way for those who didn't make the regionals to race one last time. And to mark the end of indoor track's early training for the middle distance runners.
Track and treat.

Saturday, the men's soccer team beat Chicago in overtime 2-1. In seven UAA matches this season, Washington has played six overtime games, winning three, tying two and losing one.
A couple of dozen fans and teammates stormed the field and piled on near midfield after the score, which all but assures the Bears of an at-large bid in the NCAA D3 tournament.

In football, the Bears will play Chicago next week for the UAA championship after beating Case Western Reserve University 14-13, as we like to say in the sports world, a huge win. Case had won the conference for the last two years and had not lost at home since 2006.
The Bears are 7-2 for the first time since 2001 and blocked two field goal attempts to hold on.

In volleyball, the top-ranked Bears lost the UAA championship to Emory University in four sets. Not to worry, however. Washington also lost the UAA  title match last year and went on to win the NCAA championship. (In the course of the tournament, Rich Luenemann's team gave the coach his 1,000th career win.) This year, the NCAA championship will be played here at Washington.

A record of athletics excellence
The Directors' Cup is a ranking of overall athletic achievement compiled by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.
Washington University in St. Louis has done pretty well in recent years:
2009-10  - 3rd
2008-09 - 4th
2007-08 - 2nd
2006-07 - 5th
2005-06 - 7th
So how does Washington do it?
One answer is continuity.
John Schael, the Washington University athletics director, has held that job since 1978.
The university has had only two chancellors during his tenure, and one of them, Chancellor Emeritus Dr. William H. Danforth, was instrumental in the formation of the UAA.
There have been only two deans of students.
And among head coaches, eight have been at WUSTL for 10 years or more; two have been here more than 20 years on staff; one has 30 years.

When I talked to John on Saturday in the stands of Francis Field during the men's soccer match, he added two more points: Success brings success and people build programs.

Honey update
Honey sprung a leak, and it's ugly. The kind of leak that leaves a mark and a smell.

Honey and the gates of Francis Field.

It must have happened because the temperature reached 26 on Friday night. Or maybe her plumbing just gave out. I doused it with bleach.
I had to drive into St. Louis this morning (I got lost) and find a year-round RV park with "dumping" facilities.
Problem solved, but now I'm going to have to find other facilities.
We're parked inside the massive iron gates of The Francis Field. It's on the Register of Historic Landmarks and, along with nearby Francis Gymnasium, was built for the 1904 Olympics. Most of the stands that once held 19,000 have been removed. Today, one long section remains along the south side of the soccer/football field that holds about 3,300 fans. It has Field Turf, and a modern, dark clay colored eight-lane track named Bushyhead Track. The light standards are old, faded utility poles crowned with banks of floodlights, and one has a security camera attached. According to Wikipedia, it is one of the oldest sports venues west of the Mississippi still in use. That's pretty vague, but there's no doubt that it is really old AND still being used.
Honey is honored.

The loneliness of the SID

Chris Mitchell was first in, last out of the Washington press box.

Along my 45-day trek, I have pestered and annoyed every Sports Information Director at each of the eight UAA schools.
And I'm not done yet.
They're mostly sports junkies, stats nuts, writers, facilitators and multi-taskers. They work long hours and almost always on weekends.
Amazingly, not one of them has snapped at me -- yet.
I'm grateful for their support and forbearance. Here they are in geographical order: Jeff Bernstein (NYU), Nick Minerd (Case Western Reserve), Mark Fisher (Carnegie Mellon University), Dennis O'Donnell (University of Rochester),  Anthony Moscaret (UAA), Adam Levin (Brandeis University),  John Farina (Emory University), Dave Hilbert (University of Chicago), and Chris Mitchell (Washington University).
On Saturday, after the teams and coaches and fans had left Francis Field, Chris was still writing away, filing stories for the Washington University website about a full day of games and matches.

Atlanta to Chicago. Check.

Parents line up to take pictures of their girls gathered in the goal mouth Sunday.

I have always believed that if you can't write, you should make lists.
Here is a recounting of my 723 mile trip in Honey from Williams Mill Road in Atlanta to the intersection of 56th Street and South Drexel in Chicago.
Honey is pointed east, and in front of me are the University of Chicago's athletic fields, nearly a city block of healthy grass with aluminum stands and goal posts. A calming sight in a big, flat city.
I left Atlanta at 8 a.m. Saturday and arrived at the Chicago-Brandeis women's soccer match at noon (CDT) Sunday.


Saturday, 09:33:01 - Cartersville, Ga. - 23.394 gallons - $65.48
Saturday, 3:22 p.m. - Unknown - 33.716 gallons - $91.00
Saturday, 10:28 p.m. - Crothersville, Ind. - 26.795 gallons - $75.00
Saturday, 10:34 p.m. - Crothersville, Ind. - 3.713 gallons - $10.39
Sunday, 08:53:24 - Demotte, Ind. - 21.315 gallons - $60.94

Although this list is lean on narrative tension, it does reveal certain information, such as: I bought more gas in Indiana than Georgia; this trip is an incredible drain on finite oil reserves; I don't know where I was at 3:22 Saturday afternoon; what I have "saved" by traveling in a 1984 RV I have spent several times over in gas; I can't write a lick.

It was a very long haul. The longest stretch in a limited time  -- Atlanta to Chicago in 29 hours. Along the way I also had to dump Honey's holding tanks (never a pretty scene). As a person new to RVing, I am just learning the importance of finding an appropriate dump station in advance. There are Web sites that keep track of such things. What they don't tell you is that some dump stations are constructed in a way to prevent Honey from back her behind close enough to the pit. Wasted an hour and a half at that place -- stood in line for 10 minutes to buy the dump token, tried for 20 minutes to get Honey within dump range, tried for 20 minutes to borrow a longer hose, stood in line for 10 minutes to return unused token, pouted and swore for 30 minutes.

But by noon I had arrived, just in time to see the end of the first half of the soccer match.
About an hour later, the University of Chicago women had beaten Brandeis 2-0 and clinched the 2010 UAA women's soccer championship.

Tradition, Dominance, Pitching In at Emory

Last week I visited Emory University, in my own backyard.
Some folks have suggested that I would favor Emory in my UAA research because I have lived in Atlanta and near the campus since 1983.
Not so.

Doc Partin's letter sweater in Tim Downes' office

And to prove it, I got lost, as I have done at Rochester, Carnegie Mellon and Case Western Reserve. My Atlanta friends may marvel at my idiocy, but it comes down to whether Springdale intersects with Oxford. It doesn't. You have to take a two block jog on Emory to get to Oxford. Thankfully I wasn't driving Honey so I didn't run up my mileage needlessly.

At Emory, Doc lives
Hanging in the office of Tim Downes, the athletics director at Emory, is a slightly moth-eaten glaringly yellow letter sweater that belonged to Doc Partin, the "patron saint" of Emory athletics and physical education.
He came to Emory as a student after the war, which is how my parents and their generation always refer to World War II, and didn't retire until 2002. His full name, William Clyde Partin Sr., was replaced by "Doc" after he earned his PhD from Vanderbilt.
He was Emory's AD from 1966 to 1986, but his involvement in Emory athletics lasted from 1950 to 2002.  He died in June 2009.
When you read the tributes to Doc written at the time of his death, it's easy to wish that you had known him.
"His love for Emory, our athletes, and our community was something you felt the moment you met Doc.  And from that moment, you knew you had a new best friend!" wrote Jenny McDowell, who has led the Eagles volleyball program into national prominence and won the D3 championship in 2008.
"Clyde Partin was the best of us.  He was a mentor to many, a great story teller, the best ambassador Emory University ever had, a lunch buddy and a dead pull hitter," wrote John Curtin, the cross country and track coach.
Today, Tim Downes is carrying on Doc's legacy as the Clyde Partin Sr. Director of Athletics, a position endowed by alumna Deb Jackson. (Downes was born in 1966, when Partin had already served Emory for 16 years.)
After Doc's death, a family member found his letter sweater from the '40s and wanted Tim to have it.
In Doc's day, there were no endowed chairs for athletics, and in our world there are lots of  PhDs. But very few Docs.

A coaches' work is never done
While visiting Emory last week, I interviewed Jenny McDowell and Jason Zimmerman.

Taylor and Trevor Zimmerman with Honey.

Jenny has a national championship trophy in her office from volleyball in 2008. Jason's goal is to win one in men's basketball.
Emory volleyball is so good that, along with Washington University, they form a nearly impenetrable top tier within the University Athletic Association. Any UAA team that wants to contend nationally first has to get by those two.
This year is no different, with Emory ranked No. 2 and Wash U. No. 1 in the latest D3 poll.
As I was wandering around the Woodruff Athletics facility last week, though, I saw the fullness of coaching a national championship team. hours before their Friday night matches, there was Jenny down on the empty court clearing loose volleyballs from the court and making sure everything was set up properly. Later, I came across her lugging folding tables into a meeting room for the team's post-game event.

It's a UAA thing: Attention to detail and doing what it takes to get things done. By the way, Tim Downes the AD also helped with the tables. Last year, at the UAA volleyball championships, I saw Tom Weingartner, the University of Chicago AD and former Stanford linebacker, moving trash cans between matches to help out the facilities staff.
Later that day I ran into Jason again, this time with his wife, Traci, and children, Trevor and Taylor. They were back on campus for the Emory soccer matches against Rochester.
It's not unusual to run into coaches attending games or matches to support their colleagues and athletes.
Because it was close to Halloween, Jason's kids were in costume, appropriately dressed as an Emory cheerleader and basketball player. They were intrigued by Honey, my 1984 RV, so Jason had them pose for a picture by her side.

Farewell, Terry

Terry Gurnett has coached women's soccer at the University of Rochester for 34 years, and this season is his last. He is the all-time wins leader among D3 women's soccer coaches, and third among all NCAA divisions. His teams have won two national championships.
Before the match Friday night, Emory honored him by announcing his accomplishments over the loudspeaker system and with a short presentation.

Terry Gurnett's players joined in the post-match presentation.

After the match, the Rochester alumni group in Atlanta further honored him under a bright tent and catered meal at the end of the stands.
Terry has wide-ranging interests, say his friends and colleagues, so the alumni group presented him with one of the huge volumes of the Oxford University series the History of the United States to keep him occupied. He will also continue working at Rochester as an associate AD.

On the pitch
After this weekend's matches, the Emory men are 3-1-2 in conference play and 1 point behind NYU for the conference championship and automatic NCAA D3 tournament bid. They were ranked 14th nationally in the Oct. 26 poll and play at Carnegie Mellon Nov. 7 in the last regular season match. (my friend Keith Graham, who along with his wife, Chrys, always picks the Dutch in our World Cup pools, attended with me).
The Emory women are 3-1-2 and tied with Wash U. for second place. (The University of Chicago women clinched the conference championship Sunday against Brandeis.) The Emory women, ranked 6th in the latest poll, also finish the regular season against Carnegie Mellon Nov. 7 in Pittsburgh.
National tournament selections are announced Monday, Nov. 8.

Coming Up
Honey and I made it from Atlanta to Chicago on Saturday and early Sunday, the longest and shortest leg of my trip. I can see the top of the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower from where I am parked.
Read about backfires, windmill farms and the nastiest stretch of road ever coming soon on this blog.
New national polls are out Tuesday, the UAA cross country championship was Saturday and the volleyball tournament is this weekend.

How many ...
Joke texted to me this weekend by my son the art student:
How many performance artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
-- I don't know, I left before it was over.

Skype me up, Scottie
Wednesday at 2:45 Central Time I am scheduled to appear on a live webcast. The victims are thepulsenetwork.com, a social TV network.
"It's What's Next, Now."
That's why they scheduled me.

The Polls: Where UAA Schools Stand

Leia and Claire on Freedom Park in Atlanta this morning. Ready to roll.

As the UAA soccer teams head into the final weekend of double travel games (Friday and Sunday matches), here are the latest national rankings. Plus rankings in cross country and volleyball.
Rochester travels to Emory and Carnegie Mellon; Case Western Reserve travels to Carnegie Mellon and Emory; Brandeis travels to Wash U and Chicago; NYU travels to Chicago and Wash U; Honey travels to Emory and Chicago, God willing and the tires don't blow.
The NCAA's Division 3 includes more than 450 college and universities competing in varsity athletics.
 The UAA cross country championship meet is Saturday, Oct. 30, in New York City at Van Cortlandt Park. Take the 1 train to the Bronx. It's the last stop.
 The UAA volleyball championship tournament is Nov. 5-6 at the Veale Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Take the RTA Healthline bus east on Euclid Avenue to Adelbert Road, across from Severance Hall. If the driver calls out "next stop Erie," you've gone about 100 miles too far.

Best National Universities - U.S. News & World Report , Sept. 2010
9. University of Chicago
13. Washington University
20. Emory University
23. Carnegie Mellon University
33. New York University
34. Brandeis University
37. University of Rochester
41. Case Western Reserve University
86. University of Colorado (OK, CU isn't in the UAA, but it's where I matriculated. Twice)

Football - AFCA
23. Case Western Reserve (unranked)

Men's Cross Country - USFCCCA - Programs: 389
These are the Oct. 20 rankings. The next national poll comes out Nov. 3.
7. New York University
9. Washington University
24. Carnegie Mellon 25. Brandeis
29. Rochester
30. Case Western Reserve
Women's Cross Country - USFCCCA - Programs: 4117. University of Chicago
15. Case Western Reserve
16. Washington University
26. Emory 35. NYU

Volleyball - AVCA - Programs: 429
1. Washington University (2)
2. Emory University (4)
15. NYU (17)
21. University of Chicago (20)

Women's soccer - NSCAA - Programs: 427
6. Emory University (8)
22. Rochester (24)
Brandeis and Chicago also received votes


Men's soccer - NSCAA - Programs: 406
7. Rochester (21)
12. Washington University (15)
14. Emory University  (18)
Carnegie Mellon and NYU also received votes

Information on the number of D3 programs in each sport was provided by Anthony Moscaret, sports information director for the University Athletic Association.

Honey is in the shop
Sunday night, the refrigerator in Honey, my RV, fell out of its cabinet. Too much shaking, rattling and rolling across Manhattan, the GW bridge and the New Jersey Turnpike.
I have her in the shop today, Great Escape RV of Tucker, Ga., where my friend Richard is going to brace her foundation so she'll be ready to roll Friday night for Chicago after the Emory-Rochester men's game in Atlanta.

Something old, something new

Stuff I don't need. Not shown: Microwave oven.

One thing I learned on the first 2,600 miles of my trip to visit every UAA school is that you don't really need that much stuff when you travel in an RV.
Most of it will get lost or go unused or both.
I am off-loading a microwave, hand weights, blue blazer, some clothes, personal file folders and a huge roll of bubble wrap (don't ask).
However, I am picking up 110 pounds of canine. Lisa, the kindly neighbor lady who was taking care of my dogs, says she will miss them these next two weeks but that they need to be with me on the road. Should be interesting.

Wish Brandeis Wasn't Built on a Hill

Spring ball ended last week, so it's time to fix up the Brandeis baseball field.

Brandeis University is the fifth stop on my gas-hogging UAA road trip, and it feels like a marathon, now. I haven't hit the wall, but I know it could come around any turn.
Honey, my 1984 RV, and I left Atlanta on Monday, Sept. 27. Her speedometer read 59,584 (in 1984, the speedometers in Ford trucks only went as high as 99,999). Today, she's at 62,231. That's 2,647 miles -- so far.

That hill is steeper than it looks.

Honey's estimated carbon footprint, according to a woman named Katrina at the University of Rochester, is 4.1 tons per thousand miles. If I ever do this again, I'm getting the students of the UAA to design me a deep-fat-fryer-fueled green RV. Only obstacle will be eating all those french fries, but I think I can do it.
Brandeis was founded in 1948 and is named for Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Brandeis is on a big, big, BIG hill in Waltham (wall-THAM), Ma., just outside Boston. From the perspective of my 59-year-old overworked legs, its most significant architectural feature is long sets of steps, most of them going up.

Here's a rundown of my visit:


Sunday, Oct. 18
• Arrive at 7 a.m. after Honey blew a tire on the Mass Pike.
• Attend UAA soccer matches against Emory University, which is in Atlanta, which is where I have a comfortable bed and two sweet, but totally untrained dogs named Claire and Leia. (Lisa, my kindly neighbor lady, has been wrestling with them since I left.) The Emory women won, the men's match was a tie.
• Check the number of page views on my blog. 
• Sheryl Sousa, the Brandeis AD, tells me about the UAA's commitment to academics first and to providing a first-class athletic experience for its D3 athletes. Events are run with professionalism and precision. (Sousa is a Brandeis grad, and played volleyball here with Karen Farrell, the current volleyball coach at Case Western Reserve University. There's a lot of in-breeding in the UAA, but the gene pool is so deep that it seems to strengthen the conference.)

Monday, Oct. 19
• Check the number of page views on my blog. 
• Meet the guy whose regular parking space I took. "You better have pancakes," he says.

• Attend an American Studies class about the '60s, with Mia DePalo, a basketball player from Rumson, N.J. Jacob "Jerry"Cohen is a legend here. In fact, some students are known to "minor in Jerry Cohen." He has played basketball with the Celtics of the '70s and tennis with his friend the late Howard Zinn. (I assume Zinn was a southpaw, but I didn't get to ask.) Zinn once taught at Spelman College in Atlanta, where Emory University is located, and he graduated from NYU, one of the eight schools in the University Athletic Association.

An evening with Jerry Cohen.

Cohen dramatizes the events in his lectures, doing the voice of the chancellor of Berkely who ordered students out of Sproul Hall in 1964 and doing the voice of the student who responded "Blank you!"
• Check the number of page views on my blog. 
• Visit the Goldfarb and Farber libraries, where the librarians I meet are as funny and loose as a soccer team eating a pre-game meal. When I ask what collections are the most prized and most popular, Sarah Shoemaker reels of a list so quickly and so long that I pray my digital recorder is working.
• Interview Luke Teece, leading scorer this season for the men's soccer team. His father went to Brandeis and played soccer for the same coach as Luke, Mike Coven, who is in his 38th year as head coach and won the D3 national title in 1976. This has been a turn-around season for Luke, who only seemed to hit the post last year.

Tuesday, Oct. 20
• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Cook pancakes for the guy whose parking space I took. He turns them down. "I hate pancakes," he says. "I was just joking yesterday. I'm like that."
• Eat 16 pancakes.
• Check the number of page views on my blog.  • Talk to Mike Coven, the soccer coach, who is actually shorter than I am but who has lifted a lot more weights and pedaled a lot more miles on the stationary bike. Mike is a very funny guy with a Boston accent who stays loose but takes the game seriously, very seriously. In a non-conference match Wednesday afternoon he came unglued when his team gave up a meaningless goal at the end on a corner kick. Brandeis 3, Springfield College 1.

Anita Hill was on campus Wednesday. So was local TV.

• Talk to Pete Varney, briefly, the legendary (did I use that cliche earlier?) Brandeis baseball coach who as a tight end caught the two-point conversion pass in 1968 for Harvard's 29-29 win over Yale. Varney played in "The Show" for several years and his nickname was "Big Fella." About being known for the catch, all he would say was, "It's better than being known as the guy who dropped it." (According to Wikipedia, Tommy Lee Jones played OT for that team.)
The players I talked to are in awe of Varney for his baseball knowledge and coaching skill. I got the impression that when he tells a kid to do something, they do it.
• Interview Jessica Johnson, the "newest" Brandeis coach who has coached softball for five years. In her fourth year, she took the team to its first NCAA tournament. She's unashamed about having been an English major at Wheaton College, one of Brandeis' local rivals in many sports.
• Get fuse replaced in Honey at the repair shop on the other side of the tracks of the commuter rail line parking lot where I am parked.
• Watch Manny Vasquez and his crew from Wagon Wheel Landscaping replace the raw clay bricks around home plate on the baseball field and rework the pitchers mound and third base. The bricks have to be special ordered. They lay down something called "stone mix" on the base paths and "infield mix" around the bases, home plate and the pitchers mound.
• Talk to Francine Kofinas, sophomore goal keeper for the women's soccer team from Long Island. Next Thursday, Francine will make her first plane trip ever when the teams fly to St. Louis and Chicago for the next round of UAA play. Like all the UAA athletes I have talked to, she seems unconcerned about her first flight.
• Check the number of page views on my blog. 
• Decide with the counsel of my dog sitter that I should take the girls with me for the last leg of my trip.

Wednesday, Oct. 21

Rick Sawyer signs banner.

• Attend  a business class about marketing with Alex Tynan, who toes the slab for the Judges baseball team, pitches from the port side, and reveres Coach Varney. Class this day is a guest lecture by Jeff Freedman, CEO of a small and very successful marketing company called Small Army. Jeff lost his business partner to cancer two years ago, and it still breaks him up. One outcome is a fund raising event called Be Bold Be Bald, so if you see someone on Friday with a "bald hat," you'll know it's from Jeff's effort.
One point he stressed in his lecture was the importance of story telling in marketing.
Jeff: Say hello to Jerry Cohen and Mike Coven.

• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Receive an email from David K., commissioner of the fantasy college basketball league to which I belong, that our draft will be Nov. 12. I'll be home by then.
• Find out Anita Hill, a professor in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, is teaching that day.  Local TV stakes out campus hoping for a shot of her in a car. That'll make some dramatic video. Hope she's not traveling in Honey.
• Drop off Honey at Hogan Tire Service in Waltham to have two new tires put on the inside rear.
• Interview Rick Sawyer, the Brandeis vice president in charge of student affairs (All UAA athletics departments report to Student Affairs and the president's office). Rick was briefly interim AD in 1983 when he first got wind of some schools wanting to start a unique athletic conference. The charter was eventually signed in 1987.
Brandeis, Rick tells me, is immensely proud of its membership in the UAA and shows it by hanging a huge blue banner in the atrium of the student center.
• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Pick up Honey from Hogan's. Pick up my busted generator from the repair shop. They replaced a six inch plastic tube that burned out because the exhaust from one generator was pointed at the housing of the other generator.

• Attend midweek, non-conference soccer games. The Brandeis men beat Springfield College 3-1 (Yes, Luke scored) and the women beat Bowdoin (Yes, Francine had another shutout).
• Post on my blog a list of songs that are blasted during warm-ups for UAA soccer and volleyball teams. Post a poll to vote on the best list and notice that no one is voting. (Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't.)

Yet another guy jacks up Honey.

• Get an email that a story about my road trip is posted on ncaa.net.
• Think to myself how clever I am for including a picture of JayZ and Rick Lackner, the Carnegie Mellon football coach, with the play lists from UAA teams.
• Receive another email from David K that our fantasy basketball draft will be Nov. 9, because of a scheduling conflict. OK. If Honey makes it, I should be home by then.
• Buy a six pack of Long Trail Ale brewed by the Vermont brewery Long Trail (I think it's important to sample local brews along the way. Order a pizza from Cappy's, the pizza parlor that I can see from my living room window. Drink a couple of ales and eat two slices of pizza (OK, maybe it was three).
• Arrange to attend physics, advanced calculus and developmental psychology classes with Luke.
• Talk to my sister Melanie, who paid for the two new tires about meeting in Chicago. She concurs on taking the dogs with.

Thursday, Oct. 21
• I'm late for physics, and you know how the professor likes kids to be on time. But first I need to gas up my generator which just ran out, and then I need to check the number of page views on my blog.

Whom am I leaving out?
That's one of my favorite lines from Johnny Carson, a popular TV host back in my day.
There's a lot more folks at Brandeis who made this stop the best one yet on my odyssey (I write that about every school).

Eat 16 pancakes. Check.

But Adam Levin has been the most patient and helpful. He's the SID at Brandeis, and he hasn't blinked at my intrusive requests or annoying presence. And he has a seven-week-old baby boy named Drew who is beautiful and has a great head of hair. Being an SID at a UAA school keeps you busier than a one-armed paper hanger with hives.

Other stuff
I need a brave soul to drive with me and my two dogs from Atlanta to Chicago next week. No way I can make it without help. Leaving the ATL on Friday night after soccer matches at Emory and arriving in the Windy City by 11 a.m. Sunday.
I left out some of the times that I checked the number of page views on my blog, but I think you get the idea. Janice Quinn, the former women's basketball coach at NYU whose team won a national championship and is the Quinn-essential UAA coach, might want to call a timeout and reassess her conclusion that I have no ego. Or maybe even T me up.

This blog post has been corrected to reflect that Anita Hill is a professor in the Heller School of Social Policy and Management.

UAA Soccer: A Family Affair

Keeper Scott Garfing of Rochester has a kiss for grandma  after the NYU match.

Without a doubt, most of the fans at UAA soccer matches are parents of players or grandparents of players or brothers or sisters of players.

Some travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to see their kids play or just to see their kids. They bring vats of pasta and plates with cakes for post-game meals. They bring hugs and hopes and grandma.

This is not their first rodeo, but for the parents of seniors it will be their last.

The family gathering after the Emory-Brandeis men's soccer match.

At the Brandeis-Emory soccer matches on Sunday there was nearly and equal number of Emory fans as those cheering for Brandeis.

Here's the routine after a match: Coach holds a brief (sometimes long) team meeting to go over the match while it's fresh in young minds; players gather up their gear bags and sweats and water bottles (some take off their jerseys, some put their nylon warm-ups back on); relatives gather at the spot that marks transition from field to family (there's a meeting place like this at each UAA school); the familes greet their kids and talk about the game or dinner that night or law school applications or plans for Thanksgiving; some of the kids stare at their feet, some look around to see where their teammates are,  some allow hugs, some eagerly accept kisses; then they disperse until the next game.

Sports is tightly stitched in their family fabric. Food, too. For years parents have driven children to soccer practices or volleyball tournaments or swim meets. Millions of hours together in vans and SUVs, sometimes traveling to distant events, sharing precious time.

Josh Richards

Sharon Richards' son Josh plays soccer for the University of Rochester. I meet her Friday in the concourse of Fauver Stadium, when the weather was so nasty that she was going to "watch" the match from a chair inside through the narrow tunnel that led to the aluminum stands.
She's attended hundreds of Josh's games and she sat through some pretty awful weather. Before the match Josh told me that she would be under cover if it was bad, and he was totally OK with that. (As it turned out, the rain that soaked the earlier women's game stopped for the men's match, and Sharon, with her heavy coat and and scarf and earmuffs, did see the game from the stands).
Josh has played soccer since he was 4, she told me. He's a totally focused kid (as are most UAA high achievers and chose Rochester because, among other more substantial reasons, he likes the cold. Go figure.

Wash U women chow down after match at CMU.

Rochester really needed a win that night against Chicago, but fell behind. They tied it up in the second half on a set piece, and Josh was credited with an assist. Afterward, in the dark outside the stadium, I could tell from his face and his stance that he wasn't happy with the tie, but it beats a loss. And he didn't think he should have gotten an assist. (As of Monday, he is credited with an assist in the boxscore.)

During UAA matches, the parents reveal how well they know the game. The more uninhibited ones yell at the refs. "You've got to make that call ref!" "It's a handball!" "That's a terrible call." "Let 'em play!"

They also appreciate good play and they die with every missed opportunity. "Good ball Chelsea." (Or Emily or Lauren or Ashley or Ben or Nick) "Go Blue." "Keep pressuring!"
Other, more distant relatives aren't quite as knowledgeable. Perhaps  they only come along for one game a year, like the man at the Brandeis match Sunday who yelled out "I got it, I got it" when a very high pass was made near the stands. He was promptly chided: "You don't do that at soccer matches."
Or the grandmotherly looking woman at an NYU game earlier this season was  complaining  via cellphone to someone that the field was "in the middle of a cow pasture. And they charge you eight bucks every time you have to cross the bridge."
I don't think the folks at the College of Staten Island, where the game was played, would agree with her.

NYU women stretch toward mom's post-game buffet. Note dog.

Beyond the bond of teammates, parents bond with each other. Wash U parents seem to be out in force at every UAA event that I have attended. They plan meals and gatherings and sometimes travel together from hotels or motels. They make new friendships built on their shared experiences with their kids.
Sometimes a dad will attend one road match and a mom will attend another to keep the cost down but keep the support up.

For the NYU-Rochester match, the mother of NYU's goalie, Matt Stieve, arranged her overseas trip so she could be there. An IT specialist who had to be in London, she flew from Chicago to New York and arranged to have a layover before continuing to London. Turns out that Matt had an incredible game in goal with two point blank saves in the first half that allowed NYU to tie the men from Rochester.
One week later, Matt's dad came to Cleveland to watch NYU play Case Western Reserve.

These final games are especially precious to those UAA athletes. Earlier this year, the parents of Jack Anderson,  the Carnegie Mellon basketball player, made plans to attend each of his final games -- home and away. They drove all the way to Washington D.C. in terrible weather for the game against Catholic University. They made it to D.C., but the game was canceled. Jack was the leading scorer for CMU in the makeup with 18 points.

After the hugs, kisses and pasta, it's study hall at a picnic table.

(Rescheduling a non-conference basketball game 400 miles away is typical, not unusual in the UAA. While the academics and research at each of the universities is Division I all the way, their athletic programs compete in the NCAAs Division 3. No scholarships. Strict code of operations. D3 includes more than 400 schools, most of which don't have the budgets or resources of the UAA schools. But the UAA programs operate in a way that reflects the professionalism and perfection of their member schools. Facilities are top notch, coaches are skilled and experienced, events are run as if they were Major League Baseball or the NFL. Their mantra: Our athletes, our programs, our events must reflect the quality of our institutions. As Sheryl Sousa, the Brandeis athletics director told me in her office Sunday, "We all want to make things perfect." Brandeis was hosting an eight-team round robin UAA volleyball tournament as well as the soccer matches on Sunday.)

Matt Stieve

Matt Stieve is  a senior. This is his last season of organized soccer.
Neither Matt nor any of his teammates or other UAA athletes will "go pro." That's not why they practice 20 hours a week or study in airports waiting to fly to St. Louis or Atlanta. None of them are pro material. But they are dedicated, high achievers, focused on training, team and winning. They know, however, that the classroom is where their future lies.
That's why they chose Brandeis or Case Western Reserve or Carnegie Mellon or Chicago or Emory or NYU or Rochester or Washington.

NYU Men, Chicago Women Lead in Soccer

Brandeis and Emory played to a 1-1 tie on a beautiful day in Waltham.

Brandeis is the fifth stop on my UAA Road Trip, where the Emory women beat Brandeis 2-0. The Emory men and the Judges tied 1-1 in soccer.

The season's second volleyball round robin also was also played at Brandeis on Sunday, and the headline is that No. 1 ranked Wash U lost two matches. First to NYU in five sets and then to Case Western Reserve in four.

SOCCER
After Sunday's games, the NYU men are in first place with 8 points. Chicago leads the women with 9 points.


MEN
NYU..............................2-0-2 (8)
Washington....................2-1-1 (7)
Case Western Reserve...2-2-0 (6)
Emory............................1-1-2 (5)
Rochester.......................1-1-2 (5)
Brandeis.........................1-2-1 (4)
Carnegie Mellon............1-2-1 (4)
Chicago..........................1-2-1 (4)

WOMEN
Chicago..........................3-1-0 (9)
Washington....................2-0-2 (8)
Emory...........................2-1-1 (7)
Rochester.......................2-1-1 (7)
Brandeis........................2-2-0 (6)
NYU..............................2-2-0 (6)
Case Western Reserve...1-3-0 (3)
Carnegie Mellon............0-4-0 (0)

VOLLEYBALL STANDINGS
Here are the volleyball standings after the second round robin. The championship tournament is Nov. 5-6 at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Emory.............................6-1
NYU...............................6-1
Washington....................5-2
Chigago..........................4-3
Case................................4-3
Carnegie Mellon.............2-5
Brandeis..........................1-6
Rochester.........................0-7


Correction: Earlier today I posted incorrect records and standings for soccer. Those numbers were not taken from the UAA Web site, but from my own erroneous notes.

Honey Blows Another One

The University of Rochester men score the tying goal against Chicago on Oct. 15.

Honey and I made it to Boston from Rochester about 7 a.m. this morning. We're parked on a level lot (woohoo) at the edge of campus next to the commuter rail line.
Friday night I watched the Rochester women beat Chicago 1-0 in the cold, wind and rain. Nasty night. The Rochester men tied Chicago 1-1 in the 7:30 game. The rain had stopped, thankfully for the fans.

The fans go wild at Fauver Stadium in Rochester.

The drive across Western New York and Western Massachusetts was absolutely gorgeous, though windy. Fall color appears to be about 60 percent near Rochester but more like 85 percent in Massachusetts.
Normally, I don't find road signs very interesting, but this morning on I-90 I passed a sign that said "N.H.- Maine and Cape Cod, 2 miles." Something very romantic and alluring about being so close to this corner of the United States. Only in the UAA.

Today, Emory is at Brandeis; Chicago at Case Western Reserve; Wash U at Rochester; and Carnegie Mellon at NYU. 

Nate wrestles a tire and wins.

Sounds like  a gunshot on the Mass Pike
Honey and I were making good time getting to Waltham from Rochester last night on the Mass Pike when I heard a very loud pop. Knew immediately what it was cause I heard the same sound on the New Jersey Turnpike a couple of weeks ago.
Honey blew another tire. Left, rear, inside (not one of the new ones).
I need an official UAA Road Trip Tire Sponsor.
Nate McCarthy was home eating dinner and watching the Texas-Nebraska game when he got the call. Nate works for Pete's Tire Barns, Inc. (16 locations in Western Mass.)  He had to drive down to his shop in Springfield to pick up the bright yellow then head to my location.

This tire is history. A rare 8.75 by 16.5.

We checked my spare first, and it looked OK though not perfect.

After about a half hour under Honey with a jack and wrestling tires off and on, Nate had me back on the road.

Told me is was good that I didn't have tire rot. Said he went on a call once where a guy with a newer RV than Honey (most RVs are newer than Honey) had two tires pop while his rig was sitting in his driveway.

Nate played football for Dallas Community College in Texas for a couple of years, but quit because of shoulder injuries and a lack of playing time. In high school, he cleared 6 feet in the high jump.

Texas won, 20-13.

Game Day at the University of Rochester

The ROTC unit runs laps while the field hockey team meets before dawn Friday.

The first team on the field today at the University of Rochester was the Marines.

At Zero Six Forty Five, 19 member of the ROTC unit arrived at Fauver stadium to scramble through the orange-coned obstacle course under the lights and then run some laps carrying 45-pound packs, lead by their instructor, Capt. Chapman.

DeLong wants to improve his X-C time.

Among the the camo-ed runners was David DeLong, a freshman from Philadelphia who is majoring in mechanical engineering. With captain's permission, he held himself out of the laps because he has a big race Saturday, the U of R Blue and Gold Invitational.
Next up, the Rochester field hockey team, which took the field at zero seven hundred. They are coming off a come-from-behind, OT win against Ithaca College on Wednesday.

As Einstein would have said, operating the athletics program at Rochester is all about time and space.
The field of Fauver Stadium, built in 1930, is used nearly around the clock by the football team, both soccer teams, field hockey and intramurals. And ROTC.
When I went to sleep in Honey about midnight, the lights were still blazing while about a dozen kids played recreational football.

Rochester is my fourth stop on a 4,200 mile trip to visit each of the schools in the University Athletic Association. Every one is my favorite. Earlier in my trip I loved NYU, Case Western Reserve University and Carnegie Mellon University.
Today, I love Rochester the bestest.

From the notebook
Yesterday, I attended a graduate level course on the films of Andy Warhol with Lindsay Macaluso. She's from Amherst, N.Y., and plays shortstop (or anywhere she's needed) on the softball team. She has a tiny stud in her pierced nose. Mac is fired up every minute of every day. She hit .331 last season and scored 35 runs.

Rush Rhees library at U of R.

She wasn't that crazy about softball when she was 11 or 12, so she worked her way onto the boys Little League team (she has four brothers). Caused quit a stink, and the coach even quit the team over it, but she held her ground.
Yesterday, she held her ground in film study. Among the birkenstocks and beards, she was the only student wearing the deep blue and yellow warm-ups of Rochester sports during the screening and discussion of Warhol's two-reel film, out of focus, black and white "Poor Little Rich Girl" with Edie Sedgwick. Her professor is Douglas Crimp, an expert on Warhol and former managing editor of October, the influential journal of postmodern art theory. Warhol, by the way, attended Carnegie Mellon, but didn't play sports.
Like Warhol, Lindsay has range.

Undefeated
Mike Neer would never describe himself as a legend, but everyone who knows him would.
He coached men's basketball for 34 years at the University of Rochester. His team won the D3 national championship in 1990. They reached the NCAA playoffs 12 times and the Final Four four times.
Neer was here when the UAA was founded 24 years ago, and he conference philosophy of academics first suits him perfectly.
He's a coach's coach, with a bag full of one-liners and swear words, such as "cheese and crackers" and "son of a biscuit eater," which he adopted from Sleepy Thompson, his coach at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Alexandria, Va., in the '60s.
As I travel around the UAA collecting stories, I have a growing sense of responsibility for getting it right. Mike Neer's story is one of my most precious bundles.
I met Mike, who is 6-7 and thin as a lamppost,  outside my RV, Honey, in the parking apron next to Fauver Stadium. A grounds keeper saw him arrive from a distance and came up to us quickly, his hand extended to Neer, who announced his retirement in May.
"How's it going coach?"
"Undefeated," he said.
Today, Oct. 15, is the first day of basketball practice, the first day in 34 years that Mike Neer won't be on the court.

Big weekend at Rochester
This weekend the campus population nearly doubles from 9,500 with 7,000 people expected for Meliora Weekend -- Homecoming, parents weekend and reunions. There are huge white tents everywhere and the campus is totally spruced up. It's a beautiful setting without the sprucing. Classic red brick buildings, criss-crossed quads, red and gold trees, energetic and optimistic students and the Genesee River curving along campus.
Above it all rises the dome of Rush Rhees Library, named not for a donor but for Benjamin Rush Rhees, the university's third president. Russ Rhees sounds as good as it looks, with a 50-bell carillon that chimes every fifteen minutes.
Meliora -- even better.

Sports in the right perspective
The athletics director at the University of Rochester is George VanderZwaag (wonder if he's Dutch). When I talked to him Wednesday, he put sports in perspective. While kids are practicing or playing games on the fields, the scientists and researchers on campus are looking for cures to cancer or solutions to energy needs. Relatively, sports is play time. The real world comes first. That's how they do it at Rochester and around the UAA.

Game day
The soccer teams from the University of Chicago are already in town. Flew in Thursday. That's another thing that makes the UAA unique in the world of D3 sports. Today at 5:00 the women play Rochester. The men's match is at 7:30. Weather forecasts earlier this week called for a 70 percent chance of rain, 20-mph winds and temperatures in the low 50s. But right now the sun is coming up and the skies are only partly cloudy (in relative, Rochester terms.) As every person in every part of America likes to say about their own climate, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

It's good to be king

No, I didn't separate colors.

The folks at Rochester are treating me like royalty, as have NYU, CWRU and CMU. Lisa, the kindly neighbor lady back in Atlanta, thinks I like that, and as usual, she is right. I'm parked outside the tunnel of Fauver Stadium, where I can see all the athletes coming and going for taping, untaping, suiting up and practicing. They even let me do my laundry in one of the huge industrial washers under the stands. Provo, king of equipment, calls me sir and can't stop asking whether he can do anything for me. I am grateful.

The spelling of Rush Rhees Library has been corrected in this blog entry.

New Polls Are Out, I Am Old

D3 polls are always released on Tuesdays, so here's a roundup of where UAA teams rank.

Do athletes, coaches and administrators pay attention to polls? Heck yes.
As one coach told me, if you want to compete for a national championship, the first step is competing for a UAA championship. Trust me, if I get a ranking wrong I will hear about it -- and correct it.
For those of you involved in UAA sports, these listings aren't news, because most of you called them up on the InterWeb the second they came out. For those of you who are just gaining awareness of the University Athletic Association, they show how these programs compete nationally.
About 450 colleges and universities belong to the NCAA's Division 3.

Honey in Jersey City.

Men's Cross Country - USFCCA

2. Washington University (2)
9. NYU (11)
13. Carnegie Mellon (14)
26. Case Western Reserve (27)
29. Rochester (28)
32. Brandeis (9)
Women's Cross Country - USFCCA
4. Washington University (4)
15. University of Chicago (14)
23. Case Western Reserve (23)
30. NYU (27)
34. Emory (34)


Volleyball - AVCA
1. Washington University (1)
2. Emory University (3)
15. University of Chicago (17)
23. NYU (23)


Women's soccer - NSCAA
15. Emory University (13)
23. Brandeis (15)
24. Chicago (Unranked)
25. Rochester (Unranked)

Men's soccer - NSCAA
9. Emory University  (9)
10. Washington University (11)
20. Rochester (15)
21. Carnegie Mellon (11)

About this blog: I am traveling around the country to attend soccer games at every school in the University Athletic Association, thus the random photo of my RV, Honey, parked at the Liberty Harbor Marina and RV Park in Jersey City earlier this month.
Today, Oct. 13, I am at the University of Rochester.