The Sporting Scene: Boston

National meet is his last hurdle

2010-03-12T10:08:00.000-08:00

Stoughton hurdles runner Greg Boursiquot.

Globe Correspondent / March 11, 2010

All winter, Gregory Boursiquot lagged behind his competitors out of the blocks in the 55-meter hurdle race before emphatically overtaking the field. He wasn’t drafting off his foes; the Stoughton High junior just feels more comfortable running from behind.

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“When I chase somebody, that makes me faster; [it helps] to see what’s going on,’’ said Boursiquot, who finally lost his first race of the season in a preliminary heat at the All-State meet on Feb. 26 at the Reggie Lewis Center.

Fresh off his victory at the Division 2 state meet in 7.69 seconds, Boursiquot was three-tenths of a second behind his normal start in the All-State heat, a fact his coach, Harvey Blonder, subtly pointed out to his pupil before he won the final in 7.50.

“He doesn’t get totally flustered if he’s a little bit behind; I have had hurdlers start faster than Greg, but he’s the best I’ve ever had running through the middle of it,’’ Blonder said, before noting how impressed he was to see Boursiquot jump out of the gate in the final.

“He’s smart enough to know that all he had to do was get a better start and he’d be all set. The next race, he went over the first hurdle right with the field and I knew he was going to win.’’

Boursiquot has not lost since, including his victorious 7.48 clocking at the New England high school championship held last Friday at the Reggie. He will conclude the season on Sunday at the Nike Indoor National meet at the same venue. Oliver Ames sophomore Emily Grotz also qualified for nationals after winning the 1,000 at the New England championship with a time of 2 minutes, 56.40 seconds.

Boursiquot will enter the meet with the 11th-fastest time in the country; the top six finishers earn All-America status.

“I don’t expect to come close to winning anything,’’ Boursiquot said, “but every time I think that, something good happens.’’

Boursiquot was never more pessimistic than when he earned the No. 1 seed for the New England meet, seeded ahead of even Rodrigo Souza, the Old Saybrook High (Conn.) senior who ran the fastest time in the country (7.43) this winter at the Yale Invitational.

“In my head I was scared,’’ Boursiquot recalled two days after his school-record time. “In practice I tried to stay focused, but I said, ‘Coach, how am I going to beat him? He runs so fast.’

“I don’t like being the top seed because you’re expected to win. Everyone looks at you, and if you don’t win it’s like you’re not good. I was scared to warm up because I was afraid of getting cramps.’’

Ultimately Boursiquot knew there was only one solution: Beat Souza off the blocks.

That was still only half the battle: Souza led going into the final hurdle before Boursiquot eclipsed him.

“I think my start was a little bit faster than him,’’ Boursiquot said. “In the middle of the race, we were tied but at the end I came through.

“When I beat [Souza’s time] in the first round I was amped. When I won the finals, I never expected that at all. I never thought I’d beat him.”

This spring, he will focus on the 110-yard outdoor hurdles school record set by Sean Earle, a 1993 Stoughton graduate who periodically works with Boursiquot as a coach. He has already broken Earle’s mark in the 50 (6.4) with his 6.3 sprint. Rodney Julien’s 400-meter hurdle record of 58 seconds flat is also a quest.

“It would be really cool,” Boursiquot said. “That would be awesome, my name all over the place. That would be cool.”

UMass-Lowell 76, Bentley 63: Falcons upset in NE-10 men's basketball tournament opener

2010-03-06T21:20:00.000-08:00

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Mar 02, 2010 @ 02:18 AM

WALTHAM — While homecourt advantage hasn't been kind to the Bentley University men's basketball team lately, a little home cooking helped Watertown native Max Kerman last night in UMass-Lowell's quarterfinal victory against the Falcons in the Northeast-10 Conference tournament.

``I was home last night,'' the River Hawks' junior captain said after the 76-63 victory handed Bentley its third straight home loss for the first time since the 2000-01 season. ``I drove by this morning on my way to the school, so it's great to play next to my home.''

And while Bentley has only lost four home games in the last four years, the Falcons have lost their first game in the NE-10 tournament the last two seasons.

But while No. 2-seeded Falcons (22-6) will surely be among the Division II NCAA Tournament field when it's announced on Sunday, the No. 7-seeded River Hawks (18-11) - who defeated No. 10 Assumption 91-77 to advance to last night's game - will most likely have to win the NE-10 tournament title to keep dancing.

They will play third-seeded Merrimack in Thursday's semifinals with an opportunity to play in Saturday's championship.

``This was do-or-die for us, we came in out of the NCAA Tournament so this was do-or-die for us,'' Kerman said.

The River Hawks had not won in the Dana Center since 2003. Bentley defeated Lowell 66-64 on Feb. 17 and 81-56 on Dec. 2.

``None of their players or coaches have ever beaten Bentley so you're talking about a hungry, very good team, that's been really ready to come after us,'' Bentley coach Jay Lawson said. ``And they put it on us. You gotta give them credit.''

Bentley entered the game on a two-game slide, losing to Franklin Pierce, 72-70, and Stonehill, 76-69, to close the regular season. Prior to that, the Falcons had prevailed in 61 of their previous 63 Dana Center appearances.

``That doesn't have anything to do with this game,'' said Lawson, noting that his second-best player Tom Dowling suffered a stress fracture in his foot after cracking a vertebra earlier in the season. ``We were undefeated when he's played. He tried to play, but his foot hurts too much. We've been playing all the other older players way too many minutes while he's been out all season.

``The other teams are starting to pick up that we don't have as many weapons, so it's all those dynamics - the home thing doesn't mean anything. There's only 500 people here on a good day. We've always been a good road team anyway, so I don't put any stock into that.''

Bentley fell behind, 11-4, early last night before using its long-range shooting to take control of the game. The Falcons hit three 3-pointers during a 14-0 run that gave them a 17-11 advantage with 11:32 to play in the first half.

Lowell crawled back into the game before Bentley senior guard Jason Westrol's three-point play off an emphatic left-handed dunk gave the Falcons a 22-18 edge with 9:10 left in the half.
But Lowell went on a 3-point shooting binge of its own, hitting four in a 16-4 run that put the River Hawks up 34-27 going into halftime.

``We just worked the ball around, we were patient and we got good shots,'' Kerman said.

The River Hawks' sharp shooting continued in the second half as they jumped out to a 16-point lead halfway through the half. Freshman guard Scotty Travers-Taylor (10 points) knocked down back-to-back triples before driving coast-to-coat to put Lowell up 43-34 with 15:13 to go. Then senior forward Ali Kanaan (11 points) hit a 3-pointer for Lowell.

Bentley came storming back, cutting the deficit to 55-46 as Westrol (game-high 23 points) scored the first six points of an 8-0 run in which Bentley stole the ball three times and Lowell committed a 10-second violation after a near steal.

The run was finally broken by Lowell sophomore guard Robert Walton, who finished with 12 points. He converted a three-point play with 4:29 to play, which was followed by a Westrol 3-pointer.

But Lowell got a 3-pointer from Kyle Caiola (12 points) the next time down to go back up by 10 points, 61-51. Even a hard dunk by Bentley junior forward Brian Tracy (12 points) - which made it 61-53 - was not enough to swing the momentum in the Falcons' favor.

``Maybe if we're down eight and get some steals and press (we can come back), but when you're down 16 you cut it to eight and then we're gassed,'' Lawson said.

Kerman, who finished with five points and five rebounds, came down with a rebound off a missed Bentley 3-pointer with 1:59 to play and was fouled. He split the pair to put Lowell up 66-53.

``It was a big win for us,'' Kerman said. ``I've never beaten them in my three years, and the seniors have never beaten them before, so it was a big game for us to come and play hard.

``It's a great win but we're not done yet.''

Hingham’s Lindberg leaps and bounds

2010-02-25T08:39:00.000-08:00

By Justin A. Rice

Globe Correspondent / February 25, 2010

Waiting in line to see a show in New York City while chaperoning a trip by the Hingham High drama department, Susan Lind-berg decided to chat up the school’s track coach, Fred Jewett.

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“I introduced myself and said, ‘I’ve been trying to get my son to run track, he’s really fast,’ ’’ recalled Lindberg of the conversation nearly four years ago. Coach Jewett “looked at me like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ ’’

When Dana Lindberg (right) started running as a sophomore, his mother asked Jewett: “ ‘Do you remember me? I came up to you and said my son was fast.’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah, you weren’t kidding.’ No, I wasn’t kidding.’’

How fast is Lindberg? On Sunday, the Hingham High senior ran the second-fastest 55-meter dash in school history - in 6.58 seconds - to capture his first individual title at the Division 3 indoor track and field championship at the Reggie Lewis Center.

“He’s the best sprinter in Division 3 and one of the top two or three in the state,’’ said Jewett, taking note of tomorrow’s All-State meet, in which Lindberg will go head-to-head with Andover ace Christopher McConnell. “It’s going to be a real battle between the two of them in the dash.’’

McConnell beat Lindberg at the Coaches Elite meet in January in 6.43 seconds.

Lindberg not only impressed his future track coaches at Yale with his speed, but also with his leaping ability. He owns not only a school record indoors in the long jump (21 feet, 7 inches) but also outdoors (22-10).

On Sunday, however, he was disappointed to finish third in his top event with a jump of 20-7.50.

“I was going into that thinking I had both the long jump and 55 in the bag,’’ Lindberg said. “I wasn’t hitting my mark and that’s a concern in long jump, any fundamental mistake like that can throw you off. I’m not worried, I still qualified and will get a crack at it [tomorrow]; that’s more important to me.’’

The Hingham boys placed third overall, 12 points behind champion Bishop Feehan, quite a feat with just six athletes entered in the meet. The 4 x 200 team nearly fumbled the baton but managed to finish third, while Conor Thompson placed fourth in the 55 hurdles after overcoming a staph infection suffered around Thanksgiving.

“I was just so happy for [Thompson], he’s done so much - so many other kids would’ve quit and said, ‘Forget it, see you in the spring,’ ” Jewett said. “He’s just battled back.

“That’s why Dana was so upset, just a couple more points and we could’ve won it.”

Lindberg has dealt with his share of injuries, too.

Last winter, he finished fourth in the 55 dash at All-States before pulling out of the long jump finals with a pulled hamstring that sidelined him until April. He ended up running a 22.46 in the 200 outdoors at the All-State meet, placing fourth, but failed to qualify in long jump at the divisional meet.

“I’m trying to take care of myself and make sure that doesn’t happen again,’’ said Lindberg, whose goal is to win long jump at New Englands. “This is my senior season and I want to make the most of it.’’

Lindberg also wants to make the most of his senior season as a sprinter, since he’ll likely focus on jumping at Yale.

He’s made quite a leap since freshman year, when he played football, basketball, and baseball - sports he gave up to focus on track. He was hooked once he realized that his impression of track as an individual sport was false.

“At Hingham, it’s all about team and coming together,’’ he said. “That’s why Hingham has a reputation for being such a strong team. With that in mind it’s helped me grow and succeed.

“I realized I wasn’t going to improve my chances of getting into college and achieve my potential sticking with those other sports.’’

Although he came around to that conclusion on his own, his mother has always seemed to know what was best for her son.

She said his Little League coaches called him Legs Lindberg and let him steal bases without taking a sign. When he was 3, his mother and father, Jon, would make Dana race his older sister, Erica, around the house to absorb some of his energy on hot summer nights.

“He’d say, ‘Let’s have a race,’ and he just wouldn’t stop,’’ Susan said. “He wanted to keep going around and around the house, and we didn’t mind because it used to tire him out.’’

All that youthful exuberance was embedded in Lindberg’s genes. Jon Lindberg was a football player and Dana’s grandfather, who died when he was 9, was a hurdler at Winchester High.

Last year Lindberg’s grandmother gave him a picture of his grandfather high jumping, and he pinned it to his bulletin board.

“I had no idea he did track,’’ Lindberg said. “It’s cool, I feel like he would’ve been proud of me if he could be watching now.’’

Obi-Tabot makes last stand for Raiders girls basketball

2010-02-23T06:24:00.000-08:00

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Mark Thomson/Daily News correspondent

Watertown senior center Brittany Obi-Tabot scored 27 points in her final varsity game last night at Endicott College in Beverly.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Feb 23, 2010 @ 02:37 AM

BEVERLY — Brittany Obi-Tabot's four-year tenure on the Watertown High girls varsity basketball team wasn't always easy.

But it was all worth it even if the ending is not what she had envisioned.

The 1,000-plus point scorer and rebounder finished her career by scoring a game-high 27 points in a 77-38 loss to Bishop Fenwick in the first round of the Division 3 North bracket last night at Endicott College.

``That was a tough game but we kept playing,'' the 6-foot senior center/forward, who will play for Division 1 Fairfield University in the fall, said after the defeat. ``We could've played harder, but we kept playing, and at Fairfield I'm going to be motivated to play, and know not to give up if we're down 10.''

Over the past four years, Obi-Tabot has been someone the Raiders knew they could rely on both in victory, and while trying to stay in contention against much tougher teams.

``It will be weird not having her around,'' Watertown seventh-year coach John Rimas said. ``She's been the best player I've seen come through here. To her credit, she stuck it out. She gets frustrated, but everyday she has a great attitude and she's been a great role model for a lot of younger girls, so hopefully she can inspire some younger people.

``She's so coachable and is willing to work so hard. It's unfortunate her season and her career had to end like this, but she has a lot to be proud of.''

Rimas said Obi-Tabot, who was the Middlesex League MVP this season, was a big reason the team qualified for the tournament the last four years, including an upset victory against Ipswich her sophomore year. Obi-Tabot takes pride in the fact that she carried her team to the playoffs in each of her seasons.

``My freshman year my coach told us they made the playoffs only three or four years before that,'' she said. ``It's nice to know we can play. We just need some oomph.''

This year, the 14th-seed Raiders (7-14) won't get another shot at second-seeded Ipswich, which Bishop Fenwick advances to play on Thursday.

The 10th-seeded Crusaders (14-7) held the Raiders scoreless for almost two minutes at the start of last night's game. Obi-Tabot - who scored all but one of Watertown's points in the first half - finally made the count 5-2, but Fenwick extended its run to 18-4 and ultimately outscored the Raiders 25-6 in the opening quarter.

The Crusaders, whose first and last baskets of the opening quarter were 3-pointers from junior guard Amy Pelletier (12 points), had several baskets created off pressure from their press.
They led 47-18 at half.

``We had a lot of quick turnovers,'' Rimas said. ``We knew they had three really good guards who were going to put pressure on us. We turned the ball over early and we could never really get in the flow. It's just one of those games.

``We bang heads with some tough teams in the Middlesex League all year and I want (the underclassmen) to get the experience. Tournament basketball is just a whole different game and hopefully our younger girls got some experience tonight.''

Junior captain Michelle Poirier said last night's game will provide motivation for next season.

``That was obviously a tough game,'' she said after scoring two points. ``I don't think everybody played their best and we're going to have to step it up, especially without Brittany. She was a good leader. She got everybody ready to go before games.''

Obi-Tabot was a leader from the start.

As a freshman, she broke the school's single-season record for rebounds (for both boys and girls), while also being an offensive force. She eclipsed the 1,000-career point mark in December.

``It went by so fast, it's crazy,'' she said. ``It hasn't hit me yet. I still feel like next year I'm going to come back and play. I leave July 5 and I guess that day it will kind of hit me.''

Rimas said, although he hasn't added up Obi-Tabot's stats yet, it's ``a pretty safe bet'' that she will come out as the program's all-time leading scorer.

``That's cool,'' Obi-Tabot said.

``You earned it,'' Poirier said.

``Thanks.''

And with that she bid Watertown hoops adieu.

``See you in Fairfield,'' she said.

NHL's Brooks Orpik launches drive for rink at Thayer

2010-02-21T07:02:00.000-08:00

Globe South Sports Notebook

By Justin A. Rice February 21, 2010

Looking back on his hockey career at Thayer Academy, Brooks Orpik likened the school’s weight room to a broom closet.

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“A lot has changed there since I was there,’’ recalled the rugged defenseman, who, since his departure, has won a national championship at Boston College in 2001 and a Stanley Cup last spring with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“I worked out in their new fitness center. Now it’s nicer than a lot of college weight rooms. They’re pretty spoiled over there.’’

Orpik, who along with former Thayer teammate Ryan Whitney (Anaheim Ducks) is suiting up for Team USA in Vancouver - wants to spoil the hockey players at his alma mater even more by helping Thayer coach Larry Rooney build an on-campus rink.

Rooney will host a watch party for tonight’s US-Canada men’s game (MSNBC, 7 p.m.) in hopes of garnering support for a fund-raising effort, extending an invitation to 600 hockey alums for the big-screen event.

“A night like this might kick it off,’’ Rooney said of the fund-raising. “We’re trying to get support and figureheads behind this, trying to rejuvenate some energy around this.’’

At Thayer, Rooney was a teammate of Marshfield’s Jeremy Roenick and Hingham’s Tony Amonte, who both played in the 1998 Games in Nagano, the first Games to allow NHL players, and the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. Alum Dave Silk of Scituate was a member of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice’’ team in Lake Placid, N.Y.

“It’s an honor to represent your country in international play,’’ said Whitney, who was a late addition to Team USA after Paul Martin was injured. “I’ve done it before, and you really can’t compare it to anything else when you’re wearing your country’s jersey.

Orpik, who plans to contribute funds to the estimated $20 million facility, also put together a highlight DVD to inspire those in attendance this evening.

Thayer is the only program in the Independent School League without its own rink.

“Hopefully everything goes well,’’ Orpik said of the capital campaign. “It’s well overdue. Most [ISL teams] play in pretty new and nice rinks. It would be a good thing for them.’’

Here and there

Catherine O’Connell of North Quincy High and Tim Young of Brockton continue to tear it up on the court at Newbury College. Together, the pair have copped 11 Rookie of the Week honors from the New England Collegiate Conference this winter.

O’Connell was honored last week after averaging 12 points and 10.3 rebounds over two games for the Nighthawks.

“I wasn’t expecting to win all these awards,’’ said the freshman center. “I just play for the team and if it comes on the side it comes on the side. It’s great to win them, but that’s not what I’m going for.’’

The Nighthawks men’s team was 1-1- last week, defeating Daniel Webster 61-59 and narrowly falling to Southern Vermont 77-75. Young averaged 28.5 points, 6 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 2.5 steals. “It’s great,’’ he said. “I have good teammates and have taken good shots.’’ . . .

Norwood’s Kathryn Bernazzani was selected Northeast-10 Freshman of the Week for the first time after breaking the Stonehill College school record in 55-meter hurdles. She was clocked in a time of 8.75 seconds at the Tufts Stampede, finishing second in a field of 23 runners. She has qualified for the New England Championships later this month. . . .

Westfield State freshman Brendan Corcoran of Walpole was named MASCAC Men’s Indoor Track Athlete of the Week after shattering school and meet records in the 600 meters (1 minute, 21.98 seconds).

No rest for Bergeron, B's Olympians

2010-02-19T10:55:00.001-08:00

Written by Justin Rice

Monday, February 15, 2010 04:59

Patrice Bergeron arrived in Vancouver on Sunday, 24 hours after his Boston Bruins played the Florida Panthers in Sunrise, Fla.

While there will be no rest for Bergeron or five of his other teammates competing in the two-week Winter Olympic ice hockey tournament, the 24-year-old Team Canada center hopes the rest of the Bruins get some rest and relaxation.

“Hopefully for most of the guys they can get to go home and rest and get to think about things,” Bergeron said before the Bruins lost in another shootout — to Vancouver, of all teams — on Feb. 6, “and hopefully regroup for the last part of the season.”

The loss was Boston’s 10th straight before a 3-0 victory against Montreal the next day avoided tying the longest losing streak in franchise history, set by the Bruins in their inaugural 1924-25 season.

Two nights later, the Bruins finally won a shootout by beating Buffalo 3-2 and two nights after that they beat Tampa Bay.

Bergeron, who missed the 2007-08 season with a concussion, had 12 goals and 25 assists through 53 games this season but knows he has a lot to learn from his teammates on the heavily favored Canadian team. And once the tournament begins it will be all business, leaving little time to check out all the other events in Vancouver.

“I’m going to be in my little bubble there and stay focused,” he said, “but at the same time I’m sure I’m going to have a chance to meet all the athletes.

“I’m looking forward to meeting all the athletes from different sports, not really one in particular although I’m looking forward to speed skating and stuff like that. Just really enjoying the whole experience of the whole thing.”

Speaking before the Canucks game and the Bruins' eventual three-game win streak, however, Bergeron was looking forward to joining a squad that is actually favored to win something.

“I’m looking forward to seeing all the guys. I’m actually looking forward to the whole experience,” he said. “It’s going to be amazing. Playing at home we’ve played there against the Canucks and the crowd is so loud and the building is always so loud and sold out it’s always fun to play there. So I think the crowd will help us.”

In 2005 Bergeron won gold in the World Junior Tournament and hopes to repeat that success.

“I have two [medals] actually,” he said. “They’re nicely sitting on the wall there back home. … We have high expectations for ourselves so I think its fine that we got pressure from all the fans and the whole country. Obviously we want to win, especially at home like that. So I think that’s normal. As a team we gotta handle the high expectations if we want to do well.

“That’s fine. We have high expectations of ourselves. It’s something you have to enjoy the moment. The fans are going to be behind us. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Olympic Spirit

2010-02-15T17:19:00.000-08:00

Photo: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Feb. 3: Brooks Orpik's portrait at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Penn.

Justin A. Rice/Red Line Editorial February 12, 2010

As a high school hockey player in the late 1990s, Brooks Orpik often wondered why his coach fussed so much about the Olympic spirit. As a teenager, Orpik just wanted to play in the NHL.

But at Thayer Academy just outside Boston, coach Jack Foley was all about the wide-open and finesse style of amateur and international hockey.

Now that Orpik, a defenseman, 29, is all grown up and has won a national championship with Boston College and a Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins, he realizes that Foley is one of the main reasons he is one of the only veteran NHL players on the U.S. hockey team that will compete at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. The U.S. men face off against Switzerland on Tuesday for their first game in Vancouver.

"I think when you were going through it at the time it's one of those things you think was kind of stupid, maybe you want to overlook that," Orpik said Foley's philosophy. "Growing up as a kid that's just natural. Everyone dreams of playing in the NHL."

The philosophy paid off for one of Orpik's high school teammates, too. Ryan Whitney, now of the Anaheim Ducks, was a late addition to Team USA for the Olympic Winter Games. He replaced the injured Paul Martin a few weeks ago.

Now Orpik and Whitney are members of an elite group of Foley disciples to wear the red, white and blue that includes Olympians Jeremy Roenick, Tony Amonte and Dave Silk.

Roenick and Amonte played for Team USA in the Nagano 1998 Olympic Winter Games (the first Games that allowed NHL players) and the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Winter Games, and Silk represented the United States as part of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" team in Lake Placid, N.Y.

"We really wanted to produce kids for college and the Olympics," said Foley, 64, who left Thayer in 2002 and currently scouts for the NHL's Dallas Stars. "We thought that was the pinnacle. We played a European style before anyone else did."

Throughout the years, Foley and his predecessor at Thayer, Arthur Valicenti, have been heavily involved in Team USA's youth and coaching program.

Orpik and Whitney also have played extensively within the Team USA system. Orpik, who first met Foley at a Team USA youth clinic, played for Team USA at the 2006 International Ice Hockey Federation World Men's Championship and skated for the U.S. at the 2000 IIHF World Junior Championship.

Whitney was a member of the U.S. Junior Team that competed at the 2003 IIHF World Junior Championship and participated in the 2002 IIHF World Junior Championship and 2001 IIHF World Men's U-18 Championship. He was also a member of the U.S. U-18 team within USA Hockey's National Team Development Program.

"It was incredible," Whitney said about receiving the call to represent Team USA. "It's an honor to represent your country in international play. I've done it before, and you really can't compare it to anything else when you're wearing your country's jersey. I've played for the U.S. in the World Juniors, but I can't imagine the Olympics. You're on the biggest stage and it only happens once every four years, so it's a dream come true.

Martin and Orpik text messaged Whitney when he got the call.

"I got to know Paul Martin a little bit during the camp this summer," Whitney said. "He's a great guy. He's a great player. I really felt for him. At the same time, I never wished for him to be injured, but anyway you can get there, you take it. It just happened to be that way for me, and I'm really happy to be part of the team."

Whitney also played with Orpik and Team USA member Ryan Malone in Pittsburgh but was traded to Anaheim just before the Penguins won the Stanley Cup last season.

"It will be cool,'' Whitney said of being reunited with Orpik as a teammate. "Brooks was a senior when I was a freshman [at Thayer], and I kind of grew up with him and Ryan Malone on the Penguins.

"We had a special group. And the three of us were pretty close, so it's really fun. To think you'll be in the locker room, having fun, practicing and playing with those guys again, I can't wait."

The current Thayer Academy community can't wait, either. Tigers coach Larry Rooney is hosting a watch party at the school for hometown fans during the Team USA-Canada game on Feb. 21.

Rooney, who played at Thayer with Roenick and Amonte before graduating in 1987, keeps in touch with Orpik on a regular basis. He hopes to draw 300 to 400 hockey alums to the watch party and garner support for a future fundraising effort to build a rink on campus.

"A night like this might kick it off," Rooney said. "We're trying to get support and figureheads behind this, try to rejuvenate some energy around this."

Orpik, who said he will contribute to the hockey facility (which has an estimated cost of $20 million), also put together a highlight DVD to show at the watch party. He still lives in the area during the offseason and works out at Thayer in the summer.

"A lot has changed there since I was there," Orpik said. "I worked out in their new fitness center. We had a little closet with a couple weights when I played there. Now it's nicer than a lot of college weight rooms. They're pretty spoiled over there."

Unfortunately, when Orpik and Whitney are home in the offseason their old coach, Foley, is on the road during the peak of the scouting season. But the former coach said maybe one of these days they'll be able to get together for a beer on the South Shore of Massachusetts and reminisce about Thayer Academy's Olympic legacy.

"I don't know about any high schools in Minnesota, but for most high schools in the country that's got to be pretty close to the top in terms of number of guys," Orpik said of all the players Thayer has sent to the Olympic Winter Games. "Thayer always has a good hockey program.

"Obviously a little luck is involved (in making the Olympics), but a lot of that goes back to my time at Thayer, learning a lot about myself and hockey. People still ask me who was most influential person (in my career) and I always say Jack Foley definitely was."

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Justin Rice is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.

Kesler back at home

2010-02-15T17:13:00.000-08:00

Photo: Abelimages / Getty Images

Ryan Kesler of the Vancouver Canucks at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Justin A. Rice/Red Line Editorial February 11, 2010

BOSTON - If anyone on the U.S. hockey team had a good excuse to not stay in the Olympic Village during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, it would be Ryan Kesler.

After all, Vancouver is Kesler's home.

A forward for the NHL's Vancouver Canucks, won't be resting in his own bed during the Games, however. He will crash in the Olympic Village instead.

"I'm going to stay in the village and get the whole experience," Kesler said after the Canucks beat the Boston Bruins 3-2 in a shootout Feb. 6. "There's not really one thing I'm not looking forward to. I'm just going to try to get the most of the experience."

Kesler will have an intimate knowledge of the primary Olympic ice hockey venue - General Motor's Place, which will be renamed Canada Hockey Place for the Winter Games. It's where the Canucks player home games during the NHL season.

"Obviously it helps knowing the rink and knowing the city, but I don't know if it's an advantage by any means," said Kesler, a 25-year-old Michigan native of playing in his adopted hometown.

Kesler added that he could have used his speed to his advantage if the tournament were being played on the traditional Olympic-size hockey rink, which is larger than the NHL sheet of ice.

"At the same time, I'm used to the smaller rink," he said.

Kesler, however, is not the only player who will have a home rink edge. Six of his Canucks teammates are also going to be competing on home ice.

While Kesler, a first-time Olympian, is the only member of the Canucks on Team USA, Pavol Demitra (Slovakia), Christian Ehrhoff (Germany), Roberto Luongo (Canada), Sami Salo (Finland), and twin brothers Daniel and Henrik Sedin (Sweden) also will be competing in the Games.

The San Jose Sharks leads the league with the most Olympic players going to Vancouver with eight. The Canucks and Detroit Red Wings both have seven.

The Games might be in their hometown, but the Canucks have not been there much lately. Heading into the two-week Olympic break, Vancouver was in the middle of the NHL's longest road trip in league history at 14 games. Kesler said he and his teammates haven't had much time to talk about the coming Games. The Canucks were set to play eight consecutive games away from home before the Olympic Winter Games and six in a row on the road after the Games.

"The Olympics have been in the back of our minds, but right now we're just focusing on this long road trip and trying to get through it," he said after only the fourth game of the trip in Boston.

Through the first five games of the road trip, Kesler had two goals assists and two assists as the Canucks won two games and lost three. Through the first 58 games of the season Kesler had 15 goals and 36 assists, giving the fourth-year player 80 goals and 111 assists in 378 NHL games.

"Ryan is having a real good season," Canucks coach Alain Vigneault said before the victory in Boston. "He's a really good skater, he's a really solid competitor at both ends of the ice, and he really comes to play every night. For us he's got a huge role: He kills power plays, he's on the top penalty killing team, and five-on-five I can play him against the best players in the league."

Vigneault said the Winter Games can only improve the skills of a young player such as Kesler.

"Anytime you can measure yourself up against the best, it brings out the best in players," he said. "So I'm hoping that experience will help. He's still a real young player, so it should help him be the best he can be."

Most of Kesler's teammates will be in the same boat. The players on Team USA are significantly younger than those on the 2006 U.S. Olympic squad. The average age of the 2010 U.S. team is 26.5 years, compared to an average of 31.2 years four years ago in Torino. Of the 23 members of Team USA, 20 are first-time Olympians.

When he was 21, Kesler failed to make Team USA for the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games after participating in orientation camp. The team finished 1-4-1 in Italy. At the time only in his second season in the NHL, Kesler said he wasn't ready to play at the Olympic level.

Now there has been a changing of the guard, and Kesler is looking forward to the challenge of playing on a young Olympic team.

"Obviously there's going to be a lot of youth, but we have some veteran leadership in the room and we've got a lot of young skill on the team and a lot of energy, so I think that's going to help us," he said. "Obviously I want to do well and I want the team to do well. We're going there to win a medal, but whatever happens, happens."

He might not have any Olympic experience, but Kesler has competed in the international arena plenty. He played for the U.S. National Team Development Program from 2000 to 2002 and represented the U.S. four times between 2002 and 2006. At the International Ice Hockey Federation World U-18 Hockey Championships in 2002, he led Team USA to a gold medal with seven points in eight games.

"It's going to help me a little bit," he said of his international experience, "but obviously the Olympics are going to be a much bigger stage and the players are going to be that much better. I can draw on it a little bit, but it's definitely going to be harder."

Once he's confronting that challenge head on, Kesler doesn't anticipate having much free time to check out other Olympic events, although he said he will try to see Shaun White catching some air on the snowboarding halfpipe.

At least Kesler doesn't have to worry about missing out on all the sights [CM1] Vancouver has to offer.

"Once the game starts, you are with your team," he said. "It's a great experience, and it's in our hometown so it's going to be a great thing."

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Justin A. Rice is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.

Selflessness guides Notre Dame runners

2010-02-11T05:19:00.001-08:00

Notre Dame Academy sophomore Kelsey Whitaker (second from left) has proved an inspiration to her teammates. (Notre Dame Academy)

By Justin A. Rice

Globe Correspondent / February 11, 2010

There were no hard feelings when Kelsey Whitaker bettered the 600-meter time of Ariel Kenyon, her senior teammate at Notre Dame Academy, earlier this season. And Whitaker was not upset when Molly O’Leary shattered the freshman mark in the 1,000 meters Whitaker set last season.

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“I’ve broken some people’s records and stuff like that and they are fine with it,’’ said Whitaker, a sophomore from Kingston who won the 1,000-meters at the MSTCA Elite Meet at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center last month with a personal best 3 minutes, 2.38 seconds.

“A freshman broke my record and we’re all fine. We just encourage each other to do better and we’re happy for each other.’’

The lack of a traditional caste system at Notre Dame is one major reason why coach Rick Kates has maintained the Hingham Catholic school’s dominance over the last two decades. Notre Dame has more than held its own in the Dual County League in the indoor season and won 21 straight Catholic Conference titles in cross country and outdoor track.

“A lot of underclassmen are hesitant to pass seniors,’’ said Kates, who guided Notre Dame to a DCL title last winter before finishing second in the Division 2 state meet. “Our seniors encourage them to be the best they can for themselves and the team. I think that’s awesome. I think they’re great role models.’’

“Kelsey acts like a senior. She follows right along and does everything the other team members are doing. She takes care of everyone else before herself.’’

For all that senior leadership, senior captain Corrina Lucini said Whitaker is the one who stands out in training sessions.

“Basically she pulls us in workouts,’’ Lucini said of the sophomore. “She kind of takes the lead and we all pace our times judging by her and we try to keep up with her.

“I don’t mind. She’s my friend. It’s no big deal. She helps. Kelsey works really hard. She’s one of the most dedicated people on the team. She will always improve.’’

That leadership carries over off track too, Lucini said. “I always call her for advice, as much as I’m supposed to be giving the advice as a captain,’’ she said. “She’s one of those great runners that puts a lot of effort in and a lot of people look up to her.’’

There has been no shortage of runners for Whitaker and her teammates to look up to over the years. Three of last year’s graduates are running at the collegiate level: Ellen Callahan (Colgate College), Elizabeth Arens (Bates College), and Elizabeth McManus (Lehigh University).

“They are really good to look up to,’’ Whitaker said of last year’s seniors. “They helped me learn how to race and work out. Two of them were on my relay team and helped me to race and showed me the ropes.’’

Most of Kates’ former runners continue in one form or another.

“It’s a sport for a lifetime,’’ he said. “You can run anytime when you’re an adult and lead a healthy lifestyle. A lot of them do that. I work the Boston Marathon every year and see 10 to 15 alums cross the finish line. That’s awesome.’’

This year’s senior class is not too shabby either. Besides Lucini and Kenyon, Sophia Wojtasinski has clocked a 5:22 mile.

Perhaps one reason there is no jealousy in the Notre Dame program is because everyone seems to thrive and improve together within Kates’ system.

“We start off with strength training at the beginning of the season and just a couple weeks ago we started speed training,’’ Whitaker said. “After that, everyone’s times dropped.’’

As a result, Lucini recorded her personal best mile (5:38) in last week’s DCL meet.

Whitaker broke Kenyon’s time in the 600 meters (1:41) by one second a few days before winning the 1,000 at the MSTCA Elite Meet on Jan 30. Her time, 302.28, was 9.6 seconds faster than the school sophomore record, set by Callahan.

Whitaker’s nearest opponent in that race was three seconds behind her, and she still felt like she could’ve run another 500 meters after crossing the finish line.

“I feel like I can run faster than that,’’ said Whitaker, who will get that chance Feb. 20 in the Division 2 state meet. “I’m just hoping to make it to All-States. There’s some pretty good competition in Division 2 so I don’t know if I can win, but I can try.’’

2010-02-11T05:12:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy Harvard University

Harvard University senior Doug Rogers, of Watertown, skates in his final season with the Crimson before looking ahead to a hopeful career in the NHL.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Feb 11, 2010 @ 12:00 AM

Playing in Monday night's Beanpot consolation game against Northeastern University was better than no Beanpot at all for Doug Rogers.

The Harvard senior forward from Watertown missed the opening round of the annual winter carnival at the TD Garden last Monday night with back spasms, but was glad to be back on the ice this week for his final Beanpot - despite a 4-1 loss to the Huskies.

``You want to play in as many games as possible,'' Rogers said before Boston University and Boston College met in the championship bout. ``It goes without saying I'd rather be in the championship game, of course, and I was disappointed I missed the game last Monday. But it was nice to play in my final game in the Beanpot as a senior, at the very least. It's just too bad we lost.''

The pain from his back spasms was nothing compared to the pain of watching the Crimson lose 6-0 to Boston College in the first round last Monday.

``It was tough,'' said Rogers, who played high school hockey for St. Sebastian's and was drafted by the New York Islanders in 2006. ``I wanted to be out there more than anything, especially being from Watertown - a local guy. I grew up watching the Beanpot. As a kid growing up, I always wanted to be in the Beanpot and play in it. So it was very unfortunate I got hurt against Princeton the Friday before and missed the game against BC.

``That's the way it goes sometimes and you just have to deal with it.''

Monday night was a tough loss to take too.

``That's hockey, sometimes you don't always get the first goal,'' he said. ``I don't think we played great in the first period, and we fought back well, and then I think we made bad decisions in the third period, and ultimately ended up losing the game.

``That happens, teams will score goals. It's a 60-minute hockey game and you can't get rattled by the first goal. You have to keep going with the game plan. I don't think we were worried about that. It's just that we made bad decisions at some crucial times.''

Harvard (6-14-3) lost to Yale, 6-3, on Saturday after beating Brown, 5-2, the previous game. Rogers tallied two goals and added an assist in that win only a day after returning from his injury.

``I got a couple goals and an assist, it was a good game to come back to and gave me some confidence,'' said Rogers, who has five goals and five assists this season. ``I'm glad I didn't lose a step when I was out.''

Now Rogers has six games left before the end of his senior season and college career. He said he just has to go out, and do his best, and try to enjoy the final few games.

``There's still hope in the season,'' he said. ``We're probably right in the middle of the pack in our league. I don't think we have a chance to get an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament, but anything can happen. You can get hot at the end of the year, and just hold onto that thought, and put your best foot forward and see what happens.''

He also can look forward to making a go of it in the Islanders organization. The Islanders selected Rogers as their fourth-round choice in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft after taking notice of Rogers' success with St. Sebastian's high school.

Rogers said there's a possibility he could join one of the Islanders' minor league teams once the Harvard season ends.

``We'll see what happens, I hope that happens,'' he said, ``and if not I'll train hard this summer and see what happens next year.''

One thing he has going for him with the Islanders is the fact that head coach Scott Gordon is also a Massachusetts man, hailing from Easton.

``I met him briefly last year at the Islanders summer camp but besides that (I have not talked to him) much,'' Rogers said. ``It's definitely a little comforting. You'd like to think Massachusetts guys take care of each other. But it's a business there, so you have to do your best.

``But it's nice to know you've got that connection.''

He'll always have a connection to the Beanpot too.

``I kind of felt it before the game, the last time I'd be playing in a Beanpot setting,'' he said. ``It was fun.''

Brandeis basketball player Jessica Chapin hopes to guide Judges back to NCAA tournament

2010-02-11T05:09:00.000-08:00

Photo by Mark Turesky/Sportspix

Brandeis University senior guard Jessica Chapin is coming off a record-breaking week for the Judges.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Feb 11, 2010 @ 12:07 AM

For years, Jessica Chapin's father and coaches have been telling her to let the game come to her. But when the dynamic Brandeis senior guard needed to follow that advice the most, the advice - just like her game - had to come to her on her own terms.

Admittedly not one to struggle with self-esteem, Chapin hit a mid-January slump during a weekend in which the Judges (13-6) lost back-to-back games to Washington University of St. Louis, 67-57, and the University of Chicago in Chicago, 74-61.

``I was losing some confidence in my shot, which clearly has never been a problem for me,'' Chapin said. ``Those two games I really did decide to relax and let things come to me. I think it took a game to set in. In Chicago, I realized I was just kind of forcing things, so I struggled again.''

All of that, however, is in the rearview mirror now.

Chapin was named University Athletic Association (UAA), New England Women's Basketball Association (NEWBA) and Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Player of the Week for the second week in a row last week.

Playing at Case Western Reserve University on Feb. 5, and Carnegie Mellon University two days later, Chapin led the Judges to a 2-0 week by averaging 27 points, 3.5 rebounds, 3 assists and 2.5 steals. She shot 53.8 percent from the field (14-for-26) and 69.2 percent from 3-point range (9-for-13).

``I felt like, on Sunday (vs. Carnegie), anything I threw up was going to go in,'' she said. ``So it was kind of crazy.''

In the 65-56 win at Case Western, she had 18 points, five rebounds and five assists in 34 minutes, hitting 5-of-11 from the floor, 2-of-4 from 3-point range and 6-of-9 from the line.

In a 59-50 win against Carnegie Mellon, she set a pair of school records, scoring 36 points to erase the previous mark set by Pam Vaughan 20 years ago.

The Mendon, N.Y. native also tied a school record with her sixth career game of 25 or more points.

``The past couple of weeks she has been playing really well, really shooting the ball well,'' Brandeis coach Carol Simon said, ``just doing a good job getting the team involved and getting things going a little bit. In the past couple of weeks, she's really been in the zone.

``What really benefited her is she let the game come to her rather than forcing things. There's been a couple of games where she's been forcing things. This kid is a real competitor and wants to get it done. There was one game she was just trying too hard. I was like `Jess, Jess just relax, let the game come to you.'''

The 23-year coach, whose four NCAA tournament bids have come the last four seasons, said Chapin is peaking at the perfect moment.

``This is coming right at the right time,'' she said. ``We have five more games. They are games we have to win, so I don't need her waiting.''

Simon said she thinks her team needs to win at least four out of the last five games on their schedule, including rematch games against Washington University and the University of Chicago on Feb. 12 and 14, to earn an NCAA berth. This time those games will be at home.

``We control our own destiny with five more games against top-ranked teams,'' Simon said. ``If we're lucky enough maybe to get four or five wins, I think we're in a good position again. I don't know, I'm not on committee. It's just a matter of taking care of business and winning your own games.''

Both Simon and Chapin also said it's a matter of Chapin being able to get her teammates involved more against those teams.

``It's hard because I'm trying to create things for everyone else and force things sometimes,'' Chapin admitted. ``(Wash U) stuck one of their better defenders on me and I was just not in the rhythm. I was just probably taking some shots and making some passes that were not really there.

``Like I told coach, and I tell everybody, if I have to score 36 points for us to win, that's what I'll do. But if I score two points, and we win, that's fine too. Definitely, down the stretch, we're going to need more people to contribute and have big games.''

Last year was the team's best-ever tournament run when they lost in the Elite Eight to Amherst.

``We're pretty motivated by that,'' Chapin said of getting revenge against Amherst. ``Every year our goal is to get to the tournament. It doesn't matter how it's done, how pretty or ugly, we'd like to get there.''

All parts in perfect sync

2010-02-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

By Justin A. Rice

Globe Correspondent / February 4, 2010

Not even his own teammates believed Tim Kennedy could defeat the top-ranked 160-pounder in the state.

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Kennedy’s upset win against Eric Deslauriers last month not only propelled Bridgewater-Raynham to a thrilling 34-28 victory against defending Division 2 state champion Franklin High, it also made the Trojans believers.

“We didn’t think we had a chance to beat [Franklin],’’ said Matt Libby, B-R’s 125-pound junior captain. “Kids started winning matches and once we won against the best team in the state, we knew we could compete with anybody.’’

The Titans entered last night’s league match at Taunton with a perfect 24-0 mark and ranked first in the state, according to masswrestling.com. Trojans fifth-year coach Jeff Francis believes this year’s team could be the best in the 35-year history of the storied program, which, believe it or not, is still searching for its first state team title.

Not surprisingly, B-R is chock-full of contributors on the mat.

In addition to Kennedy (27-2) and Libby (30-0), Libby’s older brother, Steve, is 28-1 at 152 pounds.

But for all the firepower, the key to B-R’s success is as much about the sure-handedness of the stars as it is the unexpected contributions of the supporting cast.

Five first-year varsity grapplers have combined for a 78-42 record. And then there’s senior captain Steve Capobianco, a semi-starter a year ago, who is 20-5 at 189 pounds this season.

“We definitely have our studs, the Libbys and the Tim Kennedys, but everybody has brought it together this year,’’ Capobianco said. “I’m not going to lie, we’ve surprised a lot of people, but hopefully we can keep it going.’’

Of the five first-year wrestlers - sophomore Dan Creighton (112), junior Colin Harrington (119), sophomore Vasili Gerekas (135), junior Tad Peterson (140), and senior Shawn Quigley - the 171-pound Quigley has been the most pleasant surprise.

Wrestling up from 158, Quigley has registered an impressive 19-4 mark, a record built no doubt on his daily head-to-head matches with Kennedy and Steve Libby in practice.

“Getting beat up by them in practice only helps me on the mat when I have to wrestle the kids that are stronger than me,’’ Quigley said.

Quigley gets his revenge in the lunchroom, where he can indulge in seconds and thirds while everyone else worries about making weight.

“I can eat what I want,’’ he said. “It’s pretty cool going home and eating two dishes of pasta and not having to worry. It gives me an advantage. I’m not tired. I’m full of energy.’’

But he doesn’t want to rub it in. “I try to stay off that,’’ he said, “everyone [cutting weight] is kind of grouchy.’’

His work has provided an inspiration. “When you see a kid, first year on varsity, winning matches, pulling off big wins, it gets everybody motivated,’’ Matt Libby said.

The Libbys provided the ultimate emotional boost last month, when each recorded his 100th career win. Four days after Matt reached the milestone against BC High, Steve joined him by pinning Barnstable’s Sean Duffy 1:24 into the first round. No other set of brothers at the school has accomplished the feat.

“That was awesome,’’ said Matt Libby, who could also break the school record for career wins.

Francis, an 18-year assistant under Stan Holmes, the program’s founder, believes the career wins mark (146) is held by Devin Hennessy. Over the years, the Trojans have produced 13 state individual and four New England champions, but a team title has always proven elusive. A year ago, B-R finished 26-4, losing to Springfield Central in the Division 1 state semifinals.

“This team definitely tops all of those,’’ Francis said. “I thought they’d be a good team, but they’re even surprising me. To go the whole season without one downfall so far is just really good.’’

B-R went unbeaten a few times in the 1970s, but “that was when we only had 12 matches,’’ he said. “This year we’re talking 28 matches after states. It’s a little bit different. The schedule we wrestle now is more statewide.’’

He constantly worries about his squad peaking too early. “You gotta cross your fingers that they don’t [burn out], but if you don’t train hard enough they will not be in good enough shape. So it’s a real fine line.’’

He is sure, though, that his five first-year varsity grapplers will be challenged more in practice than in a real match.

“By the time they get to the match, they’ve already wrestled tougher kids in practice,’’ Francis said. “That’s just what happens. They get slipped up in there, and they start thinking they’re better than they are, and they get some momentum rolled up.

“It’s a big confidence game, wrestling, and once they get in there they start realizing they can do it.’’

Pin in final match seals wrestling victory for Lions

2010-02-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Feb 04, 2010 @ 03:29 AM

NEWTON — Luscian Cascino had Nick Rogers on his back and in a headlock for about 30 seconds before his Newton South teammates got on their feet and started chanting: ``Lift his head! Lift his head!''

Everyone in the gym joined in the chant as the South wrestling team trailed Waltham High 31-27 in the final match of the night in the final dual meet of the season.

While Cascino couldn't entirely decipher what the South supporters were chanting, as another 30 seconds went by before the buzzer to end the first round, their words didn't fall on deaf ears. It only took the South freshman 11 seconds to pin Rogers in the second round to give his team the 33-31 victory.

``You really can't hear through the head gear, it's just a massive noise,'' Cascino said after his teammates mobbed him in the middle of the mat. ``It's the encouragement that really counts.
``I just had to adjust to get his shoulder blades on the mat because at first it wasn't working. At first, I thought I landed a little too hard on him. I was on him the whole time, but I couldn't get his shoulders down. ... When I took him down in the second round, I landed on him right.''

The dramatic victory was the fifth time this season South (10-8) was in a meet that came down to the final match, and the first time it came out on top.

``It's nice to win one, this definitely helps,'' said South coach Alan Rotatori, noting that the win gives his team momentum going into the postseason.

Cascino's pin came after Charley Kalotkin got South back within striking distance by pinning Fritz Sylvester in the 215-pound match.

``We knew it was going to be close,'' Rotatori said. ``Waltham has been wrestling some very good opponents during the season. We've also wrestled some good opponents. And it's all about matchups. It was nice to have the younger guys at 215 and heavyweight step up. It's a lot of pressure. It's tough sometimes.''

Rotatori said he had five seniors in his lineup for the first time all season.

``A lot of it has to do with the senior leadership, the seniors helping the freshmen,'' he said. ``But it was really, to be honest, the younger kids that stepped up and solidified the win.''

After Waltham (10-8) freshman Laban Christenson defeated South sophomore Sam Caggiano 6-3 in the opening match at 103 pounds, South got back-to-back pins at 112 and 119 from sophomore Dana Cohen-Kaplan and senior Peter Franco, respectively, to take the 12-3 lead.

Waltham tied the meet 12-12 after Chris Annunciata got a pin at 130, and took the 18-15 lead three matches later after senior Joey Catino beat South senior Tamir Singer 15-2.

After losing the lead in the next match, Waltham regained it, and eventually took a 10-point lead, 31-21, after the 189 bout when Bobby DiPronio pinned Evert Yeaw. Just before that, Kevin Smith won at 171 and Kevin Pike-Fisher gave Waltham the 22-21 lead after the 160 match.

``I had a big comeback win - it was nice,'' said Pike-Fisher, who defeated Ben O'Leary 4-2 in overtime. ``It boosted my confidence, and then Bobby had the pin, and I thought we were going to win it. And then it slipped away.''

As hard as it was for Waltham to watch the final bout, it was equally as intoxicating for South.

``It's really a testament to how hard we've been working in the practice room,'' Franco said. ``We do a lot of conditioning and it pays off, that's where it pays off.

``It was amazing. Honestly, partway through this meet I didn't think the chances were great. I was thinking about how badly I wanted to win this meet. When Lucian pinned that kid, that was great, oh man, so great.''

Franco and his cohorts couldn't have been more grateful to have been bailed out by a freshman on Senior Night.

``It's something new I guess,'' Cascino said. ``It's fun, it really is. It's a good feeling to be able to help the team.''

At the Dual County League meet on Saturday, Waltham edged out South for fourth place after senior Jimmy Coutoumas' 140-pound victory over South's Gabe Turetsky. Yesterday, Coutoumas, who is ranked No. 2 by MassWrestling.com, managed a minor decision against Turetsky, who is ranked No. 5, to cut South's lead down to 18-15 after six matches.

Waltham won eight of the 14 minutes, but it was South's ability to pin that gained it the victory.

``It's tough, they're home so they have the momentum going,'' Waltham coach Jeff Cincotta said. ``They're a tough team. I wish it didn't start at 103 because I've got a couple young guys at the end of my lineup, and it put a lot of pressure on them.''

Dancing or skating, girl just wants to have fun

2010-01-28T07:03:00.000-08:00

Nicole Perry, 14, of Raynham. (Michael Tureski/Sportspix)

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / January 28, 2010

Nicole Perry will not choose between her two passions, figure skating and dancing.

“Everybody asks me that question,’’ said Perry, a freshman at Bridgewater-Raynham Regional who captured a gold medal at the Bay State Winter Games this past weekend in Williamstown.

“I’d probably quit both. Everybody asks me that when I say I dance. I couldn’t choose. I honestly couldn’t.’’

And both of her coaches, John Mucko and Roland Bessette, believe Perry’s background in competitive dance is what makes the young skater so graceful on ice.

“Nicole is known for her artistry,’’ said Mucko, who has worked with Perry at the Pilgrim Skating Club in Pembroke for nine years. “She’s just a true performer. Technically, she’s just clean, and she’s a strong skater.

“Having that dance behind her really enhances her performance level as well as her artistry. She’s just in a class all of her own.’’

From a logistical standpoint, however, there are only so many hours in the day. Perry also skates out of the Bourne Skating Club and with the Elite Skating Club in Raynham and dances with Studio C Dance Academy in Taunton.

The honor-roll student says she spends about 11 hours a week on each endeavor.

“For me that’s what makes her so grounded,’’ Mucko said. “She has two things she loves in life and devotes equal time to each of them. Would I like to see her on the ice seven days a week? That would be great, but she has other things that keep her grounded, and that’s what makes her what she is.’’

Bessette, who also chairs the US Figure Skating Program Development committee, couldn’t agree more.

“Everybody likes to win, but our goal is to constantly keep skating challenging and fun,’’ Bessette said. “With her balance between dance and skating, she’s able to enjoy what she does in skating. You always get more when someone enjoys what they’re doing rather than when it becomes a job. Everybody’s goals are different. Everybody trains differently as well. For right now this is what makes her happy.’’

Bessette said competing in all forms of dance, including hip-hop, jazz, and ballet, helps her more than if she just focused on one technique such as ballet. He said Perry’s range allows her to interpret and move more freely to music than most skaters.

How far can Perry go?

“That’s something only Nicole can answer for herself,’’ said Bessette. “If her goals are to be good at what she’s doing and be competitive, and she’s reaching it, then fine. If she decides at some point when she gets into a higher level that [skating more] might make a difference, that’s okay.

“She obviously has lot of talent, and a lot of it will depend on what she wants. If we start putting on too many demands, especially at that age, she’ll quit and we’ll lose her forever. At some point if she decides ‘I want to do more with skating,’ she’ll be able to make that decision.’’

The 14-year-old might have to make that decision soon. At the Bay State Games, Perry won gold in the artistic solo and finished fourth in the intermediate free skate.

Over the summer she captured two gold medals and a bronze at the 2009 State Games of American held in Colorado Springs.

Perry, who also performs theater on ice, was invited to perform in the Bay State Skate Figure Skating Show for the third straight year last weekend.

“It went great,’’ she said of the show. “There were lots of people watching. It’s always fun. This year was the 25th anniversary, so it was a bigger show with lots of awards.

“I love doing the show. I definitely want to keep doing it.’’

Perry, who recently attended a national competition with her dance troop in Sturbridge, Conn., said sometimes scheduling conflicts do arise between dance and skating.

“We try to work it out,’’ she said. “I do my best to do both. They try to make me choose, but I’m not going to.’’

And as far as her skating career is concerned, Perry just wants to take it as far as she can go - without giving up dance, that is.

“I don’t want to say Olympics because everybody says that,’’ she said. “But I’ll work as hard as I can to get as far as I can but have fun doing it. Because if you’re not having fun, why do it?’’

Streaking Sensations: Bentley basketball teams combine for 20 straight victories

2010-01-28T06:59:00.000-08:00

Lisa Cassidy/Daily News staff

Bentley junior guard Kim Brennan's 45-foot buzzer beater in the second overtime helped the Falcons to a triple-overtime victory over Saint Rose Tuesday night.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Jan 28, 2010 @ 03:09 AM

When Kim Brennan heaved a halfcourt shot with time dwindling in the second overtime on Tuesday night, it looked like the Bentley University women's basketball team's seven-game winning streak was over.

That was an instant before the All-Conference junior guard sunk a 45-foot, buzzer-beating 3-pointer to force a third overtime against The College of Saint Rose.

``Yeah, that was completely unexpected,'' Brennan said one night after the 87-84 victory at the Dana Center. ``There was 3.4 seconds left on the clock, so there was nothing else to do but get the ball up as quick as possible. I saw an opening. Some people thought I shot a little too early, but I thought that was the best chance I had to get it up.''

The Bentley men's team also extended an unbeaten streak on Tuesday night, beating The College of Saint Rose, 88-67, for its 12th straight victory.

These types of streaks are nothing new in Bentley country. Just two years ago, the women had a nine-game streak while the men won their first 34 games. The previous year, the men won 32 straight games.

Over the last six years, including this season, the men are 160-26, while the women are considered one of the best and most consistent teams in the conference.

``It's always nice seeing the (women's) team wining and us winning,'' said senior guard Jason Westrol. ``It's nice seeing both of us successful at the same time. It just makes everybody happy around the gym to go down there and work hard at practice.

``Being around them so much brought us closer together with each other on a personal level as friends and stuff.''

Westrol, who is leading the team with 19.8 and 4.3 assists per game, has started since the fifth game of his freshman year.

``It's just every step of the way been enjoyable for me starting from my freshman year to senior year,'' he said. ``(The win streaks) just makes it that much more fun to come down to practice every day and work hard with the team.''

The three-overtime victory improved Bentley's women's team to 14-5 overall and 12-2 in the NE-10. They are in a second-place tie with Stonehill and two games back of unbeaten Franklin Pierce.

``That game was huge to get momentum going,'' said Brennan, who collected a season-high 25 on Tuesday night.

At the end of the second overtime, it looked like Saint Rose had the game in the bag. After sinking a pair of free throws, it led 76-73 with 3.4 seconds left before Brennan's midcourt heroics.

``It got us pumped up,'' Brennan said. ``How many chances can you get? It would be heartbreaking to lose after that. A shot like that is once in a lifetime. It gets you more excited. No way could we lose that game after something like that happened.''

But after it happened they still had to compose themselves and get back on the court.

``You do have to settle down and realize the game is not over,'' Brennan said. ``You can't stop playing. You realize you have to go back in and play hard again, run good offenses and play great defense. You can't rely on another halfcourt shot.''

After Bentley scored the first five points of the final overtime Saint Rose took an 84-83 lead with 19.1 seconds with a 3-pointer. The Falcons went up 85-84 after sophomore Katherine Goodwin's driving layup with 16.1 seconds to play.

Brennan sealed the deal by sinking a pair of free throws and a Saint Rose desperation heave wasn't close nearly as close as Brennan's.

``We're kind of plugging along,'' Bentley women's coach Barbara Stevens said. ``Our games, unfortunately, are not as easy as the men's seem to be. They kind of have more cushion than we do, but we're managing to eke out wins that are important to us.''

On Tuesday night, junior forward Brian Tracey scored a season-high 24 points for the men's squad. That victory, coupled with Stonehill's 73-51 loss to Le Moyne, lifted the Falcons (17-2, 12-2 NE-10) into a tie for the top spot in the 16-team conference.

Bentley has won the NE-10 title an unprecedented five straight years and is vying to make it six in a row. Saint Rose fell to 10-9 overall and 7-7 in the conference.

Westrol, who had 17 points, six assists, five rebounds and two steals against Saint Rose, said opponents gun for them every game and they feed off the pressure.

``I guess we handle situations like that pretty well,'' he said. ``Pretty much every team comes ready to play against us. We know that we can't take anything lightly. We have to come out with the same intensity every night and hope for the best.''

The men's and women's teams will continue to feed off one another as both Bentley teams play Pace University Saturday afternoon in Pleasantville, N.Y.

``We're both really strong teams,'' Brennan said. ``We definitely support each other. When the guys get a win, we definitely want to also be winning. We do feed off each other's energy that we have.''

Marchionda nets game-winner with two seconds left for Falcons

2010-01-26T07:30:00.000-08:00

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Lisa Cassidy/Daily News staff

Trinity Catholic senior Mike Marchionda (left) tangles with Lowell Catholic's Shane Guarino on his way to four goals, including the game-winner with two seconds left and his 100th career point, last night at Watertown's Ryan Rink.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Jan 26, 2010 @ 02:26 AM

WATERTOWN — With about 14 seconds left in last night's game against Lowell Catholic at Ryan Rink, Mike Marchionda took a pass on the blue line near the far boards. He rushed the net untouched, deked left, and beat the goalie with two seconds to spare.

The goal was the Trinity Catholic senior defenseman's fourth of the night, the Falcons final score of a 5-4 victory, and Marchionda's 101st career point.

At the start of the period, Marchionda - who had 97 points going into the game - completed a hat trick to reach the century mark. That goal gave his team a 3-2 advantage, which eventually slipped away and seemed lost forever. That was until Trinity sophomore defenseman Kyle Manning tied the game, 4-4, with 1:28 to play and Marchionda won it 86 seconds later.

``Unbelievable, it's the best feeling ever, I can't say anything else about it,'' Marchionda said after his team improved to 5-6-3 on the year. ``It's just an experience that's probably never going to happen again.

``I was thinking: I don't want to lose my 100-point game, we need to win this.''

Before his miraculous game-winning goal, it seemed like Marchionda's third score of the evening might be the most timely of the game. After scoring consecutive goals to put his team up 2-1, Trinity gave up the tying goal in the final seconds of the second period.

It didn't take long for Marchionda to get it back. With 12:07 to play in the game, he netted his 100th point on an assist from junior forward Chris Nickerson.

``I didn't even know it was the 100th (point),'' he said. ``When I got on the bench (one of the coaches) congratulated me and I was like: `For what?' Now that I know it, it's a pretty special goal and I'll always remember it.''

The game was not stopped, but the milestone was announced over the public address system. There wasn't any fanfare heading into the game either. Trinity Catholic coach John Devaney purposely didn't tell Marchionda he was three points shy of 100.

``I just didn't want to let him know,'' Devaney said of Marchionda, who has 36 of the team's 55 goals this season, including two five-goal performances in the last four games. ``(I wanted to) let him play his regular game. The points will come.''

Marchionda's first two points of the game didn't come so quickly, however. After a scoreless opening period, Lowell Catholic (4-6-3) got on the board first with 13:26 left to play in the second stanza. Marchionda finally put the Falcons on the board with 2:08 left in the second period. The goal, which was also assisted Nickerson, opened a flurry of offense.

With 47.2 seconds left in the period, Marchionda got his second goal, this time unassisted. But the Falcon defense broke down and let in the equalizer with 14.5 seconds left in the second period. The goal was scored by sophomore Jake Santorelli and assisted by eighth-grade forward Joe Santorelli.

``I came in the locker room and said `Keep you head up, keep working hard, we're still in the game - it's only 2-2,''' Marchionda said. ``They stayed with me. We have a young team this year, so there's nothing I can really do except keep their hopes up and make them better players.''

Halfway through the final period, Lowell Catholic tied the game for the second time when Joe Santorelli beat TC goalie Sean Moccia.

About a minute later, freshman defender Adam Beckwith got what looked to be the game-winning goal for the Crusaders after taking a pass from another eighth-grader, Aaron Crandall, to go up 4-3 with 5:49 to play in the game.

But late in the third, Lowell Catholic was called for roughing. And about a minute later, Manning came through with his game-tying slap shot on the power play.

``I was ready to take a slap shot and it hit off the goalie's pads,'' Manning said. ``Then I think it took a bounce off someone, and then when it went in it was just crazy. Then when Mike scored the game-winning goal, it was amazing.

``It's just ridiculous. That's all you can say about that.''

Both Manning and Nickerson played the entire game as the Falcons only have 13 players, including two goalies.

``I'm speechless,' Nickerson said. ``That was a great goal. We all played our hearts out.''

Devaney said that in his 14-year tenure with the Falcons, they have never scored a game-winner like last night's.

``We had tying goals, but we haven't had a winning goal (like that),'' he said. ``That was just a great high school hockey game. There's a lot of ties in our league, and a lot of one-goal games in our league. The competition is great. In our league, things are pretty tight.''

Things could not have been tighter in the final seconds last night when junior forward Steve Simmons passed to Kevin McAdam, who poked the puck to Marchionda at the blue line.

``I skated in thinking: What move am I going to do to beat him?'' Marchionda said. ``I didn't know if I was going to shoot it or deke him. I just went with the deke.

``I can't believe I scored.''

Wrestling regimen inspires in battle with melanoma

2010-01-21T07:05:00.000-08:00

“A lot of your best stuff will happen after there’s been a lot of bad things,’’ said Jeff Parker, Foxborough High graduate.

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / January 21, 2010

Facing 30 radiation treatments after a cancerous mass was removed from his neck in the fall, Jeff Parker drew strength from his wrestling career at Foxborough High and, later, at the University of Buffalo. Especially a punishing preseason in his first season at Buffalo in which he vomited in nearly 30 straight workouts.

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“I’ll puke but, guess what, I’m not going to stop,’’ Parker said. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to break me.’’

The 25-year-old Parker took that mentality into his radiation treatments last September and did not vomit once.

“I was thinking of it kind of like [wrestling] preseason,’’ said Parker, who was diagnosed shortly after July Fourth with melanoma before undergoing surgery in early August. “Thirty days and I’m done; it’s not too bad.’’

During his treatments, Parker never missed a day of work at the Kraft Group or a practice session as an assistant wrestling coach at Franklin High.

A fanatic fan of the Food Network, he even kept his weight up despite losing his sense of taste.

“I don’t want to shrink down to nothing,’’ said Parker, down to 225 pounds after wrestling at 260 in college. “I take pride in being a big guy.’’

The cancer spread after radiation and metastasized in several vital organs, and he is undergoing experimental treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. With Parker’s medical bills mounting, a pair of his former college teammates, Mickey Moran and Joe Muscarella, organized a benefit in his honor.

Buffalo’s match on Jan. 30 against Ohio will double as the “Takedown Cancer’’ event. Proceeds from the match and a sports memorabilia auction will offset the cost of Parker’s treatment not covered by insurance. The surplus will be donated to Dana-Farber, along with Carly’s Club, a pediatric cancer organization in Buffalo.

In just the first three weeks of fund-raising, the drive raised about $6,000. Buffalo coach Jim Beichner thinks they can raise $20,000.

“It wouldn’t have snowballed if we didn’t have a kid of character like Jeff Parker,’’ Beichner said. “He’s extremely well liked and well respected.’’

An academic all-conference selection and SUNY Chancellor award winner, Parker won 73 matches at Buffalo. His senior year, he earned the “Ideal Bull’’ award, presented to the school’s most well-rounded athlete.

Overwhelmed by the support, Parker is uncomfortable with the attention but knows it’s for the greater good.

He’s motivated by the resiliency of the children at Dana-Farber hopping out of cars and onto crutches.

“They don’t feel sorry for themselves at all,’’ Parker said. “I don’t feel sorry for myself but I feel sorry for them. If I could help them at all, that’s what I want to do.’’

Parker also hopes to leave an impression on his wrestlers at Franklin High. He tells them how he endured plenty of lows before reaching his highest highs.

“A lot of your best stuff will happen after there’s been a lot of bad things,’’ he said. “In eighth grade, I was 6-20 and had a pretty down season. My senior year, my record was 40-0. In order to get to that 40-0, there was a lot of bad things that happened to get there.’’

Parker developed his toughness by training with Father John McLaughlin, who had built a hall of fame coaching career on the mat at Woburn High. About eight Foxborough wrestlers went to train with McLaughlin at St. Mary’s Church in Foxborough, but after one session Parker and his best friend, Mike Ragusa, were the only ones to return religiously, drilling on an unpadded commercial-grade rug in the church basement.

“When new people would come in and work with them and say, ‘Are you kidding?’ Parker would say, ‘Rug burns will make you tougher,’ ’’ McLaughlin recalled.

As a senior at Foxborough, Parker was the all-state and New England heavyweight champion, and then wrestled at Binghamton University before the program was cut.

He transferred to Buffalo before red-shirting his first season with a hip injury. When he returned to the mat, he took the starting heavyweight spot and was named cocaptain his senior season.

Two months after graduation, Parker noticed a lump on his neck that was diagnosed as melanoma a few weeks later. Soon the son of a cancer survivor was himself undergoing surgery to remove the muscle that runs from his ear down the side of his neck to his clavicle.

Despite responding well to treatment, doctors soon spotted cancer on his liver and lungs.

His father, Walter, 54, who has been free of stomach cancer for four years, has a hard time comprehending it all.

“It’s kind of shocking, two people from the same family, two different cancers,’’ Walter Parker said. “It’s really heartbreaking, as hard as this kid worked, to see this happen.

“We continue to have faith and hope and pray that he beats this like I did.’’

Father McLaughlin is also praying.

“I pray he’s healed from cancer; I pray that God remembers how great of a person he is and how giving he is and the type of person he is,’’ said McLaughlin, now based in Washington, D.C.

Parker knows his wrestling foundation has been his greatest weapon against cancer. But in his mind he has only survived preseason conditioning and still has a long season to go.

With only two sessions of his new treatment under his belt, Parker has to go back for more every three weeks with no end in sight.

“This part of my battle with cancer is going to be more [about] things I learned from wrestling,’’ Parker says. “Those [radiation treatments] were quick and I could see the end. This one is longer. I don’t know the end. I can’t see the end right now. It’s like the day-to-day grind of a regular season.’’

To learn more about the fund-raiser for Jeff Parker, go to www.ubathletics. buffalo.edu/wrestling/news/ parker-benefit.shtml.

Orange Bowl pregame: Coldest Orange Bowl ever doesn't faze Iowa fans

2010-01-05T18:29:00.001-08:00

RODNEY WHITE / THE REGISTER

Jenny and Tim Hugunin of Norwalk, Iowa, donned their patch-laden overalls for the party outside LandShark Stadium.

By JUSTIN RICE
Special to the Register

Miami, Fla. — Carting a red cooler around Land Shark Stadium on Tuesday afternoon, Marshal Versteeg wore jeans and a thin black jacket five hours before what was flirted with being the coldest FedEx Orange Bowl in the game’s 76-year history.

The 2002 Iowa graduate moved to South Florida six years ago, but wasn’t fazed by the weather since he grew up on a dairy farm in Sibley.

His girlfriend, however — a Boca Raton, Fla. native — looked like she was dressed for a game at oft-chilled Kinnick Stadium.

“I’m fine now but later I know I’ll be cold,” said Carly Feduniec, sporting black North Face boots over double socks while holding a hooded sweatshirt and winter jacket with a fur-lined hood.

“I’m prepared. I got hand warmers.”

Temperatures dipped to 49 degrees by the time No. 9 Georgia Tech and No. 10 Iowa finally kicked off, shattering the previous Orange Bowl record for the coldest kickoff of 57 degrees in 2008.

Tuesday night was the coldest in a week of weather that was the chilliest South Florida has felt in nearly a decade.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=D2&Dato=20100105&Kategori=SPORTS020502&Lopenr=1050811&Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=1" target="_blank">Iowans in the parking lot laughed at the wind-chill advisory in South Florida, knowing temperatures in Iowa have dipped into the negative double digits.

South Beach was mostly filled with hardy Hawkeye fans to start the week, according to Brain Fox, a 21-year-old Iowa senior majoring in business.

“I went in the water. It was a little cold, but this is like April back home — this is like a heat wave,” said the Charles City native while wearing a yellow Orange Bowl T-shirt, cargo shorts and sandals.

Fox’s friends all wore jeans on the partly cloudy afternoon mostly in the high 50s.
“I don’t see a need to wear pants,” Fox said. “Back home it’s 15 below.”

Wearing four layers of clothing, Mara Frazier of Boulder, Colo., was prepared for the area’s chilliest cold snap in nine years.

“This was supposed to be a mini vacation away from the cold,” said the Iowa City native who got her teaching certificate from Iowa in 1987. “Today in Boulder, it’s just as warm — if you forget the foot of snow.”

Randy Ferdig, 52, of Iowa City, was glad to get in a few 80-degree beach days before the arctic cold front that has gripped the eastern half of the country set in.

The only warm clothes he brought were a jacket and a sweatshirt.

“This is nothing,” he said while tailgating behind a red Chevy pickup with two Hawkeye window flags and another 10-foot tall flag planted next to the car. “I’ll take this any day.”

Ferdig has held Iowa season tickets for 25 years.

“It feels like a fall football game at Iowa,” he said before adding that he thought the weather would benefit his team. “They’re used to playing in this. I was talking to one of the equipment managers and he said they’re real happy. The temperature is good for them. They won’t have any heat exhaustion.”

While Hawkeye fans were in paradise this week, Florida farmers were feeling the pain. Crops across the state were destroyed as temperatures were forecast to dip below freezing in some inland areas of the state.

“Those are the things you go through no matter where you’re farming,” said Versteeg, whose parents still run a dairy farm in Sibley that also grows corn and soybeans. “It’s unfortunate. We’ve dealt with hail and drought. That’s the risk you run when you farm.”

BC’s Rehnquist dons robes of scout team

2010-01-05T05:49:00.000-08:00

Despite being a BC walk-on, Peter Rehnquist already has scored his first college points. (Bill Greene/Globe Staff)

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / January 4, 2010

James Rehnquist surprised his band of five basketball-crazed children 10 years ago, taking them to shoot on the “highest court in the land’’ - the gymnasium located above the chamber of the United States Supreme Court.

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The kids’ grandfather, William H., the 16th chief justice of the Supreme Court, served more than 33 years on the bench and was known to preside over sharp-elbowed games on the basketball court.

This fall, Peter Rehnquist had a surprise of his own for his father: He had earned a roster spot on the Boston College basketball team as a walk-on.

A 6-foot-4-inch sophomore who starred at Sharon High, Rehnquist is thrilled with the opportunity to carve out a role on the Eagles’ scout team and sit at the end of the bench.

“The first couple days were tough,’’ he said. “I’d never been dunked on before and the first three days of practice I got dunked on. This is Division 1!’’

Rehnquist helped power Sharon to back-to-back appearances in the Division 2 state tournament before averaging 14 points and 11 rebounds per game in a postgraduate year at Deerfield Academy. He had his sights on Division 3 ball, like his father, who starred at Amherst in the 1970s.

James Rehnquist collected 1,512 points during an All-America career at Amherst, then knocked around semipro leagues in Europe.

While attending law school at Boston University, he coached Thayer Academy, including an undefeated season and NEPSAC championship in 1986.

“Jim is an amazing individual. He’s totally amazing,’’ said Sharon High boys’ coach Bruce Jackman. “I still get some of his youth league kids and they do a great job.

“He and his wife are two of the most supportive parents I’ve ever seen.’’

Peter says he considers going into coaching, even if it is just coaching his children’s teams, like his father did when he was growing up.

At one point, James simultaneously coached all five of his children despite being a partner at Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston. He even attended all of Peter’s freshman games at Sharon High that tapped off at 3:30 p.m.

Peter’s younger brother, Tomas, made the varsity at Roxbury Latin as a sophomore this season. His sister, Grace, a freshman guard at Williams, is the second-leading scorer for the Ephs.

“I had to get the UNIVAC out to crunch the scheduling numbers to see how many games I could go to,’’ James said.

“My wife [Anna] and I figured out we could cover pretty much all the games and even go to some together.’’

Scouting his options

Peter Rehnquist bypassed Division 3, deciding to attend a larger university and focus on academics. But he missed organized basketball during his freshman year when he caught on with a friend’s intramural team.

“We lost to the football team in the finals,’’ said Rehnquist. “They had a 6-7 receiver [Ifeanyi Momah] guarding me, so it was pretty tough.’’

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In April, on a lark, he sent an e-mail to Eagles assistant coach Mo Cassara, inquiring about trying out for the men’s team.

“They were very receptive, I was amazed,’’ said Rehnquist.

Cassara asked him to attend summer workouts. In the fall, head coach Al Skinner invited him to join the team.

He got on the floor for two minutes against Dartmouth in the season-opener Nov. 13 and then ripped down a rebound the following game in a three-minute stint against Saint Francis, earning knee-buckling praise from his friends in the student section.

His only career basket, a hard drive in the final 30 seconds of a 72-46 win over Bryant Dec. 20, sent his teammates on the bench into a frenzy.

“It was pretty loud. It was during break, so it was a smaller crowd than usual but a couple of my family members were up to see, so it was pretty cool,’’ he said, adding that his father, who makes most games, was away on business. “He was a little upset. I told him I’d score another one for him next time he comes if I get in.

“Luckily it went in,’’ he said. “One of my friends sent me a text message saying, ‘You’ve scored more NCAA points than Kobe [Bryant], Dirk [Nowitzki], and Kevin Garnett combined.’ ’’

For Rehnquist, who was a high school center, his biggest challenge is learning BC’s system on the fly. As a scout team player, he also has to learn opponents’ offenses and defenses. Although Rehnquist said he relies on his mind to make up for his lack of athleticism, Skinner said he wouldn’t be on the team if he couldn’t keep up.

“It’s one of the more difficult positions to be in because walk-ons get as much criticism as anyone else, as much heat as anyone else, but don’t get any glory because they don’t get a chance to get on the floor [a lot],’’ Skinner said. “You have to have a tremendous love for the game to be in this type of environment. Obviously he appreciates that and has been a good teammate.

“When he does play, he wants to fit in and that’s the real challenge, to be part of it, so when he does participate, he doesn’t hurt the team.’’

Nobody can accuse Rehnquist of taking advantage of the family name. Skinner, in fact, was surprised to learn of his background.

“I don’t think I would add anything to the BC program just because my grandfather was somebody,’’ Rehnquist said. “I don’t think that helps on the basketball court.’’

Off the court, he has had to adjust to juggling his academic load around four practices and two games per week. After returning from the Eagles’ trip to Michigan at 3 a.m. in early December, that morning he had to make up a psychology test given while the team was in the Virgin Islands for a tournament the previous week.

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The Virgin Islands trip was well worth it, however, as he ran into Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl, a Sharon native, in the hotel elevator.

“I actually thought, ‘What happens if I run into Bruce Pearl in the elevator? I gotta mention I’m from Sharon, Mass.,’ ’’ said Rehnquist.

It’s in the blood

James Rehnquist said he never pressured his children to play basketball or go to law school, saying he doesn’t want to encourage something that’s not there or discourage something that is.

Although he’s never mentioned it to his father, Peter Rehnquist sees the law in his future.

“It’s never like you have to live up to the Rehnquist legacy or anything like that,’’ said Peter, who nevertheless inherited his granddad’s competitive spirit. “We’d play croquet and he’d try to get in our heads while we were playing the game. He’d always win somehow, too.

“He was really competitive, that’s where we get our nature from.’’

Attending the Clinton impeachment and Bush v. Gore hearings was just a sidebar to an otherwise normal relationship.

“To us, he was our grandfather, not the chief justice,’’ Peter said.

William Rehnquist died Sept. 3, 2005, after presiding as chief justice for nearly 19 years, the fourth-longest tenure in history.

“Some kids last year went on Wikipedia and quizzed me on my grandfather because they didn’t believe me,’’ Peter said.

His father, however, couldn’t avoid the long shadow of the highest magistrate in the land.

“The attention is good for my ego,’’ James told People magazine during his junior season at Amherst in 1976, “but I realize that part of it is because of my old man, and that bothers me. I also think the constant puns about both of us being on the court and the bench are juvenile.’’

James also told People he chose Amherst after drinking free beer at a frat house.

When asked if his son chose Boston College in the same manner, he said, “God, I hope not. I think he had a lot more maturity than his father.’’

Senior uses her smarts to excel in girls' hockey

2010-01-03T04:44:00.000-08:00

Globe South Sports

Braintree High School’s Justine Hassan (left) is first in her class academically. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / January 3, 2010

Before the hockey season started, Braintree High headmaster David Swanton worried that Justine Hassan had too much on her plate this semester. Six Advanced Placement courses on her schedule, plus hockey, made Swanton’s head spin.

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“I said, ‘Justine, the headmaster just approached me; he’s concerned you’re taking on too much,’ ’’ recalled hockey coach Kevin Burchill, who likes to boast about Hassan’s academic achievements, especially her excellent 2320 SAT score. “She looked at me and said: ‘What do you mean? School’s easy. I’m more worried about hockey this year.’ ’’

With that, the number one student in Braintree’s senior class entered her senior hockey season wondering if it would be her last truly competitive one. Hassan, who also plays lacrosse, has the academic credentials to attend Harvard, Princeton, or Dartmouth, but probably does not have the hockey skills to play in the Ivy League.

The fourth-year varsity forward could possibly walk onto a Division 3 hockey team.

“Even though I love hockey, I’m not worried about the hockey part,’’ said Hassan, who has 40 goals and 34 assists in her career, including two goals and one assist this season. “I just want to get in [to schools]. I know I’ll never play hockey professionally, so I can’t worry about it too much.’’

Picking between Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, and Bowdoin is a pretty good predicament, one that Burchill cannot help but laugh at.

“She’d make a sacrifice [to play Division 3] that in anyone else’s eyes is not a sacrifice,’’ he said. “Amherst, Bowdoin and Middlebury are schools some kids would give their right arms for. . . . She has the world by the tail. She can do whatever she wants to do.’’

Braintree might just be the brainiest team in the area. Almost all 25 players are honor roll students. Sophomore Tori Machado is also at the head of her class, and after being tutored by Hassan, junior goalie Nikki O’Brien made straight A’s.

Hassan’s sister Jessie is also on the team as a sophomore defender.

“That truly makes my job so much easier, because they understand what we’re trying to do,’’ said Burchill, whose team started the season 3-1-1 through Dec. 22. “On the other side, when you’re coaching kids that are not on top of the food chain academically, they do what you say, rather than trying to sort it out and figure out the whys.’’

But even though his team, especially Hassan, has a tendency to overthink the game, rather than playing it instinctually, Burchill said the Wamps did not get competitive until the current senior class entered the program.

They finished with a 14-5-3 record last year, after losing in the second round of the Division 1 state tournament for the third straight year. Playing more fluidly than ever this season, the Wamps feel it is their best shot to make a run at the state title.

“That happens sometimes,’’ Hassan said of thinking too much on the ice. “I get frustrated. I’m almost trying too hard, and that makes me play worse. I’m working on it.’’

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On the other hand, Hassan has college-level calculus, AP psychology, AP human geography, AP physics, AP biology, and her AP language class under control.

She has her eye on an engineering or premed undergraduate track.

After scoring 2320 out of 2400 on her SATs last May, she regrets the day that news of her score spread like wildfire in the school’s hallways.

“I told a couple of people, and, before I knew it, I was walking down the hall and heard people talking about me,’’ said Hassan, who, despite being shy about sharing her score, said she never hides her intelligence. “. . . I don’t try to be dumb, but I don’t try to be a know-it-all.’’

Hassan knew she wanted to play hockey from the moment she pressed her nose against the glass at one of her brother’s youth games.

“All the little sisters would run around the rink,’’ she said. “I was glued to the boards watching the game. I just liked the game from the beginning. I persuaded my parents to sign me up.’’

Despite her parent’s initial misgivings, she played hockey just like her brother, who attends college in Minnesota. Unlike her brother, Hassan’s college choices have been limited by her parents to a three-hour driving radius.

“Luckily, there are many good schools within three hours of Boston,’’ said Hassan’s father, Captain James Hassan, who heads the Area E-5 police station in West Roxbury. “I think she will be a worthy candidate at any one of them.

“She’s at a crossroads determining where she wants to go,’’ he said. “Of course, a lot will depend on which schools will accept her. . . . I used to tell her: ‘Do the best you can. You don’t want your choices to be limited by other people. To make yourself most effective, you make the choices. You’re in charge.’ I guess she picked up on that theme.’’

Growing into leadership position

2009-12-31T04:31:00.000-08:00

Xaverian captain cites sibling’s role in success as goalie

Xaverian Brothers High senior goalie Kyle MacDonald keeps a close watch for opposing skaters during last weekend’s 5-0 win against Westford Academy. (David Kamerman/Globe Staff)

By Justin A. Rice December 31, 2009

After the Xaverian Brothers High hockey team lost in the Super 8 boys’ tournament for the second straight year last March, Kyle MacDonald not only hit the weight room - the Hanover teen also hit a growth spurt. The 6-foot, 165-pound senior goalie grew so much his pads no longer fit.

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Fortunately, his folks were generous enough to buy him new gear in October, which meant Santa didn’t leave much under the tree on Christmas.

“I didn’t expect much,’’ said the Division 1 college prospect, who said he mostly received clothing last Thursday. “Pads cost over a grand, so I was happy.’’

Besides putting on 10 pounds and growing nearly 3 inches, MacDonald, a three-year starter and hockey captain at the Catholic school in Westwood, has also made his presence in the net bigger by improving his technique.

“He’s done that and he’s so quick so that combo makes him tough to beat,’’ said Xaverian coach David Spinale. “He’s the backbone of our team. That’s no secret. We continue to rely on him, and he thrives on it and enjoys shouldering the load.’’

MacDonald, 18, started playing goalie 12 years ago, serving as a target for his older brother, Chris, who helped Hanover High win a state title in 2007 and now plays at Wesleyan University.

The older sibling had been trying to get him in the street hockey net for years, starting when he about age 3, MacDonald said. “My dad was like, ‘Stay away from him, Chris.’ Once I was old enough to put pads on, he was like, ‘Put them on,’ ’’ MacDonald said.

“He used to come in close and shoot his slap shot right in front on my face. One day I came out closer to him, I cut off the angle, and no more,’’ he recalled.

The firing squad during those street hockey games included the elder MacDonald’s friends, and Spinale credits that experience for helping Kyle succeed on the varsity as a sophomore.

“That had a direct impact on him in terms of his confidence level,’’ Spinale said, “not only being able to compete athletically but to socially be confident.’’

MacDonald started the ninth game of his sophomore season and ended up leading the team to its first Super 8 appearance in school history.

“I can’t imagine playing my first varsity game in net; the pressure on the goaltender is enough as it is,’’ said Xaverian teammate Nate Hardiman, a four-year varsity player from Stoughton. “That just shows he belongs there.’’

Xaverian returned to the Super 8 last season and ultimately lost 2-1 in overtime to Burlington.

Hardiman has been motivated to improve defensively this year, having missed his assignment at a key moment in last season’s final game. With only one returning starter at the blue line, Chris Kennedy of Sherborn, the team’s forwards have had to become more defensive minded.

“A lot of kids nowadays worry about ‘I gotta score 100 goals, I gotta look pretty’ ’’ to impress colleges, Hardiman said. “But back-checking and getting back in the defensive zone are things coaches see. Coaches realize, ‘This guy can help us out on defense.’

“If you have guys that are only offensive-minded, you’ll get hurt and lose games that way.’’

The team’s young defenders have held up fine in the season’s early going, with the Hawks starting 2-0, including a 5-0 win against Westford Academy. But there’s no doubt that MacDonald’s presence in the net gives his squad a little more room for error.

“When we made mistakes in the defensive zone he bails us out a lot, especially on penalty kill,’’ Hardiman said of MacDonald. “When they’re ripping shots from the point, he’s guaranteed to make the first save.’’

No matter how much work is ahead of them this year, the five players returning from the last two Super 8 teams know deep down their legacy is secure.

“Looking back on it, I will get to say I was part of that first team that made the Super 8 in school history,’’ Hardiman said. “Yeah, it’s a big thing, but I try not to look back on the past.

“It’s great that we made it but we’re disappointed we lost it,’’ he added.

Landmark game

According to the Fenway Park events calendar, Thayer Academy and the Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School will meet on the hallowed baseball grounds for an ice hockey game next Thursday.

The teams will play on the rink built for this season’s edition of the NHL Winter Classic, with the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers slated to face off at 1 p.m. tomorrow at Fenway.

Former Newton North star Gurley enjoying home stretch with UMass

2009-12-29T06:36:00.000-08:00

Adam Hunger/Associated Press

UMass guard and former Newton North star Anthony Gurley shoots over BC's Joe Trapani during last night's game at Conte Forum.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Dec 24, 2009 @ 01:25 AM

CHESTNUT HILL — Even though Anthony Gurley transferred to the University of Massachusetts after his freshman year at Wake Forest, Newton North's all-time leading scorer still doesn't make it back to the Boston area much these days.

This past week was a rare treat for the Minutemen's red-shirt junior guard from Roxbury.
Six nights after returning to the site of North's 2005 and 2006 Eastern Mass. championships for an upset over Memphis at the TD Garden, Gurley finally got to play a real game at Conte Forum, where he attended summer camp as a kid.

``It feels good being able to go home twice in a week, playing in front of hometown fans,'' Gurley said before UMass' 79-67 loss to Boston College last night.

Collecting his first career double-double with a game-high 23 points and a career-high 10 rebounds, Gurley was 6-of-20 from the field and 2-of-6 from beyond the 3-point line.

``It was one of those nights,'' Gurley said after shaking his head at the stat sheet. ``You know every night is not going to be Christmas. So I guess you gotta find other ways to get the job done, whether it's rebounding or defense, or stuff like that.

``I guess that's what I attempted to do tonight.''

Gurley paced UMass in the first half with 11 points, including a dunk that tied it at 19. But BC led 26-25 at the break after Gurley missed a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from just inside the midcourt logo.

BC extended its lead to 10 with 10:22 to go and UMass got within five, 60-55, with just under five minutes to play. But Joe Trapani (18 points) sunk a 3-pointer that would have just about sunk the Minutemen with 4:05 to play had it not been for a flagrant foul late in the game.

With 1:42 to play, UMass cut it to 70-63 after Ricky Harris was intentionally fouled by BC's Reggie Jackson. Harris split the free throws and the Minutemen got the ball back and got a layup. On the other end, however, Jackson put BC up 72-63, and even Sean Carter's emphatic dunk was too little, too late for UMass.

As good as it felt to play at Conte Forum last night, the experience did not top beating Memphis at the Garden on Saturday night.

``Not at all, not even close,'' UMass' leading scorer said on Tuesday. ``I went to high school in Newton, but I'm from Roxbury. I grew up going to the Garden. It was definitely very, very, very exciting.''

Gurley scored 14 points for the Minutemen in the 73-72 victory. The winning play against Memphis was actually drawn up for Gurley with 3.8 seconds left. But the plan broke down and the ball ended up in the hands of freshman Terrell Vinson, who knocked down the game-winning jumper.

It was the first UMass game at the Garden since 1997.

``It was big for our program, it gives us a lot of confidence and it just kind of lets Boston fans know there's a lot going on out in Western Mass. as well,'' Gurley said. ``When I was growing up, I didn't know too much about UMass. I knew of (John) Calipari and (Marcus) Camby. But other than that I did not follow their program because they were on the other side of the state.''

For North coach Paul Connolly, the fact that Gurley ended up in Amherst makes a lot of sense. Of all the recruiters that visited Gurley in Newton, including Memphis, Syracuse and N.C. State, the UMass efforts stood out.

``Travis Ford drove 120 miles per hour to get here,'' Connolly said of the former UMass coach, whom Derek Kellogg replaced after Ford bolted to Oklahoma State.

Ultimately, Gurley was lured away by Winston-Salem's Southern hospitality. He averaged 6.4 points and 14.5 minutes per game as a freshman, and was doing well academically. But Connolly said the late Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser told him that spring that Gurley was homesick.

``It was a great experience,'' Connolly said, ``but when it was all said and done, when you got home and your head hits the pillow at night, are you happy? And he wasn't.

``I tried to walk him through the process a little bit, but at the end of the day he wasn't happy.''

Connolly said the fact that another former North standout, Lex Mongo, plays for the Minutemen helped ease Gurley's transition to Amherst.

``That was good for Anthony to have a buddy out there, he's very happy out there,'' Connolly said. ``He's in a situation where he's going to score 1,000 points in three years, barring injury.''

Connolly said Mongo could've stared in Division 3, but chose to walk-on at UMass.

``I'm really proud of Lex because that's not an easy role,'' Connolly said.

Connolly watches all of his former players at the collegiate level at least once each season, including Corey Lowe at Boston University. But he did not see Mongo and Gurley play in person until earlier this season against Arkansas-Fort Smith on Nov. 21 - a game in which Mongo recorded his first career assist.

Connolly missed Saturday's game at the Garden, but did attend last night's game against BC.

``I sent (Gurley) a text after the game in the Garden and told him you and Lex are 3-0 at the Garden,'' said Connolly, referring to their two high school triumphs on the parquet.

Last night's game was not Gurley's first against BC. Last season, Gurley scored 17 points as UMass fell to BC, 85-81, in Amherst. The season before that, Gurley scored 13 points for Wake in a loss to the Eagles in Winston-Salem.

He fell short again last night.

``I was proud he had 10 rebounds, but it looked like he tired a little bit at the end, and didn't sprint back on defense as hard as I'm accustomed to him doing,'' Kellogg said. ``He had a good game, but I think he can continue to improve and get better.''

Waltham's Morin coaches championship NASCAR crew

2009-12-19T08:39:00.000-08:00

Photo contributed

Waltham's Greg Morin teaches students at Pit Crew U in North Carolina. Morin was the pit crew coach for Jimmie Johnson's Sprint Cup champion team this season.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Dec 18, 2009 @ 01:04 AM

Growing up in Waltham, Greg Morin was never a NASCAR fan. Nevertheless, there he was in Las Vegas earlier this month for the sport's Champions Week - the toast and talk of the town.

For the second straight year Morin coached the pit crew for the No. 48 Hendrick Lowe's car raced by Jimmie Johnson, who won a historic fourth consecutive championship title this season.

``It is definitely not something I directly pursued,'' Morin said via e-mail Monday. ``Not having grown up a race fan, I did not have a clear appreciation for the sport. After learning about it and becoming a part of it, I'm very glad that my adventure, even though it was done in a roundabout manner, has allowed me to accomplish and be a part of all that I have.

``Being at the awards ceremony was amazing. Not only is it great experience and reward for the work that was put in during the season, it's history. Being a part of history, especially sports history, is something that every guy dreams of, and we became a part of history this year. Simply amazing.''

Morin graduated from East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., in 2001 with a degree in Recreational Therapy before becoming a teacher and athletic trainer. He soon met the staff at Performance Instruction & Training (PIT), a motorsports pit crew training facility in Mooresville, N.C.

He decided to enroll in the school. After completing the school's Pit Crew U program, he moved into a coaching position. He eventually became PIT's Director of Motorsports, heading up the school's Pit Crew U program, and coached professional teams that came to PIT for training.

Morin began the 2008 season with Hendrick Motorsports as the head pit crew coach for the No. 48 team, as well as Jeff Gordon's No. 24 team. The No. 48 team won the 2008 Sprint Cup championship.

Besides winning championships both years, Morin said winning the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway both years stood out as the greatest highlight of his run with the team. He also enjoyed ``being a part of a team that never quits, never stopped trying to get better, even though we were in first place.''

As unlikely as Morin's success in the sport is, it was far from unplanned.

``Greg and I mapped out his path before he ever enrolled in Pit Crew U, and he may have had a plan before he even met me,'' said Breon Klopp, PIT's Senior Director of Development, in a statement. ``That ability to see and plan ahead has made him a champion coach. In class, Greg always asked `Why?' in addition to `How?' Understanding the reason behind an action provides insight as to how improvements are made.''

Under Morin's leadership, both pit crews for the No. 48 and No. 24 teams have won numerous awards for quickness and precision. Morin said he also developed a desire and work ethic to be the best at his craft.

``It takes a lot of sacrifice, and that itself might be the biggest challenge,'' he said. ``There is a lot of time spent on the road on the weekends, at the shop practicing and training during the week. Even at home, you never really get away and stop thinking about work. We are always trying to get better and find an advantage, and it can be hard to stop working once you go home because of that desire to perform and win.''

But the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

``The best part of what I do is competing at the highest level of our sport with the best team in the sport,'' Morin said. ``Knowing what we've accomplished, and the challenge that lies ahead in an effort to accomplish more, it drives you to get better and stay hungry.''

He doesn't get back to Waltham much these days, but he said every few years he visits family in the Greater Boston area. He is unlikely to make it home much this offseason.

``We work even harder in the offseason to get that much better for the next season,'' Morin said. ``We will train and practice even harder to stay ahead of the competition in 2010.

``Next season will be a dogfight for the championship. There are a lot of people gunning for us, and we've got to be prepared to out-plan, out-prepare, out-work and out-play the competition.''

Her play is to swoon over; she’d rather not

2009-12-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

Globe South Sports

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / December 17, 2009

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“I drank 10 bottles of water a day,’’ said Shepherd, a junior at Fontbonne Academy in Milton.

“To hear that I was dehydrated was weird for my parents; I’m always drinking water, Gatorade, or Propel.’’

The Quincy resident was diagnosed with vasovagal syncope after collapsing on the softball field as a freshman. The non-life-threatening condition decreases blood pressure and blood flow to the brain, resulting in dizziness or fainting.

Shepherd combats the disorder with sodium pills, consuming eight to 12 cups of water per day, and getting enough rest.

“When it first started happening, I didn’t know what to do - I would just drink as much as I could and thought I’d be fine, then I rushed off to the bathroom,’’ Shepherd said. “Now that I’m used to it, I know how to judge it, when to have a sip [of water] and when to drink a bottle.’’

Her condition has hardly slowed her down on the ice, the volleyball court, or the softball diamond. She collected hat tricks in both the state semifinals and the state final to power Fontbonne to the Division 2 girls’ hockey championship last March, was named to the Catholic Conference all-star team, and was a Globe All-Scholastic.

With Shepherd netting a pair of goals and an assist, the Ducks opened the season with a 5-0 win over Boston Latin School last week. The victory extended the squad’s shutout streak started last season by Kristen Conners, who became the first MIAA goalie in history, male of female, to blank every postseason opponent en route to a state championship.

Conners is now a freshman at New England College, but her backup, junior Sam Curly, delivered 15 saves in the opener. Freshman goalie Lan Crofton will also see significant minutes in goal.

“That’s what makes me less nervous when I’m playing, the fact that [Shepherd] is going to stop them from coming in on me or get a goal right back,’’ Curly said. “She does it every single time.’’

Facing double- and triple-teams, Shepherd may have trouble matching last year’s 35-goal, nine-assist output. But Fontbonne coach Bob Huxley believes his top line of Shepherd, junior Elizabeth Coleman (16 points last year), and senior Catherine Flaherty (22) can be the most productive in the state.

“I think they’re that good, they’re just so much fun to watch,’’ said Huxley, who describes Shepherd as a “very fluid skater who sees the ice well.’’

She laced up her first skates at age 7, and started playing hockey the same year. Though she was the first in her family to play hockey (her father, Jerry, played basketball at Nichols), her parents were a rather easy sell on her suiting up for a travel team.

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“The fact that I loved going to practice at 5:30 in the morning - they knew it was something I enjoyed and they said, ‘You know what, we’re willing to spend the money,’ ’’ said Shepherd, who was introduced to the game by neighborhood boys on rollerblades.

“They boys would make you look silly with their stick handling. It made me want to learn how to do it. I wanted to be faster and do that stuff they did to make me a better player.’’

Shepherd had a similar experience the summer before her sophomore year when she was invited to train with some of the best female high school players in the nation at the Community Olympic Development Program in St. Paul, Minn.

“I’d much rather be a little fish and kind of look up at the girls who play hockey all year long,’’ she said. “It’s motivating to keep up with them. For me, my drive is there, and I want to be the best player I can be every shift, be ready to play; ready to play up with them.’’

But Shepherd had her worst vasovagal syncope attack to date in Minnesota when she fainted in a game and was sent home early.

“You never know when it can happen,’’ Shepherd said. “When it happened on the ice, it was very scary for me.’’

She turned down an invitation to play in Minnesota last summer, partly because she was afraid of getting sick again and partially because she wanted to compete in summer softball and volleyball with her friends. Although next summer she will focus on hockey, she probably won’t give up volleyball and softball during the school year. She will only return to Minnesota if she feels her dream of playing Division 1 hockey, preferably at Boston University, needs a boost.

“Right now we’re focused on winning as many games as possible and meshing as a team,’’ Shepherd said. “The team chemistry is already unbelievable. It’s outrageous already.’’

Groundwork (icework?) laid for Winter Classic

2009-12-11T06:46:00.001-08:00

Written by Justin Rice

Friday, December 11, 2009 05:41

BOSTON — Turns out there is not much difference between building and maintaining an NHL hockey rink inside a baseball stadium and a hockey dad’s backyard rink. In both instances, round-the-clock care is required along with boatloads of patience.

In the NHL’s case, however, boatloads of water are also required.

“This crew was handpicked and they have passion,” Dan Craig said of his 200-man crew building the rink in Fenway Park for the 2010 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic on New Year’s Day. “They can make ice at any time like you would with your son, like I did with my son.

“There is nothing more peaceful than being out spraying at 3 a.m., when you know the best players in the world are going to play on it.”

The third annual event will be played this year between the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers at 1 p.m. on Jan. 1 — leaving Craig and his team plenty of time to stretch the 200-by-85-foot ice surface from Fenway’s first base to third base — in the shadow of the famed Green Monster.

“We’re taking our time,” said Craig, the NHL’s ice guru who is known as the Ice Man. “Patience is one of things that is number one on our list. We tell the guys when we get up in the morning we don’t rush through anything, we don’t go out there and lay down 1,000 gallons of water, turn around and go get a coffee.

“They’re on the hoses constantly for 16 hours, just spraying back and forth for 16 hours in a given day.”

On Thursday the NHL began the process of placing the rink in Fenway by parking its 53-foot long Winter Classic refrigeration truck next to the ballpark on Van Nes Street, where it will stay up till and throughout the game.

“It’s fabulous,” said Craig, whose official title with the league is facilities operations manager, after getting out of the truck. “You look up here and it gives you chills. Just to be within the walls [of Fenway], never mind bring a rink [to] it.”

Containing 300 tons of equipment, the truck will pump more than 1,000 gallons of coolant per minute to keep the ice cold and solid.

“This system is monster, we haven’t even pushed its limits,” Craig said on a partly cloudy, blustery 47-degree day. “On a day like today this thing wouldn’t even hiccup. This is our second season [with it] and we don’t foresee any problems.

“It’s like going out for jog, it’s always nice to have good weather but when you go out for a jog and it’s raining you still get up and go.”

Nevertheless, in the event of rain or a blizzard, the league has a built-in makeup date of Jan. 2.

Craig, who has been in the ice-making business for more than 30 years, said his crew will not start making ice until the middle of next week. A full, firm sheet will be in place by the end of next week. They will not even start the ice-making process until Wednesday.

In the meantime Craig’s 200-person team started laying down panels on the lawn so the rink does not to damage the field.

“We’re coming in here from the National Hockey League and we’re showing this grand stadium, this grand ball park the utmost respect,” Craig said. “The same as I would expect anyone if they came into our NHL facilities to do. That’s why we’re working with the grounds crew, we’re working very closely with them to make sure everything is taken care of so when we leave it’s like we were never here. That’s how we like to leave it.”

This is not the first time the NHL is working in a baseball stadium.

While the first Winter Classic was in Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo, where the NFL’s Bills play, last year’s was at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Don Renzulli, the league’s senior vice president of events and entertainment, said they learned a lot from last year. Wrigley Field’s concourses were packed during intermissions so the NHL has asked the city if the Red Sox if they can keep Yawkey Way closed off to pedestrians and open to fans attending the game.

“What you have during a baseball game is 17 or 18 breaks where people go to the bathroom, get there concessions,” he said. “Here you have two 20 minute breaks. And what we learned last year is the concourses were just body to body so [Yawkey] helps us expand.

“Each year we learn more with these stadiums.”

The NHL has also expanded the events in the run up to and after the Winter Classic as there will be public skating, an alumni game and college hockey games at Fenway.

There will also be a Spectator’s Plaza starting Dec. 31 located next to Boston Beer Works, in the parking lot diagonally across Brookline Avenue from the Red Sox ticket office.

As for tickets to the this year’s Winter Classic, Renzulli said 310,000 fans tried to get tickets when they went on sale, up from 241,000 people looking for tickets last year, which attracted the largest broadcast audience for a regular-season NHL game in 34 years.

Only 38,000-plus fans can fit into Fenway on game day.

“So the demand is there, people want to see it,” Renzulli said, noting that New Year’s Day is no longer a college football bonanza because the best bowl games are no longer played on Jan. 1. “It’s something that college football has kind of left us open a window and we took it and people want to see it.”

Brown, Coakley to face off for Senate seat

2009-12-09T06:36:00.000-08:00

By Justin A. Rice

BOSTON — The only woman running to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in the US Senate survived muted controversy and criticism in the run up to Tuesday’s special primary to advance to next month’s general election.

“I’m honored and humbled to have the opportunity to follow Senator Ted Kennedy, he who did ‘Dream the Impossible Dream,’” Martha Coakley said in a ballroom at the Sheraton Boston Hotel after receiving 47 percent of the vote and being introduced by Sen. John Kerry. “You know, the first phone call I received after I won the Democratic Party for Middlesex District Attorney was from Ted Kennedy.

“The first phone call I received this morning after I voted was Vicki Kennedy to wish me well with her trademark grace and warmth.”

The attorney general’s opponents US Representative Michael E. Capuano (28 percent of the vote), City Year cofounder Alan Khazei (13 percent), and Celtics co-owner Stephen G. Pagliuca (12 percent) were reluctant to attack the Coakley directly. Her opponents only pounced on the race’s front-runner after she volunteered that she would not vote for a national healthcare bill that included restrictions on abortion.

But a day after jumping on Coakley for her statements on abortion, Capuano shifted his position, saying he only voted on the bill in congress to push it through to the Senate. He said he ultimately would not approve anything with anti abortion language.

“I want to congratulate the next senator of Massachusetts Martha Coakley,” Capuano said when he took the stage to concede victory at 9:23 p.m. “She ran a good campaign and it was a good clean campaign. I want to congratulate her. I want to be there in January to make her the next senator.” “The attorney general was a good candidate. She didn’t make any slipups and we couldn’t narrow the gap.”

In the Jan. 19 special election Coakley will face Republican state Senator Scott Brown to once and for all determine who will fill the seat

Kennedy held for nearly 47 years until his death in August.

Brown defeated Duxbury businessman Jack. E. Robinson and independent candidate, Joseph L. Kennedy of Dedham. Brown was projected the winner by the Associated Press at 8:29 p.m., collecting about 89 percent of the vote compared to Robinson’s 11 percent.

With about 600,000 people out of 4.1 million eligible to cast ballots heading out to the poles to vote, turnout was probably low due to the off-season timing of the primary and cold temperatures.

“It was, it was really light,” Teia Searcy, 27, of Roxbury, said after a day of campaigning for Coakley. “I was worried for a minute. But I had great hope because I knew she was the best candidate.”

On paper, Coakley did not seem to win any category, from endorsements to spending. She was even knocked down in the grassroots. The only problem was that other candidates split those categories amongst themselves.

Capuano racked up the bulk of the endorsements, snagging former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, US Rep. Barney Frank and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. He also got the Boston Herald’s vote of confidence and all nine Boston city councilors.

Pagliuca spent at least $7.6 million of his own personal fortune and Khazei was hailed for being an ingenuous grassroots leader, who also did pretty well on the endorsement front.

He was endorsed by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, the Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Gen. Wesley Clark. Vicki Strauss Kennedy endorsed Khazei in a in a Huffington Post piece.

“Well you know there were plenty of skeptics out there,” Coakley said. “They said, how could an attorney general win? We believed it was quite possible! How could she raise the money? But we believed it was quite possible. They said women don’t have much luck in Massachusetts politics — we believed, that it was quite possible that that luck was about to change.”

Coakley did not do too shabby with endorsements either. She had state Senate President Therese Murray on her side all along and at the last moment President Bill Clinton rode to the rescue.

“I think this was a close call for many voters,” Alex MacDonald of Cambridge, a Coakley supporter said just before the race was called in Coakley’s favor. “These are three talented, very admirable, very progressive candidates and I would predict that each would one if they won the seat would probably 98 percent of the time vote the same.

“But the fact is Martha possesses some special attributes that will put her in the Senate.”

MacDonald said he knows most of the candidates well but was involved in Coakley’s first campaign and already pledge his support to her, even though others asked for his help.

“In a very close call a father of three daughters is the feather that tips the scales,” he said. “I voted or Coakley for a lot of reasons most of which because I known her and always liked her but I also did it for my daughters.” Searcy, who also attended Coakley’s party, was also confident a woman will finally represent Massachusetts in the senate.

“Women make a lot of changes, a lot of wise changes,” Searcy said. “I’m happy to hear a woman is in the House. Women are the rebirth of things.”

Coakley, however, was not counting her eggs before they hatched. “Following in the steps of so many men and women who have broken barriers and cracked ceilings as well as those who have worked at the bottom of the ladder,” Coakley concluded, “it is my hope that as this is one small step for women, you will help me take the much larger steps we need to take to make those words of the Declaration of Independence truly inclusive."

Miami Hurricanes absorb pounding on the boards, fall to BC

2009-12-07T05:35:00.000-08:00

BY JUSTIN A. RICE

Special to the Miami Herald

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Beating one of the few unbeaten teams in the country Sunday at Conte Forum was no point of pride for Al Skinner.

``If they're expected to go undefeated the rest of the way, then, yeah, there's a lot of pride in that, but up until this point it's only eight games, it's not like it's 25 [games],'' the Boston College coach said after beating the University of Miami 61-60 in front of 5,063 fans. ``But if they go the rest of the way and win the rest, and we're the only ones who beat them, I'll be really happy about that.''

Skinner did, however, hang his hat on outrebounding UM 46-21 -- including 23 offensive rebounds compared with the Hurricanes' four.

``In five years we've never gotten beaten like this on the boards,'' UM coach Frank Haith said. ``That's just been a big part of who we are, so that's what's been most disappointing about the performance today is they slammed us like that on the glass.''

After starting 8-0 for the second time in Haith's tenure, UM (8-1, 0-1 Atlantic Coast Conference), not only dropped its first game but its opening league game as well.

``We were struggling out there, and we didn't execute like we would've liked to,'' said sophomore guard Malcolm Grant, whose shooting down the stretch almost beat BC (6-2, 1-0). ``We just have to bounce back, like Coach said, and the most important thing is we don't get down, stay positive and bounce back.''

After slowly digging his team out of a 15-point deficit with 14:07 to play, Grant sunk a three-pointer with 4:23 left to cut the lead to five and another one about a minute later to cut it to two.

He capped UM's 8-0 run with an up-and-under layup that tied it at 57 with 2:25 left. But then UM gave up perhaps its most crucial offensive rebound to sophomore guard Reggie Jackson.

Jackson, who tied Grant for a game-high 18-points, put back the rebound for a 59-57 lead.

After a timeout, Grant missed a three-pointer. On BC's ensuing possession UM senior guard James Dews snagged Jackson's missed three-pointer but stepped out of bounds on his way down.

With the ball back in his hands on the right wing, Jackson blew past freshman guard Durand Scott, taking flight for a rim-rattling but disallowed dunk. Freshman center Reggie Johnson took the charge with 18 seconds left.

Twelve seconds later Grant missed a three-pointer that was rebounded by -- who else? -- Jackson.

``We were going for the win on the road,'' Haith said. ``We want to go for the win, and I thought Malcolm got a good look.''

Jackson was fouled and drained both free throws to go up 61-57 with two seconds left, and Grant hit a 28-footer as time expired.

``Malcolm was great offensively, he just gave us a spark there in the second half and gave us a chance to win the game,'' Haith said of Grant. ``He put us right there with a chance to win the game. Had we had a couple rebounds secure, we would have given ourselves an even better chance to win the game.''

The Eagles held a 28-11 rebounding edge at the half with a 16-1 offensive-rebound advantage.

``It was a hard-fought game,'' Haith said. ``BC's energy on the glass just destroyed us.''

The write stuff

2009-12-04T07:06:00.000-08:00

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News Correspondent

Posted Dec 04, 2009 @ 12:46 AM

With just one leg and one lung, Jothy Rosenberg has spent his life pushing his body and mind to the limit on ski slopes, through whitewater rapids and in the ivory towers of Duke University. So it may be hard to believe that the cancer survivor's greatest challenge was chronicling his adventures in an independently published memoir called "Who Says I Can't."

"Writing is a challenging activity," said the 13-year Newton resident, who lost his right leg and left lung after being diagnosed with cancer when he was 16. "People had heard me tell my stories orally for years and said 'You gotta write these down.'

"I couldn't think of any better way to write them down than chronologically, in the order that they happened. (But) that's not the best way to write a memoir. The first version was a little too autobiographical; I went off on a lot of tangents. It ended up being a cathartic experience, but it was not interesting to anyone else."

After five years of writing, rewriting and pitching publishers, Rosenberg's book, a survival story told from the everyman's perspective, will be mass-distributed on Feb 1.

"When you spend five years maniacally focused on getting something done, that's a hard thing," he said. "This was the book I needed at a certain time, and it didn't exist."

A Dec. 16 launch party will be held at the Needham headquarters of the Pan-Mass Challenge. Racing seven times in the nearly 200-mile bike-a-thon that raises money for cancer research, Rosenberg has raised $52,000 for PMC and will donate a portion of his book's proceeds to the organization.

The 53-year-old says writing his book, which he began to outline in 2004 based on his blog entries, was even harder than completing his Ph.D in computer science at Duke University in five years.

Yet it's still hard to compare writing to competing in the annual swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco, which he has done 16 times.

"(Swimming)'s not just physically hard, it's intimidating," said Rosenberg, who keeps himself healthy by working out six times a week. "I do it because I sort of recommit myself to do something hard and lonely and make sure I stay fit. For me swimming became non-optional. It's my only defense against shortness of breath. Because I work hard at it, my lung capacity feels normal.

"It makes me feel good. It's something most people won't do. I beat a lot of two-leg athletes - that's very satisfying."

Three years after being diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma, Rosenberg's cancer had spread, and doctors were forced to remove two-fifths of his left lung and to amputate his right leg five inches below his hip. Told he had no chance of survival, Rosenberg quit school at Kalamazoo College in his native Michigan to spend his final days on the ski slopes of Alta, Utah.

After skiing for 100 consecutive days without incident, Rosenberg decided to return to school. He completed his doctorate in computer science in 1983 and, after teaching at Duke for five years, moved to California to start the first of six tech companies he has founded over the years.

Eventually a software company he worked for sent him to Boston for what was supposed to be a year-long assignment. The Rosenbergs liked living in Newton so much they decided to stay for good.

Rosenberg continued his adventures on mountainsides and in rivers before showing a "stream-of-conscious" version of his book to his wife in 2004.

"She was horrified," Rosenberg recalled. "She said, 'You're not going to publish this?' Of course, the answer is 'no' whenever your wife asks a question like that."

Rosenberg agreed to help a friend launch a startup company in Oregon soon after. While spending countless two-week stretches holed up in the Oregon winter with nothing to do, he started to refine his book.

"One of the things that I was obsessive about in my mind was how to get my point across," he said. "I want to tell people how to fight back."

But the project was still much different than anything Rosenberg had done, including two computer science books he had published.

"Writing nonfiction, writing like this from the heart is very difficult, and I found a style that I was very comfortable with," he said. "It's a little folksy and has something that will make you smile. At least every two pages there's something very funny.

"The most challenging thing about writing is when someone reads your work. You're on the edge of your seat - are they going to like it, did I get the point across?

"One of the most challenging things, of course, is I'm hyper-sensitive to even the tiniest hint of a criticism. I can be self-critical; I can be brutal; but when someone else says, 'Oh, I didn't quite get that,' that just cuts me to the quick."

In 2007 Rosenberg called on a friend, Harvard professor Dan Kindlon, the author of "Raising Cain." Kindlon recommended his agent Kenny Wapner, who Rosenberg paid to help organize his story around a set of principles and concepts he wanted to convey.

Even with Wapner's help, publishers still weren't biting on the project. The most common feedback was that Rosenberg didn't have a platform or celebrity status.

"I said that's pretty hard for me to suddenly go get," Rosenberg said. "The fact is, that isn't the point of the book. I'm not famous, and most people who this happens to are not Michael J. Fox or Dorothy Hamill. What about them? How do Lance Armstrong's books inspire and motivate them? It's like reading a biography of someone famous, like John Adams, but you don't internalize it. It doesn't translate to 'What should I do to be like Lance Armstrong?"'

Eventually Rosenberg parted with Wapner and started exploring self-publishing options. After going down one bad road, he landed on independent publisher Bascom Hill Books, who liked the idea of a story being told from an everyman viewpoint.

"He's very down to earth for all that he's accomplished," said Cashman, Basocom's director of marketing. "He has an attitude that, just as his book says, 'Who says I can't?"'

Bascom also admired his persistence.

"Everyone has a story, and it's those who continue to speak up, to fight, to be vocal about their experiences, who are the ones who break through to a larger audience," Cashman said. "Being a first-time author, it's not an easy thing to do to get your message out there. I'd say Jothy is one of most aggressive authors. He's making sure everything is covered.

"Amongst 10 million other projects, he gives this as much effort as he does to his full-time job, biking and volunteering. He's 100 percent in everything he does, and that's why he has broken through."

Now Rosenberg, who started working full-time for a BAE Systems earlier this year, is starting to get a platform of his own. The Today Show recently featured him, and he has launched a grassroots campaign to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

"How many copies sold will I consider a success?" Rosenberg asks himself. "That's an arbitrary number. I guess if this got into 10,000 people's hands I'd feel pretty good; 100,000 would be a home run. But there are still 2.5 million amputees in this country, and there are 45 million people classified as having a disability.

"So 100,000 copies is not getting even that. As a personal goal, I have to consider it a success, but in terms of having made a big enough impact, not really."

Northeastern’s demise has southern exposure Alex Dulski says the death of football at Northeastern is just beginning to hit.

2009-12-03T07:48:00.001-08:00

Globe South Sports Notebook

Alex Dulski says the death of football at Northeastern is just beginning to hit. (AP File Photo/Nancy Palmieri)

By Justin A. Rice December 3, 2009

Globe South Sports Notebook

Northeastern University’s recent decision to discontinue its football program was a crushing blow, particularly for a number of Husky players from the area. The team’s roster lists 17 players who either reside in a town south of Boston or attended a high school there.

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“A lot of guys get recruited from the area because it’s close and [coaches can] see a lot of good games,’’ said junior quarterback Alex Dulski, who led Walpole High to a Super Bowl appearance. “There’s a lot of good talent from the area.

“It’s not easy on anyone, no matter where you’re from.’’

Dulski has already spoken to several colleges, from the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly 1-AA) to Division 3. But he said that his plans, like many of his teammates with eligility remaining, are still not clear. Will they transfer or stay at NU? The university will honor their scholarships. But if they choose to transfer, they can do so without sitting out a year.

Former Braintree High star Nick Chambers, a freshman linebacker who transferred to NU from UMass-Amherst, is considering Bryant University. But former Mansfield High standout Greg Martell, a sophomore offensive lineman, says he will stay.

“I’ve got a good co-op job, so I’m going to stick with that and finish my education here,’’ said the criminal justice major, who is interning in the Immigration and Customs department in Boston’s Federal Building.

Martell said he can’t imagine what it will be like to not have football practice next fall.

“Even today, I’m done with classes, and it’s kind of like ‘Now what?’ ’’ he said. “I’m so used to having a structured schedule. It’s a weird feeling now.’’

Xaverian Brothers grad CJ Parsons, a freshman defensive end, spent the week interviewing with coaches who flew to Boston to recruit Huskies looking to transfer, but would rather be focusing on his finals.

“It’s pretty stressful,’’ said Parsons, who may stay to play baseball at NU.

Weymouth’s Frank McPhee, who played at Catholic Memorial, has two more years of eligibility but is being advised to stay at NU.

“I’m still kind of in a sense of denial but the [Thanksgiving] break was good, it gave me some time to think about it,’’ the offensive lineman said. “It’s just a little ridiculous.’’

For Dulski, reality is starting to stick.

“It has sunk in a little bit,’’ said the quarterback, who threw for 655 yards and three TDs this season. “It will really hit a lot of guys in the coming months, and guys who aren’t going on to play, it will hit them in August when we normally report to camp.

“It’s been surreal this past week. I can’t say it has sunk in yet, but it’s starting to.’’

Ferbert made up for his late start
His freshman year at Bridgewater State College, John Ferbert didn’t go out for the football team, instead focusing his attention on his studies.

“When I took a year off and came back I thought I’d just play special teams,’’ said Ferbert, a criminal justice major who wants to get into coaching. “I went out to get into shape and meet some guys. I never expected it to be like this.’’ In his final season, the 5-foot-10, 220-pound linebacker made 90 tackles in 10 games, the most by a Bears player since 1997, and was a second team NEFC all-Bogan Division selection.

“John is a great example of what you can do with hard work,’’ said Bridgewater State coach Chuck Denune. “We weren’t sure of his physical ability to play the game at the Mike [or middle] linebacker position when he came to us, but the work he put in over the last couple off-seasons shows what a young man can do with his body over the course of two to three years of hard work.

“What he did on the field was just short of amazing.

Here and there
Stonehill finished 5-5 overall, but four players were named to the Northeast-10 Conference first team: sophomore cornerback/return specialist Stephan Neville, senior lineman Thomas Pheifer, senior defensive lineman Andrew Lesko, and sophomore punter Chris Rooney. Defensive back Jareed Gaines was chosen the conference’s co-freshman of the year. . . . Former Bridgewater-Raynham standout Kevin Kearns, a senior linemen at Bentley, was also a first-team pick, while former Brockton High players Sharrief Hall and Mike Gomes made the second team and all-rookie team in their inaugural seasons at the University of New Haven. . . . Bridgewater native and Saint Anselm College senior linebacker Dan Bohenek was named to the All-NE-10 second team. . . . Bridgewater State College women’s soccer coach Andrea Zeigler-O’Connor retired as the program’s all-time winningest coach, going 96-81-20 in 11 years.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Ready for the big time

2009-11-19T11:03:00.001-08:00

By Justin A. Rice
Globe Correspondent / November 19, 2009

The Catholic Central Conference is not exactly a beacon for “bigs’’ banging down low in the post, which is precisely why Archbishop Williams senior Valerie Driscoll, a 6-foot-4 center, can’t wait to step onto a court in the Big Ten.
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“Some teams we play against, I’m the tallest girl by eight inches,’’ said Driscoll, who signed a letter of intent with the University of Michigan on the first day of the early signing period.

“It would be good to play someone my size and bang around with her.’’

That is quite a leap for a player, who by her own assessment was awful back whe she was playing middle-school ball.

“I was afraid of the ball, timid,’’ said the Stoughton teen. “I didn’t like playing, but I was tall. The more I practiced, the better I got, and the more I started to like it.’’

In the seventh grade, she was cut from a town travel team. But Archies coach Jim Bancroft saw a player of promise for his Bay State Magic Elite AAU squad. Driscoll lacked toughness but had a soft touch, an ability to run the floor, and a willingness to be coached.

“She was a big girl who hadn’t played a lot of basketball,’’ he said. “In the AAU season we looked for tough opponents, girls with more skill. She took her lumps, got beaten down and knocked down and outplayed many times. She very easily could have thrown up her hands, quit, and walked away. Luckily, she kept on working, and it all paid off for her.’’

In an AAU game in Rhode Island prior to Driscoll’s freshman season, Bancroft recalled, a coaching colleague turned to him on the bench and said, “ ‘Can you believe you got her at Archie for the next four years?’ I said, ‘I know, isn’t that cool?’ because she was doing everything we worked on the last two years. Her confidence grew, and that just helped it explode.’’

Her first two seasons at ABW, teaming up with Megan Black along with the backcourt duo of Casey Capello and Christine Duffy, Driscoll helped the Bishops to back-to-back state titles.

“I knew this was for me, I really am meant to play basketball,’’ said Driscoll, who until that point was unsure of her basketball future.

A year ago, with Black (Suffolk University), Duffy (Southern New Hampshire), and Capello (St. Lawrence) all playing at the collegiate level, Driscoll averaged 19.4 points and 17 rebounds per game and led the Bishops to the state semifinals, despite often facing double- and triple-teams in the paint.

Now she is believed to be the first player from her high school program to play for a Division 1 school. Driscoll visited the Ann Arbor campus during the summer and “just fell in love’’ with the school, she said. Her family subscribed to the Big Ten Network; last Friday, she watched the Wolverines’ opener, a win against Ball State.

“They run the floor really well, they run a lot and have a very high-tempo game, which I like,’’ Driscoll said. There was “a lot of banging around.’’

Coach Kevin Borseth, whose team finished 10-20 last season, is ecstatic to land Driscoll.

“Val is a big, strong presence around the basket, and really demands attention down low,’’ he said in statement. “It is something that we haven’t had, and we are excited to get her into our program. Val is an extremely hard worker and an all-around good person who I believe is going to be a major contributor to our program’s success.’’

First, though, Driscoll is determined to propel Archies to a third state title. “That would be very exciting.’’
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Alves, Gill are leaders of the pack for Stonehill

2009-11-15T07:51:00.001-08:00

Globe South Sports
The Boston Globe

By Justin A. Rice
Globe Correspondent / November 15, 2009

On Saturday, Jill Alves of Whitman will compete in the NCAA Division 2 cross-country championships for the second time. And although she’s only a sophomore, Alves is still considered a veteran compared to the other runners on the Stonehill College women’s team.

Riding the performances of Alves and freshmen Erin Carmone and Lynley Joynt, the Skyhawks edged Northeast-10 Conference rival University of Massachusetts at Lowell to capture last week’s Division 2 East Regional title at Franklin Park.

Alves, who finished 155th overall on the 6-kilometer course at the NCAAs last year, is aiming for a better finish this year at the University of Southern Indiana.

“All the girls up front are so ridiculously good,’’ said Alves, who was an Atlantic Coast League All-Star in both cross-country and track at Whitman-Hanson Regional High.

“I have to just worry about where I’m supposed to be in the race and not worry about the girls way up front.

“There are hundreds of girls around you and it seemed like I was in 100th place. It was a very different experience. Hopefully this year I can handle the pressure a lot better.’’

Carmone broke the tape first at the East Regionals, earning an 11-second victory in a time of 22 minutes 16.5 seconds. Alves (23:18.2) was eighth and Joynt (23:18.9) was ninth.

Breaking into the Top 15 at the nationals, though, will be difficult for a squad that is youthful and lacks experience, according to Karen Boen, who coaches both the Stonehill women’s and men’s teams.

“If you can get out there this young, there’s not as much mystery or fear going into the second time,’’ Boen said of running the championships as underclassmen. “Going into her second time, Jill will be much more mentally prepared.’’

Nevertheless, Boen said this year’s combination of freshmen and sophomores is probably the strongest she’s had in her 11 years coaching the women. A lot of that has to do with Alves’s leadership.

“She’s just everything you look for in a runner,’’ Boen said. “She’s determined and has great leadership, just a great disposition.’’

The ninth-ranked men’s team also qualified for nationals, finishing second behind UMass-Lowell on Sunday; former Brockton High standout Kevin Gill covered the 5-mile course in 21:18.6 to finish fourth overall.

“Collectively, we didn’t run as well, but we got the ticket to nationals, that’s all that mattered,’’ Gill said, noting that only the top two teams qualified for the NCAA Championships.

Boen said he hopes the men can finish in the top 10 at nationals.

“They have the talent to do it, they just have to have the guts now,’’ Boen said.

The men qualified for nationals even though number-five runner Ben Rumery was sidelined with the H1N1 virus. He is back at practice and should be ready for the nationals.

A year ago, Gill placed 78th in the 10K at the NCAAs in a time of 32:55 on a hilly and snowy course at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. He said he hoped to finish in the top 40, which earns All-American honors.

“That’s what I’m shooting for this year,’’ he said. “I had this goal since pretty much my freshman year. I thought it would happen last year. This year I just have to put it all together out there, and if it happens, it was meant to be.’’

Gill’s older brother, Keith, graduated from Stonehill last spring as an All-American in all three running seasons: cross-country and indoor and outdoor track. He was named Division 2 Athlete of the Year for indoor track after he set a school record in the mile (4:03.43) in February 2008.

The younger Gill has an impressive resume too. An All-Scholastic runner at Brockton High, he helped the Boxers win two cross-country state championships and he won a state championship in the mile. His first year at Stonehill, he ran the fastest mile ever (4:10) by a freshman.

“He’s a workhorse and a fierce competitor,’’ Boen said.

That fire, however, got the younger Gill into a bit of hot water last Sunday at the Franklin Park race when he went out too hard and didn’t have enough in his tank for the final kick.

He doesn’t regret the strategy though, saying it will make him more battle-tested for the NCAAs.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Speaker Pelosi Endorses Mike Capuano for U.S. Senate

2009-11-14T09:26:00.001-08:00

By Justin A. Rice
Special to Boston24

BOSTON — Rep. Michael Capuano looked on like a proud student whose teacher just plastered a gold star on his chest on Friday morning as he stood next to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The six-term congressman from Somerville earned Pelsoi’s endorsement to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy just days after a controversy between Capuano’s rival — frontrunner Martha Coakley — squabbled about an anti-abortion amendment in the president’s health care bill.

Capuano jumped all over the Massachusetts Attorney General after she said on Monday that she would not vote for any bill containing the so called Stupak-Pitts amendment that limits federal funding for abortions. The following day, however, Capuano shifted his position, saying he only voted on the bill in congress last weekend to push it through to the Senate and ultimately would not approve anything with anti abortion language.

So when Pelosi pinned her stamp of approval on Capuano in a meeting room at the Omni Parker House Hotel on Friday he could have beamed through the ceiling.

“The vote on the floor is a vote to move the process forward,” Pelosi declared. “Why would we defeat that and then lose an historic opportunity to go forward? Then you see what happens in conference, and then reserve judgment as to whether you want to support the bill at the end of the day.”

“There you have it, this is why she’s speaker, this is why I have faith in her,” Capuano said. “You heard what she said. She is right and everyone in the democratic caucus knows that.”

Pelosi went even further, branding her colleague’s vote for the bill as “courageous” and seemingly took a swipe at Coakley by saying: “Any one of us could have found one reason or another not to vote for the bill. But that was not an excuse for preventing this historic moment from taking place.”

The bill is currently in the Senate and if it passes would move to a House-Senate conference committee where differences in the legislation can be hashed out. If the anti abortion amendment remained, Capuano could vote against the final bill, but Pelosi said she does not think it will come to that.

While some have said Coakley has accused Capuano of flip-flopping to her position, during a radio debate at WTKK-FM on Thursday, Coakley said Capuano was the only one on the attack.

“[The Stupak-Pitts amendment is] incredibly restrictive on women’s rights and went further than any current status quo on women’s rights to choice,” Coakley said. “Having said that I didn’t criticize anyone else. I was asked how I would vote and the congressmen criticized me for it. He’s made a record of asking voters how he’s voted on principle.

“That’s all I said, I still believe it is right and I still believe we can get good healthcare without compromising rights.”

Coakley has done well to energize a base of women voters and has been endorsed by the majority of the female political big hitters in the state, including Senate President Therese Murray.

Just weeks before the Dec. 8 primary, Pelosi’s endorsement was also seen as a huge shot in the arm for the former mayor of Somerville, because he trails the only woman in the race by a wide margin.

Earlier in the week a Suffolk University/7News poll had Coakley netting 44 percent of the vote in her quest to become the first female senator from Massachusetts while Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca each had 17 percent and Capuano had 16. Three percent went for City Year founder Alan Khazei and twenty percent were undecided.

State Sen. Scott Brown and Duxbury businessman Jack E. Robinson are vying for the Republican nomination and the final special election to permanently fill Kennedy’s seat will be Jan. 19.

Capuano is also a key member of the Pelosi leadership team. She chose him to lead a House ethics reform committee and he also accompanied her to Darfur in the wake of genocide there. Pelosi called Capuano “operational” instead of “ideological.” She noted that he was one of the first to support her bid to take the top spot of the House and that they first bonded over the fact that they are both Italian American.

“He’s a tremendous resource to me,” she said. “I have to admit it will be my loss when Michael goes to the Senate but I will be very proud.”

Rising Out of the Crowd

2009-11-13T05:42:00.000-08:00

by Justin A. Rice/Special to USCHO

Nov. 10 — Carl Hagelin didn’t exactly stand out from the crowd when he attended Red Berenson’s Michigan Hockey Camp as a youngster almost a decade ago, even though he traveled all the way from Sodertalje, Sweden, to skate in Ann Arbor and in Berenson’s graces.

“No I don’t [remember him] ; I remember his older brother, Bobbie, was a really good prospect,” Berenson, Michigan’s 26-year hockey coach said. “Carl was really young then but his brother was noticeably good.”

Berenson might not recall the younger Hagelin attending his camp, but Berenson and his camp left an awfully large imprint on the impressionable mind of the younger Hagelin. About seven years after attending camp in Ann Arbor for the first time, Hagelin was drafted in the sixth round (No. 168 overall) by the New York Rangers in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft but chose instead to play for the Wolverines.

“I was always the tiniest kid on the team. I was a late bloomer on and off the ice,” said the junior left winger, who didn’t start playing hockey until he was about 8 years old. “When I was 16 or 17 I grew and put some weight on.”

But even though his brother went pro (currently playing in Denmark) straight away, Hagelin turned down opportunities to take the same track. Instead the 6-foot, 181-pounder decided to follow in the footsteps of his father by attending school in Michigan. While his father went to Western Michigan, Hagelin turned down Ferris State and Northern Michigan to become a Wolverine.
Michigan's Carl Hagelin had 31 points as a sophomore (photo: Melissa Wade).
Michigan's Carl Hagelin had 31 points as a sophomore (photo: Melissa Wade).

The 21-year-old left-hander, however, didn’t finally make a name for himself in Ann Arbor until his sophomore season when he set single-season highs for points (31), assists (18), goals (13), game-winners (four) and multi-point games (8).

Through eight games this season, Hagelin was the Wolverines’ second-highest point scorer with seven (three goals, four assists).

“I think Carl can have a better year offensively,” Berenson said. “He’s emerging as a top college player. If he can put the puck in the net he’ll go a long way with his game and he won’t surprise anyone.

“From my understanding he was not a high-end playing coming up. He was a late bloomer. Now he’s an elite skater. Something must’ve switched on in his body because he put it all together. There’s no question some humility comes along with [being a late bloomer] . Carl is a terrific individual. He’s humble and he works so hard. He earned the respect of the players before he ever stepped on the ice in the offseason workouts with his work ethic.”

This season Hagelin was added to the power play and going into a late-October, two-game sweep at Lake Superior State, Berenson said he would try using the Swede on two different lines simultaneously to try to spark the then 2-2 Wolverines. On Oct. 30 Hagelin registered the game-winning goal and an assist against Lake Superior State for his 13th career multi-point game and second of the season.

Being on the power play also means Hagelin is expected to produce around the net, an area of his game with which he has struggled. In a 3-2 loss against defending national champion Boston University on Oct. 24, Michigan scored twice in the final period to tie the game before losing. Hagelin missed several opportunities around the net during the game but said the loss was a good gauge of where the team was at.

“It’s always good,” he said of playing top teams. “We like playing all the good teams. Last year we lost to BU 7-2. We had a bad attitude and it decreased our self confidence. This year we showed we have a lot of character in that third period. By coming back we showed what team we can be, a hard-working team in the third period.”

And if Michigan continues that hard work it could make it all the way to the Frozen Four, which this year is 45 miles down the road from Ann Arbor in Detroit. Hagelin would be in good company among the Swede-heavy Detroit Red Wings, some of whom Hagelin has skated with during the summers.

“Before I came here I wasn’t that big of a [Red Wings] fan,” said Hagelin, adding that he only makes the trip from Ann Arbor to Joe Louis Arena about four or five times a season because it is too time consuming.

That wouldn’t be an issue come April, when the Frozen Four makes its way to Detroit’s Ford Field.

“Obviously that’s one of our goals this year to win the NCAA championship,” he said, “but we can’t look that far ahead.”--

Victory is transcendent for Habs, White

2009-11-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

By Justin Rice
HockeyPrimeTime.com
Friday, November 06, 2009 19:07

BOSTON – While progress has come at a painful pace for the Boston Bruins this season, their archrival Montreal Canadiens — who have also been snakebitten by the injury bug — are moving in light years by comparison.

And the Habs, compared to the rest of the NHL, are still moving at a turtle’s pace.

In a game that saw the two original six franchises face off for the 700th time Thursday night, the Bruins (6-7) — despite losing one of their best scorers, David Krejci, to the H1NI virus — avoided their longest scoring drought in 80 years by 51.7 seconds.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that Montreal (8-8) needed extra time to win the 2-1 shootout, at least they could take stock in the fact that rookie Ryan White collected his first NHL point in his first NHL game.

“It wasn’t [pretty] but it’s my favorite one up to date I’ll tell you that,” White said of assisting on his team's only regulation goal. “It wasn’t like it was a nice backward pass or anything like that, but it was perfect and I wouldn’t want to get it any other way.”

What was started with White's utilitarian assist was finished spectacularly by former Bruin Glen Metropolit. The first-period goal came after White fed Andrei Kostitsyn in the neutral zone, poking a puck that popped out of a collision between Dennis Wideman and Matt Hunwick. Kostitsyn drove to the net, which he wrapped around from the left to the right and dumped the puck off to Metropolit in front of the goal at the 17:32 mark.

“It was beautiful; those guys made a great play,” White said. “I just made a little one in the zone but it worked out good.”

About five minutes later the Bruins had a goal disallowed after a replay showed the net was jarred off the hook before Patrice Bergeron knocked the puck in. But Bergeron would finally get a goal, the team’s first in 192:06, by slamming home a rebound off Derek Morris’s shot.

“Once again, it’s like a broken record,” Blake Wheeler said. “We say the same thing over and over again, night in, night out. You’ve got to be tired of it. You look around; we’ve got a lot of guys who can score goals and all of a sudden we are going on nine periods of no goals. We’ve got to take that to heart. We’ve got to take it personally.”

While the Bruins were glad to finally see the end of their goal-scoring drought, the game also marked the end of a losing streak for Habs goalkeeper Carey Price.

“I hadn’t won in six games, and that was not the time to get upset,” Price, who finished with 42 saves for his third win of the season, said of allowing Bergeron’s goal. “I had to refocus in a hurry because if I let it slip, then I lose another game.”

In the shootout Price stopped Wheeler, Bergeron and Mark Recchi while Montreal’s Mike Cammalleri beat Bruins netminder Tim Thomas on the only shootout goal to improve the Canadiens’ overtime mark to 7-0.

In the end, a game billed as a matchup between teams that are shadows of their previous selves transcended mediocrity through the sheer intensity of their historic rivalry.

“It’s always fun,” Metropolit told reporters before a which was the first meeting between the two teams since Boston knocked Montreal out of the playoffs last season. “Who knows what kind of rivalry we’ll start tonight?”

NOTEWORTHY: Wheeler was on the Krejci’s left wing Tuesday night, a day before Krejci was diagnosed with H1N1.

“Kind of took me by surprise, like everyone else,” he said. “I guess that’s the way the word is today. You’ve got to be careful. Obviously we wish him the best and a speedy recovery.”

The Bruins were quick to point out they had no plans to be vaccinated for the swine flu, unlike the Calgary Flames, who recently took heat for jumping ahead of eligible Alberta citizens who were waiting for innoculations.

“We do the best we can. David Krejci is not around the team, and hopefully that’s where it will stop, but there is no guarantee,” Bruins head coach Claude Julien said. “We are all vulnerable to it, we just have to deal with it the best way we can.”

Branco blossoms as Brockton’s top scorer

2009-11-05T14:14:00.001-08:00

By Justin A. Rice
Globe Correspondent / November 5, 2009

Morgan Branco has recorded a staggering six 3-goal performances for the Brockton High girls’ soccer team this fall. But the goal that stands out the most in her mind didn’t even come off her own foot.

In a match against Durfee late last month, the sophomore forward broke free at midfield and dribbled untouched into the box. When a defender approached, Branco dished a feed just in time to freshman Felicia Mulholland, who converted an insurance goal for a 3-1 lead with 3:01 left.

“For me that was a big thing,’’ said Branco, who has netted what is believed to be a school-record 28 goals, along with seven assists, through 18 games.

“Everybody thought I could shoot and I could’ve shot, but I thought passing to Felicia was a better thing.’’

That kind of unselfish play has been prominent for a Boxers squad that has qualified for the state tournament for the first time in five years, its 13-2-3 record a major turnaround from last year’s 5-9-3 finish.

“This was a long time in the making, we really struggled,’’ said eight-year head coach Andrea Tassinari. She saluted the leadership of her three senior captains, stopper Jennifer Love, forward Kate Wegener, and midfielder Sunshine Yang, who have never appeared in a tournament game.

Team records do not date back to the program’s first season in 1969, but the 13 wins are believed to be a school record. The impressive numbers continue in goal, where senior keeper Kelsey Sheridan has registered 10 shutouts. A three-sport athlete, Sheridan was shifted to goal as a sophomore.

“Literally after one game, I pulled her into the coaches’ room and said: ‘Look, Kelsey, you’re a basketball and softball player, a natural athlete. Guess what? You’re our new goalie,’ ’’ Tassinari said. “And that was it.’’

Sheridan said she didn’t feel comfortable in goal until last season and “I’m still not completely 100 percent. I don’t feel like a goalie because I played my whole life as a field player.’’

Branco, however, said it’s hard to tell that she is a relative newcomer at the position.

“You would never think that if you saw her play,’’ she said. “Without her we wouldn’t have the season we’ve had. She’s had so many big stops and really makes the difference on our team.’’

Sheridan, who plays the saxophone, is one of four Boxers who’s also a member of the school’s marching band, joining Evelyn DeJesus (flute), senior Jill Lynch (flute), and senior Lesley Blanchette (trumpet).

The four often rush from their soccer games to perform in the halftime show at Boxers football games. “When it comes down to it,’’ said Sheridan, “I’d rather save goals than play notes.’’

Branco has been playing sweet notes all season.

She earned a spot on the varsity as a freshman, but because of the team’s depth up front, she settled in as a midfielder, moved into the starting lineup at midseason, and scored four goals.

“I wanted to prove myself to [Tassinari],’’ she said. “That I could be on the field with everyone else and I was not just a freshman who should just be practicing. I tried to prove I have the same skills.’’

In her second season, she has developed into the Boxers’ top scoring threat since Ashley Bourne scored 20 goals in 2002.

Her first four-goal game came Sept. 15 in an 8-1 victory against Taunton. Two days later, she had three goals against Mashpee in a 5-0 win, then scored four goals the next game against Attleboro in a 6-0 victory.

“When I started scoring a lot in the beginning of the season, I knew this was our season,’’ said Branco, who credits all the goals to better ball movement. “Our team was doing really good, and I kept getting that many goals. After a while, I said if I can get this many in one game, I can get them in another game.’’

Midway through the season, foes were marking her with multiple defenders, and yet she still managed to score three goals in a 5-1 win over Fontbonne Sept. 3 and then all three in a 3-1 victory against Framingham Oct. 5. Her final hat trick came against Mashpee Oct. 29.

But the Boxers have plenty of depth. Wegener (10 goals, 12 assists), freshman Amy Yang (10 goals, eight assists), and Mulholland (10 goals, nine assists) are all double-figure scorers, which Tassinari attributes to Branco’s unselfish play.

“In the second week of September [Branco’s] goals started piling up and it was like ‘this is weird,’ ’’ the coach said. “But she’s never been the player who says ‘I’m the leading scorer, it’s all about me, me, me, give me the ball.’ ’’
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Bentley football team on cusp of playoff berth entering finale

2009-11-05T14:08:00.000-08:00

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent
Daily News Tribune
Posted Nov 05, 2009 @ 02:06 AM

WALTHAM — Even though the Bentley University football team didn't play last week, it had one of its most productive weeks of the season as far as the standings and polls are concerned.

During its bye week, the Falcons clinched at least a share of the Northeast-10 Conference football championship after Merrimack College outshot Southern Connecticut State, 52-42, on Friday night.

The team also cracked the Top 25 in the AFCA Division II poll for the first time since 2004 and is No. 4 in the Super Region One.

``Which was exciting to hear, but it doesn't mean anything unless we win this Saturday,'' said junior offensive lineman Jared Kawadler. ``It's going to be a huge game.''

Bentley (8-1, 6-1) can clinch the league title outright at noon on Saturday with a victory in its regular season finale at Stonehill College (4-5, 3-4).

``That has been our goal from Day One when we started this year,'' Bentley head coach Thom Boerman said of winning the league.

While Bentley controls its own destiny in terms of the league title, a bid to the postseason is a bit more complicated. A win on Saturday should guarantee its first berth in the Division II tournament since 2004. The Falcons could also make it if they lose, as long as they maintain at least a No. 4 seed in the regional rankings.

``That's something that's harder to control is the national playoff picture,'' Boerman said. ``We've been in the hunt most of the year for a playoff slot, and if we win we're virtually guaranteed a spot. But it's a selection committee, so who knows?

``There's so many factors. I don't know what will happen if we lose. I just have to go under the presumption that we have to win to make it, and if we lose, shame on us.''

Last year's 35-7 loss to Stonehill was so shameful Boerman has been showing his team film from the game.

``We watched that game film and we got that bad taste in our mouth,'' said senior linebacker Matt Zahoruiko. ``We definitely don't want that on Saturday.''

They also don't want to share the league championship. This season would be the third time Bentley has had at least a share of the NE-10 championship. The Falcons won the title outright in 2003, and shared it with C.W. Post the following year.

``We have paid zero attention to that,'' Boerman said of clinching the tie. ``I'm not a huge fan of that. Somebody should be champion of every conference. If we're co-champs, that's great, we would be honored, but we're not focused on that at all.''

Another thing the first-year head coach is trying to keep off his mind and his players' minds is that he was nominated for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year.

``I'm not even thinking about that,'' he said. ``That's a nice honor. That's kind of cool, but I mean the guy leading the voting is way ahead. I appreciate the fact that someone nominated me and I appreciate the support.

``I'm sure all my relatives will vote for me (via the Internet). Other than that, I don't think about that at all. In my first year, even being nominated is a heck of an honor. But first things are first, we gotta take care of business and beat Stonehill. That's where our focus, attention and energy are this week.''

So much so that Boerman has also been showing his team film from games against Stonehill in the early 1990s when the two teams had a bitter rivalry, including when Bentley overcame a two-touchdown deficit in the final five minutes to win.

``That was kind of fun to watch, just seeing that atmosphere between the two schools,'' Zahoruiko said. ``That rivalry is something we, as students, don't know about. It was cool to go back and see the history between the two teams and what the rivalry was about.''

The regional rankings will be used to determine the seedings for the NCAA Division II playoffs. The top two teams in each region receive a first-round bye and the next two hosting first-round games. The NCAA tournament field will be announced Sunday afternoon between 3-3:30 p.m. on ESPNEWS.

``It's been heck of a ride so far and I hope it's not over on Saturday,'' Boerman said. ``If it is, I'm so proud of the team. It's been a heck of a season.

``Hopefully, we'll prevail and see where the chips lie in terms of a playoff spot.''

2009-11-02T06:51:00.000-08:00

Sabres' Miller Makes Good
First Impression on Wilson

Northeast

Written by Justin Rice
Friday, October 30, 2009 23:18

Northeast Division notebook:

At the helm of the worst team in the NHL, Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Ron Wilson not only got an up-close look Friday night at one of the best teams in the league, the Buffalo Sabres. He also got a glimpse of his new netminder.

Well, his goalkeeper for the Olympics, that is.

Wilson, the head coach of the U.S. Olympic team, watched his Toronto team (1-8-2) fall 3-2 on Friday night after Tim Connolly netted a power-play goal 1:04 into overtime.

On the bright side, Wilson watched Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller make 33 saves. Taking a 1.60 goals-against average and .944 save percentage into Friday night, Miller (8-0-1) has led his squad to a surprising 8-1-1 start.

“I’m well aware of how well he’s played this year,” Wilson told reporters before the game. “We expect him to be one of our goalies, if not the starting goalie. “I just hope Buffalo doesn’t wear him out.”

The Maple Leafs, who came in with the best power-play unit in the league, finished 0 for 4 with the man advantage on Friday night. Toronto completes a five-game road trip against Montreal on Saturday.

BUFFALO

Buffalo Sabres general manager Darcy Regier announced that rookie defenseman Tyler Myers will stay with the Sabres indefinitely. Regier said on Thursday that Myers, who still has junior eligibility remaining, will “remain with the team for the foreseeable future.” Myers’ three-year, entry-level contract officially began against Toronto on Saturday night. He had two goals and three assists through nine games. … The Sabres are 9-2 in their last 11 games against Toronto, including six straight wins. ... Buffalo defender Toni Lydman missed his third consecutive game on Friday with a groin injury. ... Before returning home to take on the Leafs, the Sabres swept a three-game road trip, including a 4-1 victory against the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday night.

BOSTON

Despite a 2-1 loss to New Jersey on Thursday night that dropped the B’s record to 5-5, the underperforming team was pleased to come 86 seconds away from playing a complete game. “I can’t say I’m disappointed with the way we played but [I’m] definitely disappointed with the outcome, Bruins coach Claude Julien said told the media after his team gave up the game winner to Dainius Zubrus with 1:26 to play. … The first meeting between two original-six teams will be on Sunday, when the Bruins travel to New York for a 1 p.m. showdown with the Rangers. It is the second in a stretch of three games in four nights for Boston.

MONTREAL

After having a four-game win streak broken by a 6-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Wednesday night, Montreal looked to get back on its feet with a win against Chicago on Friday. After coming back from a 2-0 deficit, the Habs fell 3-2. Before its win streak, Montreal (6-7-0) had lost five straight. ... Monday marks the 50th anniversary of the date former Montreal goaltender Jacques Plante altered hockey forever. On Nov. 1, 1959, after taking a shot to the nose off the stick of New York Ranger Andy Bathgate, Plante became the first goalie in pro hockey history to wear a mask.

OTTAWA

The Ottawa Senators fell victim to their own success on Thursday night, losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-2 just two weeks after beating Tampa by a count of 7-1. “We definitely used that as motivation,” Lightning center Steven Stamkos told reporters after scoring two goals and three points.

2009-11-01T16:50:00.001-08:00

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Boston still vexed

by school busing

Justin A. Rice THE WASHINGTON TIMES

BOSTON | More than three decades after a federal court order forced Boston to desegregate schools by busing black students to white neighborhoods and whites to black areas, the birthplace of public education is still fighting the battle.

But the lines no longer pit race against race, with 87 percent of the student body now minorities.

Now the city is wrestling with school-choice issues and an antiquated busing system that can send a lone student on a bus ride across the city. And the more the Boston Public Schools system assigns students to neighborhood schools, rather than bus them across town, the more likely it is that children in the poorest neighborhoods will go to the worst-performing schools.

Boston schools still let parents pick schools, but only within three enormous and controversial geographical zones. Buses carting only one student often crisscross the city - contributing to next year's nearly $80 million transportation budget at a time when the district faces a projected $100 million budget shortfall.

Proposals to replace the 20-year-old school-assignment zones with five smaller ones fizzled twice this decade, most recently in June. And while the city secured federal funding this month to take another stab at overhauling its busing system, the issue remains a political hot potato that is not among the talking points of either mayoral candidate.

"And they won't talk about it because it's very divisive," said Myriam Ortiz, executive director of Boston Parent Organizing Network, which successfully argued that Boston Public Schools' recent proposal to return to neighborhood schools drastically decreased access to quality schools for the city's poorest students, "because communities where better schools are located could care less about the communities where the underperforming schools are located."

"I know this for a fact. A few months ago, we heard parents testifying that their schools should not receive budget cuts because their schools perform better. They said, 'The schools that are not performing, budget cuts should be their punishment.' "

At a recent debate, Mayor Thomas M. Menino had his performance on education graded by his opponent - City Council member Michael F. Flaherty Jr., who gave him an "F" - and by himself. He said he'd grade himself "maybe a B-plus, no, a B. I'll be generous."

The two men sparred over the mayor's record: "We boast of having the best colleges and universities in the world, yet children who actually do graduate from Boston Public Schools will never get an opportunity to compete," the mayor's 40-year-old challenger said. Each man slung around statistics on dropouts, but neither addressed the educational elephant in the auditorium at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum: busing.

Mr. Menino, who called for the abolition of busing in his 2008 State of the City Address, could not be reached for comment for this report.

During a phone interview, Mr. Flaherty, a proponent of neighborhood schools who said he recently realized the need to focus initially on improving school quality, did address busing frankly.

"The city has a long history with the subject; at the same time, things have changed tremendously," said Mr. Flaherty, who was born five years before the 1974 forced-busing ruling. "We need to be sensitive to the issue and recognize the past. I've seen Boston at its best and at its very worst. To dismiss and discount the past is shortsighted. We need to put all the issues on the table.

"The discussion around school assignment can be polarizing already. With that said, maybe we do need to have a frank discussion about race in Boston, where we came from and where we are now before we embark on this particular issue."

While Boston's third attempt to rewrite its school-assignment plan since 2004 has gone untouched this political season, Washington has taken notice.

On Oct. 1, 35 years after the now-deceased federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled that Boston Public Schools practiced de facto segregation, the U.S. Department of Education awarded Boston a $241,680 grant.

The Technical Assistance for Student Assignment Plans grant is designed to help school districts reconcile long-term effects of busing by studying the practices of cities nationwide. The 11 districts awarded the grant have 12 to 24 months to use the funds and cast wide nets in reaching out to school-assignment experts and civil rights activists.

For the Boston Public Schools system - which has 72 percent of its students eligible for subsidized free and reduced-price meals - the challenge is deflating a bloated transportation budget without impeding access to the city's best schools.

Superintendent Carol Johnson shelved her five-zone plan in June after it was revealed that the majority of the district's underperforming schools were concentrated in the two zones populated by the city's poorest residents.

Parents in those two zones were irate after learning they wouldn't have equal access to bilingual and special education.

"We are pleased about the grant; it will help propel us further and faster," Ms. Johnson said by phone. "But even if we had not gotten the grant, we are committed to making changes to improve the quality of schools in Boston."

While BPS abolished race-based school assignment in 1999, the district currently conducts a school-choice lottery, in which students apply to elementary and middle schools within their zone of residence. They can apply to schools outside their zone as long as they are within walking distance of their home. High schools are accessible citywide.

Ms. Johnson was widely applauded for tossing out her five-zone plan this summer. But even after she announced in August that she was applying for federal money to aid her new efforts, skepticism remained widespread.

"I don't believe they're going back to the drawing board," said Carlos Henriquez, a City Council candidate who says 10 out of 11 elementary schools in his predominantly black and Hispanic district chronically underperform. "They are waiting until November 3 is over, then they'll propose a plan that convinces nobody." Election Day is Nov. 3.

In 2004, before Ms. Johnson's tenure began, a similar school-assignment proposal also failed. Just as they did this summer, community organizers and parents argued that the district should improve underperforming schools before addressing transportation woes.

While Ms. Johnson says BPS can simultaneously work toward improving poor schools and ending busing, Mr. Henriquez said presenting a school-assignment plan would be much easier once all schools performed equally.

"They can quickly throw together a transportation plan," the 32-year-old said, "but no one can put together how to improve 10 of 11 schools."

In 2008, state officials deemed 100 of 143 schools "in need of improvement" before Ms. Johnson closed or consolidated chronically inadequate schools. About three-quarters of the city's 135 schools underperform today, but Ms. Johnson has increased the number of seats in well-performing schools.

"I think we have some evidence that we made some improvement," Ms. Johnson said. "I also think that since some parents feel they didn't get any of their top three [school choices], they still want us to make sure we address that issue. Yes, some people will feel better about the school their child is in, but not everyone is satisfied. That's why it's important for us to have the grant. We need to think about all the different ways to have a choice system."

While busing battles in Seattle and Louisville played out in the Supreme Court two years ago, Boston has hashed out school-assignment debates hyper-locally in church basements, school cafeterias and auditoriums.

And while the Supreme Court ultimately limited the role race can play in determining student assignment, in Boston the issue is not especially racial, since only 9 percent of public-school students are white, compared with 39 percent black and 37 percent Hispanic.

The battle in Boston pits those trying to preserve access to quality schools, as well as the English language and special education, versus those lobbying for a return to neighborhood schools.

East Boston resident Gloribell Mota wasn't satisfied with the middle schools in her predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood a few years ago. So her son traveled 1 1/2 hours by bus each way to attend a better school.

Ms. Mota credits that decision for helping him test into Boston Latin School, the jewel of the district and the nation's oldest public school, founded in 1635. But leaving the neighborhood to attend middle school wasn't easy.

"It wasn't like he could stay after school with his friends hanging out, it was straight home an hour and a half on the bus," said Ms. Mota, whose daughter is in kindergarten. "I want to make sure she has those options as well.

"Until BPS takes a structural look at some of the schools, parents will continue to oppose [a new busing plan]. They want quality schools in the neighborhoods."

Ms. Mota recently walked a few blocks from her home to attend her daughter's parent-teacher conferences and acknowledged that neighborhood schools can foster community and parent involvement.

When defending her school-assignment proposal last winter, Ms. Johnson said the geographical districts reflected parents' desires to choose schools closer to home.

Neighborhood schools, however, are not a silver bullet. The Orchard Gardens Pilot School sets aside 75 percent of its seats for students within walking distance of the school in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, but Mr. Henriquez notes that it still underperforms.

Ms. Johnson said she understands why parents are pushing so hard for high quality, but added that the debate can sometimes get sidetracked by focusing too much on transportation and school choice.

"I do sometimes think we lose track of what the core of our work in schools is," Ms. Johnson said. "The core business of schools is about student achievement. That is what this is about. We have to keep making sure we ask questions that drive the agenda toward student achievement and student success, as opposed to focusing solely on choice.

"Parents do want choice, but to what end?"

2009-11-01T16:44:00.000-08:00

Globe South Sports

From around the world,

they get their

kicks in Randolph

The Mbengam brothers, Godfred (11) and John (10), flank soccer teammate Linus Lindbereg.
(Barry Chin/Globe Staff
)

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / November 1, 2009

Shortly after arriving from Sweden in August, Linus Lindberg was mowing the lawn at the Randolph home of his host family when he was approached by a pair of teens from Cameroon.

The Mbengam brothers, Godfred and John, had heard about Lindberg’s prowess on the soccer field and were making their pitch for the 18-year-old to join the Randolph High boys’ soccer team.

It was his intention to play for the Blue Devils. But the gesture of the Mbengam brothers went a long way in forging a fast friendship and helping the exchange student quickly assimilate to life in the high school hallways and on the soccer pitch.

Just a few months removed from that initial meeting, Lindberg has developed into one of the most prolific scorers in program history, his 23 goals at midweek just two shy of the school record.

But more important, the unlikely trio has helped Randolph qualify for the MIAA Division 3 tournament for the first time since 2002.

The bonding of the trio “just happened,’’ Lindberg said. “They were polite to me and greeted me to the team.’’

Godfred, 17, and John, 16, can relate to adjusting to life in Randolph: The pair arrived in town five years ago after leaving their native Cameroon.

“I was the same as him, I didn’t know anybody,’’ Godfred said between bites of a hamburger and fries this past week. “I wanted to make him comfortable, show him around. Show him his classes. Make sure everywhere we go, we go together. Make him feel at home.’’

The Mbengam brothers, along with their four siblings, were adopted in 2004 by their great aunt, Helene Sonkem, and her husband, Victor, an engineer at the state Department of Environmental Protection. Their mother had died suddenly when they were toddlers.

Helene, a former nurse who moved to Randolph in 1997, started the adoption process in 2002.

“When my niece [their mother] died, my mother was taking care of them,’’ said Helene, who has three children of her own. “Then my mother died, and they were living in the village going through hard times.

“Back home, they are still talking about [the adoption] even though it’s been five years. I went through a lot to bring them here, I did so much. I think it was their destiny.’’

Helene said athletics are what helped her great nieces and nephews adjust to their new home.

All the siblings play, or have played, sports at Randolph High, including Anna, a sophomore goalkeeper for the Randolph girls’ soccer team.

“Soccer is what they do in Cameroon,’’ Helena said. “That’s all they knew.’’

But when Godfred and John initially tested into the seventh grade after their arrival, speaking French and a little English, there was no outlet to play soccer.

One day their physical education teacher noticed them kicking a ball around and recommended they play for Eastern Mass FC, a club team.

Now as juniors, they are thriving in the both the classroom and on the soccer field, competing against each other every step of the way.

“When I play soccer, that’s when I have joy,’’ said John. Said Godfred: “When I play soccer it looks like I’m free. I have control. Even when I’m hurt, I put cleats on, and the pain goes away.’’

They have also excelled in track, helping their 4x400-relay indoor team win at the New England meet last winter.

Exchange students are not foreign to Randolph High.

Varsity boys’ soccer coach Ed Weiand, also the boys’ tennis coach, estimates he has coached eight exchange students in the last 15 years.

Dr. Louis Silvagnoli, who is sponsoring Lindberg, usually hosts one student each year.

The diverse Randolph community has helped ease the transition for foreign-born students, said Weiand, who has seven countries represented on the soccer team this season.

“What we have to offer is very unique in terms of diversity in the community,’’ said Weiand, in his 18th year at the Blue Devils’ helm and 24th year as a special education teacher in the district. “I meet so many different kinds of kids from so many backgrounds.’’

The transition is not always smooth, however.

On occasion, John Mbengam will get frustrated when his teammates are not playing up to his level. He and his brother started playing soccer shortly after their mother died and worked their way up to club and school teams. Soccer, they say, is learned more organically in Cameroon than in this country.

“Back home, if you mess up they yell at you,’’ said John, who along with Godfred has played varsity soccer since he was a freshmen. “Here you don’t get yelled at, you get patted on the back because it’s for fun. I don’t play to have fun. I play to win.’’

In Lindberg, who suits up for a club team in Sweden because there are no school teams, John Mbengam found an instant wingman.

“Ball movement just clicked, he always knows where to go,’’ said John, a striker, who had five goals and six assists at midweek. “I don’t even have to tell him. I was like, ‘All right, he’s the man.’ ’’

Lindberg is classified as a senior at Randolph, but when he returns to his home in Landskona, Sweden, at the end of the school year, he will have one year of high school left to complete.

The fact that so many of Randolph’s players come from soccer cultures has allowed the team to compete with opponents who have played together since youth soccer.

“They have a better understanding of the game than Americans,’’ assistant coach Jon Ridolfi said. “It’s my favorite sport, so I’m sorry to say it, but here we have other sports to focus on. That’s just the team concept they all recognize from growing up. They learned soccer as a team game.’’

Initially however, the United Nations-like squad struggled to get on the same page, starting 2-2-2, including a tie against Middleborough, before ripping off five straight wins.

En route to an 8-5-2 start (2-5-2 Patriot League), Randolph has netted 55 goals. And with Godfred anchoring the defense, the Blue Devils allowed only 18 goals.

On Oct. 21, Randolph exacted revenge against Middleborough, winning, 2-1, to clinch a playoff berth.

“It’s very exciting,’’ Weiand’s wife, Teresa, said of the team making the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons. “He called me a million times when they finally clinched, and he finally got a hold of me. It’s nice because they’ve struggled. The high school is excited that they finally have a winning team.’’

For the Mbengam brothers, giving the school something to rally around is the least they can do after everything the community has done for them.

“It was like ‘wow,’ ’’ Godfred said of helping to turn the team around, part of an overall athletic resurgence at Randolph. “It was like giving them back what they gave to us.’’

Lindberg is happy to be a part of the turnaround and to have forged a friendship with the Mbengam brothers.

“It’s pretty amazing,’’ Lindberg said of the brothers’ story. “A lot of people couldn’t handle that. I know what they went through from some of the things they told me and I’m amazed.’’

Justin Rice can be reached at rice.ju@gmail.com

2009-10-29T05:41:00.000-07:00

Newton North shares

pool with Perkins

School for the Blind

Lisa Cassidy/Daily News staff

Newton North Lauren Millione smiles as she swims in her lane with her goggles covered with tape during yesterday's exhibition with the Perkins School for the Blind.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Oct 29, 2009 @ 02:03 AM

NEWTON — As much as yesterday's sixth annual exhibition meet between the Newton North girls swim team and the Perkins School for the Blind was about giving back, making friends and learning life lessons, there was also a practical and technical lesson for the Tigers to learn.

While North coach Kirsten Tuohy always asks her swimmers to count their strokes so they can work on reducing the number of strokes they take per length, she especially likes to reinforce that point at the Perkins meet - during which she blacks out her team's goggles with duct tape.

``You can really tell whose stroke is absolutely mechanical and maintains the same stroke count, and you can tell who swims with feeling, who swims emotionally vs. methodically,'' North senior captain Caeden Brynie said. ``Those swimming with a lot of emotion run into lane lines, whereas people counting strokes every flip turn is exactly the same, and they are usually in the middle of the lane.''

But, as always, the meet, in which the two schools race about 20 heats of the 50 freestyle, is more about making friends and realizing that the swimmers have more in common than they realize.

``No matter what disability someone has they are still a person and you still want to have a conversation with them about their favorite chocolate, whether they like milk chocolate or dark,'' Brynie said. ``Making friends is a universal thing. It's great lesson to learn.''

The swimmers are paired up before the meet starts and everyone introduces themselves to one another before anyone jumps into the pool. Afterwards, they share a pizza party.

``We just finished eating 25 pizzas,'' said Tuohy, noting that the Perkins team out of Watertown consists of about 30 swimmers. ``The first year they might've had 10 or 11 kids and now they have, consistently, right around 30 because they have the opportunity to swim against a regular high school team.

``It's a wonderful experience. I have students over the years head off to college and tell their coaches this is something they'd like to do.''

Tuohy doesn't exactly remember how the annual meet first got off the ground, but recalls a social worker in the school district setting it up.

``I had done volunteer work for the Easter Seals for 10 or 12 years and loved doing that, so I thought it would be a fabulous experience for my girls and, indeed, it was.

``It's a challenge for everyone. Certainly for my swim team it's a challenge not being able to see. It's something the girls haven't done before and it's very disconcerting. It's such a positive experience. I have people come back year after year to watch.''

For Tuohy, she gets a thrill out of seeing the Perkins students progress from year to year.

``It has evolved because their students are with them so long,'' she said. ``Some of their students are 8 or 9 years old, competing against a high school team. We watch them grow up, which is a lot of fun. We look forward to hearing things from them, seeing them move on and getting involved with different things and other sports - just getting to know them over the years.''

For North, which has one more dual meet left on Tuesday against Weymouth, the meet is also a chance to let their hair down before the stress of the postseason, which begins on Nov. 8 with the conference meet.

North has qualified all three of its relays for Sectionals and two of its relays for States. Hunter Hedenberg and Stephanie Brown qualified for Sectionals and States in diving, and Thao Bach has qualified for Sectionals and States in the 200-yard IM and in the 100 breaststroke. In the 100 fly, Zoe Talkin qualified for Sectionals.

``It's a fun change in pace and great social experience,'' Tuohy said. ``It's fun to see what other people are capable of doing and what kind of challenges we can step up to.

``It's really hard to maintain intensity, so this is a break and gets them excited, and gets them thinking about someone else. Typically, it is a little bit of a break and it's nice that this is still swimming.''

If the Tigers needed a reminder that they weren't only swimming for fun yesterday, they just needed to take a poll of who was counting strokes and who wasn't.

``I run into lane lines, I'm not gonna lie,'' Brynie said, ``but the thing is you have to realize to go slowly to go in a straight line, so I get the concept. In theory, I'm not as bad as some, certainly I'm not straight down the middle. ``It is a lesson about swimming and about seeing how much swimming is muscle memory and how we can do it without seeing.''

2009-10-24T07:52:00.001-07:00

Winless Leafs Thinking Happy Thoughts

Northeast

Written by Justin Rice

Friday, October 23, 2009 12:47

Northeast Division notebook:

With the lowly New York Islanders finally picking up their first win of the season Wednesday, a 4-3 shootout victory against Carolina, the Toronto Maple Leafs remain the only winless team in the NHL.

But the mood around the Leafs remained upbeat Thursday as they left for a five-game road trip, including Saturday night’s game against the Canucks, who were 4-5 as of Friday.

“It's all about staying positive,” defenseman Mike Komisarek told the Canadian Press. “It's easy to get caught up in the negativity if you follow what the media (are saying). You can’t let it get to you, you have to stay positive. The results haven't been there and you have to build somewhere -- and that starts in practice for us.”

The 0-6-1 Maple Leafs flashed smiles and joked around with each other as they packed up for the road trip after wrapping up a four-day stretch of practice that Leafs coach Ron Wilson tried to keep lighthearted.

Wilson reserved time for a 3-on-3 tournament during practice to try to pump life back into his team.

But the big question mark remained: Would goaltender Jonas Gustavsson, who went through his first full practice Thursday since injuring his groin on Oct. 6, return on Saturday?

Wilson told a Toronto radio station that he had his “fingers crossed” that Gustavsson could play.

“It's getting better and better,” Gustavsson told the Canadian Press. “I'm not sure about Saturday. We'll see what happens.”

MONTREAL

Center Glen Metropolit finally returned to the lineup on Thursday night after missing six games with a rib injury. He collected two assists in a 5-1 victory against the New York Islanders. … The win against the one-win Islanders was an ugly one. New York took seven penalties, turned the puck over 23 times and allowed Montreal to rifle 43 shots at goaltender Martin Biron. … Team president Pierre Boivin called for a Quebec hockey symposium on Thursday, noting that the province has had a tough time developing its youth players for the NHL. The speech came just after ex-NHL player Bob Sirois released a controversial book arguing that discrimination still exists in the NHL against French-Canadians.

BUFFALO

Starting the season 5-1-1, the Sabres are leading a charmed season thus far. Despite not scoring in the final two periods against Florida on Wednesday night, the Sabres still pulled out the victory -- because they registered five goals in the opening 20 minutes of the contest at Bank-Atlantic Center. “We weren’t ready to play,” Florida coach Peter DeBoer told the Miami Herald. ... Playing for the first time in eight days, Thomas Vanek returned from an upper-body injury to score a goal against the Panthers. ... Defenseman Toni Lydman missed practice Friday with a groin strain and could be replaced by Nathan Paetsch in the lineup Saturday in Tampa, the Buffalo News reported on its Sabres Edge blog.

BOSTON

Daniel Paille has taken quickly to his new home in Boston. After being traded by Buffalo on Tuesday he logged an assist in Boston’s 3-2 victory against Nashville the following day. “It was a little bit of a shock, but I'm also excited at the same time,” Paille told the Boston media after joining the team. “It was just to a point where I wasn’t playing in Buffalo, and Buffalo thought I deserved to play, whether it was with them or with someone else. They thought somebody else, and I'm more than happy to be here. It's exciting for me.” ... Paille is the first player ever to be traded between the two franchises. ... Brad Marchand was recalled from AHL Providence for Wednesday's game and picked up an assist in his NHL debut.

OTTAWA

The Senators were happy to leave with a point on Thursday night against Nashville after erasing a three-goal deficit in the third period. The 6-5 OT loss improved their record to 5-2-1, putting them tied in the points category (11) at the top of the division with Buffalo. ... G Pascal LeClaire (flu) and F Milan Michalek (upper-body) were doubtful for Saturday's game against Boston, the Ottawa Citizen reported. ... F Jesse Winchester was assigned to AHL Binghampton on Friday for conditioning. ... D Matt Carkner signed a two-year contract extension on Tuesday. ... Binghamton Sens forward Ilya Zubov, the club's leading scorer last season, was loaned to the Russian Kontinental Hockey League.

2009-10-23T08:11:00.001-07:00

Bruins' 2018 draft pick lined up?

Headlines

Written by Justin Rice

Sunday, October 18, 2009 00:00

Northeast Division notebook:

The Boston Bruins might not be giving fans much to cheer about on the ice — they were 3-3 heading into Saturday night's game in Phoenix — but Oliver Wahlstrom has. The 9-year-old has become a YouTube sensation after he scored a dazzling goal during an Oct. 4 “Mini One-on-One” tournament taped at TD Bank Garden.

The goal, in which the Maine resident picks the puck up on the side of his blade, spins and then flicks it into the net, appeared on ESPN. It had received more than 300,000 views on YouTube by Saturday.

The boy also appeared on the CBS Early Show on Friday.

Wahlstrom told the Boston Globe he modeled the move after University of Michigan’s Mike Legg’s 1996 goal in which he carried the puck on his blade before popping it in the net.

“I call it ‘The Michigan,’ ” he said. “I just dreamt it up.”

MONTREAL

Despite having seven men on the ice in the final moments of a 3-2 loss to Colorado earlier this week, the Canadiens couldn’t net the equalizer. The Habs sent out an extra attacker but, when Hal Gill’s penalty ended in the final minute, Gill remained on the ice and the officials didn’t realize the Canadiens had an extra man. ... A similar situation went down in Game 3 of the Staley Cup Finals last year when Pittsburgh had six skaters on the ice for 21 seconds before beating Detroit 4-2. … It does not appear that the team will discipline Georges Laraque for endorsing an alcoholic energy drink. The Canadiens enforcer appeared in an Internet ad for the drink Octane 7.0 — playing street hockey with scantily clad women — despite the fact the league prohibits players from sponsoring alcoholic beverages other than malt-based beverages, such as beer. The Habs say sanctions will have to come from the NHL, which has not commented on the issue. ... Prime Minister Stephen Harper helped unveil a set of commemorative stamps celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Center on Saturday. He was accompanied by hockey legends Rejean Houle and Guy Lafleur and Habs president Pierre Boivin.

TORONTO

One of two winless teams as of Friday (the Islanders being the other), the Maple Leafs attempted to lighten things up during Thursday’s practice. Coach Ron Wilson introduced activities such as dodgeball with tennis balls and relay races. He also sent players through a length-of-the-ice gauntlet while the rest of the team shelled them with pucks. ... The Leafs did, however, get some good news this week: Thursday was also Phil Kessel's first day back to practice after an injury. ... And some bad news: defenseman Mike Van Ryn will have major knee surgery in late October, removing him from the lineup for the season and possibly ending his career.

OTTAWA

Milan Michalek collected a hat trick in the most spectacular fashion Thursday night, not just scoring once in each period of a 7-1 victory against Tampa Bay, but by scoring twice short-handed and once on a power play. ... Head coach Cory Clouston told the Ottawa Sun that defenseman Filip Kuba, who has missed five games with a groin injury, was to skate Saturday with an eye towards returning Thursday when the Senators host the Nashville Predators. ... Defenseman Anton Volchenkov had 18 blocked shots through Friday, tied for fourth in the league.

BUFFALO

The “upper body injury” sustained by standout winger Thomas Vanek kept him out of back-to-back games Friday and Saturday. Vanek left Wednesday’s 6-2 victory against the Detroit Red Wings with 12:46 to go in the second period and did not return. After the game his coach, Lindy Ruff, said it was possible Vanek would be out for “weeks.” ... Ryan Miller ranked second among all starting goalies in goals-against average (1.58) and third in save percentage (.938) through Saturday. The Sabres' eight goals allowed through Saturday were the fewest in the league.

2009-10-20T07:58:00.001-07:00

Rowing in a winter wonder land

By: Justin A. Rice, Eastern Mass. Regional Correspondent • 10/20/2009 7:00:00 AM

BOSTON — The Head of the Charles regatta normally indicates New England is in the heart of fall. That wasn’t the case on Sunday as a northeaster turned the river into a winter-wonder land.

The high school crews rowing in the world’s largest regatta, however, were lucky to get off the river before the annual autumn carnival turned into a white out.

“It was really strange, I am more used to nice foliage but the snow was interesting,” said Winsor School senior coxswain Erin Driscoll after steering her crew to a second-place finish in the youth women’s fours on Sunday, a few hours before two crews of international all stars calling themselves the Great Eights teamed up for the first time at the Head of the Charles. “That was amazing. That was probably one of my favorite crew events ever, especially to watch the Great Eights, that was awesome.

In the 45-year history of the world’s largest regatta, which drew 8,842 athletes, 1,884 boats and about 300,000 spectators over the weekend, it has only snowed two other times.

“It’s pretty crazy out there, no question,” said Lisa Stone, who coaches the Boston-based Winsor School. “I’m glad they rowed without the snow. They didn’t have to worry about hypothermia.”

Despite enduring a driving, sideways rain, the all girls’ school was one of the most successful Massachusetts high school crews on Sunday. The Winsor School’s crew in the women’s eights traveled the 3-mile upstream course in 18:27.104 for a 17th place finish.

In the women’s fours, the Winsor School boat — which consisted of junior Gianna Guarino, senior Lisa Luo, senior Katherine Ernst and senior Susannah Shipton in addition to coxswain Driscoll — started second in the race. They led the race briefly before finishing with a time of 19:38.29.

California-based Marina Aquatic Center Junior Rowing finished about three seconds faster than Winsor School.

“We raced our best race,” Driscoll said. “I honestly don’t think it had anything to do with us. Sometimes there are faster crews. It was not so much our being three seconds slower as they were three seconds faster.”

Winsor School, which led the race until the Riverside Bridge, just under one mile into the course, was also second in the same event last year. They were fifth in 2007 and also in the Top 10 the previous year.

“It was kind of a bummer,” Shipton said. “We were hoping for a win but you have to take everything in stride. A lot of crews don’t ever place as well as we did. We can be appreciative of that but it’s always nice to end with a win. But we’re grateful for what we have.

“It was definitely very dramatic. There was some wind, mostly it was cold. The cold was the problem. The rain is not so bad. It was mostly spraying on the powerhouse stretch where it probably was the windiest. It didn’t start snowing till later, it was just hailing when we went.”

Ryan Banks, who coaches the powerhouse Watertown-based youth program out of Community Rowing, Inc. (CRI), was also surprised by the snow.

“It was definitely unexpected,” Banks said. “I think we were definitely lucky because it was supposed to be real bad weather Saturday and Sunday. On one hand people were happy Saturday was nice all day but Sunday was definitely tougher.

“Forty mile per hour head winds definitely made for difficult rowing. I think everyone had a good time and enjoyed a different experience.”

For the first time in three years on Sunday, CRI did not win the youth women’s eights at the Head of the Charles. The boat filled by Priscilla Livingston, Maja Chelstowska, Rebecca Shaffer, Julijana Englander, Paige Madden, Alexandra Todorvic-Jones, Ali O'Connor, Jen Stockwood and cox Caroline Kiritsy finished second.

“They’ve had a good year, they’ve won five out of the last six or seven years so they’ve done really well and they continued in that tradition, which is great,” Banks said of his youth women's eights, which submitted a time of 17:31.626, about six seconds slower than Maritime Rowing Club. “I am sure they were disappointed. They want to win every year. Every year its different competition and that boat that did win was a very strong crew, they had a good race.”

CRI — which had more boats (29) racing over the weekend than any other club — also had 11 other youth crews racing, including in the women's double. Rae Taylor-Burns and Madeleine Johnson finished eighth in that race with a time of 21:42.214. CRI's youth men’s eights had a sixth place finish with a time of 15:58.060.

Another notable youth performance from a Massachusetts’ team was submitted by the Wayland-Weston Rowing Association, which finished eighth in the youth women’s eights in a time of 17:53.802 and 15th in the youth men’s eights (16:16.668).

In the end, however, the 2009 Head of the Charles will be less remembered for what times the rowers rowed than for what they rowed through.

“Yeah definitely [the snow] will be something people talk about as well as the Great Eights,” the Winsor School’s Shipton said. “That’s also a big deal for the river too. That’s nice publicity; it’s nice they were able to pull those boats together.

“With this regatta definitely comes just sort of a mystic. There’s something about the Head of the Charles, it’s the biggest regatta in the world. There’s something about it that can’t be matched.”

2009-10-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

Globe South Sports

Dancer turned to crew

and never looked back

A dedicated ballerina throughout her childhood, Jenne Daley of Cohasset learned to row while at Boston University.

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / October 18, 2009

Earning bit parts in Boston Ballet’s annual production of the “Nutcracker,’’ Jenne Daley was a picture of style and grace as a young ballerina.

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The same could not be said about her form as a rower when she walked onto the Boston University crew after graduating from Cohasset High in 2005.

“I’m sure I did not look pretty my freshman year, but in a lot of ways the focus is similar to dance,’’ recalled the 22-year-old Daley, who had never put an oar in the water before attending BU.

This afternoon, she will row the Head of the Charles Regatta for the fourth time, but her first as a member of the prestigious Philadelphia-based Vesper Boat Club. Daley will compete in the women’s lightweight eights race, continuing her quest to row on the women’s national team.

And she credits her background as a ballerina for her sculling success.

“Ballet and rowing are obviously different, but at the same time they are very similar,’’ said Daley, who graduated with a degree in elementary and special education in May.

“You have to be very in tune with your body when rowing. The technique was easy to pick up, to know which muscles to engage.

“Ballet helped with the focus; it helped with the mind-body connection,’’

After joining the Terriers’ novice team on a lark in the fall of her freshman year, Daley not only made the varsity that spring, but helped BU win a medal for the first time in 13 years at the Eastern Sprints Regatta in Camden, N.J.

BU has not since medaled at the marquee event.

Daley’s first coach, Heather Cartwright, who now heads the powerhouse women’s lightweight program at Radcliffe, said it is unusual for a freshman to walk onto the varsity, let alone medal.

“She proved herself in terms of fitness and rowing technique,’’ Cartwright said.

“She moves nice, and having that sense of rhythm and movement allowed her to become a good rower.’’

While her dance training provided an edge on the water, it was an experience on the banks of the Charles that hooked her for good.

As a freshman, Daley and other first-year rowers were assigned to cheer on the BU boats while running down the 5-mile Head of the Charles course. Soaking in the pageantry of the annual October carnival, the novice rowers didn’t receive much of a workout but they did return to campus with drawstring backpacks and other freebies.

“They brought me back a hat,’’ Cartwright said.

Daley, however, walked away with more than just swag.

“I was like ‘I’m going to be in a boat next year,’ ’’ she said, “and ever since then I’ve been in a boat, and it’s been one of the most exciting things ever.’’

She also absorbed the rowing culture, since she spent the majority of her youth inside dance studios, which is another subculture all its own.

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Daley, who moved to Cohasset from Cleveland with her family in the fifth grade, attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts in northwest Michigan and other well-known dance programs while in high school. But after enduring six-hour auditions for college dance programs, Daley decided she did not want to spend her collegiate years as a dancer.

Once she arrived at BU, she asoon realized she needed a structured activity to fill her free time.

“She was big into ballet, her goal in high school was to become a professional ballet dancer,’’ said Daley’s mother, Helen. “She decided in the end to go to BU. Some mailings came to the house to join the crew team and I said ‘You love to sail, give it a try.’ ’’

The 5-foot-10 Daley was also egged on by her roommate.

“She was 5-2 and she would sit looking at the flier and say ‘It’s just for tall people; I can’t do it but you should do it,’ ’’ Daley recalled.

“When I started rowing, I never expected I’d be here now.’’

The summer after her freshman year, she attended the Under-23 national team development camp in Boston and learned how to scull. Between Daley’s junior and senior year she raced with BU at the Royal Henley Regatta in London.

But for all her early progress, Daley still had a dancer’s frame and did not have the luxury of rowing for the lightweight squad, since BU does field one.

“I once held up a pair of medium size spandex and said ‘I want you to fill these out, no wrinkles, no sags in the spandex,’ ’’ Cartwright said of Daley, who continued to dance throughout college with the Boston Liturgical Dance Ensemble. “She’s a tough kid and pulls hard every time.’’

At the end of her senior year, Daley knew she wanted to continue to row and contacted Cartwright and other coaches for advice. They set her up with national team coaches at the Vesper club in Philadelphia. To pay the rent, she works as a lifeguard, teaches swim lessons, and coaches high school crew.

Daley said she will give rowing at least another year before deciding if she can reach her goal of making the national team. Even if she starts spinning her oars and plateaus, she said she will always row recreationally.

Head of the Charles

2009-10-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

Friday, October 16,2009

Rowing Into The Sun

By Justin A. Rice

Bundled up in a bulky orange jumpsuit covered with yellow reflectors and a white knit hat, Michelle Guerette clutched a bullhorn and looked like she was dressed to run into a burning building. In actuality she was motoring across the Charles River before sunrise on a blustery morning.

The former rower at Radcliffe (a.k.a. Harvard’s women’s crew) and silver medalist at the Beijing Olympics pulled her motor boat up to yellow scull filled with four former college rowers.

“Alright, you guys have to get back for work, right?” Guerette, 29, asks around 6:45 a.m. on Wednesday, about an hour after the men began their workout.

The members of the boat, which will race in the club fours event at this weekend’s 45th annual Head of the Charles regatta, all nodded in the affirmative.

“Gotcha, just checking,” Guerette replied before giving the crew final instructions for their row back to the Union Boat Club’s boathouse, where Guerette is in her second fall as the rowing coach and program director.
The rowing shell was one of five Guerette was instructing Wednesday morning. But her rowers were among countless crews clambering to get in workouts before the world’s largest regatta with 1,900 boats and more than 8,800 athletes competing this weekend and roughly 200, 000 spectators watching.

And with so many of those crews rowing before dawn this week so their rowers can run off to work, the traffic on the Charles can get a bit scratchy well before a the bumper-to-bumper backup begins on the Southeast Expressway.

“Three days prior [to Head of the Charles] all the crews come to town,” said Peter Schnorr, who leaves his Marlborough home at 4:45 a.m. three days a week to workout with UBC’s master’s eight team. “Nicole [Nitchie] our coxswain went crazy this morning try to keep track of everybody. It’s dark out and she’s dodging boats in the dark trying to make sure we get the workout we need so we can get down the course fast.

“It’s fun to compete and it’s a great way to stay fit,” continued Schnorr, the former Naval Academy rower. “We were all competitive and we are all competitive. We like to race. Even as you move on you want to keep your hand in the game competing and racing.

“Cruising down the river with 1,000 screaming people, it’s a whole different environment, even when it’s really bad weather it is wild.”

Appropriately named, Chris Storm was hardly detoured by talk this week that race organizers would shorten the world-renowned 5-mile course this weekend because of potential horrid weather conditions.

A law student at Suffolk University who rowed for Penn before graduating in 2007, Storm said it is more challenging to row now than it was in college.
“Although I’m not training as hard as I did when I was as an undergraduate, those workouts were harder because we did more of them, it is harder now because more is at stake in law school; everything is GPA driven,” said the 24-year-old, who trains eight to 12 hours a week and spends another 18-20 hours working at a law firm. “It’s not a neat balance. I don’t always do the best job at it. A lot gets put on the back burner. It all gets done eventually. After Head of Charles I have to refocus on school.”

Preparing to race in the club singles this weekend, Storm, who lives on Beacon Hill, rises at 5:15 a.m. each morning but can’t imagine trying to maintain his schedule with a wife and kids and commuting from the suburbs like many UBC members do.

“I love rowing but that kind of commitment, getting up at 4:30 and not getting to bed till late, I don’t know if I could do that,” he said.
That is the story of Storm’s workout partner Edward Demetriou’s life. To make matters worse, the 36-year-old lawyer living in Cambridge with his wife and two-and-a-half year old son has insomnia.

But Demetriou endures his hectic schedule because he said rowing is therapeutic, even more so after his father died this summer.
“It’s my sort of yoga,” the former Dartmouth rower said. “With all the stresses in life I need an outlet to make me focus and not worry about other stuff. Rowing is an all consuming sport. You need to focus to get the technique right. That focus is similar to meditation. It’s my stress relief.

Demetriou’s, whose wife rowed for the US national team, said he’s finally learning how to put rowing in perspective. “I used to punish myself always, do it no matter how I felt, whether it was a stress relief or stress inducer,” he said. “Now if it is a stress inducer I don’t do it, I take a day off. What complicates things is putting in an entry in a race like the Head of the Charles. I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

Joy Stark, a member of the regatta’s race committee this year, is just learning how to take days off. Moving to Boston solely for its crew culture, the former University of Texas rower lives in Dorchester, works fulltime in Waltham and takes night MBA classes at Boston College. Guerette noticed Stark was wearing down earlier this week and suggested she sleep in for a few days.

“Taking a couple days off this week seems so counter intuitive,” said Stark, 31, who will take two hours off from parking boat trailers on Sunday to compete in the master singles. “You just want to go out and row and get every last bit of workout you can. I decided to take her advice and didn’t practice Tuesday and Wednesday and went out [Thursday] and felt great.

“She really knows what she’s talking about.”

Of course skipping her 5:30 a.m. workouts has its downside too.

“When I don’t row in the morning and I’m stuck in traffic on my way to work I curse myself,” Stark said, “because I could’ve avoided it.”
Demetriou commutes from Cambridge on his bike and doesn’t have to worry about traffic but he still struggles with Stark’s problem of knowing when to let up.

“Rowing is the kind of sport that if you start putting a little time in you see improvements and want to put more time in and you feel like you can always improve,” he said. “At some point you have to draw the line because it starts to take over. It’s frustrating when you have to draw the line before you reach your potential, it’s especially frustrating as get older and you’re potential isn’t what it used to be.

“But it’s a lot more fun when you can just row and not have to worry about other responsibilities. At the same time life is more satisfying with other things going on. My mood is not tied directly to how well I’m rowing, which it was in college.

“I feel proud of the fact that I can actually row and race and not have a family that is completely dysfunctional.”

After his Wednesday morning workout Demetriou showered in the boathouse and climbed down a wooden ladder to where Storm was tending to his rowing shell.

“I’m coming in early tomorrow,” Storm tells Demetriou.

“I’m not rowing tomorrow,” Demetriou says as he walks out the door, unlocks his bike and rides down the esplanade toward his office.

2009-10-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

All in a row

By: Justin A. Rice
Eastern Mass. Regional Correspondent
10/13/2009 11:00:00 PM

The Bromfield High duo have rowed since seventh grade but only started racing together in a double boat this summer, when they won the Philadelphia Youth Regatta on July 18 in 8 minutes and 32 seconds — beating a 16-and 17-year-old by 15.31 seconds. At the end of September they won the double again in the Tail of the Fish Regatta in Saratoga, N.Y. with a time of 14:08:65, beating a junior and a senior by 51.57. They also finished second recently in the Head of the Textile in Lowell.

“We just go in thinking we can do it and it just works out,” MacLean said. “We just try our hardest. Just because we’re underdogs we don’t look at it as a disadvantage.”

Those big wins under their belt are a big reason why the girls, who raced varsity as eighth graders last season, are so confident going into the famed Head of the Charles Regatta this weekend in Boston. Because each rower can only compete in one event at the Head of the Charles, Bromfield will only enter in the boys and girls youth eights. The boys will race at 11:24 a.m. on Sunday while the girls will race at 11:58 a.m.

“Last year we went mostly for fun,” MacLean said. “This year our new coach has been telling us she wants us to finish in the top 50 percent.”

Bromfield’s new coach, Holly Hatton, coached at Boston University for 13 seasons before leaving BU in 2008. She can only improve the team’s Head of the Charles performance from last fall, when one rower was using an oar handle that was inadvertently screwed on improperly.

“Last year they raced they were a bunch of eighth graders completely freaked out and overwhelmed,” Hatton, 59, said. “One kid was rowing and forcing the handle to stay in and the same time. I don’t know how they did it. Every time you pull it the oar would be pulling itself out of the shaft.

“Finishing in the top 50 percent is our goal. We don’t want to over reach. We’re rowing against the best of the best in the country.”

Last week Hatton, who has also coached at Harvard University, used her connections to get her team some practice time on the Charles, which was helpful for Hart because she missed last year’s event.

“What I got out of the practice certainly was a hard workout but it was also good to see where you are at different points, different landmarks,” Hart said of rowing out of the Harvard boathouse. “It will help me keep going when I get to a bridge and know how many miles are left.

“That was really exciting and cool. I think our eight [boat] has a lot of potential and I’m excited to see how we do in such a large race because we’ve been to a lot of smaller [regattas] so far. It gave us a good feel for [the course] and the environment. We row on such a small pond that has some tough turns. It was good for us to get a feel for the length of it because it’s a long race.”

Racing through the Bare Hill Rowing Association, the Bromfield High team is technically a club sport and not officially sanctioned by the school. The athletes pay a $700 fee to the rowing association and they practice five days a week on the Bare Hill Pond in Harvard both in the fall and the spring.

“It’s tiny,” Hatton said of the pond. “We can’t row five minutes without turning around. It’s definitely a challenge to get them in the condition I hope they will ultimately have. But it’s absolutely beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. That’s why when I saw the pond was so beautiful I thought, ‘what a place to be on each day.’”

Because the girls’ team shares boats with the boys’ team, Hart and MacLean only get to practice together as a double team once every two weeks.

MacLean said the lack of practice together can be frustrating.

“We just go out there and go as hard as we can and really focus when we do have practice,” MacLean said.

Hart said, “We started out and we didn’t know each other that well but we became friends over the course of a couple seasons. Now we know each other well and know our strengths and weaknesses and can help correct them even if the coach isn’t around. We can feel it in the boat.”

But Hart and MacLean both said having a former college coach at the helm of their squad has made all the difference in their technique and they have been impressed at how well Hatton has transitioned from coaching college to coaching high school.

“She motivates us a lot and makes you want to work hard,” MacLean said, adding that Hatton troubleshoots their technique quickly and accurately. “She will make one change and fix a lot of the problems. Other coaches will make lot of changes and fix things individually. Her changes, you can tell she knows what she’s doing.”

Hatton will also be a tremendous resource for MacLean and Hart when they start to get recruited by schools and decided where they want to row in college.

But until that point they don’t worry about letting all their early success get to their head — regardless of how they finish at Head of the Charles.

“I don’t think of it that way at all,” Hart said. “By the time we are upperclassmen we’ll be even better. There are a lot of things we could fine tune. We could do a little better at staying together in the boat at all times. That’s what’s good about rowing both seasons [fall and spring], there’s a lot of little technique things you can fix.”

2009-10-08T12:32:00.000-07:00

Falcons protect

field hockey turf

Mark Fisette/Daily News correspondent

Bentley sophomore, and Watertown High alumna, Stephanie Sideris cracks a shot on net during last night's 5-2 victory over Merrimack in Waltham.

By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent

Daily News Tribune

Posted Oct 08, 2009 @ 01:39 AM

WALTHAM — Courtney Bartlett got off to a good start yesterday morning, and an even better one last night, scoring 29 seconds into Bentley University's 5-2 field hockey victory against Merrimack College.

``I was feeling it from this morning,'' the senior midfielder said before being asked if she had her Wheaties for breakfast. ``That is actually what I had for breakfast. The whole team knew this was a big game and all of us got ready. Every person on the team touched the ball to get it down the field before I scored. So it was a true team win.''

Ranked seventh in this week's Kookaburra/National Field Hockey Coaches Association Division II national poll, Bentley's victory against ninth-ranked Merrimack (8-6, 3-2 Northeast-10) had big implications on the league standings. No. 4-ranked Stonehill (10-3, 4-1) was upset, 3-1, by Franklin Pierce (7-6, 3-2) last night, putting Bentley (9-3, 4-1) in a tie for first place.

But the defending NE-10 champs have already lost to Stonehill twice this season - one of which was officially a non-conference match - so the Falcons will need to keep playing well, and get some help, to capture the conference title.

``We've already had our shot,'' said Bentley second-year coach Jessica King, referring to a 4-1 loss to Stonehill on Sept. 2 at home and then a 2-1 loss on the road 20 days later. ``We can only control what we do. We can't get ahead of Stonehill unless they do something wrong. But it's nice to be a bit closer. The Northeast-10, anyone can win it.

``We could've put ourselves in a difficult situation, and put us out of the driver's seat, if we lost. (Stonehill's loss) is nice. I'll take it, but we don't count on any of that.''

The victory also meant a lot in terms of NCAA Division II regional rankings too. Last week, Bentley was No. 3 in the North Region, while Merrimack was fourth. The top three teams in the final rankings earn NCAA Division II tournament bids.

``I can't think that far ahead,'' King said of the tournament.

But she had no problem recounting last night's victory, which tied the most offensive output of the year for the Falcons, who also scored five goals in their last outing against Saint Anselm on Sept. 30.

Last night, they got goals from four players.

``We're a balanced team,'' King said. ``We don't have one big star. We rely on everybody to contribute.''

Bartlett's goal came after she put back the rebound of senior forward Abbie DeMusis. At the 28:34 mark of the same half, the Falcons went up 2-0 when senior midfielder/forward Allison St. Jean scored an unassisted goal. There was a scrum in front of the goal before St. Jena poked it past Merrimack freshman Kerri Bergquist.

Bentley put back another rebound for its third goal of the half with 1:58 to go when sophomore defender Caitlin Kamide found the back of the goal for the 3-0 edge.

Merrimack finally got its own goal about a minute later. Senior forward Jaclyn Germano beat senior goalkeeper Alyssa Sliney before Merrimack went into the half trailing 3-1.

In the second half, Bentley extended the lead 4-1 when Bartlett netted her second goal of the evening at the 26:24 mark.

Another unassisted Bentley goal came off the stick of sophomore midfielder, and Watertown native, Stephanie Sideris with 18:22 to play. The goal was her eighth of the season.
Sideris, who has four assists and 20 points on the year, is only one goal behind Bartlett (9-3-21) for most on the team.

``I just wanted one I guess,'' Sideris said.

Merrimack got one goal back about six minutes later when Germano scored her second goal of the game.

Bentley returns to action at 1 p.m. on Saturday against Southern Connecticut State. The contest is Bentley's Play for a Cure game in honor of breast cancer awareness.

2009-10-08T12:28:00.001-07:00

Globe South Sports

Hanover plays without

club soccer worries

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / October 8, 2009

Their focus is simple: Go out and play.

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Their foes feature lineups chock-full of year-round players, but the majority of the players on the Hanover High boys’ soccer team choose to participate in other sports in the offseason.

When the Indians knocked off perennial power Pembroke 2-1 last week, exacting a bit of revenge for a 1-0 loss in last year’s Division 3 South semifinals, they did so playing their game, and not worrying about the individuals suiting up on the other side.

“I don’t really know who the best players are - that doesn’t really matter to me,’’ said senior cocaptain Jon Spitz, who also plays basketball and baseball at Hanover. “I just go out there and play.’’

Only two players on the Indians (goalkeeper James Oliver and freshman Dylan Griffin) participate in the subculture that is club soccer.

That approach has proven to work well for Hanover (6-0-1) and coach Jim Sylvia, who also guides two other varsity sports at the high school, boys’ hockey and girls’ tennis.

In addition to its win over Pembroke, Hanover has also defeated a pair of tough foes in Middleborough and North Quincy.

Sylvia said two of his former players, Matt Shea and Ryan Shea, currently playing at Boston University, were steeped in club soccer culture and always debriefed their teammates before games.

“They knew different kids on different teams and they used to say who was the best,’’ the 27-year coach said. “That means nothing to me. [We] go out there head-to-head and if they are a better soccer team than we are they will win the game. I don’t care at all if a player plays on four different teams.

“I don’t really care if they are club soccer players. That doesn’t faze me. We’re out there working as a team. It’s not the end-all, save-all to play on a club soccer team. It’s like junior hockey now; some teams have junior hockey players. You still gotta go out and play the game. We’re gonna play our game and use our strengths.’’

The approach has not only maintained fearlessness among Sylvia’s teams, but playing other sports often means they are more athletic and versatile than their opponents.

“It is difficult because [other teams with club players] play a different game than us,’’ said cocaptain Andrew Bishop, who also plays basketball and lacrosse. “We don’t necessarily have the best soccer skills, but we’re a fast team and we know our roles on the field.’’

They also have the element of surprise. “They don’t know us,’’ Bishop added. “They think we’re not going to be as good this year.’’

Even after winning a share of the last four Patriot League titles as the Fisher Division champ, Hanover players don’t think they receive the respect they deserve from Keenan Division clubs (Scituate, Whitman-Hanson, Silver Lake, Hingham, North Quincy, and Duxbury).

“They definitely know we’re probably the best on the other side of the league but they definitely probably overlook us,’’ said Spitz. Last fall, though, Hanover beat Duxbury and tied Whitman-Hanson.

“They think the other side of the league doesn’t really matter; all the best teams are on the Keenan side.’’

This past week, however, the Indians knew they couldn’t rely on past success as they entered a gantlet of games: Scituate (Monday), Duxbury (yesterday), and Hingham (tomorrow).

Regardless of the results, the goal is to keep improving. “The main thing is to be better tomorrow than we are today,’’ Sylvia said. “If we can keep climbing the ladder, we’ll get better and better because of our league schedule and we’ll be ready come tournament time.’’

The Indians, with just 11 total goals entering the week, need to improve their work around the net. Griffin (four goals) and sophomore Derek Healy (three) led the way, while Spitz had five points with a goal and four assists. Colin Shea has two goals and two assists.

“We haven’t won any games convincingly,’’ Sylvia said.

Luckily, their senior keeper, Oliver, only allowed two goals through the first seven games.

In the win over Pembroke, Hanover rallied from a 1-0 deficit, with Griffin scoring the equalizer off a corner kick by freshman Chris Toohey. Spitz lofted the game-winner from about 45 yards out after fielding a free kick from senior Paul Murray taken at midfield.

“The past couple years, they’ve kicked us out of the tournament,’’ Bishop said of Pembroke. “A big win like that gives us hope for the future. When we get to the tournament we know what to expect.’’

2009-10-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

Globe South Sports

Hanover plays without club soccer worries

By Justin A. Rice Globe Correspondent / October 8, 2009

Their focus is simple: Go out and play.

	Discuss
	COMMENTS ()