Salute to NCAA college sports (1 of 3)

The six athletes pictured are 1) Amy Boswell, women's volleyball, BYU; 2) Alex Lyon (the goaltender), men's hockey, Yale; 3) Nadia Podo (in white), women's lacrosse, Towson; 4) Jordan Sheffield, baseball, Vanderbilt; 5) Sophina DeJesus, gymnastics, UCLA; 6) Joergen Brath (from Norway), men's skiing, University of Utah

Remembering Nelson Mandela with a Quote from Him

Nelson Mandela died two days ago in his native South Africa.

Former President Bill Clinton said Mandela would ask to speak to Chelsea when he called the White House to ask her if she had done her homework. Chelsea Clinton went on to graduate from Stanford.

Though former Vice President Dick Cheney made disparaging remarks about this remarkable man, he was lauded by politicians on both sides of the aisle in the United States. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va) and Cong. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) praised his contributions to ending Apartheid while Cong. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) praised Mandela for being a champion of human rights.

Here is a quote from Mandela:

"It always seems impossible until it's done."

SIDEBAR: Alas, it was a rough night for us as spectators as all four of the teams we were rooting for somehow fell in the NCAA tournament: Cal upset North Carolina, LSU came from two sets down to win over Michigan, Radford University posted a great second set but still fell in straight sets to host Minnesota, and in spite of winning the first set against Utah, the Yale Bulldogs lost to the Utes 3-1.

Oh well............

College Volleyball Notebook: Radford U and Yale are Among Emerging Small School Teams

While our last entry was on teams in the ACC, a conference with three nationally-ranked programs, we now turn our attention to two smaller schools which are having great years.

The first one is Yale University. The Bulldogs' Mollie Rogers (pictured top) was named co-Ivy League Player of the Week along with Alexis Censke of Penn. With home weekend straight-set wins over Columbia and Cornell, Yale also won their fourth consecutive Ivy League with two remaining games in the season. Brittani Steinberg of the Bulldogs had 15 kills in the win over Columbia.

Meanwhile, Radford University (the alma mater of the blog editor), is gradually pulling ahead in the Big South Conference with one remaining weekend of play, which will include two games on the road.

For the Highlanders, Rachel Wiechecki (pictured bottom) was named Big South Player of the Week. She led her team to a home victory over Campbell University with 22 kills and 19 digs in a game that went to the full fifth set. Additionally, she had 20 kills on Saturday when the Highlanders won another home game in straight sets over High Point University.

Here are weekend scores for the Ivy League, Big South and other east coast games.

Friday:

Big South:

Radford 3 Campbell 2

Winthrop 3 Gardner-Webb 0

High Point 3 Liberty 2

UNC-Asheville 3 Presbyterian 2

Other scores:

Yale 3 Columbia 0

NC A &T 3 Savannah State 0

Wofford 3 Elon 1

Saturday:

Big South:

Radford U 3 High Point 0

Winthrop 3 UNC-Asheville 2

Liberty 3 Campbell 0

Other Scores:

Penn 3 Harvard 2

Furman 3 Elon 1

UNC-Greensboro 3 Wofford 1

Princeton 3 Dartmouth 2

Brown 3 Columbia 0

Yale 3 Cornell 0

Sunday:

Univ. of Rhode Island 3 George Washington 1

8 Things You Need to Know: DC Turkish Fetival, UNC Volleyball and Sen. Ted Cruz

1. The 11th Annual Washington D.C. Turkish Festival will be happening on Sunday. It will take place between 12th and 14th Street, two blocks from the White House. The event will feature folk dancing, musical performances, coffee fortune reading and (of course) very authentic ethnic cuisine (pictured top).

2. The University of North Carolina Tarheels' women's volleyball team will face ACC rival North Carolina on their home gym floor in Chapel Hill, NC, at Carmichael Arena, but the game, which starts at 8:00 p.m. tonight (eastern time) will also be televised on ESPN-U. Victoria McPherson (Number Seven, pictured center) was named ACC Player of the Week. The Tarheels are undefeated so far.

3) Though the game will not be nationally televised, the Yale Bulldogs will be facing their first Ivy League opponent when the Brown U Bears come to New Haven, Conn., on Sat. @ 5:00 p.m. Jesse Ebner of Yale was named co-Ivy League Player of the week.

4) In tragic news, Elif Yavuz, 33, a Dutch citizen of Turkish heritage was gunned down along with her Aussie boyfriend Ross Langdon, 33, at the Westgate Shopping Center in a violence rampage in Nairobi, Kenya, that has claimed at least 62 lives. The massacre/hostage situation started on Saturday. Yavuz was eight and a half months pregnant. She had performed work on behalf on the Clinton Foundation. Former president Bill Clinton praised Yavuz, who was also a Harvard alum.

5) The Salem Red Sox, the single-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, won its first Carolina League title since 2001, and the first since the team joined the Red Sox family. The defeated the Potomac Nationals to win the title. Mugsy (pictured bottom) is the team mascot.

6) One of the most fun bands in the word the Red Elvises are on tour. On Thursday night, the band performs at Moe's (yes that is the actual name of the venue, we were thinking about "The Simpsons" too) in Englewood, Colo., on Thursday night. The venue's phone number is 303.781.0414

7) Along with Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx) stands out among the Tea Party crazies who are gradually hijacking the Republican Party. Just a few hours ago, Cruz wrapped on his 21-hour speech, which included a reading of the Dr. Seuss classic "Green Eggs and Ham" (?!). He now gives new meaning to the term Ted Talks (TED Talks is a series of talks given about technology and socially relevant issues, such as education).

8) Teasers: In the coming days, we hope to have tweets about tweets relating to all things Washington, DC, which includes not just Congress, but the National Zoo. In addition, we are hoping to post some entries related to both Book Week and Banned Week (we believe both are going on this week). Stay tuned..............

http://www.turkishfestival.org

https://www.facebook.com/washingtondcturkishfestival

http://www.clintonfoundation.org/

http://www.redelvises.com/

http://www.ted.com/talks

http://www.goheels.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=3350&SPID=12977&SPSID=668175

http://www.yalebulldogs.com/sports/w-volley/index

Kudos to UNC on ACC Men's Lacrosse Title

The University of North Carolina (UNC) won its first ACC men's lacrosse title since 1996 when the Tar Heels held their home turf in a 16-13 win over the University of Virginia.

According to goheels.com, the game was played in front of 4,001 fans in Chapel Hill, NC, and both the 'Heels and the Cavaliers had to deal with the proverbial elements of mother nature as the game was played in the rain.

For the 'Heels, Davey Emala and Chad Tutton scored seven goals each. Their teammate Marcus Helman (pictured center, we believe) was named as the outstanding ACC Tournament Player.  To play UVa, the 'Heels first had to defeat their arch rivals Duke; Virginia had to upset Maryland.

For the Cavs, Matt White scored seven goals.

'Teels goalie Kieran Burke had 17 saves.

The 'Heels trailed 5-3 after the first quarter, but they took a 10-7 lead by half-time.

UNC now goes to 12-3 and looks forward to the NCAA tournament, but due to their disappointing finish the Cavs at 7-8 are not going to the tournament, a rarity for the school in Charlottesville, Va., for the sport.

SIDEBAR ONE: We saw that Link-TV, a non-profit progressive television outlet in America thanked Rick in Floyd, Va., for his support; we want to thank Rick too.....for no particular reason.

SIDEBAR TWO: Today's sponsors are Doomsday Dating, which we heard about from a female stand-up comedian from Winston-Salem, NC; she insisted she wasn't kidding about the existence of this Davidian singles group, and yes they do really exist!

SIDEBAR THREE: Since we completely neglected the Yale Bulldogs for the team's first ever men's hockey title as captain Andrew Miller lead his team in a 4-0 upset win over their cross-town New Haven, Conn., rival the Quinnipiac Bobcats....yes, we think that must be the NCAA's most difficult to spell school as well...at the Frozen Four in Pittsburgh, but we are pointing it out now.

SIDEBAR FOUR: Tomorrow, we kick off Soccer Week (pardon the pun), and as a teaser, we will issue a SPOILER ALERT to the six people in America who were taping the English Premiere League game between two lower-ranking teams Aston Villa and Sunderland (perhaps Rick from Floyd, Va., was one of them). Aston Villa really kicked butt by a 6-1 score today.

http://www.goheels.com

http://www.dailytarheel.com

http://www.doomsdaydating.com

http://www.linktv.org

http://www.yalebulldogs.com

http://www.visitfloyd.org

http://www.visitchapelhill.org

Silly Photo to Fill Space_ John Harvard

Today, we turn our attention to Ivy League sports since the men's basketball team for Harvard University (18-2) is nationally ranked, and really kicking butt. The school mascot is indeed John Harvard!

The Harvard Crimson (that is the school's nicknamed, we double-googled) beat arch rival Yale University on the road in New Haven, Conn., for just the second time in 13 ties by a 65-35 score. The team then turned around and won another road game at Brown by a 68-59 score.

Steve Mioundou-Missi, a junior from Cameroon (yes, we double-googled his name too), was named the Ivy League men's basketball player of the week.

Surprisingly, Harvard's men's hockey team had a home game against Yale on Friday, and the ice guys were also victorious as they beat the Bulldogs 4-3. The Crimson then beat Brown at home by a 3-1 margin on Saturday.

Harvard also has a strong women's hockey team this year, and they beat Yale 8-0 and Brown 6-0 (both road games) over the weekend.

This lead to Kaitlin Spurling, a junior from Byfield, Mass., being named as Harvard Athlete of the Week. Spurling scored four goals against Yale and two goals against Brown.

The men's basketball team will face Princeton on the road for nationally televised game on ESPN-U on Sat., Feb. 11 at 7:00 p.m. The last Ivy League men's basketball team to make the Final Four were the Pennsylvania Quakers in 1978.

Harvard also has water polo team's for both men and women, and recently the women's team traveled to Hungary.

Status Update_ It's Been a Fairly Rotten Day

We were hoping to post a more interesting entry, but well even though at times, it looked like today might be an okay day, things just sort of fell apart. But, the highlight of the day was perhaps seeing an old Huckleberry Hound cartoon from 1961 on Boomerang where the blue dog with a Southern accent was in drag! He was trying to be Little Red Riding Hood in a cartoon that followed the plot of the age-old fairly tale which is supposedly about a girl coming to terms with her sexuality. But, we'll leave that up to English majors at Yale.

As for apples, the United States of America is the world's second leading producer of apples behind China. American apples account for 7.5 percent of the world market, according to Wikipedia.

While Michigan and Washington are known for apple production, there is quite an abundance of apples in my home state of Virginia, and my state of residency, which is North Carolina.

In Virginia, many apples can be found in the Shenandoah Valley, particularly around Winchester, which is the hometown of the late country-singing icon Patsy Cline. Each April, Winchester hosts the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, which according to its web site brings in 250,000 visitors to the area each year. I remember one year when I attended, the crooner Pat Boone was one of the guests of honor, but I didn't get around to asking him why he was a right-wing nut (forgive the political humor).

In North Carolina, the town of Hendersonville, near Asheville in western North Carolina, is known for its apple farms.

The other leading producers of apples are Iran, Turkey and Russia.

Turkey is my late father's country, and I knew that the country produced many apples, but I did not realize Turkey was fourth in the world in apple production.

Many Turkish apples are produced around Amasya, which is in the central Black Sea region of Turkey, relatively close to the port city of Samsun.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day. In the worst case scenario, I can always play with the family cat.

Weekend Road Trip- Connecticut to Colorado (5 of 20)

Today, we continue our time-consuming series on road trips across les etats unis (French for USA) by looking at the time it would take one to get from New Haven, Conn., 06510 to Colorado Spring, Colo. 80903. As one might expect, it is a long drive.

We chose these two zip codes because both Yale University in New Haven and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs have outstanding men's hockey programs (we know Yale has a women's hockey program too, alas we didn't get to see if that sport was offered at AFU).

Yale actually defeated Air Force in a NCAA tournament game that went to overtime. But, the Bulldogs fell in the final eight. Tonight, Minn-Duluth and Notre Dame face off in the Frozen Four, followed by the University of North Dakota's game with Michigan. The event is taking place today in St. Paul, Minn.

Both schools also have women's gymnastics teams, a sport that I am a huge fan of. We found out that for the Bulldogs' gym team, captain Sherry Yang from Maryland had a 9.3 on vault at a meet at Towson University in here home state on March 11. The team also has two (we presume twin) sisters from Singapoer in Nicole and Tabitha Tay, both of whom are freshman.

As for the Falcons' women's gym team, senior Brittany Dutton, a 5-1 gymnast from Georgia, has been among the stand-out gymnasts as she competed in NCAA regionals in Denver. Her teammate Linnaea Hance has a pet cornsnake! And, her fellow Falcon Jen Larsen likes "Scooby Doo," a cartoon which is a year older than me (we believe in debuted in 1969).

As for the hockey teams, Jimmy Martin, a senior from St. Louis who was captain for the Bulldogs had an outstanding year as did Falcons' stand-out Jacques Lamoureux from North Dakota who amazingly enough cites the Edmonton Oilers as his favorite team (a member of the U.S. military roots for a Canadian hockey team!).

We found out the mileage by checking out the distance from Ibiza Restaurant in New Haven, a Spanish diner that offers chipirones, baby squid braised on its own ink, and Jack Quinn's Irish Ale House and Pub in Colorado Springs which offers Irish strout beef crostini.

We concluded that the distance was:

A) 26 hours

B) 28 hours

C) 30 hours

D) 32 hours

The answer to last week's question was A). Durham, NH, and Norman, Okl., would amount to a 28 hour drive presuming one does not stop at a Burger King in Kentucky along the way.