Salute to NCAA College Sports (3 of 3)

The six student athletes pictured here are: 1) Tacko Fall, a 7'6 freshman from Senegal, Central Florida, men's basketball; 2) Nikki Taylor, women's volleyball, Hawaii, 3) Nick Fields, men's lacrosse, Johns Hopkins, 4) Amanda Leveille (from Canada), women's hockey, Minnesota, 5) Dante Holmes, men's basketball, North Carolina Central; 6) Johanny Sotillo, women's gymnastics, Iowa

The Olympics List (4 of 10): The Canadians

While those of us on the east coast of the United States are in the midst of yet another major snowstorm mess which will probably provide fodder for Bill O'Reilly to say Al Gore is wrong, there is no global warming, ya da ya da ya da..........we have noticed that there is seemingly no snow in Sochi!

With that in mind, here is our list of ten Canadian athletes who are assuredly more used to snow than students at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, one of the zip codes affected by today's storm:

1) Alex Bilodeau. Age 26. Home province: Quebec. Men's Free-style Skiing. Has won gold.

2) Dara Howell. Age 19. Home province: Ontario. Women's Free-style Skiing.  Has won gold.

3) Jesse Lumsden. Age 31. Home province: Alberta. Men's Bobsledding.

4) Heather Moyse. Age 35. Home province: Prince Edward Island. Women's Bobsledding.

5) Ryan Fry. Age 35. Home province: Ontario. Men's Curling. The team beat Russia 7-4  today.

6) Jennifer Jones. Age 39. Home province: Manitoba. Women's Curling. The team beat Great Britain 9-6 today.

7) Shea Weber. Age 28. Home province: British Columbia. Men's Hockey. Plays for Nashville Predators (pictured).

8) Laura Fortino. Age 23. Home province: Ontario. Women's Hockey. Plays for Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. The team beat the United States 3-2 today.

9) Charles Hamelin. Age 29. Home province: Quebec. Men's Short-track Speed-skating. Won gold.

10) Rosalind Groenewood. Age 24. Home province: Alberta. Free-style Skiing.

For our list of athletes from Scandinavian countries, go to our sister blog http://www.polticscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

SIDEBAR: NBC News is reporting that my beloved hometown of Roanoke, Va., will get 10-15 inches of snow during the major storm which will hit virtually the entire east coast. This is virtually the same amount of snow they are expecting in Rutland, Vermont! Major metro areas which have been affected include Atlanta, Columbia (SC), Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh (NC), Richmond (Va), Washington DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

http://olympic.ca/

http://www.hockeycanada.ca/en-ca/

http://olympics.cbc.ca/

http://www.nbcolympics.com/

http://www.winthrop.edu

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.

Olympics Athletes Profile (18 of 25)- Meghan Agosta/women's hockey/Canada

Tommorow night, Team Canada will face Team USA in the gold medal game for women's hockey in Vancouver. The Americans will want revenge since the Canadian women's team won the gold medal over Team USA during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Meghan Agosta, 23, has been the main star of the Canadian team as she has scored nine goals in the competition so far. So far during the games, Agosta, an Ontario native has scored two hat tricks: one against Slovakia and the other against Sweden.

During the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, Agosta scored a hat trick on her 19th birthday against Russia.

Agosta started playing hockey at the age of six. In 2004, she moved to Calgary to train for the Canadian national team.

She has also played college hockey for Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., where she became the first freshman nominated for player of the year.

Agosta lead the Lakers to an NCAA Division 1 title game against Wisconsin in 2009, but they fell to the Badgers by a 5-0 margin.

Expectations are high for both men's and women's Canadian hockey teams since the games are in Vancouver. Both Team Canada and Team USA have had little difficulty winning in women's hockey, so tomorrow night's game will be the first true test for both teams.

And, as the old Abba song goes: "The Winner Takes it All." (hmmm.....sorry for that!)