Schools – Page 3 – Legends of the Falls

September 9, 2007September 18, 2007

Impressive showing by the fans

The fans really responded to the call for a stadium “White Out” for last night’s game against Notre Dame. This shot was taken from the student section (actually it’s a panorama of 6 shots stiched together).

EDIT: Found another notable shot

One thing that is interesting about the shots is that they are taken directly opposite each other. It’s like each of the photographers were directing their camera at the other.

Reminder that you can click on the photos to see an enlarged version of each shot.

And one more for good measure (this one is already at max resolution).

Couldn’t leave out this one from Sports Illustrated

May 11, 2007May 11, 2007

Not your average high school

Last night, I was chatting with Danny Morrissey, an UncleLar nephew and shooting guard for Penn State’s basketball team. Danny went to prep school at the Pendleton School in Bradenton FL. Pendleton is part of the IMG Academies, a world renown collection of training academies for youth athletes. Some of the academies you have undoubtedly heard of – the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, the Chris Evert Tennis Academy.

Pendleton creates a unique educational environment where kids go to class in the morning at the prep school, then attend training sessions at one of the academies in the afternoon. As Danny described it “This was not your typical high school. Taurean Green (starting guard for two time national champion Florida) was my point guard, Maria Sharapova (world renown model/tennis player) was a classmate of mine, and Freddie Adu (soccer phenom) lived in the dorm room below me.”

All of a sudden my high school experiences seemed quite boring.

February 19, 2007April 30, 2007

Capping my THON coverage

With various stories about the event.

Hazleton Standard Speaker:: Dance of Love: Nittany Lion football players help make THON memorable for local youngster

A dozen kids and their families get a personal tour of the Penn State football facilities.

The Daily Collegian: Players grant wishes

Another article on the tours hosted by the football players.

Centre Daily Times: Cancer benefit kickoff, impact larger than life

More than 2000 students prep the Jordan Center for THON. A mother of one of the young cancer patients is quoted as saying – “When they’re with those Penn State students,” Sharon Otstott said, “you see these kids (become) normal kids again.”

CentreDaily.com: Students raise $5.2 million at Thon

Crowd estimated as 10,000 to 12,000 for Sunday’s afternoon wrapup.

The Daily Collegian: Thon breaks record by $1 million.

Tavern employee quoted in the article – Independent dancer Jen Shaffer (senior- kinesiology) wore an orange cape during Thon, which her moraler gave her so she’d be easy to spot on the crowded floor. “My moraler made it for me, and in her first shift, gave it to me as a surprise,” she said.

The Daily Collegian: Families enjoy each others’ company at Thon breakfast

On Sunday morning, organizers host a breakfast for all the families in attendance who have a child that has been helped by the Four Diamonds Fund. From the article – Catharine Scott, whose daughter Colleen was diagnosed with cancer when she was only 5, said without the Four Diamonds Fund, paying for Colleen’s treatment “probably would have bankrupted us.

The Daily Collegian: Former Thon kid relives her experience

As a teenager, Kern had the most common type of bone cancer among children, osteogenic sarcoma, in her right knee. She was a Four Diamonds child in 1992 and is now cancer-free. Still, someone from her family has returned to Thon each year for the past 15 years.

The Daily Collegian: Thon supporters trek 135 miles for the kids.

Runners brave brutal conditions to relay a backpack of letters from kids in the Four Diamonds Children’s Ward at Hershey Medical Center 135 miles to deliver them to dancers at the Dance Marathon. This was the first time they did this run and it worked so well that it’s apt to become an annual tradition now.

The Daily Collegian: Mail call delights, energizes dancers.

Mike “The Mailman” Herr danced around the Thon stage as members of the crowd cheered him on, creating a buzz that flooded through the Bryce Jordan Center early Saturday morning.

“You’ve got mail!” he screamed. “Lots of mail!” he added, eliciting cheers and whoops from the tired crowd at this weekend’s Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon.

Left: Dancer Kerri O’Rourke reads a letter she received during mail call.

StateCollege.com: Familes share experience, find support at Thon.

Article talks about three families and their battles with childhood cancer. One family talks about a special day the Four Diamond Fund hosts for siblings of cancer patients, oft times forgotten victims as the disease hits a family.

The Daily Collegian: Family Hour evokes emotion from all.

At 1PM on Sunday, families of the cancer victims and survivors take the stage to share their stories with the dancers. It is annually the most emotional moment of the event and serves to remind everyone why they are there.

The Daily Collegian: Athletes add excitement

Bears kicker Robbie Gould: “It’s awesome,” said former Nittany Lions kicker and current Chicago Bear Robbie Gould, who signed autographs and took pictures with the kids. “As an alum, this is important to me … it’s the reason you’re here, and it’s the reason you come back.”

The Daily Collegian: Kids work it on the stage

Thon children “worked it” Saturday morning as they strutted, tossed their hair and were treated like celebrities during the kids’ fashion show. The children wore brand new clothes that were donated to the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon by local merchants. Each child was allowed to keep the outfit he or she modeled.

FTK

February 18, 2007May 9, 2007

$5,240,385.17

Just got back from THON – the Penn State Dance Marathon charity and they hit a new record topping $5 million for the first time.

Julie Myers, who is quoted in the attached article, is a Tavern employee and the daughter of a Sonny Myers, friend of mine that worked with me at the Tavern in the 70s. Julie was one of five Tavern employees who danced in the event. Others were Lisa Scarborough, daughter of John “Doc” Scarborough, also a former Tavern waiter, friend, and onetime roommate of mine (1967-68 academic year); David Gray, Penn State soccer player, and son of Gary Gray whom I have mentioned on this blog several time; Jen Shaffer, a Facebook buddy of mine; and a fifth employee whom I don’t know.

I stopped in at THON at 2:30 AM last night to see the kids and I thought they were all doing remarkably well. For being the middle of the night they had quite a crowd there cheering the dancers on.

But that crowd paled when compared to the scene this afternoon. There had been some criticism about moving THON out of our cozy gym called Rec Hall. Over the last few years they had to stop letting people into Rec Hall on several occasions because it was filled to capacity (probably about 5000 or so). As a result, the event was moved to the Bryce Jordan Center with a capacity of about 16,000. There was a fear that the size of the Jordan Center would cause the event to lose it’s intimacy and everyone would seem lost in the arena. Those fears were unfounded as the BJC was pretty much packed and the event was hugely uplifting as usual.

Here’s a photo I took from the upper deck and you can see how the place was crammed with people.

The kids on the floor had been going for 44+ hours at this point. The kids in the stands are the spectators and various sponsoring sororities, fraternities, and other groups who have dancers on the floor. Typically the groups will have T-shirts made up to match their dancer(s) which is why the whole scene is so colorful. Here are two shots I took from opposite sides of the arena.

“JR and Natalie Band” were the last band to take the stage for the event. They went on at 2PM this afternoon. Here’s Nat acknowledging her biggest fan before she takes the stage.

In this one, taken from the back of the arena, if you look on the screens behind the band you can see one of the kids who decided to climb up on stage and dance with Natalie. He stayed up there most of the set and the crowd loved it. Mark, the lead guitarist, even had the kid strumming his guitar during one of the songs. The kid was having an absolute blast.

And here’s Ernest Hemingway with the rock star after her set was over.

Here’s a short video that I took from backstage with my photo camera showing the kids rocking to the band. I just wish I had some audio to go with it but it is an obsolete photo camera that’s considerably old technology – you know 4-5 years old.

One final thing that I want to show is another short video with my photo camera. This time the video starts out with the morale leaders on stage leading the dancers in the line dance that they do every hour. It then scans out over the actual dancers and the crowd and you can see how enthusiastic and pumped everyone is even though they are 46 hours into the marathon.

It’s quite an event and there’s really nothing even close to it when it comes to student fund raising. The kids can be immensely proud of themselves.

Many more stories if you are interested.

February 15, 2007April 30, 2007

THON 2007

Tomorrow features one of the big Penn State tradition – Dance Marathon Weekend – aka THON. THON is the largest student run charity event in the world and has been going on at Penn State for over thirty years. This weekend several hundred students will participate in a two day long dance marathon to raise money for the Four Diamonds Fund. Monies raised for the Four Diamonds Fund go to fight childhood cancer. The fund picks up the medical bills not covered by insurance for all children who are treated for cancer at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center. No child treated for cancer at Hershey ever gets a bill.

The actual dance event is actually just the culmination of months of work that thousands of PSU students have put into the fund raising. Planning for next years THON will start immediately after the conclusion of this year’s event. The logistics of pulling this thing off are incredible. There may be a couple of hundred kids dancing but there are thousands who participate in one way or another. Each dancer will have a support crew that numbers in the dozens and will work in shifts to help the dancers make it through the weekend.

Hundreds of others have spent months spearheading the actual collection of monies through all sorts of sponsorships and auxiliary events such as charity auctions (want to buy a raffle ticket on a Joe Paterno autographed Penn State Chopper? – go here), or canning events up and down the East Coast. Last year THON raised over $4M for the Four Diamonds Fund.

Others work hard on generating nationwide publicity for the event and more importantly raising awareness of childhood cancer issues. If you turn on your favorite network morning news program tomorrow you will undoubtedly see a segment devoted to THON.

Everyone that I know who has participated in this event has told me it’s been a life changing moment for them (and no I am not exaggerating). The emotional connection that the students make with the kids that they are helping is impossible to put into words, particularly by someone like me who is quite inept with them.

To get a flavor for the event, watch this video of a past segment from a few years ago on CBS Window on America.

Here’s a short video shot from the bleachers at the Recreation Hall gymnasium in 2005. Rec Hall is a 6000 seat gym that is ordinarily home to the volleyball, wrestling, and gymnastics teams. The dancers are all down on the gym floor while the crowd packs the bleachers cheering them on. You can see how packed the gym is. The event has gotten so big that this year they are moving it to the 16,000 seat Bryce Jordan Center to help accommodate spectators who had to be turned away in past years.

One of the things that keeps the dancers going over the course of the weekend is the once an hour line dance that they do. Each year a new unique line dance is created. It’s set to a pop music track but the lyrics all summarize worldwide, national, and local events that have taken place over the previous year. I know people who danced in the marathon 10-15 years ago but they can repeat their dance and lyrics at the drop of a hat. Here’s a video that captures the line dance from 2006.

Here’s another promotional video set to the music from Gladiator. Two things stand out in this one. One you get to see lots of the young kids who have been helped by the charity. The event and the dance floor are open to all former and current patients at the children’s center at Hershey. For some of them, THON has become a yearly event that they look forward to like a vacation. Another thing that you get fleeting glimpses of in this video are various Penn State athletic teams. Each team traditionally puts together a short skit/dance of their own and team members get on stage to dance for the dancers. The idea is to break up the monotony that the dancers are going through with hourly activities. Something different happens at the top of every hour and the dancers are always looking forward to the next hour.

One of the more moving THON moments happens during mail call which is at 3:30 AM Sunday morning. The dancers are all identified months in advance. It’s an incredible honor to be able to actually dance in the event and it’s not something that you can just walk in and sign up for. Each dancer is comes from a sponsoring organization either on campus or around town and the competition for the honor of dancing is enormous. Because the dancers are all well identified there’s plenty of time for the dance marathon committee to contact friends and family of the dancers to solicit cards and letter in support of the dancers efforts. In the middle of their second night on their feet the kids are really dragging. At that point, “Mike the Mailman”, a local on campus legendary figure, brings in literally thousands of letters for the dancers (each dancer will get 100+ letters. For the last few years, Mike has been accompanied by “Mr McFeeley” the postman on Mr Rogers Neighborhood. Interspersed with the letters from each dancer’s friends and families are letters from many of the kids who have survived their cancer bouts with help from the Four Diamonds Fund. Most of the kids letters are specifically addressed to a dancer but some are pulled out and read on stage to all of participants. Many of them are incredibly touching and when they are read there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

For more info, check out THON’s Wikipedia entry.

Probably the best way to wrap up this post is to link to this year’s promotional video. And I’ll end it by signing off the way that all THON correspondance is typically concluded as a reminder that this is all being done “For The Kids”.

FTK

June 29, 2006May 9, 2007

What does $2.5M get you these days?

The baseball park that was just built here was started through $2.5M in seed money by Anthony Lubrano, a former Penn State baseball player. As a result of his donation, the university choose to include his name when they named the ballpark “Medlar Field and Lubrano Park”.

So you would have thought that $2.5 million might have been enough to get people to pay attention to your name. Evidently not. Check out this sign from the concession area.

May 14, 2006April 30, 2007

Chicago Bandits

A friend of mine will be playing for the Chicago Bandits this summer.

“Who?”, you ask.

“The Chicago Bandits women’s professional fast pitch softball team”, I answer.

UncleLar niece, Missy Beseres (bad photo in the link BTW), was drafted by the Bandits as a pitcher. She’ll join Chicago once her Penn State career end – Penn State is awaiting an invitation to the NCAA tournament expected to come later today.

Missy set a Penn State career record for wins this year – she currently sits at 53 over her four years here. A spot on the Bandits roster opened up when uberbabe Jennie Finch got pregnant. A couple of years ago Finch dethroned Anna Kournikova as ESPN’s Hottest Female Athlete.

Here’s a photo of Jennie in action (I don’t think this is an official Chicago Bandit uniform however).

Here’s a shot of Missy in action (that is an official Penn State uniform).

I suspect that Missy will only be on the roster until Jennie makes it back from her pregnancy (she had a baby boy a week ago). The Bandits have a powerful pitching staff and I’m not sure that Missy has quite reached that level yet.

What amazes me these days is the number of opportunities for women to play professional sports. If Missy makes the squad, she will be the fifth female I personally know who is a professional athlete. The others are Jess Brungo on the Connecticut Sun basketball team, and Syndie Nadeau and Ashley Pedersen who both play professional volleyball in Paris and Barcelona respectively, and Joanna Lohman who has played for both the New York Power and Washington Freedom professional soccer teams along with the US National team. I think it’s wonderful that these girls get an opportunity to continue to excel even beyond college at the highest levels in their chosen sports.

May 5, 2006December 8, 2007

Once UCLA writer has the Bruins in a walkover

Some excerpts from his article.

Irvineâ€™s loss could become UCLAâ€™s gain in finals

Penn Stateâ€™s upset win means well-rested Bruins will face a team primed for a letdown

I had already written most of a column about how epic a national championship match between UCLA and top-ranked UC Irvine would be…But as I was finishing up, I saw the score…

that means it’s likely UCLA will win a national title on Saturday night

In volleyball, all of the elite teams in the country are in the West

Penn State has piled up wins on a much weaker schedule than Western teams

Penn State isn’t going to play out of its mind two matches in a row

This is locker room bulletin board stuff if I’ve ever seen some.

Guess what? It’s already posted on in our locker room. Here are some of the guys reading it before practice today.

May 5, 2006May 9, 2007

Final Four Drama in Rec Hall

Fasten your seat belts folks, this is going to be a long one.

First, a little background. Rec Hall is short for Recreation Hall, a gymnasium on Penn State’s campus. It was built in 1929 and was the home for Penn State basketball until 1996 when Penn State opened the Bryce Jordan Center, a modern multi-purpose arena. Rec Hall is still the home for Penn State volleyball, wrestling, and gymnastics. This weekend, PSU and Rec Hall are hosting the NCAA men’s volleyball Final Four.

Rec Hall and volleyball hold a special place in my heart. My first trip ever to Penn State was in 1963 to play in the PIAA State Volleyball Championships. It was a double elimination tournament with play starting Saturday morning around 9am. Central Bucks was the District 1 Champion and we drew Peobody High, District 7 and defending State Champion in the opening round. We were in awe of Peobody and quickly went down to defeat.

We fell into the loser’s bracket but fought our way back with a couple of victories but couldn’t continue the streak. By about 2 in the afternoon we were eliminated. As we walked back to our hotel, we passed a fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, that was just a block from Rec Hall. It turned out that Phi Gam was holding their annual big party, Fiji Island Weekend, that day. Here were all these guys and girls running around in bathing suits, grass skirts, and bikinis sipping all sorts of alcoholic concoctions. I saw this guy passing by an upstairs window with a girl thrown over his shoulder. I turned to the other guys on the team and said “I think I could learn to like it here”. Little could I have imagined.

That’s just a little Rec Hall and me background. Now some PSU and volleyball background. While women’s volleyball has a presence across the country, the elite men’s teams are almost all from the West, particularly from California. Penn State is one of the very few schools east of the Rockies who have a quality program. Actually, there’s little doubt that PSU is the premiere program outside the West.

To show you how dominant the western schools are, take note of these facts. Penn State was the first school from the east to ever win a match against a California school when we beat one (I forget which) in a regular season match in the 70s. In 1982, Penn State upset USC in five games in the NCAA semifinals to be the first non California school to ever make the finals of the NCAAs (Karch Kiraly and UCLA pounded us in the championship game). We had a little advantage in that match against USC in that the Final Four was held in Rec Hall, so it was actually a home game for us.

In 1994, Penn State won the NCAA title to be the first team from west of the Rockies to win the NCAAs. In the following year, we made it back to the finals (becoming the first non-western school to ever make the championship game two years in a row) only to lose to UCLA again.

The path to the Final Four in volleyball is a little unique. There are basically just three leagues that play men’s collegiate volleyball – the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF), the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (MIVA), and the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA). The winners of those leagues’ tournaments get automatic bids to the Final Four. The fourth spot is given to an at-large bid which has ALWAYS gone to a western school (once again showing the dominance of the western schools in men’s volleyball.

Because of that structure Penn State only has to win the EIVA tournament title to get into the Final Four. As dominant a program as we have for an Eastern school that is usually fairly easy. PSU has appeared in 21 Final Fours and we are second to only UCLA in that regard. However, getting past that semifinal game isn’t so easy. Coming into last night we had lost ten straight semifinal matches since our last win in 1995.

PSU has been pointing to this weekend for years. We brought in an outstanding recruiting class four years ago and we knew that we were going to host the 2006 Final Four. Everything knew that 2006 was going to be the year that we made another run for the championship. So the expectations for this year were high and the pressure was on the team to do well. The pressure might actually have been a little much because the team has not played well, at least by our standards, all year.

They opened the season up 1-5. They even lost at home to a non-Western school, Ball State. They had other questionable losses throught the season to schools like Ohio State, George Mason, and IPFW. Things were starting to look a little dicey for maybe even making it to the Final Four. Then they got a little help.

A week ago, PSU was expected to have a difficult EIVL title match against George Mason, who had knocked off PSU a month earlier in a league match. But the St Francis Red Flash pulled off a huge upset in the semifinals to knock George Mason out of the tournament. That gave PSU an easy opponent to claim the EIVL spot in the Final Four. The Nits responded with an quick 3 game sweep.

That set up the Final Four participants as UC-Irvine, UCLA, IPFW, and Penn State (read more about the participants here). To no one’s surprise, PSU was seeded fourth for the event. We had already faced all three other opponents during the year, losing to each (UCI and UCLA swept us, IPFW beat us 3-2). As the fourth seed, we drew the #1 seed and #1 nationally ranked UC-Irvine Anteaters, who were making their first ever appearance in the Final Four.

So while expectations for the season were high, our play during the season kind of reset everyone with much lower expectations coming into the weekend. That soon changed.

Penn State played absolutely flawlessly in the first 15 minutes of game 1 and eked their way to a 14-11 lead. That got the team’s confidence up and they fought their way to a hard earned 32-30 victory. UC Irvine fought off three game points before falling. At this point, I’m thinking “however this turns out, the kids have accredited themselves well with this win”. Things were just getting started though.

In game two, Penn State just overpowered the Anteaters and they raced to a 30-23 victory. Now I’m starting to think just like I did midway through the second half of our Kentucky hoops game in 2000. You know, the “Holy mackeral, we might actually beat these guys.

Game three was a battle. The UCI players were fighting for their volleyball lives and our kids were giving them no quarter. With a 29-28 lead, senior captain Nate Meerstein was serving for the match. Incredibly, he airmailed the ball about 20 feet over the endline, giving the Anteaters life. They responded and won 33-31.

Game four was a problem. Meerstein was clearly flustered with his service error in game three and all of a sudden he couldn’t get his serve in. To his credit, he continued to be an absolute monster on the front line recording over a dozen kills and blocks during the match. The Nits battled valiantly but went down to a 30-27 defeat.

That set up the dramatic game five. Matches that go the full five games are settled by a 15 point final game. That leaves little margin for error, so Meerstein wisely abandoned his jump serve and went to a floater for the remainder of the match. Shaking off their back to back losses, the Nits jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead. That set the tone for the match. We’d get a two point lead but UCI would come back to tie it up (the match was tied at 2-2, 6-6, and 12-12).

PSU pulled ahead 14-13 and had freshman Max Holt serving for the match when UCI called a timeout. I looked at my watch and realized that the match was now almost three hours long and my TiVo was about to quit recording even though I had padded it with a extra hour. Right at that point, the lights went out. And I don’t mean figuratively, I mean literally. Yup, a partial power failure (so they say, frankly I think someone forgot to turn off the timer that shuts the Rec Hall lights off at 11 PM) killed half the lights in the building.

Things like this only happen in Hollywood scripts but there it was. Because of the type of lighting, it takes about 10-15 minutes to restart the lights. UCI couldn’t have asked for anything better. How long does a basketball timeout last? How about a football timeout? 2-3 minutes max. Teams use timeouts to ice players at the free throw line, or kickers getting ready for game winning field goals. Here, UCI effectively got a 15 minute timeout to ice a freshman who was serving for a berth in the NCAA championship game.

NO PROBLEM.

Max aced the serve and we move on to play UCLA for the title on Saturday night.

Mr Cinderella

A friend of mine just made the Final Four. James Johnson was an assistant coach at Penn State for the last two years but took a job with George Mason this year. There were a bunch of people who questioned why he would leave a B10 school to go to the Colonial Athletic Conference but his decision is looking like a stroke of genius now (for more on his decision, read this story from the Harrisburg Patriot.

Here’s a shot of him leaving the court on Friday after their win over Wichita State that got them to the Elite Eight.

This afternoon they knocked off UConn in overtime to advance to the Final Four. In addition to the Wichita win, GM also knocked off traditional major conference power houses Michigan State, North Carolina, and UConn. What’s even more amazing is that George Mason was a controversial at large pick for the NCAA tournament to begin with. They lost in their conference tournament to Hofstra and thus didn’t earn an automatic bid. Several people felt that because Hofstra defeated George Mason twice in the last two weeks of the season, Hofstra deserved a bid instead. Now just two weeks after learning they were in the tournament, the Patriots will be headed to the Final Four.

Since everyone’s bracket is probable all messed up with the upsets, this will give you someone to root for when the Final Four starts next weekend.

BTW – As you might be able to tell from the photo, JJ dresses well. So well, in fact, that while he was at PSU, he was named as one of the NCAA best dressed assistant coaches.