Sharing the Wealth
A small token of my appreciation. (I’ll keep a hold of them.)
My empire is expanding
The UncleLar web empire has grown once again. The latest is an addition to my Happy Valley brand of Penn State sports related sites. You might remember Happy Valley Hoops, my basketball site that I told you about back in January. As a compliment to that I’ve created Happy Valley Hardball, a site devoted to the Penn State baseball team.
Golf Followup
It looks like I never followed up on this post from a year and a half ago.
“Two friends of mine are playing in a local first round qualifier at Scotch Valley Country Club in Altoona for the US Open today so I’m headed over to watch them. There are 39 players contending for 3 sectional qualifier spots…
I’ll be back later tonight to fill in details of their rounds.”
The details are – they sucked. They both played terrible, tied for dead last with two other guys (although seven guys didn’t turn in cards so they might have beaten them).
You are probably asking yourself why I’m following up on this now. We’ll there’s a reason. During our friend RJ’s round, word filtered back to us that a guy in the group just in front of us was playing pretty well (it was a brutal day, the wind was blowing incredibly hard and scores were skyrocketing – by days end, only three of the pros managed to break 75 – and the guy in front of us was two under at the time). So my friend Tom Minsker and I decided to move up and watch him (RJ was playing so bad that we felt he was probably self conscious that we were watching).
There really weren’t any people following any of these groups around, just a couple of friends and family. There was no one following the guy that we moved up to watch, so we were able to strike up several conversations with him and his caddy. His name was Brad Adamonis and he was a small time 30-something Nationwide tour player from Rhode Island (he had earned all of $3531 on the Nationwide tour in 2005). He didn’t used a driver but he consistently smacked his three wood 280 or so off the tee. He seemed so much better than any of the other guys that we had seen that day that Tom and I were dumbfounded that this guy was a nobody.
Adamonis wound up being one of the three guys to claim a sectional spot and we kept an eye on him when he went on to the sectionals. At the sectionals, he came in sixth among 33 guys and thus did not qualify for one of the two available slots from his qualifier.
Every now and then though, Tom or I would check up on Brad. He finished 2006 at 71st on the Nationwide tour earning $81,000. In 2007, he won one event and moved up to 33rd on the tour with $170,000. Then this past fall he finished ninth at the Q school to earn his PGA card.
So yesterday, I’m sitting home working on my computer with the Golf Channel’s coverage of the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines on in the background. I’d occasionally look up to catch one of Tiger’s shots. Tiger finished his round at -5 two shots back of the leader. Shortly after Tiger finishes they flash to this guy whose lining up his birdie putt on eighteen. He drops it to go six under one back of the leader and they flash his name – Brad Adamonis. Whoa – that gets my attention.
Then the announcers talk about how Brad’s made a nice start on his first year on the tour, making the cut at both the Sony and the Hope tournaments and earning $40k to date. His now in a good position to take home a nice paycheck this weekend and to hang onto is card.
At 35 years old, Brad makes a nice human interest story and not surprisingly, the press has picked up on it today. Here are some:
SignOnSanDiego.com > Sports > Golf — Adamonis in unfamiliar territory – The Spotlight via kwout
Adamonis shoots 66 in Buick Open, bolsters sick father — South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com via kwout
SignOnSanDiego.com > Sports > U-T Golfblog via kwout
Success comes in bunches for rookie
By: DAN HAYES and BRIAN HIRO – Staff Writers
LA JOLLA —- Brad Adamonis couldn’t help but grin after a friend high-fived him following a birdie on the 18th green at Torrey Pines’ North Course.
The 35-year-old PGA Tour rookie has been all smiles recently, especially after a 5-under-par 67 in the opening round of the Buick Invitational on Thursday.
Consider that after eight previous tries at qualifying school, Adamonis finally reached the PGA Tour this season and has made the cut in each of his first two tournament. Then there’s the improved health of his family and friends. And then there’s his beloved New England Patriots, who are headed back to the Super Bowl after last Sunday’s win over the Chargers.
…
I’ll be paying close attention to the guy for the rest of the tournament.
The Gift That Keeps on Giving…
I hope. For those of you who weren’t able to make Gary’s 50th birthday party, we gave him what may turn out to be just that gift. We gave him a $25 bet that the Yankees would win the World Series (oh well), and another $25 bet that the Giants would win the Super Bowl. What I don’t recall is the odds…I think either 30 to 1 or 40 to 1. Funny thing is, Gary isn’t sure where he put the ticket. At this point, he has decided not to look for it so as not to jinx them. I agree, but I certainly hope he’ll have to look for it after the game.
Five years ago I was in Arizona at a business conference. Archie Manning was the motivational speaker at one of our meetings. At the question and answer session, one of my co-workers asked Archie which son was a better quarterback. Surprisingly he said Eli! He stated that Eli had better control than Peyton. He certainly seems to be showing that control in his last few games. Hopefully it will continue.
Wish Gary and the Giants luck!
My latest project
HappyValleyHoops.com
A website devoted to Penn State Basketball.
I’ve spent a lot of time the last six weeks getting this up and running and I’m pretty proud of it.
Nice weekend for Fremd grad Russ Rose
On Thursday, he gets inducted into the American Volleyball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Then he follows that by being named the 2007 AVCA National Coach of the Year. Then on Saturday, he coaches the Nittany Lions to a thrilling five game win over Stanford for the national championship title.
Congrats Russ and congrats to the women’s vb team.
PSU vs Stanford for women VB title
These two were probably destined to play for the title. PSU ended the season as the #1 ranked team. But Stanford got the #1 seed in the tournament. PSU has now won 25 straight matches with their last loss coming September 15th against, you guessed it, Stanford. Stanford and Penn State are also the only two teams in the country who have made every NCAA tournament.
Stanford needed five games to win their semifinal match against USC, fighting off a match point in the fifth game to do it. Penn State, on the other hand, swept Cal in three, continuing the roll that they have been on since the start of the NCAAs. PSU got stronger in every game winning 30-28, 30-25, 30-16. Cal was actually the first team in the entire tournament to score 20 points on PSU – they have been that dominant.
The finals will be on ESPN2 Saturday night at 9PM EST. Unfortunately, that the same time that I’m having my fifth annual State College Santa Crawl (poor planning on my part). The good news is that I can maneuver the crawl so that we’ll just move from one bar to another between games so we should be able to catch most of the action anyway (weather permitting, that is, the forecast isn’t too good right now).
On a related side note, I was down at the Tavern last Saturday after watching PSU beat BYU for the regional crown when one of PSU’s players, Kate Price (Kate’s the one who went into the stands for that spectacular save that I mentioned last week), came in with some former players. I’ve known Kate for about three years now (her older teammates corrupted her and used to sneak her into some of the local taverns as a minor).
Kate begged me to show the others one of my tricks that I rarely do. It involves someone freely picking a card out of a deck, signing it, returning it to the deck, then shuffling the deck. After giving the deck back to me, I toss the deck into the air and the signed card winds up sticking to the ceiling. I don’t do the trick very often because it ruins the deck. In addition to the one card on the ceiling, the other fall to the floor and just scatter everywhere. Even if you bother picking the cards up off of the floor, they’re usually too messed up to use anymore. But it was near the end of the night, the deck I had was kind of messed up anyway, and Kate had just won a big match, so I relented.
One of the secrets of doing the trick is to make sure that you put it on a ceiling that’s high enough that someone can’t just pull the card down. The Tavern ceiling is about ten feet high so I figured I was safe. Wrong. I overlooked the fact that while Kate is a girl, she’s also 6’4″ tall and a top caliber NCAA athlete. The card stuck cleanly to the ceiling but as her girlfriends stood there staring at the card, Kate just took a running jump and cleanly picked it off of the ceiling. I was caught red-handed with wax stuck to the back of the card. Of course, they still couldn’t figure out how I found the card and got the wax on it, but a little bit of the awe and amazement was gone. Next time I need to remember not to underestimate my audience.
PA vs Utah
Not the school but the state.
Penn State hosts BYU tonight in a regional women’s volleyball final with the winner advancing to the Final Four next weekend in Sacramento. The #17 ranked Cougars (24-7) will be looking to pull off a huge upset over #1 ranked Penn State (31-2).
Penn State has now won 33 consecutive matches on their home floor and look to be prohibitive favorites to make it the the NCAA championship semifinals for the fifth time in the last 15 years. Penn State is one of only two schools to play every NCAA tournament in the 24 years the NCAA has been hosting the VB championship. Stanford is the other and looks to be one of two schools with a chance to derail the Lions championship express (Nebraska is the other – Neb and Stan are the two schools the own a victory over PSU this season).
As good as Penn State is, they actually look to be a year away from putting their best team on the floor. They lose only one player who is a factor on this time, part-time starter and defensive player Kate Price, and have a very capable back-up already in place.
Hall of Fame coach Russ Rose has been building an incredible juggernaut here at PSU. He’s upgraded the talent on the team every year for the last five years (while winning the B10 title every year too). Penn State has now claimed the freshman of the year in the B10 for six years running. The absurd thing about it is that many of these freshman award winners have found themselves on the bench the following year because the incoming freshman have been even better. For example, the aforementioned senior Kate Price was named the B10 freshman of the year as a front row blocker in 2004. She was out of the starting lineup the next year and didn’t work her way back to the starting lineup until the second half of this season (and she’s only starting because she changed positions to a defensive specialist – she couldn’t break into the front row).
PSU’s starting line-up is now:
6’2″ Sr Kate Price – B10 Freshman of the Year (2004)
6’4″ Jr Nicolle Fawcett – National Freshman of Year (2005), 1st team All American (2005), Big Ten Freshman of the Year (2006), 1st team All Big Ten (2006, 2007)
6’2″ Jr Christa Harmotto – B10 Player of the Year (2007), 1st Team All B10 (2006, 2007)
6’3″ So Megan Hodge – National Freshman of the Year (2006), 1st team All American (2006), B10 Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year (2006), 1st team All B10 (2006, 2007)
6’0″ So Alicia Glass – 1st Team All B10 (2007)
6’2″ Fr Arielle Wilson – B10 Freshman of the Year (2007)
Coming off the bench is Sr Mellisa Walbridge who was 1st team All B10 and a 2nd team All American in 2005 but cannot break into the starting lineup now.
These girls have a good shot at a national crown this year and, barring injuries, should be an odd on favorite to win it all next year.
I’m looking forward to running between Rec Hall where the volleyball battle starts at 6:30 (ESPNU coverage for those who would like to watch) and the Bryce Jordan Center where the basketball team takes on Seton Hall at 8:00 PM (coverage on the Big Ten Network for those who might get the channel).
e-Boy Gets a Job
Big soccer news out of the state of Utah. While his Dad was helping lead the Judge Memorial Girl’s soccer team to a state title, Elliot scores a full-time gig with a Major League Soccer Club. Real (pronounced “ray-al”, like the Madrid club) Salt Lake has hired the boy to work in their Marketing/Communications Department. Hey that’s two Fall’s (Gary) working for a major league team…though the Yankees and oft-losing RSL exist on opposite ends of the sports spectrum.
RSL finished it’s third year here, and failed to make the playoffs again. Elliot had an internship this past season (April to Oct) and they loved having him…hired him first chance they got. His title is now Public Relations Coordinator – e-mail efall@realsaltlake.com He’ll stay in school and work part-time til the ’08 season starts. After he earns his degree (economics ) in May he starts full-time at the club.
He’s pictured here holding up the Rocky Mountain Cup trophy, making the trip to Colorado where RSL beat the Rapids to win their annual competition.
Meanwhile, the Judge Memorial Girl’s team (I’m still assistant coach) startled the Utah high school scene by going on a blistering run through the playoffs – giving up just one goal in four games – to capture the state title. The team had begun the season 1-6, but turned things around and beat three number one seeds to win State. It’s our third state championship in six years.
