Random weekend thoughts

[statefan]

With the nice weather, I was able to see a little of the track & field meet and a few innings of baseball on Satuday and almost the entire softball game and the entire men's lacrosse game, including the senior ceremony yesterday. I thought I'd post a couple of thoughts:

 

1. While both the baseball and softball fields are significantly improved over a few years ago, the sight lines for spectators are still mostly lousy.

 

2. I was stopped yesterday by two track athletes who noted they had seen me there on Saturday and appreciated the support. No matter who and where you are, it always feels good to be thanked and I was very appreciative of the notice.

 

3. Baseball has a tough league schedule, opening up with three series against the top three teams in the conference pre-season poll. When you look at the standings, you have to realize their tough games are front loaded.

 

4. I had wanted to see Amanda Morin pitch and was surprised to see her pitch yesterday as someone had told me she had considerable pain pitching the day before. The people watching seemed to think she was not pitching at her full speed and she didn't have many strikeouts. But when she lost her perfect game in the 5th on a ball to short right field (which the rightfielder made a great diving effort on) I noticed she struck out the next two batters throwing seemingly harder than she had all day. While I only watch a handful of softball games each year, one thing that struck me yesterday was that our lineup can hit 1 through 9. In fact yesterday, the key rally was begun by the 6th place hitter and the home run was hit by the 9th place hitter. I highly recommend getting out to watch this team. The pace of the game is fairly quick and you can catch an entire game in a little over an hour.

 

5. I don't pretend to be an expert on lacrosse. It seems to be that our philsophy is high risk - high reward. While we appeared sloppy, It never seemed the outcome was in doubt and it seemed to be that our style has changed over the years to become more like the competative national teams. We will try to thread the needle with a pass while perhaps against a team such as Quinippiac, we don't need to be so perfect. But, I applaud this style, as we will need to play it if we hope to take the next step which I would define as getting a better seed in the NCAA.

 

6. I had read some criticism of our lacrosse fans on laxpower, and had wondered if it was justified. I saw no evidence of poor fan behavior yesterday.

 

7. The senior day ceremony for mens lacrosse was very nice and i was glad to have stayed for it. The relationship of Coach Marr with his players and their parents was nice to see.

 

8. I noticed President and Mrs. Hall at both the Softball and Lacrosse games. They appear very approachable and it certainly appears so far that the search committee did a good job bringing them to Albany.

 

9. I really don't know very many athletes by sight except for basketball players, but it appeared there was good attendance by other sports' athletes at most of the weekend games. I did notice Alicia Learn and Kristin Peterson at the Softball game.

[McFan]

There were also a couple of B'ball players at the Track meet.

 

Off topic but was wondering if in the picture on the front page of the TU, is that one of the regular RACC Rowdies?

[UAalum72]

Looks like it to me

[GODANESGO]

That would be the famed Flagman.

[alumni '92']

charades ... funnel???? ... silent/public protest of new UA fountain day policies???? ... the campus community needs more students like the Flagman! ... i applaud his publicly displayed spirit/efforts at UA events ... role model for his peers ... i hope that he plans to stick around for a masters if he is not already working on one