Category Archives: General

Homeward bound

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I came out to the East Coast in August of 1990, 17 years old, about to start my freshman year in college.

And other than going home for the summer between that and my sophomore year at Catholic University, I’ve been out here ever since.

It’s been a long 18 years; it’s time to go home. We’re doing our own version of the Mid-Atlantic Shuffle, leaving Northern Virginia in August and moving to Minneapolis.

I’ll miss the vast number of Division III schools there are here on the East Coast, where I can basically stumble over a D-III school every 20 minutes on the highway. I’ve seen 222 Division III football teams play, as near as I can tell, and been in 67 teams’ stadiums. Now I’m looking forward to seeing a whole new group. I’ve been to Hamline’s gym and Macalester’s now-defunct gym, seen St. Ben’s and UW-River Falls, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Platteville. How many Iowa gyms will I get into this year?

There will be a lot of new things to experience.

Like flying to the Final Four. 🙂

So I apologize that it’s been a bit of a quiet offseason around here, other than the silly season with all the coaching changes. We’ve spent a lot of time repairing, painting and packing. I’ll keep the same day job, as sports editor of the Verizon Central Newsroom, and simply work from there instead of Virginia.

Thanks to everyone who has been so hospitable over my years here on the East Coast. Hundreds of SIDs and coaches have made time to help us cover Division III in the past decade. Now I’ll get a different perspective, meet new people and spend a lot more time on I-94 and I-35 rather than I-95 and I-66.

Choosing Division III

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Our friends at the Double-A Zone have asked the question, Who chooses Division III? It’s the NCAA’s official blog, so you have to take that into consideration, but unlike many ways in which the NCAA deals with Division III (can’t get its own playoff brackets right, doesn’t know how many Pool C bids there should be), the blog has a healthy knowledge of Division III, run by former Brandeis baseball player Josh Centor.

In light of the fact that Division II has spent a fair amount of time over the past few years trying to find its identity, there’s now apparently some sort of buzz. For me, I’m not sure what “I Chose Division II” actually means, while Division I’s identity is fairly clear and Division III has staked out the student-athlete high ground as the only purely amateur division (non-scholarship) in college athletics.

However, there seems to be some discussion from commenters, not much of it well-informed, as to what Division III’s identity is. Those people need a good dose of D3sports.com readers to fill them in. (I myself have a comment that is awaiting moderator approval.)

Meanwhile, the core question: Should Division III do more to brand itself? Speaking as someone who has done most of the branding of Division III over the past decade, absolutely. I look at what Division II has done in this area over the past few years, in terms of fancy promotional spots, games on CBS College Sports and football playoffs on ESPN, a full package of streaming video broadcasts of football and basketball, and I am definitely jealous. All Division III fans should be.

Division III should be branding itself. It should not be left to people like us here at D3sports.com or Steve Clay and D3Cast or Robb Modica and D3Scoreboard.

We just wasted a bunch of time and money figuring out Division IV was not the place we really wanted to be. So let’s spruce up our house a little bit while we’re here. Let’s show the rest of college fandom that this is not just glorified intramurals. Let’s get our games out there for people to see.

Why did you choose Division III? Go tell them.

And tell us below.

Good clean living

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In a sports world plagued by stories of athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, it’s natural to wonder whether this is a problem for Division III athletics, too. Rich Scarcella of the Reading (Pa.) Eagle looks at how Albright College is addressing this concern.

While the NCAA tests Division I and II football and baseball players for steroids and has year round tests to determine what other scholarship sports have a higher risk of steroid use, that level of testing hasn’t extended to Division III. There is random testing at NCAA playoff events.

The cost of testing and a conventional belief that non-scholarship athletes have less incentive to use performance enhancing drugs are two reasons given for less testing at this level. But 2006 events at UW-Stout and a 2005 NCAA survey in which Division III athletes reported the highest levels of amphetamine use (see page 12) have called that conventional wisdom into question.

As noted in the Reading Eagle article, the NCAA has a pilot program that tests athletes year-round for performance enhancing and recreational drugs, including marijuana. Alcohol is only tested for certain sports, like rifle shooting. Because it’s essentially a fact-finding study, there are no sanctions for testing positive.

But Albright has gone considerably farther. There are sanctions for testing positive with a “three strikes and you’re out” policy. A missed or refused test is considering a positive result. And alcohol is a tested substance. The Albright athletes interviewed had a divided opinion on the testing.

Sophomore running back Nate Romig says, “At the Division III level a college can’t give money to someone to play football…At Division I and II, colleges are paying you to play by giving out scholarships. They can do what they want to do to those athletes. They can test. I’m paying my way here. I do feel that my privacy is being invaded to a point. It is an infringement. I have teammates who feel the same way.” Despite the reservations, Romig also feels the testing should be adopted at other schools.

Athletic Director Steve George points out that the divided opinion isn’t confined to the athletes. “I’m not sure we had the support from the other side of the street (administration). On a college campus, there’s a liberal point of view that students should be allowed to experiment and to be able to find their way. When I came over to the athletic department, we had some issues.”

Personally I like randomly testing athletes for performance enhancing drugs throughout the year. If you’re trying to police this kind of drug use, you should cover offseason workouts. And I like testing for recreational drugs during the sports season.

I’m less clear on testing for recreational drugs in the offseason. Though morally opposed to the use of illegal drugs, does a basketball player or football player represent a college any more than any other student? If you’re going to test the athletes, why not other groups, too?

Platteville ready to come home

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The UW-Platteville men’s and women’s basketball teams are overseas. They will check in with Division III basketball fans from time to time. Jeff Skemp is our correspondent.

Our final days spent in Ireland are starting to wear on everyone involved. The trip has been great, but many of us on the team can’t wait to get home to have a nice greasy McDonald’s burger, or a Mountain Dew. These things are a necessity to college students.

As far as the tours have gone, yesterday (Monday), we visited a beautiful Abbey at Kylemore. On our way there we traveled through many peat bogs and around mountains. The countryside of Ireland is as green as we heard about before coming, and is very beautiful. After visiting the Abbey we went to a Celtic (pronounced Keltic) crystal factory and looked at the amazing pieces on display, and then had the opportunity to watch a cutter work on cutting a candy dish. His quickness and precision was a site to see.

The athletes tried to get out of the last day of touring to walk the city of Galway and finish up any last souvenir shopping that needed to be done, but this idea was vetoed, and all ended up going out to see a city called Athenry, the only Medieval-walled town in Ireland with the walls still intact. Following this brief tour we were then able to spend the rest of the day free before coming together for our pregame meal.

The men and women both won their last games respectively, the men winning by a final score of 86-55 over the GMIT All-Stars. The opponent was probably the best team that the men saw, and the game was very physical. The Pioneers had great individual efforts from Curt Hanson with 26 points, Jeff Skemp with 20 points and Mike Shaw with 19. The lone senior on the trip, Berent “Bear” Froiland scored his only points of the trip with an and-one situation which brought the crowd to a standing ovation. The women beat the Maree Ladies 66-36, led by Lisa Grantman’s 18 points. The Pioneer men and women ended the trip with a combined 6-0 record.

The night ended with parents ordering pizza for the group and spending one last time socializing and taking group pictures. We depart from the hotel at 3:15 a.m. and will arrive back at Chicago O’Hare at about 12:30 p.m. Again, the trip was great except for the sickness that went around, and there will be many stories to share by all who were involved.

UW-P recuperates from virus

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The UW-Platteville men’s and women’s basketball teams are overseas. They will check in with Division III basketball fans from time to time. Jeff Skemp is our correspondent.

The past few days have been hectic on our trip. The illness that swept through both the men’s and women’s teams affected me, so I spent one whole day in bed, relaxing and not doing anything. It was determined that the illness was a very contagious virus, and a doctor was administering shots to those who were the worst off. It has since worked its way out of our group and everyone appears to be healthy.

As for the touring, I missed one whole day like I mentioned above, Saturday was spent mainly taking a bus tour around the countryside of the Killarney area. It appeared to me that we just kept seeing the same things over and over; once you have seen one church you have seen them all in my opinion. As quoted by one of the adults along on the trip, I think that we have seen 750,000 sheep too. They are all over the hillsides in the country much like cows are in Wisconsin.

We played our second game of the trip and won again by a score of 92-52. The scoring was very balanced again, and multiple players scored. More importantly than the individual efforts though is how different the game is played here in Ireland, playing with international rules. A few glaring rule differences are the 24 second shot clock which definitely speeds the game up, and we also have noticed that as soon as the ball goes out of bounds you can grab it and inbound it right away, without waiting for the official to give it to you. This is much different because in the U.S. we are used to waiting for the official, calling a play, calling matchups and so forth, while here it is all done on the fly. The last important thing is that although we have not played really talented teams while being here so far, the game is much more rough, and officiated much rougher than in the U.S. Although there are some differences, the objective to put points on the board still remains the same.

The women also won their game Saturday, beating St. Mary’s 53-49. Angie Vamstad’s 16 points and Charity Stotmeister’s 10 points led the Pioneers, while Megan Guernsey had six during an 8-0 run.

Sunday morning was more entertaining as we departed Killarney for Galway. We took our coach buses on a ferry across the Shannon River, and stopped for a period of time at the beautiful Cliffs of Moher. For lunch we did what we call adopt a student for lunch day. All adult couples on the trip adopt one or more of the students that are along and take them for lunch. This is very interesting and fun as we each get to learn about the other person, and their families. It is important for the people on the trip to get to know us then more than just basketball players. We have now arrived in Galway and will spend the rest of our time here before departing for home. We play one more game that I will be sure to write about.

Day 4: The day started off bright and early with a wakeup call at 6 a.m., breakfast at 7 a.m. and a supposed departure from Dublin at 8 a.m. The departure did not happen as planned though because of an illness that has now set into and affected more than 25 people from the group. Many thought that it could have been from one last night out in Dublin, but as 11 group members stayed in Dublin today because they were too sick to go with the tour, and countless others got sick as the day went on we are beginning to think that it may have to do with food poisoning. The trip and tour stops on the way to Killarney were not even that pleasant for those of us who were not sick. Out of three tour buses only one had a bathroom so all sick people were placed on that bus with those who were not sick. I am not sure that five minutes of the all day trip passed without the bathroom being occupied by a sick passenger. The worst part was though that while the bathroom or toilet in Ireland was being used, people were throwing up into shopping bags which Charlie Lohoff and I had the pleasure of cleaning up. Not to be worried though as a doctor was called to the hotel in Dublin and gave some sort of shot to those people and they will be joining us shortly and feeling much better. After arrival in Killarney a doctor was called to the hotel to check out those who got sick during the day and work to get them feeling better.

Now on to the not-so-exciting news for the day, our tour made stops at the Rock of Cashel which was a castle that not very many people toured. From there we continued on a bus trip to Cobh which was the last boarding site for the Titanic and where the Lusitania was torpedoed by German U-boats. We ate lunch at this stop as well has had some time to walk, and do some shopping. We then continued on to what many have felt as the most interesting tour attraction other than the brewery and distillery, and that was the Blarney Castle which is the home to the famous Blarney stone which many of the tourists kissed for the good luck and prosperity that goes with it. From there we again continued on and arrived at our hotel just before 8 p.m. and ate dinner. It sounds as if nearly everyone is staying in tonight as some are sick, and others are too tired to venture to far.