In a few short weeks, Virginia graduate Wyatt Allen will row with the U.S. men’s eight in the Olympics. A few short years ago, Allen first put hand to oar for the Virginia men’s crew.

Allen grew up in Maine — a state with little junior rowing, according to former Virginia coach Mike Blanchette. With no plan to pick up the sport, Allen came to Virginia and was tracked down by some older rowers who were looking for freshman with the right physique. The 6’4″ athlete claims he was out of shape when he arrived on campus, but he nonetheless caught the eye of the recruiters.

While Allen’s rise to the top of rowing has been fast, the first few days with the Virginia crew were a struggle, Allen said.

“I was the second to last guy to make the team,” he said. “I think I beat one other guy — I was really out of shape. But I pretty much fell in love with it.”

It didn’t take the young rower long to get the hang of things and catapult onto the national rowing scene. By the end of his freshman year, he had the fastest ergometer score on the team, and by his sophomore year, he decided they were good enough to submit to the national team.

By his junior year, Allen was invited to the under-23 selection camp and rowed in a pair. Members of the pair also serve as spares for members of the eight, the most sought-after boat. The next year Allen returned to the selection camp and earned a spot in the junior men’s eight.

At Virginia, Allen not only served as one of the captains of the team, but also made fast friends with his teammates.

“He’s sort of beloved by everybody,” Blanchette said. “He’s absolutely the nicest guy and everyone wants to try to emulate him because he’s basically a stud but he’s a great guy as well.”

After graduation, Allen went to New Jersey and joined the Princeton Training Center, where the national team trains.

Allen got a stroke of luck having graduated in 2001, a year after the last Olympics.

“It’s a little loosey-goosey,” Blanchette said. “It’s organized but guys kind of come and go especially right after the Olympic year.”

Allen also pointed out that it is easier to make the national team on non-Olympic years, but his rise through the ranks exceeded even his own expectations.

“Things definitely progressed faster than expected,” Allen said.

Allen originally rowed in a single-person skull then progressed to a double. He won the national speed order in both boats.

After his success with small shells he was added to the quad for the world championships.

“He has had a meteoric rise,” Blanchette said.

As a member of the men’s eight, Allen says he is nothing but enthusiastic about the team.

“The chemistry is amazing,” he said. “Rarely has a boat been this much fun while reaching this level of success. I’m psyched to be a part of it.”

Rowing coverage from Athens will begin on Aug. 14 and will continue throughout the 16 days of the Olympic Games.

Virginia football coach Al Groh announced Monday that the Cavaliers will start the season without the services of sophomore lineman Ian-Yates Cunningham.

Cunningham started the last five games of the season at left offensive guard last year as a freshman. He injured his back in the spring, underwent surgery to repair a disk problem in May and may not be able to play at all this season, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Groh called Cunningham “P.U.P. right now — physically unable to perform.”

Filling in for Cunningham will likely be Ron Darden. The 6’4″, 327-lbs. sophomore started one game at right guard last year for the Cavaliers.

The freshman class of 2005 list continued to get longer today, as the Cavaliers received a commitment from 6’3″, 205-lbs. Richmond quarterback Jameel Sewell.

The left-hander is the 20th rising high school senior to commit to the Cavaliers early. Two other players who were expected to join the Cavaliers for the 2004 season, Olu Hall and Branden Albert, failed to meet NCAA eligibility standards and will likely join the Cavaliers for the 2005 season. That means 22 out of the 25 scholarship spots have already been filled months before signing day next spring.

Sewell threw for 1,032 yards as a junior at Hermitage High last season, completing 65 of 135 passes. He is the second quarterback to commit for the 2005 season, following Vic Hall of Gretna, Va. Hall was ranked the No. 3 recruit in the state by Rivals.com while Sewell was ranked No. 12.

The Cavaliers received two first-place votes in the ACC Preseason media poll and finished in third place with 697 points.

Florida State took the top spot for the 13th straight season, barely edging out newcomer Miami. The Seminoles received 49 first-place votes and 925 points, while the Hurricanes accumulated 36 tallies for the top spot and 913 points overall.

Right behind Virginia was Clemson, which finished fourth with 664 points, followed by Maryland (653), Virginia Tech (511), N.C. State (509) and Georgia Tech (365). Wake Forest (273), North Carolina (184) and Duke (114) round out the last three spots.

Virginia coach Al Groh told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that if he was picking, he would have ranked Clemson ahead of his Cavaliers because of the importance of returning a starter at the quarterback position and because the Tigers “might have been playing better than anybody at the end of [last] year.”

It’s an old adage that the University of Virginia coaching staff has seemingly taken to heart recently: “The early bird catches the worm.”

With the 2004 season fast approaching, and several high-profile members of this season’s recruiting class making headlines, there’s another group that is surprisingly stealing a good deal of attention — the class of 2005.

The Cavaliers already have verbal commitments from 20 rising high school seniors to don the orange and blue in two years time. Among those prized prospects are quarterback Vic Hall from Gretna, Va., and New Jersey products offensive lineman Eugene Monroe, linebacker Lamont Robinson and defensive back Mike Brown. To put the number of Virginia commitments into perspective, Virginia Tech has seven players committed for 2005. LSU has eight, and Miami has only three.

With a lot of football to be played and official commitments to be made, some programs view putting so much stock into young players as risky. Not Virginia coach Al Groh.

“I don’t see what risk there is involved in it,” Groh said. “These are players that we’ve targeted from the beginning as guys that we want to have on our team whenever we could get them. There’s only benefit in it in that we know that the player has already said ‘yes’ once to Virginia. What this does obviously is makes us the target of all the other teams that might continue to recruit the player, but I’d rather be the target than just one of many.”

Joining that class next year will be 2004 recruits offensive lineman Brandon Albert and linebacker Olu Hall who were found academically ineligible for this season. Even with the delayed arrival of Albert and Hall, and the loss of Ahmad Bradshaw, the class of 2004 has talent. The biggest names in the class are cornerback Philip Brown, defensive end Chris Long, running back Cedric Peerman and tight end Tom Santi.

Brown was a 2003 recruit but spent a season at Hargrave Military Academy. He comes to Virginia as one of the highest rated junior college cornerbacks in the nation. Long, son of NFL Hall of Fame defensive end Howie Long, was the 2003 Gatorade Player of the Year in Virginia. Peerman, a PrepStar All-American, was a consensus top 15 prospect in the state of Virginia and Santi, a top 10 tight end prospect, is built in a similar mold as Heath Miller.

With a talented group set to take the field in a couple of months, and 22 of 25 scholarships accounted for in 2005, ACC expansion looms as the biggest news on the horizon for the future of Virginia recruiting.

“The ACC has positioned itself to become the premier football conference in the country,” Groh said. “As a result I think it will raise the profile of all the members to recruits around the country. From that standpoint I’m sure that there will be progressively greater impact as the seasons go on.”

That heightened profile will certainly bring a level of competition previously unseen in the ACC. The Cavaliers will need the continued dedication of the staff to bring in even more highly rated classes. The help of one very dedicated group of students, the Cavalier Connection, is certainly going to help them in that.

“We have about 40 to 50 members comprised of girls and guys and we help with the recruiting for the football team year round,” fourth-year Cavalier Connection member Vivienne Bui said. “We help on football game days, we help when recruits and their families come and host them. It’s great because [the recruits] really get to ask the questions that they really want to know about the school, student life and such that they probably wouldn’t feel comfortable asking a coach.”

Bringing in top recruiting classes year after year has proven to be a team effort. The Cavalier Connection is able to provide these high school students with a different perspective, one from outside of Scott Stadium, while the coaching staff can make sure they’re confident in the on-field product.

This season, Miami and Virginia Tech are joining the ACC, and in 2005, so will Boston College. With a mega-conference on the horizon, these two classes seem to be arriving just in time for Cavalier fans.

Giving up something you love is hard. Smokers love to smoke, drinkers love to drink and, well, people who watch television love to watch television. This summer I was forced to give up watching sporting events on television for the most part, a passion of mine since I saw my first installment of SportsCenter so many years ago. It has been tough, especially when trying to write a sports column each week for this paper and having only the Internet to work with.

I’m currently finishing up a stint at camp in Charlottesville with the Summer Enrichment Program. Not only do I not have air conditioning, but I am also prohibited from having a television — with good reason. I’m supposed to be supervising the kids, not watching highlights, which I am sure would’ve happened at least once, likely resulting in at best an injured camper and at worst a lawsuit.

It was hard; this was an eventful summer in sports, particularly the last couple of weeks. Just four short days ago, the Ricky Williams era ended as he boarded a plane to Asia. He was already in Hawaii — how much more remote could he be searching for? I hope he keeps up his tradition of always wearing his helmet just like he did that season where he snapped and only gave interviews through his facemask. He can wear it as he searches for inner peace over there. The language barrier is tough, I’m sure, but a reflective visor and NFL helmet could do wonders for that issue.

I have missed some actual important events, not just news like Ricky’s departure. As a golf fan, especially around majors, I was frustrated that I missed most of the British Open. I got so desperate to see it that at one point I took all eight of my campers to the head counselor’s suite, who has a television, and made them sit on the floor and watch the final four holes of Sunday’s round.

Most of the kids whined the entire time, claiming they knew nothing about golf and that they were bored and wanted to leave. In order to be annoying and try and force me back to the room, one camper, clearly a baseball fan, yelled strike after every practice swing taken by the golfers. The same camper asked repeatedly how they could miss the ball — it wasn’t moving, and it was right in front of him. I tuned them all out, and focused on one 13 year old who carries a nine handicap. He and I enjoyed the reprieve from an Internet scoreboard for all it was worth. As fate would have it, Todd Hamilton and Ernie Els tied, sending the match to a playoff that Hamilton won but that I simply couldn’t talk the kids into watching.

I also missed the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong’s sixth straight victory. While I’m not a big cycling fan, I understand the sport much better after reading up on how the teams work, which is impressive. Some team members’ job — and these are top-notch bikers — is to shuttle water or anything else that Armstrong needs. Other riders are sent to chase down leaders and tire them out, while still other riders simply ride in front of Armstrong to protect him. It is incorrect to think that cycling is an individual sport. He relies on that team every step of the way and by assembling the best team, he has almost assured himself of victory each time he races.

So, while I’ve relied almost solely onthe Internet and the occasional Washington Post for my sports news, I’ve managed to stay on top of the sporting world. But I would’ve liked to see Emeka Okafor get drafted. Or that Red Sox vs. Yankees brawl. And to think of all the Inside the Huddle with John Clayton segments I’ve missed…

The one-sentence statement released Friday afternoon was short, concise and to the point.

“University of Virginia football coach Al Groh announced that Ahmad Bradshaw will not be participating with the team this season.”

Details about the situation, however, are not forthcoming.

Bradshaw, an incoming freshman and all-state running back in high school, was arrested in the early morning hours of July 17 when he was alleged to have fled from police after being stopped for underage alcohol possession. He was charged with the Class I misdemeanor of obstruction of justice, which carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a fine of $2,000. Bradshaw is set to appear in Charlottesville General District Court Aug. 13.

The arrest may not be the only reason for Bradshaw’s dismissal from the team. Reports last week said that the Virginia football coaching staff had learned of other incidents of Bradshaw’s as a juvenile and called his high school coach to find out more information. Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage did not confirm those reports last week, but he did not deny them either.

Whether Bradshaw will be enrolled in the University for the academic year, whether he may play for the Cavaliers in 2005, and what the exact particulars were that caused Groh to dismiss him from the team are all questions that have been left unanswered.

Groh limited his statement to only 20 words, and the Virginia Sports Information office indicated there would be no further comment.

Maybe you don’t believe Scott Bottoms. Maybe you think his 30-second clip on ESPN.com isn’t persuading enough to convince you that he deserves to be named the No. 1 fan in the country. Maybe you need to hear it from someone in authority who has been impacted by Bottoms’ devotion. Someone like, say, Al Groh.

At the end of Virginia’s 29-17 win over Georgia Tech last November, the Virginia football coach was so moved by the fan support that he decided to jump into the stands, Lambeau-leap style. He chose to jump right into the arms of Bottoms.

“He’s a die-hard fan,” rising fourth-year College student John Nader said of Bottoms, also a rising fourth year in the College. “His enthusiasm is amazing and he always makes it out to games. He travels to away games as well. Weather is not going to stop him — he’s going to do whatever it takes.”

The intensity of Bottoms’ devotion was enough for ESPN.com to nominate him, along with 24 other fanatics for the honor of being crowned the nation’s No. 1 fan.

The contest began last Friday and continues for the next four weeks. The first period of voting ends tomorrow, and the top 15 vote-getters will advance. Over the following three Fridays, the field will be narrowed to 10, five and finally, the sole winner — the No. 1 fan in the nation. If Bottoms finishes first, he wins a free vacation and a Toyota Tacoma.

Each contestant has a brief video clip on the Web site explaining their commitment to his or her team and what they believe it means to be a real fan. Bottoms spoke with ESPN right after last season’s Virginia-Virginia Tech basketball game on the eve of the yearly football contest between the two heated rivals.

“I’m going to camp out tonight,” Bottoms said in the clip. “It’s going to be like 30 degrees, I don’t really care. I have to be in the front row. I’m going in body paint, it doesn’t matter — all out.”

Bottoms, who transferred to Virginia for the spring semester of his second year, was shocked and thrilled when he found out he was a contestant.

“I was incredibly excited, I didn’t expect it at all,” Bottoms said. “I had no idea. When they interviewed us, they didn’t mention it. I wasn’t performing for anybody when they filmed me.”

Bottoms said that the ESPN officials told him that they were filming clips they might use on the network at a later date. On July 12, he received a letter informing him that he might be one of the contestants. A week and a half later, he checked the Web site and saw his face and video posted.

ESPN did wind up using some of the footage they filmed of Bottoms in a commercial for its network. The spot includes Bottoms stating his name and his hometown, followed by him screaming “Go Hoos!”

But airtime on a national basic cable network is not enough for Bottoms. He is determined to earn the title as the nation’s No. 1 fan.

“I’ve scoped out the competition and I think my chances are great,” Bottoms said. “I’m one of the only young, college-age contestants. The bright orange color and the helmet stands out and I seem more passionate than most of the others.”

The orange construction helmet Bottoms is donning in the video is part of his “uniform” during basketball games. He wears the helmet, equipped with cup holders on each side, along with a bright orange construction vest to each game — where he can usually be found in the front row of the student section. He even tried to add big orange duck feet to his costume, but found that they were too much of a nuisance going up and down the stairs when he had to use the bathroom.

Bottoms is hoping that his crazy antics and hard-core fanaticism will translate to votes in the ESPN.com contest.

“I represent the passion not only of a true U.Va. fan, but of every dedicated fan out there,” Bottoms said. “I have as much passion, dedication and loyalty as anybody.”

On at least one occasion that passion, dedication and loyalty has exceeded that of even the most dedicated supporters that Bottoms cheers with.

“He’s always the first one to volunteer to body-paint himself at football games — even when it’s 20 degrees,” rising fourth-year College student Lee Martin said. “At the Virginia Tech game, he wanted to get seven or eight people to spell out each letter of ‘Virginia’ on their chests, but that didn’t work out. It was just too cold, no one else was willing to do it.”

No, the weather or the possibility of public embarrassment are never obstacles to Bottoms. It’s only other people’s sanity that sometimes stands in his way.

Fenway Park, the Green Monster, Red Sox-Yankees, the Curse of Bambino: powerful phrases for any baseball fan. The Boston Red Sox are one of Major League Baseball’s most storied franchises and former Virginia pitcher Andrew Dobies hopes to become part of that Red Sox lore.

In June, the Boston Red Sox selected Dobies in the third round as the 95th overall pick of the Major League Baseball Draft. Dobies became the highest Cavalier draft pick since 1997, and only three Virginia players have been drafted higher since 1966.

“Andrew Dobies deserved to be drafted in the third round,” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said. “He’s a talented left-handed pitcher that has worked hard and paid the price for success.”

Dobies decided to forgo his senior season as a Cavalier to play for the Red Sox organization, where he was designated to the Sox’s class A affiliate, the Lowell Spinners.

Last season as a junior, Dobies was one of Virginia’s weekend starters and led the team with 108.1 innings pitched and a team-high 109 strikeouts while amassing a 6-3 record with a 3.41 ERA. He started 16 games for the Cavaliers and held his opponents to a .257 batting average. In his six appearances so far with the Spinners, Dobies has tossed 13 strikeouts in eight innings of work and posted a 1.13 ERA.

The Red Sox have a specific plan for Dobies and are letting him start games for the Spinners, but only allowing him to pitch one or two innings because of how much he threw last spring and in college.

“They want to give my arm a rest and get me used to minor league pitching and minor league hitting,” Dobies said. “Once I get a break in the fall and winter I’ll be full throttle in spring training.”

Dobies’ success in the time he has seen so far with the Spinners is even more impressive considering the large differences between minor league baseball and college ball.

“I think the hitters make you pay more for the mistakes that you make,” Dobies said. “If you leave a ball up in the zone it’s going to get hit hard, as opposed to college, where you can get away with that with some of the weaker hitters. You see more guys that know how to pitch and that have talent.”

One of Dobies’ advantages is that he is a left-handed. It is easier to control the running game being left-handed because the pitcher naturally looks towards first base. There are also fewer lefties in baseball than right-handed pitchers; hence, hitters don’t see left-handed pitchers as often. Plus, there are a lot of lefty power hitters in the major leagues and it is easier to control them as a southpaw.

“He’s a competitor and he throws three pitches for strikes,” O’Connor said of Dobies. “When you’re left-handed with the velocity that he has, that’s a pretty good pitcher.”

Dobies’ goal for now is to pitch in high A next spring training (the Spinners are a low A team). O’Connor said there are a few things Dobies can improve on to move up in the organization, but he sees a bright future for his old ace.

“Number one, he just needs to continue to stay healthy,” O’Connor said. “Number two, he just needs to sharpen up all his pitches and to develop and mature… I’m confident that he’s going to progress through the minor league system and have a chance to pitch in Fenway.”

THE RACE for president has led many to believe that the nation has hopelessly divided itself. The label “Massachusetts liberal” alone can toss a candidate out of competition in 15 states. The other candidate has even more bashers. A country like this has few shared principles and little hope of coming together.

Pundits and demographers have crafted a dramatic mythology of total division in the past few years. The exaggeration has been repeated so many times that many Americans believe the country has split itself intractably down the middle. Entire states have closed their minds. The whole country is marked solid red or solid blue, and if we’re lucky, we’ll avoid a civil war.

Certainly, President Bush and his policies have proved divisive. Completely new national challenges have forced voters to draw solutions from ideology instead of previous experience. But this race’s divisionist rhetoric and attack geography distort the larger picture. On a holistic level, our factions and regions do not stand as far apart as many commentators would suggest. In fact, voters everywhere demonstrate open-mindedness. Even in the bluest states, Republican ideas can still win the day, and vice versa.

In the division mythology, certain states will never endorse certain political positions or elect the candidates that espouse them. Specifically, most of the Northeast and Northwest have written off Republicans, and much of the South has closed the door to Democrats. The division rhetoric can become so intense that voters forget that even in states considered “solid” for one party or the other, the loser will often win 40 percent of the votes — a significant share.

Indeed, the fact that a state has not warmed to a particular national candidate does not mean it will never cozy up to a party’s ideas.

Many will assume that the states already in the Kerry column have an allergy to conservatism and would never elect a Republican. Pundits write off New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland, Hawaii and California as states that have fully rejected conservative ideas. But all those states have Republican governors. And while they may not all hail from the same faction of the GOP as President Bush, their elections all show that those electorates — supposedly dyed blue in the wool — can vote for parts of Republican ideology.

Similarly, Democrats control governors’ mansions in such solidly pro-Bush states as Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, North Carolina, Wyoming and Virginia (and until recently, Kentucky and Mississippi). This year, Democratic candidates for governor are running neck-and-neck with Republicans in two Bush bastions, Montana and Utah.

The gubernatorial races alone prove that Americans have more political imagination than the division rhetoric would have voters believe. And while many claim that a Massachusetts liberal like Kerry could never win in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Alaska and Oklahoma, Senate candidates who champion many of his ideas are doing just fine there.

In all those red states, Democrats are running solid campaigns in close races. Though (like all politicians) they break with their party line at points, all those Senate candidates highlight traditional Democratic issues like health care, education and Social Security — ones John Kerry talks about in his own campaign.

But none of those candidates is going to this week’s Democratic convention. They openly say that though they share plenty of positions with the presumptive Democratic nominee, perceived closeness to Kerry could poison their campaigns at home.

As these examples show, the stigma attached to attack geography has become so universally assumed that campaign staffers now consider it fact. But in a more substantive sense, division myth has a harder time tabooing ideas. After all, after five Southern Democrats announced their retirement a few months ago, pundits had called the Senate for the GOP. But after looking at the numbers and political realities, they declared Democrats back in the race. Susceptibility to repeated name calling did not mean that Americans were as ideologically fixed as many had assumed.

Certainly, our nation faces new, divisive issues. An unusually divisive president has forwarded divisive solutions to them. But the rancor that understandably surrounds presidential politics has so far failed to overwhelm normal American political behavior, marked by a willingness to cross party lines. In spite of the fight for the White House, a wider look shows that Americans still bear to the center, adapt beliefs to context and cast ballots with an open mind.

That’s exactly the way that one nation, indivisible would have it.

Michael Slaven is a Cavalier Daily columnist. He can be reached at mslaven@cavalierdaily.com.