I write this letter to express my extreme disappointment with the athletics coverage of this newspaper. Over the weekend the men’s and women’s swim teams each recorded victories over the Carolina Tar Heels and Duke Blue Devils. These victories, however, seem to be of far less importance than the loss by the basketball team to FSU on Saturday. Of the five articles on The Cavalier Daily Web site’s sports sections, three are about the basketball team. I understand that basketball is a revenue generating sport and has a larger following, but how is it that a their poor play warrants such a large amount of coverage?

The Cavalier Daily is doing a disservice to the University and the student body by not covering all sports.

Patrick Reams
CLAS IV

I am extremely pleased with the increase in admissions applications from the communities of color for the 2009 school year. However, I am rather concerned that the article (“Class of 2013 applications show large increase in ethnic diversity,” Jan. 26) and accompanying graphic failed to address the percentage of applications received from the Asian Pacific American community.

By failing to probe beyond the University’s official press release, The Cavalier Daily advances a University-wide discourse on race and diversity that, while thankfully no longer relegated to a black-white dichotomy, continues to neglect shades of gray.

Ryan McElveen
CLAS ‘08

Several initiatives aimed at distinguishing the University from its peers were presented yesterday afternoon during a joint meeting of the University’s Faculty Senate and the Commission on the Future of the University.

University Provost Arthur Garson said the priorities and values expressed in the initiatives, which have already been approved by the Board of Visitors, were the result of a joint effort between the two groups present.

“Our strategy is to strengthen our core resources while strategically funding selected new efforts that will further distinguish the University,” said Lili Powell, Faculty Senate Planning and Development Committee chair.

In an attempt to increase diversity among faculty members, the University has created a pilot program that includes 30 diverse members of the faculty charged with the goal of developing a strong group of young, talented faculty members who can help to develop a new generation of leadership, Pediatrics Prof. Sharon Hostler said as she explained the first initiative.

Hostler spoke about the importance of recruiting the best faculty candidates from an increasingly diverse academic workforce as well as supporting and retaining the faculty members already part of the University’s ranks. Currently, the faculty does not fully represent the diversity of the University, she said, noting that the initiative is aimed at addressing this problem.

Another initiative seeks to improve higher education instruction by establishing the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, Education School Dean Bob Pianta explained in his presentation. The Center will help to provide the University with new ways to improve teaching in higher education classrooms. The program will be run through the Education School, but the staff will serve as the catalyst in establishing new activities in each of the schools across Grounds, he said.

James Hilton, vice president and chief information officer, presented an initiative for the Center for Computation-Intense Research & Scholarship with co-chair Karin Wittenborg, the University librarian. The initiative would provide ways for the University’s many academic departments to access new technology and to support a computation-intense research environment, Hilton said.

“The initiative is intentionally people-intensive,” he said in his presentation. “The focus is on providing ways for faculty to collaborate with each other, students and technically-oriented staff who are fluent in the methods of computationally-intense inquiry and to make sure that new and existing infrastructure commitments align with the needs of our scientists and scholars.”

Computer Science Prof. Andrew Grimshaw presented another technology-oriented initiative focusing on incorporating more high-level computing systems into resources available for members of the faculty, in addition to the “basic tool” technology education that is offered now, Grimshaw said.

Religious Studies Prof. David Germano, meanwhile, introduced an initiative for the social sciences, humanities and arts network of technological initiatives, which will help to connect faculty members from related fields.

By comparison, in an effort to connect students through different fields, Vice Provost for International Programs Gowher Rizvi presented an initiative for programs that would better equip University students to be “global students,” he said. He added that it is important that students can understand different cultures and can be effective participants in a world of increasing globalization. To prepare students for international studies, he said, “you very much have to rethink what sort of education we are offering our students.”

One of goals of the initiative is to ensure students are fully able to absorb and learn from the culture of another place when they study abroad, Rizvi said. Language was also a key factor, he said, adding that the project would help to “expand the ability of teaching languages to students.”

Vice President of Research Tom Skalak presented the final initiative, which focused on science, technology and research.

“U.Va. knows research,” he said, expounding on the ways in which the University has built up its research program in recent years and outlining the ways it can improve. Designing sustainable programs, buildings and research is especially crucial to the University’s future, Skalak said.

For each of the new initiatives to be fully realized, collaboration between faculty and administration is absolutely necessary, Powell said. She encouraged faculty members to serve as representatives within their departments to engage other members of the faculty in the open dialogue process of implementing the initiatives.

“The key question is how to organize ourselves,” Faculty Senate member Ann Hamric said. “We, as senators, have to grapple with that key concept.”

—Prateek Vasireddy contributed to this article

As this Honor Committee’s term winds down, Committee members have raised concerns about garnering enough interest in the upcoming Honor Committee elections.

“Last year, we had a lag in filling spots,” Committee Chair Jess Huang said at Sunday’s meeting.

Last spring, the Architecture, Education, Nursing and Medical schools entered the Committee with only one representative instead of the two allotted to each school other than the College, which is constitutionally provided five representatives. Nine students sought election from the College, and four students each ran from the Engineering School and the Law School.

“Some of the smaller school elections aren’t … as well advertised, and students don’t know that there are all these positions to run for,” Huang said.

After last spring’s elections, though, schools were able to fill all the remaining vacancies by using alternative processes to elect officials. To determine the second representative for the Medical School, for example, the Mulholland Society, the school’s student body association, decided to accept statements from students interested in serving as the Honor representative and then appointed Will Derry to fill the spot. Derry said he did not run for the position initially because he was not aware elections were being held.

“It wasn’t very well publicized,” Derry said.

To ensure enough students run this spring for the Honor representative positions, Derry and his co-representative Aaron Trimble plan to better advertise the elections within the Medical School community. Derry said they plan to e-mail first-year Medical students to garner more interest.

Poor advertisement, however, may not be the sole explanation for why so few people from some schools run for Committee positions. Derry said he believes the notion of honor is much more prevalent among undergraduate students in the College than it is with Medical students.

“All we have are multiple choice tests, so you can only cheat one way,” Derry said. “People in the [Medical] School know the honor system’s there, but it’s very cut and dry.”

He added that in the past 10 years, there have only been two honor cases in the Medical School.

In addition to raising awareness about the Committee and its elected positions, the Committee has also begun to form its transition committee, which serves to ensure the transfer of leadership to the next Committee runs smoothly, Huang explained.

The transition committee is responsible for planning the Committee’s retreat weekend in March, during which newly elected representatives undergo training. Executive Committee elections are also held during that weekend, Huang said.

Next week’s Committee meeting will be held at 3 p.m., rather than 8 p.m., because of Super Bowl Sunday.

A recent study by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching suggested a need for a shift in undergraduate engineering education from predominantly theory-focused programs to a more practical, realistic format with a focus on professionalism.

Sheri Sheppard, professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University and a consulting scholar at the Foundation, said she and her colleagues studied 40 undergraduate engineering programs, mainly focusing on self-assessment documents from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology to see how the schools presented their own programs. Of these 40 schools, Sheppard said, the researchers chose seven schools to study more thoroughly through campus visits.

“We spent two to three days on each of those campuses, trying to get a deeper feeling about what … their priorities were,” she explained.

Though Sheppard said each school had unique elements, she added that “there are some really dominant blocks that you find in each of the programs.”

For the purposes of the Foundation’s study, Sheppard said a “block” is both a body of teaching material and literally a block that prevents young engineers from being taught most effectively.

“The problem with forming programs around blocks is it’s harder to create connections,” Sheppard said. “In real engineering, you draw broadly from a set of tools and strategies. Blocks may be convenient for organizing a program, but [they keep] students from having authentic experiences.”

In addition, Sheppard said she and her colleagues found the study of professionalism and ethics was a smaller portion of many programs than she and her colleagues would have liked.

“We’re overjoyed that it’s on everyone’s radar, but it’s often there in a very small way,” she said. “One of the things we’re calling for is making professionalism the guide of programs.”

Sheppard said the researchers are recommending an “integrated network model” with professionalism forming the backbone of the model and they want the study of engineering to focus more on the actions and attitudes of practical engineering.

She added that students should be “confronted with the messiness of real work.”

University Engineering Dean James Aylor said he agrees with the idea that an increased focus on professionalism is needed in engineering education.

“You are developing products and services that are intended to improve the lifestyle of individuals,” he said. “You’ve got to be a professional and you’ve got to worry about the ethics side of engineering. There’s no question that that has to be a main component of the education process.”

Aylor said the University’s Engineering School focuses on teaching students about ethics and the real world of engineers.

“I don’t think we’re particularly unusual about students coming into engineering and not really knowing what it’s about,” he said. “They’re good at math and science, and someone told them along the way that an engineering degree is useful.”

Aylor said all Engineering students must take a few courses that focus on helping them to understand the value of engineering and what different types of work engineers actually do.

First-year students take a project-oriented ENGR 162, “Introduction to Engineering” course, he said, to move beyond the theoretical and “get excited about engineering.” Students also take STS 101, “Engineering, Technology and Society,” with the goal of learning about engineering in the context of the real world.

In the STS class, Aylor said, students get a chance to interview a faculty member and to give a presentation about what he or she does and why he or she is an engineer.

“We try hard to make sure [students] understand what engineering is about,” he said.

Another concern in the field of engineering, Sheppard said, is keeping students interested in the field.

“More people are going to college,” she said, “but the percentage of engineering [students] is declining.”

Sheppard said the number of women and minority students studying engineering is also low.

“There’s evidence that when you bring a diverse team together, the number of ideas and space of exploration is larger,” she said. “We need those groups because we need their broader thinking or their different thinking. The field as a whole is disadvantaged by a lack of diverse people.”

Aylor said the University is fortunate in that women make up 30 percent of undergraduate Engineering students; however, he also said a lack of female engineering students is a widespread problem.

“Across the country only about 18 percent of the undergraduate population [of engineering students] is female,” he said.

Aylor said one reason for the higher-than-average female population of the University’s Engineering School might be the fact that the University is a major liberal arts institution.

“It gives students the opportunity to take courses in other areas,” he said.

As for the minority student population of the Engineering School, Aylor said there is room for improvement.

“We are trying to attract some of the best and brightest in minorities, but it can be hard,” he said. “You just have to capture the people wanting to be engineers.”

An ongoing collaboration involving the University’s Nursing, Medicine and Engineering schools has resulted in the creation of a simulator designed to help fight prostate cancer. The simulator, known as the Virginia Prostate Exam Simulator, is a human patient simulator created by professors, undergraduate students and graduate students that is designed to help teach students how to effectively detect prostate cancer.

Medical students have had limited opportunities to perform prostate examinations in the past, Emergency Medicine Prof. Marcus Martin noted, adding that the University created the Medical Simulation Center in 2004 to research and create better simulation techniques, such as the VPES. Since that time, the program has been improved and University community members have continued to benefit from the opportunities for learning offered by VPES and other simulators.

“One of the tasks for the simulation center was to develop a life-saving techniques workshop for Medical students,” Martin said, which could teach “them procedures without the use of live animals,” a technique previously used by other schools. Other forms of earlier prostate examination included non-interactive simulators that were unrealistic, unable to provide feedback and easily memorized by students, said Gregory Gerling, assistant systems and information engineering professor. Matrin and Gerling, along with Asst. Nursing Prof. Reba Childress, collaborated on the VPES project to provide students with a more realistic learning opportunity.

The VPES combines two major concepts, Gerling said. First, the simulator, which is a model consisting of four prostates filled with small water balloons, can be changed on demand by inflating or deflating the balloons inside the model.

“There are over 100 possible abnormalities you can turn on and off in different combinations,” Gerling said, noting this is different from older models that could not be changed and only represented “three to five tumors.”

Secondly, the simulator can monitor a student’s finger pressure on the prostate.

“What we’re trying to do is correlate patterns students may use” while training with the simulator and relate that to their performance, Gerling said. “We’re trying to figure out what good performers are doing” in order to then teach those patterns and techniques to others, he added.

The VPES is able to “provide feedback instantly for the student or at a debriefing later,” Martin said. “The instructor can look at a monitor and provide feedback right away and also provide graphic evidence of whether the student palpated the tumor or not.”

This feedback includes the location of the simulated tumors, whether the student found the tumor, how many tumors there were and the student’s technique during the examination.

Martin said physicians and nurse practitioners frequently conduct examinations on a regular basis, so teaching tools like the VPES could significantly improve training and palpation techniques. He also noted that early detection and proper training in prostate examinations will greatly increase the survival rate of the many men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer for men in the US,” with “200,000 new cases diagnosed and 30,000 deaths each year in the US,” Martin said. “One in five men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime.”

The University is the only school that has a simulator like the VPES with which to train students, Martin said, noting that he would “like to see this simulator utilized at other schools around the country and even around the world.”

The simulator will continue to be worked on and improved upon, Gerling noted. Currently, students are analyzing actual samples of tumors to ensure the tumors used in the simulation are realistic in their size and stiffness, he said, adding that there is currently interest in commercializing the project.

In the three complete years of Virginia coach Dave Leitao’s career, he has not had a consistent shot-blocker. Senior center Tunji Soroye had 37 blocks during the 2005-06 season but has since faded, and last season 6-foot-5 senior forward Mamadi Diane led the Cavaliers with 22.

It seems Leitao has finally found the defensive menace he has been seeking in 7-foot freshman center Assane Sene. The native from Saint-Louis, Senegal, already has 24 blocks this season. Should he keep his current pace, Sene will finish with about 40 blocks, not including postseason play.

“He’s a high, high motor-guy,” Leitao said.

From preseason practice, both Leitao and team members praised Sene for his energy and activity on both ends of the court. That is why Leitao said Sene earned his first start Nov. 28 against Syracuse. While logging just seven minutes that evening, Sene’s minutes quickly grew in number. Since conference play began Dec. 28, he has started every contest and played at least 22 minutes in all but two games; he played 16 minutes in a 74-50 blowout against Brown Jan. 6 and played 10 minutes after getting into foul trouble in an 84-78 loss against Maryland Jan. 20.

Where he got the motor with which Leitao has been so impressed, Sene said, is from his boyhood idols: now-retired NBA players Alonzo Mourning and David Robinson, two of the best in the business at swatting shots.

“When I saw them playing, I was saying, ‘I wanna be like this guy,’” Sene said. “They get big and were playing hard. They’re kind of like models for me — I’m trying to be like them.”

Like many players from Africa, Sene did not start playing basketball until well into adolescence. After playing soccer most of his life, Sene said, he picked up basketball — which Sene said is the third most popular sport in Senegal behind soccer and wrestling — upon encouragement from his four older brothers.

“I was like 6-[foot]-8, something like that,” Sene said. “My brothers always kept telling me, ‘You should go play basketball.’”

Sene picked up the new game and quickly became a star. He participated in the highly regarded Seed Academy Camp in Senegal, where he met Amadou Fall, director of scouting for the Dallas Mavericks, who Sene said was his biggest mentor and influence in making his way into college basketball in the United States. Sene then showed well at the NBA Players Camp in June 2007, which got him on college coaches’ radar.

“The coaches over here — they know that we have the ability,” Sene said of players like him who hail from Africa. “We’re aggressive, we have the height, we can move easily,”

Sene arrived in the United States for good in summer 2007 and enrolled on scholarship at preparatory school, South Kent School, in South Kent, Conn., staying with a guardian family Fall had introduced to him in Senegal, Sene said. Upon his arrival, Sene had to adjust to the more physical style of play in American basketball, but most challenging of all, he had to learn English. Though he is now fluent, he said he had not learned any English before he left Senegal.

“My guardian family, they helped me a lot with my language and a lot of things over here,” Sene said.

In the meantime, the recruiting frenzy began. Sene averaged 10 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks per game in his lone high school season and was offered scholarships by Big East powerhouses Syracuse and Connecticut as well as Kansas and Virginia, he said. Texas, Florida, UCLA and Maryland also looked at him, according to Rivals.com.

“Before I got here, I didn’t know exactly about the conferences,” he said. “I had a teammate who was also from Senegal, and he helped me a lot to tell me about the conferences, and what were the differences and stuff like that.”

Sene made his commitment to the Cavaliers Oct. 23, 2007. After visiting Sept. 28 last year and meeting with Leitao and assistant coach Bill Courtney, Sene said his trust in the coaching staff was the biggest factor in his decision.

“Before I signed, I had a big relationship with Coach Leitao and Coach Courtney,” he said. “I trusted them before I came here. They were really nice [to] me, and I said, ‘They deserve to get me on their team, so I’m going to go play for them.’”

Though he is now equipped with English language skills, Sene said adjusting to a new environment this season has been like arriving at South Kent all over again. Now, however, Sene has a new mentor: fifth-year senior and Nigeria native Tunji Soroye, who Sene said is like a brother.

“He’s not playing this year a lot, and also he’s a fifth-year, but he keeps doing his thing, especially helping me a lot,” Sene said. “[He’s] telling me a lot about basketball. Even if it’s not improving my game, he’s telling me some stuff that I need to take … like school stuff.”

Now, Sene is at the center of a core group of freshmen and sophomores who hope to lead Virginia back to prominence. Like his team, however, Sene knows he has room to grow.

“I’m on the way — I’m not a great player,” Sene said. “I’m trying to get better.”

When sophomore Scot Robison hit the water to swim the third leg of Virginia’s 400 free relay, it appeared as if Virginia would suffer yet another close loss to its bitter foes from North Carolina. When Robison emerged from the pool roughly 44 seconds later, however, the Cavaliers’ outlook could not have been more different.

In a final event that would decide the victor of Saturday’s high-intensity dual meet — which Virginia coach Mark Bernardino described as “winner-take-all” — the Cavaliers trailed the Tar Heels by a half-second following the first two legs. Robison, however, turned in an inspired swim, not just erasing the deficit but handing sophomore anchor Matt McLean a body length of breathing room.

The distance would be too great for North Carolina to overcome, as the Cavaliers claimed first and third places in the deciding event to secure a tight 156-144 victory on the men’s side of the meet.

The win was just the beginning of an impressive weekend of swimming for Virginia; the women topped the Tar Heels 182.5-117.5 in less dramatic fashion later Saturday afternoon, and both squads dominated Duke Sunday. On the women’s side, the Cavaliers (10-1, 5-0 ACC) cruised to a 169-126 victory against the overmatched Blue Devils, while the Virginia men (10-2, 5-0 ACC) won in a 163-123 landslide.

“Beating Carolina and beating them badly is something that always makes me excited and happy,” said Megan Evo, one of seven seniors honored Sunday in their final home meet at Virginia. “[The win against Duke] was just fun. It was a good weekend.”

Though Evo played a leading role in making the weekend good for the Cavaliers, racking up three victories both Saturday and Sunday, she was just one of many Virginia swimmers to step up and turn in big performances when it mattered most.

Robison, in particular, was crucial to the men’s weekend effort, especially in Virginia’s late push to beat perennial ACC nemesis North Carolina. In addition to leading the Cavalier surge in the relay, the sophomore also won both the 50- and 100-yard freestyle. Perhaps most impressive of all was his second-place finish in the 100 butterfly; swimming on a short amount of rest, he nevertheless managed to pick up four critical points for Virginia.

“To come right out of the 100 free with less than 10 minutes rest and do what he did in the 100 fly was huge,” Bernardino said. “He was hands-down, flat-out, nothing less than spectacular today.”

If Robison was nothing short of outstanding Saturday, so was McLean. Racing against his toughest competition of the season in North Carolina sophomores Chip Peterson and Joe Kinderwater in the 500 freestyle, McLean went out fast and never looked back, leading the race from wire-to-wire to win by six seconds.  The 10th swimming event of the day, the race was perhaps the momentum-changer of the meet, because it marked the first time the Cavaliers had led since the opening relay.

“I knew what I had to do,” said McLean, who also added a victory in the 200 free Saturday. “I just wanted to take advantage of having such great athletes to race like [Peterson] and [Kinderwater] and get out there.”

Both McLean and Robison were quick to note that the team’s weekend wins would not have been possible if not for several all-important second and third-place finishes along the way. In the 500 free, sophomore Taylor Smith upset both Peterson and Kinderwater to touch second, while in the 100 free, junior John Azar came from an outside lane to finish runner-up behind Robison.

“Those were critical and just wonderful second and third places to pick up,” Bernardino said. “Without them, we don’t win the meet.”

While the men were fueled by points in some less obvious places, the Cavalier women went about their dismantling of the Tar Heels in a different fashion, finishing first in 12 of the 14 events of the day.

Joining Evo in capturing two individual events against North Carolina were juniors Liz Shaw, winner of both the 200 individual medley and the 200 butterfly, and Katherine McDonnell, who swept the 100 and 200 breaststroke events, with a personal best time in the 200.
Virginia’s Mei Christensen continued to put the touches on a brilliant season that has seen her set two conference records and twice earn ACC Performer of the Week honors. Against the Tar Heels, the junior finished first in both the 100 and 200 backstroke in NCAA provisional times; she also paced Virginia to victory in the 200 medley and 400 freestyle relays.

If Saturday’s win against North Carolina was the Cavaliers’ most spirited meet of the season thus far, Sunday’s dominance of Duke was a much more “business-like performance,” Bernardino said.

A little flat from the emotional toll of the day before, the men and women nevertheless managed to lead the Blue Devils from start to finish. After shaking up the lineup a bit to avoid a post-Tar Heel letdown, Bernardino’s squads managed to finish off an undefeated conference dual-meet schedule with the victory as they get set to enter championship season. With less than a month until the ACC Championships at Maryland and with only one regular-season meet Sunday against Pittsburgh remaining on the schedule, the Cavaliers find themselves favorites to defend last year’s team titles on both the men’s and women’s sides.

“I think that [Saturday against North Carolina] was a good foreshadowing for ACCs,” Evo said. “We kind of got up emotionally and were intense for that, so we feel good about what’s coming up next.”

Collegiate rugby uses a system which, unlike college football, uses a playoff system to determine a national champion. Though reaching the 16-team playoff is no easy feat, the Virginia men’s rugby club has its sight set on this goal. With the leadership of coach Neil Livett, the Cavaliers believe they have a chance to reach this level in due time.

The team’s lackluster 4-5 start in the fall, however, has left Livett disappointed. The Cavaliers have several more games to play during the spring, but they will need to improve in several key areas to find success.

“I have very high expectations for this team,” Livett said. “They simply didn’t materialize.”

Livett attributes the team’s shortcomings to its difficulty with the line-out, an out-of-bounds play in which both teams line up parallel to each other and compete for the in-bounds pass. Virginia’s inability to retain possession on the line-out play “led to most of the defeats in the fall,” he said.

The Virginia rugby club’s challenges are more deep-seated than its on-field struggles can account for, though.

“Since a decade ago when rugby went professional, programs within the United States have changed dramatically with many universities running programs in a semi-varsity status,” Livett said. “That assists the sport because these colleges are constantly in the mix for the 16-team national championship picture.”

Though Livett hopes his team can reach this championship-caliber level of play, he points to various recruiting disadvantages Virginia faces — that perennial contenders have overcome — as the major sources of the Cavaliers’ struggles. “Arkansas State … and [California-Berkeley] recruit worldwide because their programs are backed by the university,” Livett said. “They tend to acquire better players and higher academic players.”

Virginia rugby’s recruiting process is complicated by the lack of full institutional support that its competitors may receive. Livett currently relies on a two-tiered approach, recruiting students at the University who were varsity athletes in high school and also through an alumni system. He said he believes his efforts are hindered because the program exists only at the club status. Junior fullback and club president Chris Colliton said the team’s club-level status limits opportunities to raise funds, the value of a deeper connection with the University and the use of certain facilities and transportation. Increased public exposure, Livett said, could also help the program thrive.

“One thing that success on the rugby field would bring is increased awareness of the college to qualified foreign students — both academically and rugby playing — and also to the huge base of high school rugby players in the U.S.,” Livett said.

This focus on recruiting players who are both academically and athletically prepared to play at Virginia is of the utmost importance for Livett.

“I place a huge emphasis on scholarship,” Livett said. “It would be nice for the University to allow players to attend to their academic requirements but in a time scale that allows players to train every day. Currently, this keeps us from being effective.”

The team has conditioning five days per week, practices three evenings per week, holds pre-game run-throughs and plays most weekends.

Despite the disadvantages the team faces, Livett has improved the team’s situation in his two years as head coach.

“Four or five years ago, the program was locally based,” Livett said. “When I arrived, the club was promoted to the Division I Territorial Union. This step up from local to this level is a huge step, hence the building stage.”

The team hopes to continue to develop and build on the success of its four wins in the fall. Livett sees in his team the signs of a fundamentally sound, up-and-coming team that displayed its capability in a 1-point loss to then-No. 3 ranked Navy.

“We moved the ball around the field much better, increased our tackling quota,” Livett said. “And our restarts at the scrum were very strong.”

Because of the club’s slow start in the fall, only the first team will compete against other Division I schools that are not in the championship mix, while the second team will face local competition. Livett said he hopes the team’s tougher development track this spring will translate into success next fall and will prepare the club for a national championship run. To qualify for nationals, the team must finish in the top four in its region in the fall.

“We’re really going to try to get more of the younger guys experienced,” Colliton said. “We know we can finish in that top four.”

Such success cannot be achieved without team cohesion.

“Unlike in baseball and football — where you have star players — in rugby, it is a requirement that all 15 play together,” Livett said. “A single player cannot alone turn a game around — we’re getting that way.”

But perhaps most important for Livett is support from the student body.

“If the student population gets involved, that would help the team, improve recruitment and bring national attention,” Livett said.

Livett is a strong advocate for the sport and said he believes it is a very entertaining game — one that the student body should embrace.

“Rugby is a mix of soccer because it is territorial, basketball because of the frequent changes from attack to defense, the contact nature of football, together with the live-ball situation of wrestling,” Livett said.

It is telling that Livett described rugby as a conglomerate of common American sports; this may be the only medium through which many people can begin to understand the game. The rugby community acknowledges a sort of language barrier that often dampens interest in the sport.

“People tend to think of rugby as just a bloody game,” Colliton said. “It’s really a sophisticated game; once you learn the rules and see how it should be played, people really enjoy it.”

Many rugby insiders turn to football comparisons. “Football is five seconds of intense work split by periods of downtime,” Livett said. “Rugby is anywhere between five seconds to two minutes of intense work interspersed with a lot of running.”

Virginia rugby players will next enter the fray Feb. 4 against James Madison. Though the team’s fall season was mediocre, the Cavaliers will look to pass their recruiting hurdles and develop their rugby fundamentals so they can continue to remain competitive even while at the club sport level.

With rankings of No. 5 and No. 41 in the NCAA respectively, the Virginia men’s and women’s tennis teams are making news for their performance between the lines. But what they recently did off the court deserves much more attention. When I heard that both teams volunteered their time to work with Special Olympics Virginia in Charlottesville for the second straight year, I knew I needed to write a column about it.

The second annual Special Olympics Virginia Xperience Tennis Invitational was held Jan. 15 through Jan. 17 at the Boar’s Head Inn Sports Club of Charlottesville. The three-day tournament featured nonstop tennis matches and also included a clinic Friday night hosted by the Cavaliers’ tennis teams with the help of the Virginia softball team. This year, the number of athletes in the tournament increased from 30 to 35, and the Cavaliers were clearly moved by the event; they returned to Boar’s Head for Saturday’s awards ceremony. This impressed Special Olympics Virginia Public Relations Director Holly Claytor, who called the team’s support Saturday “one of the most rewarding things to see during the weekend.”

She was delighted to see the Virginia tennis teams support and connect with the athletes. The Cavaliers “were cheering when the athletes were getting their medals. They wanted to be there for that.”

The Cavalier players and coaches became involved in the Xperience after Ron Manilla, the tournament director at Boar’s Head, mentioned the idea to Virginia men’s tennis coach Brian Boland. Naturally, the players wanted to get involved, and Boland himself emceed the closing ceremonies at the Xperience.

While Virginia’s student-athlete volunteers surely enjoyed themselves, they certainly were not alone. For Special Olympics athletes such as Jon Fried of Charlottesville, this was an opportunity to show off against college-level players. Fried is a World Games gold medal winner, and many of his fellow athletes are highly skilled tennis players. For all 35 athletes who came to Charlottesville from 10 states to play in the tournament, as well as for the 200-plus volunteers who helped put it all together, the Xperience was truly memorable.

“What we want is that you don’t come out and just see the experience or watch the experience, we want you to have the Xperience,” Claytor said. “When you come out and get involved with the program, you will want to come back, and you hopefully will have your mind changed about these athletes and their abilities.”

Events like this are important for the community, as it shows that people of all ages and abilities can play together on the same courts and share the same passion for the same sports. Special Olympics Virginia allows athletes the opportunity to play 18 sports, from tennis and basketball to alpine skiing and speed skating. I encourage any Virginia sports team, as well as any student, to get in touch with Special Olympics Virginia if you are interested in volunteering at future events. After all, there’s no better way to help the community than to Xperience it for yourself.