In the recent article about the Virginia Pep Band (“Virginia Pep Band plans protest for Saturday afternoon,” 3/25/2009) Leonard Sandridge, University executive vice president and chief operating officer, was quoted as saying “the status of the Pep Band has been clear from the beginning” and that “no new developments about it have arisen.” I have great respect for Sandridge but am compelled to report that his statement is not complete.

In July 2005, I spoke with Sandridge in my then-capacity as President of the Pep Band’s alumni support group (Friends of the Virginia Pep Band). During that call, Sandridge told me that, while the administration had no existing plans to invite the Pep Band to perform at Olympic sports, the door was not closed forever. Sandridge told me that if the Pep Band demonstrated a consistent record of positive contributions to University life over a period of years, he would be open to reconsidering a role for the Pep Band in the future. In short, he kept our hope alive.

Since July 2005, we have worked diligently to turn that hope into a reality. We provided regular updates to Sandridge of the Pep Band’s good works, always gently repeating our hope. Sandridge did not dispel it until last month.

When hopes are pinned on an “open door,” a decision to close that door forever is a significant “new development.” Sandridge’s announcement last month hit us like a ton of bricks. The administration’s policy toward the Pep Band is divisive and heartbreaking. I hope that Sandridge will recall what he told us and reopen the door for the Pep Band.

I would like to express my dismay in the abundance of letters to the editor regarding The Cavalier Daily comics.

The Cavalier Daily, a student-run daily publication, is intended to inform and entertain a broad and diverse population of students, faculty, alumni, and anyone else with access to it in print or online. It would be an impossible task to please everyone who fits this readership, and for the readers to have that expectation is ridiculous. It is especially ludicrous because we readers are not even paying subscribers who actually help employ the staff. If you are offended by a certain writer or artist, why continue reading their material? I read the paper everyday and I often skip articles or comics that do not appeal to me for whatever reason; however, I would not consider The Cavalier Daily at fault. I would not accuse the staff of bland reporting that does not interest the student body, nor would I complain that the quality of entertainment itself is lacking.

Nowadays, it seems that any and all groups of people considered minorities, any and all religious affiliations, any and all genders are off-limits to the comics artists. I believe they should have the freedom to create what they wish to, and The Cavalier Daily should not be forced to censor material (unless they are directly libelous to someone or visually obscene) because certain people will be offended. People will always be offended by something, and of course they are allowed to express that, but they should not expect a change in content or harsher censoring. Why are we to live in an environment where entertainment that pushes boundaries is forbidden?
Instead of being personally offended by a particular artist, why not use the material to start up a discussion among your peers, boycott the publication, or submit your own ‘non-controversial’ comic? Readers sure seem to expect a great deal of limitations on and requirements for a free newspaper — a newspaper on which a large body of passionate college students generously choose to spend their time, a newspaper that is supposed to be a forum of free expression, a newspaper that is printed for a college campus, a supposedly open-minded community.

Having just read The Cavalier Daily’s report on the health risks of hookah smoking (“Hoo Loves Hookah?”, 3/25/2009) I feel bewildered. The article presents wildly inconsistent information with no attempt to reconcile the diverse data. First, the article cites an American Lung Association study that compares a hookah session with smoking 100 cigarettes.

Next, Susan Bruce of the University’s Center for Alcohol and Substance Education is quoted as saying that a hookah session delivers carbon monoxide equal to 8.4 cigarettes, less than a tenth of what the ALA study suggests.

And finally, Bruce is cited saying that “just sitting in a hookah bar” is like smoking 15 to 20 cigarettes, about twice as much as the person actually smoking the hookah.

This is confusing. It is commendable that CASE and The Cavalier Daily want University students to be able to make informed decisions about the health risks of their behavior, but I don’t feel like this article has given me a reliable sense of the risks involved in hookah smoking.

Swimming is a sport of strategy. Races can come down to tenths of seconds, which can change any race’s outcome. Because of the sport’s nuanced nature, Virginia coach Mark Bernardino constantly emphasizes attention to detail.

Detail and strategy will play integral roles for the Virginia men’s swimming and diving team when it competes in the NCAA Championships at Texas A&M’s Student Rec Center Natatorium in College Station tomorrow through Sunday. The men’s team travels to Texas with hopes of performing at or above the level that its female counterpart reached last week when it finished 12th overall at the women’s NCAA Championships.

Before the season started, the men’s team set a goal of finishing in the top 10 at NCAAs before the season started, Bernardino said.

“I wouldn’t hesitate a second to tell you that the women’s team set the bar very high for the men’s team,” Bernardino said. “The women have done a wonderful job of performing exceptionally well prior to the men all year long. Because we’re such a close-knit group it has helped motivate and set a standard for the men to aggressively go after and to try to match or [do] better.”

Some men qualified automatically because of their exceptional times and plan to focus on specific events to earn points for the team.

“There’s an incredibly different time standard that maybe five to seven swimmers can accomplish in the year prior to going into the meet, but that vast majority of athletes qualify on the provisional standard,” Bernardino said. “There’s a set number of athletes that can go so all numbers are irrelevant … but if you make an A-standard, which is so hard to do, you automatically make the meet.”

Virginia sophomore Matt McLean clocked in at 4:10.00 in the 500 freestyle, and 14:35.12 in the 1650 freestyle, earning himself an automatic entry and top seed in both events. Sophomore Taylor Smith’s performance in the 500 and 1650 freestyle events also met the A-standard.

Though McLean’s times in the 500 and 1650 are the fastest in the nation this season, this week’s 1650 will only be McLean’s third collegiate mile. The sophomore, however, is not nervous.

“I don’t base my confidence on experience,” McClean said. “Usually I try and base it on my training and how fit I know I am. I’ve gotten stronger this year and I’ve always been more of an aerobic guy and I’ve just utilized that capacity more this year in my events.”

McLean is also part of two relays that automatically qualified to compete this weekend after meeting the A-standard at the ACC Championships last month. Junior John Azar, freshman Peter Geissinger, sophomore Scot Robison and McClean will compete in the 400 free relay. The 800 free relay team is comprised of Azar, McClean, Robison and freshman David Karasek.

Senior Ryan Hurley, senior Lee Robertson, junior Eric Olesen and Geissinger will race in the 200 medley relay, and Hurley, Robertson, Oleson and Robison will swim the 400 medley relay, in which they will have the chance to earn double-points for the Cavaliers.

“For the last three years probably, [relays] have been a major focus on how we could improve our team,” Bernardino said. “The team has really bought into it and understands the psychology behind it and understands the importance of the relays. There’s a real thrill in being selected to be a part of a relay. They realize that that’s a special honor.”

Swimmers who are unable to automatically qualify in a relay or individual event use a different strategy to maximize the opportunity to win points. To save their energy for certain races, swimmers who are not seeded in high positions in one event often will be scratched from races they were originally scheduled to swim.  

“It’s a strategical game that coaches will play,” Bernardino said. “If an athlete is the 40th seed in the 100 free, but part of the 400 free relay, the coach might scratch him out of the freestyle so he’ll be fresh for the relay. That happens all the time.”

Robertson potentially finds himself in this situation. Determined to perform to his maximum potential in the relays he qualified for, he said he may opt to take the 50 free out of his line-up.

“The first day, I’ll probably end up scratching the 50 free because there are two relays on the first day, which are a lot more important than not scoring in an individual event,” Robertson said.

To me, reporters occupy a unique niche in relation to the repetition of language because of the serial nature of journalism. The repetition of events and language seems particularly emphatic in sports writing, which follows sports calendars as regular as the seasons — the very word we use to describe the arc of a league’s progression.

American sports also constantly throw the epic against the mundane. Even before a game has ended, a sportscaster has no qualms declaring it ‘an instant classic.’ The past seemingly has no end as athletes and, more importantly for the present, their results, are dredged and signified again and again. This may not be as problematic or dramatic as I describe, but I do think dehumanizing athletes into formulas and categories does have consequences that need to be considered.

Let’s take as an example a phrase from William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Easter, 1916,” that you may have come across, particularly in the wake of the violence perpetrated Sept. 11, 2001: “All is changed, utterly changed; / A terrible beauty is born.”

In Yeats’ elegy of the deaths of leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, he repeats those two lines several times in a discussion of personal agency and the power of language that tries to disrupt readers’ sense of causation and responsibility.

To draw the epic, and yet mundane, institution of American sports into the discussion, the general current of the steroids controversy in Major League Baseball at this time seems to reflect, off-hand, the day-to-day sentiment of those lines.

The sport’s relationship with how we talk about steroids seems to change as every player emerges from the shadowy realm of the ‘clean’ and steps into the spotlight. Alex Rodriguez’ admission of using performance-enhancing drugs, back during his days with the Rangers when he won at least one MVP award, seems like it should resonate most with Yeats’ words because he is the crown prince of baseball. Should he be a changed man? Or do we settle for the smaller change in how we address the transgressions in sport?

It seems more like baseball fans themselves are ‘utterly changed,’ and not the athletes or the sport. Granted, there are now more stringent testing procedures and penalties for PEDs, but the way in which the general ‘discovery’ of steroid use in baseball gets presented seems more like the American public being told, ‘OK, you can take your hands off your eyes now,’ than asked, ‘Why do you have your hands on your eyes?’

The problem of blame for steroids is complex because it is unclear, like for Yeats, how to reconcile two intuitions of the athlete: the pure talent of Benny ‘The Jet’ Rodriguez and the commodity of steroid users. Yeats’ use of the passive illustrates the perceived passivity of steroid users that keeps the debate from brimming over. So, for the sake of the game, or the owners’ pockets, we do not try to look too deeply at why a player uses steroids. We can imagine the pressure and expectations players have for themselves to succeed; and when those expectations are tied with the unlimited possibility and incredible diversification of labor at the heart of the American dream, the slightest tear of the wrong tendon or the decision to ingest the wrong chemical can derail not a career but a life.

Josh Hamilton’s recovery from problems with drugs after sustaining a series of injuries that kept him off the field seems to be the exception, rather than the norm. And though I do not claim to have statistical data to back up such a statement, it does seem to correlate with our expectations about the game. Here, we confront the terrible beauty of the game: the ability of players, former and current, to strike, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Such tenacity and commitment, in the face of millions of fans, or the lifestyle supported by millions of dollars, seems to mask their humanity in statistical significance.

The question becomes then, what can be done about this? First, the terms of the debate or discussion about steroids need to transform — something that has already begun. Although government involvement like the Mitchell Report matches the public’s political power against the industry’s economic power, the government too often concerns itself with short-term, election-based results. On the other hand, it may be too much to ask for the objective truth, for what actually happened, because I am not convinced the American public would know how to properly use such information. These players have offended themselves, the game and the fans, but I think I speak for many fans when I say strict legal remedies seem to take the offense too seriously. This is a game after all, just one that happens to produce billions of dollars of revenue every year.

The Virginia football team hosted scouts from 29 of the 32 NFL teams at its annual draft-eligible players’ Pro Timing Day this past Thursday. With the NFL Draft approaching April 25-26, the scouts were eager to get a first-hand look at 12 Cavaliers who had impressed them in recent offseason events and throughout their college careers.

The day started at 7 a.m., when the first scouts arrived at the football team’s McCue Center headquarters to watch game film from past seasons. The game tape — used internally by coaches — is taken from a steady end-zone camera, which follows the action of a play from the sideline angle, unlike television footage. From this angle, any of the 22 players on the field can be watched for an entire play. Ultimately, scouts use these tapes to help evaluate how a particular player handles himself on the field.

Virginia coach Al Groh gathered the scouts at 9 a.m. for an informational meeting with athletic trainer Kelli Pugh and strength and conditioning coach Brandon Hourigan. The players began warming up downstairs in the weight room at 9:45 a.m., and by 10:15 a.m. the show had been turned over to the NFL scouts.

“Down to spandex,” a scout from the Indianapolis Colts instructed. Football pads may sometimes conceal a less-than-impressive physique, but tight-fitting shorts and tank-tops do not. A player’s physical fitness shows to an extent during workouts and on game film, but scouts also use the pro day to “eyeball test” players. In addition to a player’s stats, scouts ask themselves whether the prospect would make a successful professional football player.

The players were then weighed and measured for height, before lining up for the vertical jump, broad jump and bench press. With his teammates cheering him on, wide receiver Maurice Covington impressed scouts with a 40-inch leap; Covington was not invited to the NFL Combine in February, but his vertical jump would have been in the top five among receivers there. The broad jumps were measured with less fanfare, and then the players were given instructions for the bench press.

“Lock your arms out and keep your butt on the bench,” a scout from the New York Giants instructed. When lifting for repetitions, players can be tempted to short-arm the bench bar instead of performing a full press, and arching one’s back is one way of compensating for spent strength at the end of a set.

“The form [scouts] want is stricter than what you’d have in a normal workout,” defensive end Alex Field said.

Field managed a solid set of 23 reps of 225 pounds, which was second to that of senior linebacker Antonio Appleby’s 24. Appleby pressed the bar 27 times, but had three reps discounted for improper form.

Five Cavaliers opted out of the weight room tests: offensive tackle Eugene Monroe, wide receiver Kevin Ogletree, running back Cedric Peerman, tight end John Phillips and linebacker Clint Sintim, all of whom worked out at the NFL Combine in February.

Just after 11 a.m., the activities shifted outside to the practice field. Scouts were watching closely — timers in hand — as the players ran shuttles and cone drills designed to test their agility and short-area speed burst. Next came the 40-yard dashes, highlighted by an impressive run by Ogletree.

After the last measured drills had been finished, the players split up into groups for position-specific workouts. Monroe went first, drilled by the Cincinnati Bengals’ and Jacksonville Jaguars’ offensive line coaches. The drills were intended to test Monroe’s movement out of a set stance, the angles he takes when blocking and his hip explosiveness.

Next, the quarterbacks and receivers completed their drills, which featured three prospects with ties to Virginia football in addition to the players from last year’s team who had declared for the draft. Cavalier tight end John Phillips invited his brother, William and Mary quarterback Jake Phillips, to throw for him.

“He always makes me look good,” Phillips said.

Ogletree invited former Virginia quarterback Kevin McCabe, who played last season for California University of Pennsylvania. Former Cavalier running back Andrew Pearman, whose last season with Virginia was in 2007, was also present , working out as a wide receiver.

Linebackers Appleby, Sintim and Jon Copper then participated in workouts led by scouts from the Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami Dolphins. All three have significant experience in Virginia’s 3-4 defense, which appeals to pro teams who use that formation.

“Coach Groh is like a founding father of the 3-4,” Sintim said.

Appleby and Copper are considered inside linebackers, whereas Sintim played the “elephant” linebacker position, a strong side hybrid of coverage assignments and pass-rushing responsibilities in the 3-4. Sintim noted that “a number of teams with 4-3 defenses have talked to me.”

The New England Patriots showed interest in Field, putting him through footwork and agility drills after the linebackers had finished. Field has both the experience in a 3-4 front and the size (6-foot-7, 273) that teams look for in a defensive end for that type of defense.
After the workouts were finished, the players reflected on the importance and pressures of the draft scouting process.

“I’ve been working for four years,” Monroe said. “This is the easy part.”

Sintim added that he thinks the workouts are not as important as they are sometimes perceived to be.

“It all comes down to, are you a football player or not?”

Virginia bounced back from its two-game losing streak with a dominant 13-4 win against Towson yesterday evening at Davenport Field.
The No. 8 Cavaliers (20-2, 5-2 ACC), who dropped only one position in the national polls after losing two of three games in a thrilling series against No. 4 Miami, were led by sophomore Phil Gosselin, who played left field instead of his usual position of second base. Gosselin batted 3-for-4 and drove in four of Virginia’s runs.

Starting for Virginia yesterday on the mound was senior right-hander Robert Poutier. Poutier earned the win on the evening, striking out six batters and allowing three runs in five innings.

Freshman righthander Jeff Randolph took the mound at the beginning of the game for the Tigers (12-11). After giving up one run in the first inning and five runs without earning an out in the second, he was replaced with freshman right-hander Sean Bertrand, who stayed in the game for six innings. Though Bertrand was mostly able to keep the Cavaliers in check — both Towson and Virginia scored four runs after the third inning — the early deficit was too much for the Tigers.

Virginia and Towson face off again tomorrow at 5 p.m.

—compiled by Dan Stalcup

This year was going to be different. Sure, point guard Sharneé Zoll graduated, but juniorguard Monica Wright was just starting to bloom into a national star. Senior forward Lyndra Littles and senior center Aisha Mohammed would supplement Wright, and up-and-comers were going to provide support as they matured into contributors.

Despite being ranked higher than it was last season, though, the women’s basketball team walked away with an ending that could be difficult to describe as anything but disappointingly similar.

Where did the team go wrong? How did the most promising season in years fall apart down the line into quick exits from both the ACC and NCAA Tournaments?

Let’s start by looking at the season’s high point, which also happens to be its beginning: the big Nov. 17 upset against reigning national champion Tennessee, 83-82.

In Knoxville, the team set up the dynamic that would continue through the first half of December: Wright was the go-to player, scoring 35 points, but the rest of the roster provided a balanced second line that seemed capable of running a smart offensive play when Wright was covered.

This game plan of looking first for Wright and second for anyone else worked pretty well despite its predictable nature. Although Wright sometimes took close to 30 shots a game, she is talented enough to score relentlessly.

Those moments that Wright was out of the game or couldn’t find a shot, a handful of other players stepped up: Mohammed and fellow senior Britnee Millner, the two Hartigs — Jayna and Kelly, both sophomores — and three or four freshmen. Those players are the real reason this plan worked; it was a fundamentally balanced, team approach. Besides Wright, no fewer than six players were a threat to score 20 points in any given game.

Virginia, when taking advantage of its full talent, seemed like it could only lose when it got beat by sending opponents to the foul line. In the only two losses before Littles returned from academic ineligibility halfway through December, the team got scorched from the line. Old Dominion and Gonzaga, the opponents in the losses, took 70 combined free throw attempts, nailing 52 of them.

Besides that occasional flaw, Virginia outplayed its opponents in just about every game. When Littles returned in the game against Monmouth, the thinking at the time was that things could only get better. Littles, a more seasoned player than most of the others on the team who had been supplementing Wright, made a lot of shots, played a lot of defense and seemed to bolster the team.

And for a while, the Cavs seemed unbeatable. Besides a scare against Georgia Jan. 2, Virginia dominated every game until the beginning of conference play. Then, the troubles became obvious.

With Littles on the team, Virginia’s balanced approach began to shift to a more simple, two-pronged Wright-Littles attack, with Mohammed grabbing rebounds and laying in second-chance shots. The three routinely combined for at least three quarters of the team’s points.

The default plan for every play went something like this: Littles would take it up the court and look for a shot. If she found one, she’d take it. Otherwise, she’d pass it to Wright. The offense became two-dimensional and more predictable than when Wright was the lone star on the team with a multitude of players playing second fiddle.

Take the time to scroll through this season’s box scores and you’ll see Littles and Wright missing shot after shot as defenses clamped down on the Cavaliers. Part of this was just Virginia’s schedule becoming more difficult against the loaded ACC. But there’s no reason the team should have finished sixth in the ACC. Just from a coaching and talent standpoint, Virginia is at worst fourth in the conference, and even if that’s the case, the team should have given the likes of UNC, Maryland and Duke runs for their money.

And so I partially blame the dynamic of Wright and Littles for the team’s demise down the stretch. Once an opponent had the duo figured out, it had the team figured out. This pattern repeated regularly throughout February and March.

I don’t want to put, however, all the blame there. Doing so, for one, comes across as a criticism of the two players, when really they played their hearts out every minute they were on the court, which would often bear close to a full 40 minutes for each. The two are both, rightfully, All-America and All-ACC candidates, and Wright is a national player of the year nominee.

What’s more, this dynamic was not the only factor in Virginia’s demise; the main problem was that Virginia just peaked too early. When a team tops a national champion, it’s easy to do a simple translation into declaring that team a title contender, as yours truly did. Virginia worked so hard all season to keep those Final Four and ACC Championship hopes alive that the natural loss of momentum this past month really stung fans. It’s easy to call the Cavaliers’ play poor or their season a disappointment.

Maybe instead, though, the season should be looked at from the perspective of a team overachieving all year and then reverting to just achieving. After giving fans as thrilling a season as it could have hoped for, the team just ran out of energy.

The 2008-09 season closed with a decrescendo, a year after the 2007-2008 season closed with a crescendo. With the nation’s third-ranked recruiting class set to join the squad, and Wright preparing for her final season at U.Va., perhaps 2009-10 will be the full symphony we’ve been waiting for.

The No. 10 Virginia women’s lacrosse team topped No. 18 JMU 18-9 last night in Harrisonburg, Va., ending a three-game losing streak against ranked opponents.

The Cavaliers (7-3, 1-2 ACC) scored 12 goals in the second half and were led by senior midfielders Blair Weymouth and Ashley McCulloch, along with junior attack Whitaker Hagerman, who each scored a hat trick. McCulloch also led the team with three assists.

Virginia played impressive offense and defense against the Dukes (4-4). The Cavaliers limited JMU to 21 shots in the game, compared to 38 for the Cavaliers, including 22 in the second half.

The Cavaliers also dominated draw controls — an area both teams have performed well in throughout the season. Junior midfielder Brittany Kalkstein, who ranks as one of the top draw control players in the nation, grabbed a game-high five.

Senior attack Jaime Dardine and sophomore midfielder Mary Kate Lomady, meanwhile, both led JMU. Dardine and Lomady each scored two goals and notched an assist.

With the win, Virginia improved to 2-3 against ranked opponents this season. The Cavaliers defeated No. 8 Syracuse Feb. 27, then fell to No. 2 Maryland March 6, No. 4 North Carolina March 14 and No. 7 Princeton Saturday.

Virginia continues play Saturday at 3:30 p.m., when No. 5 Duke comes to Klöckner Stadium for Virginia’s last  conference game of the regular season.

—compiled by Dan Stalcup

Men’s Basketball

The performance of ACC teams in the NCAA Tournament the past weekend was mediocre, and they came nowhere near the success of representing teams from the rival Big East, which still has five of the eight teams it sent to the tourney. While the top two seeds from the ACC — one-seed North Carolina and two-seed Duke — both advanced, Wake Forest, Boston College and Clemson were upset by lower seeds in round one. The upset of the fourth-seeded Demon Deacons was the most humiliating, as they were manhandled by 13-seed Cleveland State 84-69. The six-seed Eagles were also crushed in round one, losing 72-55 to 11-seed USC; seven-seed Clemson at least kept its game close, dropping its contest by three to 10-seed Michigan.

Ten-seed Maryland made up slightly for some of its fellow conference teams’ debacles, upsetting seven-seed California in round one. The Terrapins were outclassed by two-seed Memphis in round two, however, falling 89-70.

Should Duke and North Carolina both advance through the next two rounds, they would meet in the Final Four in Detroit.

Women’s Basketball

The ACC has also underperformed on the women’s side of the NCAA Tournament — while all of the six teams sent to the tourney advanced to round two, only one team remains in the Sweet 16: one-seed Maryland. Duke, also a one-seed in the Tournament, was stunned 63-49 last night by nine-seed Michigan, which, incidentally, is where Duke coach Joanne P. McCallie was formerly employed as the head coach.

All three ACC teams that competed in the round of 32 Monday were also bounced — most notably, three-seed North Carolina failed to advance to the third round for the first time in five years, falling to six-seed Purdue 85-70. In addition, three-seed Florida State lost against six-seed Arizona State 63-58, five-seed Virginia was crushed by four-seed California 99-73 and nine-seed Georgia Tech was trounced by one-seed Oklahoma 69-50.

Maryland advanced easily in its second-round game, defeating nine-seed Utah 71-56.

Women’s Swimming and Diving

At the NCAA Championships in College Station, Texas during the weekend, N.C. State senior Kristin Davies won the Wolfpack’s first-ever national championship on the women’s side and first-ever diving championship for both the women or the men, winning the platform dive. Davies scored 339.65 in the finals, besting Texas senior Jessica Livingston’s runner-up score of 321.50.

Baseball

In one of the biggest upsets of the season, unranked Duke defeated No. 1 North Carolina in two of three games over the weekend in Chapel Hill. The Blue Devils won the latter two games of the three-game series by a run each, handing the Tar Heels their first series loss since April 2007 and their first series loss to Duke since 2001.

Clemson had a week with both a monumental high and a heartbreaking low. The Tigers first threw a no-hitter by committee Wednesday, as five pitchers in succession held USC Upstate hitless in a 14-0 victory, the first no-hitter for the Tigers since 1984.

During the weekend, however, the Tigers lost a series to Florida State in dramatic fashion, losing on a walk-off homerun in the ninth Sunday to drop two games in the series to the Seminoles in Tallahassee. For Florida State, the series win marked its first of 2009.

—compiled by Paul Montana