Finding his niche
After 3 years in limbo, Fassnacht finally contributing for Cavs
By Whitelaw Reid / wreid@dailyprogress.com | 978-7250
April 20, 2007

Think about all of the great athletes who have passed through the Washington D.C. metropolitan area throughout the years.

Now think about this: Only one has ever been named first-team All-Met in three different sports by the Washington Post.

He is Virginia lacrosse player Adam Fassnacht - a kid who hardly saw any playing time in his first three years in Charlottesville.

At Robinson High School in Burke, Fassnacht (pronounced Foz-knocked) was a star in football, wrestling and lacrosse.

Surprisingly, he said it was a somewhat easy decision on what sport to play in college.

“I had more success in football and wrestling than I did in lacrosse,” said Fassnacht, who won a state title in wrestling in the 215-pound class, “but I thought of myself as a lacrosse player and always had the personality of a lacrosse player. I just enjoyed it a lot more.

“I loved football and wrestling but thought lacrosse was where I wanted to be.”

Until late last season, it might have been easy for Fassnacht to second-guess himself.

In his first two years at Virginia, he appeared in only 10 of the team’s 28 games and didn’t register a single point.

Last season, he appeared in 13 of 17 games but didn’t make much of a tangible contribution until the NCAA Tournament.

This season, Fassnacht has been huge.

The senior has won 54 percent of his faceoffs (98 of 181), filling the void that was created when last year’s faceoff specialist, Charlie Glazer, graduated.

“The reason you’re able to win is by possessing the ball,” said Virginia co-captain Ricky Smith, “and Adam’s been able to do that for us this season. I think he’s been a real key to our success.”

Fassnacht’s efficiency has been of particular benefit to senior co-captain Drew Thompson, who hasn’t had to take as many faceoffs.

“It’s always nice when he goes out there and wins,” Thompson said, “because doing that takes a lot of energy out of you. I can get to the offensive end fresh and get ready to run a set.”

Virginia coach Dom Starsia doesn’t usually hand out “game balls,” but he awarded one to Fassnacht after the team’s 11-8 win over Syracuse on March 3. In the game, Fassnacht won 12 of 16 faceoffs.

“He was paramount to us being able to win,” Starsia said, “and has made invaluable contributions to us this year.”

When Starsia recruited Fassnacht, he admits he wasn’t sure what his role would be on the team. He says there was just something he really liked about him.

Starsia recalled going to see the 5-foot-10 defensive end play in a football game. Just looking at Fassnacht, the Virginia coach wasn’t impressed.

“Then he had six sacks the night I was there,” said Starsia, laughing. “He was just blowing people up at the offensive line.”

When Fassnacht arrived at Virginia, he started out on the attack. In the spring, he was switched by Starsia to the midfield. With two weeks left in the season, he was asked to become a longstick middie.

By the spring of his sophomore year, he was back on attack.

Through all the position changes and lack of playing time, Fassnacht - who is known to everyone on the team as “Faz” - was only concerned with one thing: doing what was best for the team.

“These are the kind of stories that warm your heart,” Starsia said. “It would be pretty easy to get a little jaded when you’re a member of a team and your hard work isn’t manifesting itself on gameday. But that’s never been part of Adam’s makeup. He’s just been a positive influence on everybody throughout his career.

“It pleases to me to no end that he’s finally found his way on to the field.”

Fassnacht admits his first few years of not playing were frustrating. However, it also served as motivation.

“I never wanted it to be an issue,” he said. “I kept it to myself. My dad was always very supportive.

“It was never a case where I felt like I should have been out there instead of somebody else.”

It’s that kind of attitude that has endeared Fassnacht to his teammates.

“He’s always been a happy-go-lucky guy - no matter what,” Smith said. “He’s always just cared about being a part of the team more than anything else. He just brings a positive influence to everything he does.”

Added Starsia: “Over the years he’s just been one of my favorite players. He’s surpassed our expectations to date.”

THE FASSNACHT FILE
Hometown: Burke

Nickname: Faz

Major: Cognitive science

Chef Boyardee: Faz, whose father is part Italian, likes to cook for his roommates - Ricky Smith, Drew Thompson and James King. “I made a claim that my sausage is better than Coach Starsia’s.”

Before games I listen to: Outkast.

Favorite concert I’ve been to: Rolling Stones at Scott Stadium.

Did you know: Faz is a big fan of James Bond movies.

My favorite Bond: “You’ve got to go with Sean Connery, the original.”
 

McAnaney an ace in the pen for Cavs
By Jay Jenkins / jjenkins@dailyprogress.com | 978-7250
April 20, 2007

If needed, Brian O’Connor can sport a poker face that would leave legendary card player Doyle Brunson sweating in his seat.

As Virginia’s baseball coach heads into Clemson’s Doug Kingsmore Stadium, a place the Tigers call home and opposing skippers refer to as a house of horrors, O’Connor does so with an ace up his sleeve.

While the sudden comfort stems from an untimely injury that looked initially like a crushing blow, O’Connor and sixth-ranked Virginia boast a pitching staff loaded with an extra option.

That flexible alternative - left-handed pitcher Pat McAnaney - is a proven starter who is quickly emerging as a reliever eager to do anything to help the teammates he let down.

What type of injury sidelined the junior has reached urban-legend status.

“There have been rumors galore about what happened,” he joked. “Actually, it was one of the most freakish things that there could possibly be.”

With the season still weeks away in January, McAnaney was milling around UVa’s Aquatic & Fitness Center with a few minutes to spare and energy to burn.

The chance to join a quick, pick-up basketball game was too much to pass up for an award-winning prep hoopster from Syracuse, N.Y.

That decision is one that McAnaney might never forget. But, it is one that he has learned to live with.

The setback occurred on one forgettable play - McAnaney sliced to the basket, tossed up a runner and turned his head to see if the shot dropped through the net. As he did, McAnaney’s pitching hand glanced off a concrete wall.

“I realized my hand was throbbing in pain,” McAnaney said. “I was crossing my fingers thinking it is just a jammed finger, but the pain never went away.”

If missing the shot was not bad enough, after returning home, McAnaney put his meal ticket on ice.

The pain that he expected to subside remained.

“It was such a freak thing that took me awhile to believe it actually happened,” McAnaney said, “but there was nothing I could do about it.”

McAnaney had suffered a boxer’s fracture, an injury that landed his throwing hand in a cast and forced O’Connor to look for another weekend starter. That job was given to another southpaw, freshman Matt Packer, but McAnaney remained hopeful that his return would be prompt.

It was anything but.

“I remember the week before we were supposed to go to Coastal Carolina for the season opener and I was watching an intra-squad game with my pitching hand in a cast, just saying ‘I cannot believe this,’” McAnaney recounted. “The second the cast came off, I thought I would be 100 percent and ready to throw by the second weekend of the year.

“But it really took a good amount of time for everything to heal up and get back to 100 percent. I would say it was almost more frustrating once the cast came off. In my mind I was thinking I could pitch, but I had to work back up the stamina.”

O’Connor, a college pitcher at Creighton, knew it would take time for the “body strength” to return.

“Any time you do something to your hand, like he did, it is going to take some time,” O’Connor said. “I think everybody had the expectation that when he was cleared he was instantly going to be this guy who is polished and could be in the rotation.

“That is not reality. It doesn’t work that way.”

McAnaney, who entered the season with a 12-1 career record and a 2.21 ERA, did not make his season debut until Virginia’s 20th game, when he emerged out of the bullpen in a lopsided win over Niagara on March 13.

Exactly a week later, the southpaw earned his first start and tossed five innings at Richmond, logging his first victory of the season.

A rough outing against Longwood followed on March 28, landing the 21-year-old back in the bullpen for good - for now.

“With the bullpen work, everybody has their own thing that they do and I have been watching some of the other guys just trying to get the timing down,” McAnaney said of his new role. “You have to find that happy medium of being loose and ready to go in, but not to the point to where you have already thrown too much in the bullpen.

“It is almost a little bit of trial and error, but I’m getting a little more comfortable now to be able to go down there and get ready in a moment’s notice.”

Last Saturday with Virginia trailing Georgia Tech by two runs after the sixth inning, McAnaney closed out the game by hurling three scoreless frames. That bought time for the Cavaliers to rally for the win on a walk-off, three-run homer by David Adams.

“If Pat doesn’t throw those three shutout innings, we don’t win that game,” O’Connor said. “It was great to see, and I have felt like his last couple of outings that he has been a lot stronger - his velocity is coming back, his location is getting back.

“I really think he can be a valuable asset down the stretch run.”

McAnaney would love nothing more.

“The injury was a mistake and I take responsibility for it, but luckily everything is behind me now,” he said. “I am just hoping to be able to keep contributing for the team and to help us make a nice little push in the postseason.”

 

'Today, we are all Hokies' is ACC's message
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Apr 20, 2007

Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer was late joining an ACC conference call yesterday. No one objected.

Beamer had been at Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, comforting some of those wounded in the shoot- ing spree Monday on Tech's campus, as well as their families.

"I'm really glad that I went," Beamer told reporters. "They probably did more good for me than I did for them."

When the ACC set up a teleconference with Beamer and his 11 counterparts around the league each allotted a 10-minute segment -- the idea was to allow them to discuss spring football.

That was before Monday's shootings. Many of the questions and answers yesterday concerned the tragedy in Blacksburg.

"My heart sank for everybody up there," Georgia Tech coach Chan Gailey said. "I just can't imagine going through something like that."

Beamer, a Virginia Tech alumnus, said he's heard from dozens of other coaches this week, including the University of Virginia's Al Groh, Ohio State's Jim Tressel and Mississippi State's Sylvester Croom. Beamer's son, Shane, also a Tech graduate, was an assistant under Croom at MSU.

In the coaching profession, Beamer's closest friends include Maryland's Ralph Friedgen.

"I haven't talked to Frank," Friedgen said yesterday. "I'm sure he's been inundated with calls. But my heart goes out to him and to all the people at Virginia Tech. I'm going to see Frank in about a week. But my wife and Cheryl [Beamer] are very close, and they talked about what a traumatic experience it was."

N.C. State coach Tom O'Brien said: "All our prayers and thoughts are with the community in Blacksburg. It's one of those things that if not by the grace of God, it could have been us on our campus."

Beamer has built a perennial power in Blacksburg, and nationally he's been the face of his alma mater for years. In the weeks ahead, Tech officials are likely to ask Beamer to meet with students and their families and help with the healing process. He'll happily comply.

"I'll do whatever anyone asks me to do," Beamer said.

Like Virginia Tech, Clemson is a land-grant university set in a rural area. That made Monday's shootings more troubling for his school, Tigers coach Tommy Bowden said.

"Had it happened in a campus in a heavily populated area," Bowden said, "I don't think it would have sent much of a message to us or to Virginia Tech" or schools such as Auburn and Mississippi State and Mississippi.

"If it could happen on that campus," Bowden said, "it could happen anywhere."

Groh said he and his wife, Anne, were incensed that TV networks and newspapers devoted so much time and space to disturbing images of the gun-wielding Cho Seung-Hui. The focus, the Grohs believe, should be on the victims and their stories.

O'Brien, who was hired at N.C. State after last season, has visited Blacksburg periodically for more than two decades, first as a U.Va. assistant and later as Boston College's coach. He marveled at the Hokies' resilience.

"You have to love their spirit and love the way they've embraced what's going on in Blacksburg and the way they're going to get through this thing," O'Brien said.

Beamer agreed.

The tragedy "will affect everybody here on campus," he said. "The other side of it is, we've got to overcome it, and we've got to be a bigger family, and I think we will be.

"We absolutely will not give in to one person coming in and causing all this pain and suffering. We're too proud of a group of people. We grieve with the families, but we're going to come back stronger than ever."

Also yesterday, the ACC announced that it will recognize Tech at the conference's spring championships, which are under way this weekend.

Signs with this message -- "Today, we are all Hokies." -- will be displayed at the championship venues, and athletes will be provided black wristbands to wear when they compete.

At the ACC office in Greensboro, N.C., Tech's flag will be prominently displayed today to show support for the Hokies.

"The conference stands as one with Virginia Tech as they begin the healing process from this terrible tragedy," Commissioner John Swofford said in a statement.

 

Local college roundup: U.Va. athletes to wear VT logos
Daily Press
April 19, 2007, 10:48 PM EDT

University of Virginia athletes will display Virginia Tech logos on their uniforms or equipment during competition this weekend to honor and remember the victims of Monday's shooting rampage.

"This is a way for us to pay tribute to the victims at Virginia Tech," U.Va. athletic director Craig Littlepage said.
 

Cavalier spring game as lackluster as ever
Receiver issues not a matter of recruiting
By Doug Doughty

Now that Randy King has informed me that we’re wrapping up Virginia and Virginia Tech insiders for the summer, I’m guessing it would be a good idea to formalize some of my impressions after spring football practice.

I didn’t learn a thing Saturday during the Cavaliers’ annual spring game and that’s probably the way coach Al Groh wanted it. It was one of the most boring UVa spring games on record and that’s saying something.

“It’s hard to put together any cohesiveness,” Groh said. “The gameplan is very limited. What we did on Wednesday for 146 plays [in a scrimmage] is a lot more like what the team is trying to be next season.”

For the second year in a row, the winning points in the spring game were scored by a walk-on. In 2006, it was a last-minute field goal by Noah Greenbaum; this year, it was a touchdown catch by Simon Manka.

Greenbaum scored four points – a field goal and and an extra point – this past season. If Manka surpasses that total in 2007, he will have more of an impact than a lot of people would project.

In starting this story, I wrote over the UVa Insider from April 26 and was surprised to see the approach that story took. It focused around the kickers and how Ryan Weigand had boomed a 50-yard punt on his first attempt of that but had followed that with a few “clunkers.”

It sounds just like last Saturday.

We can assume that the Cavaliers will go into the regular season with Chris Gould handling field goals, extra points, kickoffs and punts inside midfield. Weigand would handle all of the other punts.

We can assume that because that’s how Virginia ended the 2006 season, not because of anything that occurred in the spring game. Gould didn’t even kick off the ground; his activity was limited to three “pooch” punts.

When asked about special teams earlier this spring, Groh noted a number of areas, including 29 Gould punts downed inside the 20-yard line, in which he was pleased in 2006.

Then, he added, “The performance of our kickers has to improve. Hey, no matter how well you block and tackle, the difference in a conference [where] a lot of teams are essentially the same team is, ‘Can you end up with a couple more points than they do?’ “

In a news conference after the spring game, Groh noted that the Cavaliers had signed a place-kicker, Chris Hinkebein, who will be joining the team for preseason drills. Hinkebein is not an option in the punting game.

In a perfect world, Hinkebein would be redshirted next year, but Groh will be less likely to go with the status quo if his kickers are on the same 12-for-21 pace they kept last year. Both Gould and Greenbaum will be seniors; in fact, Greenbaum will be a fifth-year senior and it will be interesting to see if he returns.

“I’m going to start meeting with all of these guys on Tuesday,” Groh said Saturday. “Not just with Noah, but with any other player, I’m not going to give too much of an assessment before I meet with the players individually.”

You could draw the conclusion from 7-0 score that the defense was/is outstanding and the offense wasn’t/isn’t very good, but you have to take several things into account.

The No. 1 quarterback, a guy who passed for 1,392 yards in nine starts last year, wasn’t in uniform. Neither were the top two returning receivers, wideout Kevin Ogletree and tight end Tom Santi. In all likelihood, Ogletree, who underwent reconstructive knee in early April, won’t play next season.

However, Sewell and Santi both could have played Saturday if the game had meant anything.

My guess is that Santi will catch 40 balls or more in 2007 and the other tight ends will be heavily involved, possibly even redshirt freshman Joe Torchia, who was very active in the spring game. However, based on the spring game, there should be plenty of opportunity for several wide-receiver recruits to compete for playing time.

Walk-ons Cary Koch and Staton Jobe had received praise for their work earlier in the spring, but they didn’t get much separation Saturday. Maurice Covington, probably the No. 1 returning wide receiver in Ogletree’s absence, reminds me of Fontel Mines because of his height but, like Mines, he has yet to prove he can stretch defenses.

Virginia nemesis Greg Roberts asks how UVa got in this situation and how the Cavaliers failed to recruit any big-time wideouts. But, actually, the Cavaliers did recruit them; they just didn’t sign any, losing Maurice Stovall (Notre Dame), Dwayne Jarrett (Southern Cal), Doug Dutch (Michigan) and Derek Williams (Penn State).

Virginia faded early in the Williams sweepstakes, but, at one point, the Cavaliers were the team to beat for Jarrett. The Stovall family thought enough of UVa to send daughter Enonge to play for the Cavalier women’s basketball team (after missing the 2006-2007 season, she will return for 2007-2008).

You could say that Virginia Tech’s wide receivers have been a lot better than Virginia’s receivers in recent years, but look at who we’re talking about: Josh Morgan, Eddie Royal, Justin Harper, Josh Hyman and David Clowney?

The Cavaliers blew the recruiting of Royal and his Westfield High School teammate, Sean Glennon. Not offering Glennon was the first step toward losing Royal; then, when the Cavaliers hesitated in offering Royal for academic reasons that turned out not to be an issue, they lost ground they would never make up.

Royal became a SuperPrep All-American and, along with Glennon, one of the top five players in the state. The Hokies did a good job in recruiting both of them, but Clowney was an afterthought who didn’t get an offer till late January and almost anybody could have had Harper coming out of Hargrave Military Academy. The same for Hokies stud defensive back Brandon Flowers, another Hargrave product.

Academics prohibited Tech or UVa from getting Hyman out of high school and UVa probably could not have gotten him out of high school, but when you look at the five above-mentioned receivers, Hyman had the fewest receptions in 2006.

With Fork Union coach John Shuman available to corroborate my information, I can’t say if Morgan would have had any problems with UVa admissions, but I don’t remember any attempts by Virginia to get involved with him. (The Fork Union freezeout, you might call it). It doesn’t matter, though. The point is, the fact that Tech has had good wide receivers and Virginia hasn’t is not a matter of recruiting.

I’m not saying it’s a matter of luck, either, but some of Virginia’s best wide-receiving groups have included walk-ons like Patrick Jeffers, Tim Finkelston, Keith Mattioli, Bryan Owen and Derek Dooley. Most of those walk-ons played with great quarterbacks like Shawn Moore or for teams that had pass-blockers like Ray Roberts or Mark Dixon.

Just wait. If the rest of the operation holds up in 2007, an otherwise nondescript UVa receiving corps could look a lot better.

 

Coaches reflect on tragedy
Throughout the ACC, football coaches have been glued to the news about Virginia Tech.
By Doug Doughty
981-3129

From its rural setting to its background as a land-grant institution that has become increasingly diverse, Clemson is the ACC program with a profile most similar to Virginia Tech's.

That's what struck Clemson football coach Tommy Bowden on Monday when he learned of the shootings that killed 32 people in Blacksburg.

"Had it happened in a campus in a heavily populated area, I don't think it would have sent much of a message to us or to Virginia Tech and maybe a school [like] Auburn or Starkville or Oxford," said Bowden, whose latter two references were to Mississippi State and Mississippi.

"When it happened on that [Virginia Tech] campus, it definitely was a wake-up call. If it hadn't happened in this setting, I'm not sure that schools like ours would have thought as much about intensified security measures. I'm sure our university will be meeting very shortly, as most are.

"If it could happen on that campus, it could happen anywhere."

This past fall, there was a shooting on a much smaller scale but with more of an athletic connection at the University of Miami, where defensive lineman Bryan Pata was murdered Oct. 7.

In a previously scheduled ACC coaches' teleconference Thursday, new Miami coach Randy Shannon spoke to the importance of being able to contact his players on a moment's notice.

"We have a log that's in every coach's office and in our football relations office and [with] all the secretaries," Shannon said. "It's a phone list of every player and we also have their e-mail address and their text-message information. And, we also have all the parents' numbers.

"When we need to contact the players, whether it's a team meeting or crisis or anything, we can all split up and get it done in a manner of two minutes. We have nine assistant coaches; with me, that makes 10. We have four or five people in football relations, then there's three secretaries."

Shannon, previously the Hurricanes' defensive coordinator, said the process has undergone modifications in recent years but that the players have been good about responding.

Virginia Tech assistant athletic director John Ballein said that the Hokies' football office can reach all of the players by e-mail with a single key stroke. Assistant coaches have phone numbers for all of the players in their position groups.

Several of the ACC head coaches have spoken to Tech's Frank Beamer this week, and Maryland's Ralph Friedgen said his wife had spoken to Beamer's wife, Cheryl.

"I'm sure Frank was inundated with calls," said Friedgen, who had seen clips of a convocation Tuesday at Cassell Coliseum. "I saw tears in both his and Cheryl's eyes."

Georgia Tech coach Chan Gailey said, "My heart sank for everybody up there. I just can't imagine going through something like that."

Gailey alluded to the weird behavior exhibited by Cho Seung-Hui before he embarked on his massacre.

"It's a great opportunity, in my opinion, to talk about responsibility," Gailey said. "It's a great opportunity to talk about being aware of everything that is around you in life and not looking the other way when you see something wrong or bad happening."

Virginia's Al Groh, one of the coaches who was able to get through to Beamer, objected to the front-page display that some newspapers gave to photos of Cho.

"I just got finished speaking with my wife and she said she picked up the paper and on the front page was a picture of the perpetrator," Groh said. "She said she didn't even bring the paper in; she threw it in the trash can. I think she's kind of correct.

"There should be a lot more written about the positive things that the unfortunate victims had done in their lives and not so much attention [to the shooter]. It's probably the same type of attention that reinforces people who have some of these sick ideas."