Virginia notebook: Weight added to Olympic sports
By Doug Doughty

At most Division I-A programs, the head football coach is charged with the responsibility of hiring a director of strength and conditioning.

The football players get access to the best equipment and premium lifting times, with the Olympic sports having to settle for secondary facilities and timetables.

The success of former director Evan Marcus in coordinating all of the strength programs was the impetus in UVa taking a new direction in replacing him.

Marcus' successor, Ed Nordenschild, previously had coordinated strength programs for UVa's Olympic sports. Matt Balis was hired from Florida to work exclusively for football.

Balis was second in charge of the football strength program at Florida, winner of the 2006 national championship. He will have all of the traditional duties of a head strength coach without the title but with comparable compensation.

"We didn't have anybody drop out," said UVa associate athletic director Jon Oliver, who works with football. "Al [Groh] put together the list of candidates. Everybody he targeted was in our final mix. No question, this was his hire. The director of strength and conditioning, which basically was a promotion, was my hire."

Marcus, who had been at Virginia for four years, left in January to take over the Atlanta Falcons' strength program .

"What I became concerned with was an issue of equity," Oliver said. "Although there was a room to service Olympic sports, there was one big room [at the McCue Center] servicing primarily one sport. What I said was, 'OK, understanding the priorities of football, are their ways to open up access to the other sports so that everybody feels that they're important?

"Our philosophy now is to have one unit overseeing all sports, with the director of that sitting at the top. That started with Evan. Evan brought in Ed Nordenschild and Ed was the architect of this entire plan. What I knew with Evan leaving was, we could not go backwards."

Sore arms

The good news for Virginia baseball coach Brian O'Connor is that a pair of 2006 freshman All-Americans, Greg Miclat and Jeremy Farrell, have received full medical clearance to serve as designated hitters. The bad news is, O'Connor can use only one designated hitter at a time.

Miclat, a shortstop, has a shoulder injury that limits his throwing ability and may require surgery after the season. Farrell, projected as a first baseman after playing third base as a freshman, is recovering from a forearm injury and is three weeks away from playing in the field.

Miclat has been the Cavaliers' principal leadoff man while serving mostly as a designated hitter and has a team-leading .383 average, with a school-record 32 stolen bases.

Farrell, son of Boston Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell, has 14 RBIs in 55 at-bats and is hitting .436.

Pitching is the key for fourth-ranked Virginia, whose 2.47 ERA first in the ACC and second in Division I. Sophomore Jacob Thompson is seventh in Division I-A in ERA (1.38) and senior Casey Lambert has nine saves, giving him 41 for his career and a share of the ACC record.

Sore back

Virginia will go to the NCAA women's golf regionals without No. 2 player Jennie Arseneault, who has back problems. Arsenault and Lauren Mielbrecht, who left the program before the season, were coach Jan Mann's most touted recruits. However, senior Leah Wigger has been the face of the program and this week was selected UVa women's athlete of the year.

Senior Sally Shonk, a redshirt candidate after her mother was diagnosed with cancer, subbed for Arsenault late in the year and had one of her best tournaments with her mother in attendance. The president of UVa's Student Athlete Advisory Council, Shonk will represent the Cavaliers in Baton Rouge, La., at the regionals.

Scheduling

The addition of Southern Cal was a must for a 2008 UVa football schedule that included non-conference home games with East Carolina and Richmond. The Cavaliers also wrap up a two-game series by traveling to Connecticut that year.

Army and William and Mary are possibilities for 2009, when the Cavaliers are also looking at the possibility of reviving a series with West Virginia. Long term, the most prominent non-conference football opponent in talks with UVa is Penn State.

Recruiting

Virginia has been eliminated by longtime men's basketball target Patrick Patterson, a 6-foot-8 post player from Huntington, W.Va., who announced at his team's banquet Monday night that he has narrowed his choices to Florida, Kentucky and Duke. New Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie spoke at the banquet.
 

Story time with some UVa greats
By Jerry Ratcliffe / jratcliffe@dailyprogress.com | 978-7251
May 9, 2007

Scattershooting around the sports world over your morning coffee ...

Readers often ask me what the best part of my job is, and one of the things I always tell them is getting to meet so many interesting people.

Often, when telling the stories of those people, there’s too much to include in the articles, so I try to save some of the good stuff for moments like these.

During the past month, it was fun hanging out with Gene Corrigan and Dick Bestwick on separate occasions.

Bestwick, who coached UVa football from 1976-81, returned to town for the football alumni weekend and was honored by his former players at a special function in addition to the other events. Corrigan, who retired to Glenmore with his lovely wife, Lena, coached several sports at UVa before becoming director of athletics at Washington and Lee, Virginia and Notre Dame prior to serving as commissioner of the ACC in a distinguished career.

The reunion of Bestwick’s players was a very emotional event.

Tony Blount, who hadn’t been back to UVa since his playing days (1976-79), couldn’t choke back the tears as he addressed the gathering and explained just how much playing for and learning from Bestwick meant to him.

A steady stream of former Cavalier players followed suit, and Bestwick later told this columnist that the tribute by his players was one of the most special moments of his life.

But it wasn’t all an emotional reunion. Eric Fears put on quite a show and had everyone in stitches, first confessing after all these years that the players always had a secret nickname for their head coach.

“Coach, we used to call you ‘Daddy Dick,’” Fears boldly informed Bestwick.

Without skipping a beat, Bestwick had a clever comeback.

“Well, at least it wasn’t ‘Tricky Dick,’” the coach responded.

Fears recalled one story from his playing days, noting that after one season he had taken all his final exams but one and decided he was just tired of the testing and was going to skip the exam and go home to Maryland.

No sooner had he gotten to his parents, the phone rang. It was Bestwick, who was asking him how he was doing and going through the normal pleasantries of a conversation.

“Then, Coach asked me, ‘Say, Eric, how long does it take to drive from Charlottesville to your home up in Maryland?’”

To which Fears answered about two hours and 45 minutes.

“Well then, Eric, you’ve got two hours and 45 minutes to get your [expletive] back to school and take that last exam,” Bestwick said.

Needless to say, Fears walked straight from the phone to his car, didn’t say anything to his parents, and drove back to Charlottesville and took the exam.

The peacemaker

One of the most famous, or perhaps infamous, incidents that Corrigan had to rule on during his years as ACC commissioner was the Dean Smith vs. Rick Barnes altercations during the 1995 league basketball tournament.

With a little more than three minutes left in North Carolina’s win over Clemson, Smith and Barnes were nose-to-nose in a heated verbal altercation that resulted in officials having to separate the two coaches.

Smith had reacted to Clemson’s Iker Iturbe delivering what Smith believed to be a harder-than-necessary foul to Tar Heel Jerry Stackhouse.

It was one of the most memorable ACC Tournament post-game press conferences, and my friend John Feinstein does a great impression of Smith’s answers about Iturbe’s tactics.

The Carolina coach stopped short of calling Iturbe a dirty player, instead saying, “[Iturbe] does things much the same as they do in European basketball (known for it’s rough play).”

Corrigan had to deal with it, and because it occurred in the post-season, his hands were somewhat tied for the moment. Had it been during the regular season, he would have suspended them for the next game. So, Corrigan waited until summertime for his ruling.

“I called [Carolina AD] John Swofford and [Clemson AD] Bobby Robinson and said I’d like to have those two come to my office next Tuesday at 11 o’clock,” Corrigan remembered. “Both ADs called back and said that neither coach could come.”

Well, that was the wrong answer.

“I said, ‘Fine, tell them they’re both suspended for the first two games next season,’” Corrigan relayed to the ADs.

Swofford and Robinson both called back and said the coaches will be there on Tuesday at 11.

“Well, here they came,” Corrigan chuckled. “Dean shows up and must have had 30 game tapes under his arms. I said, ‘Take them back to the car ... that’s not what we’re here to talk about.

“Dean said, ‘People are trying to hurt my players,’ and I said, ‘Dean, we’re talking about the way you two guys acted.’”

The three met for about an hour and a half and Corrigan decided he was going to end it right then and there so that it wouldn’t come up again.

“I’m going to issue a statement, and you’re both going to have statements in there, where you both apologize for your actions,” Corrigan said.

Both coaches began to balk, with Corrigan stating, “Do we really want to carry this on, or do we want to end it?”

Both realized they had drawn his ire and didn’t want to test him, so they both agreed.

However, in typical Smith fashion, following the press release, the Carolina coach complained that he had said more good things about Barnes than Barnes had said about him.

Steve Superior

Long before Steve Spurrier began to annoy coaches in the SEC, he had drawn the wrath of many ACC rival coaches.

Corrigan hadn’t been commish very long before he heard that, during an Atlanta Touchdown Club function, Clemson football coach Danny Ford had ripped ACC game officials for calls in a tough loss to Auburn.

Corrigan, who had been AD at Notre Dame, remembered how he didn’t like reading similar comments by Big Ten coaches in the Chicago papers every week during his time there.

Corrigan decided to nip it in the bud and, in a meeting with the ACC athletic directors shortly thereafter, noted that he was going to write a letter to every coach of every sport in the conference to inform them that they would be suspended for a game (no appeals) for criticizing officiating to the media.

The ADs approved the proposal and the letters went out.

The very next weekend, Duke’s game with N.C. State ended in a tie due to a critical call that would have given Duke (Corrigan’s alma mater) the win. Spurrier said that in all his days in football it was the worst call he’d ever seen.

Corrigan called Duke AD Tom Butters and arranged a meeting the next morning.

“I told him ‘Steve, you’re suspended. You can be with your team until a half-hour before the game, but when they come out of the locker room, you’re out of the stadium and you can’t be in the press box,’” Corrigan said.

Spurrier wasn’t happy and told Corrigan, “I want you to tell my team that I can’t coach them.”

Butters interrupted his coach and said, “Hey, you broke the rule, Corrigan didn’t.”

Spurrier sat out the next game, which came against archrival North Carolina, and the Dookies clobbered the Tar Heels with their coach somewhere out of the stadium.

To this day, Spurrier and Corrigan have a great relationship.

 

Hammond takes the lead for UVa
By Adrian Vigil / Daily Progress correspondent
May 10, 2007

With a 6-4, 6-4 win over Georgia Tech’s Tarryn Rudman on April 15, Virginia's Caroline Hammond won her 29th match of the season, giving her sole possession of the UVa record for wins in a season by a senior. Hammond tied the mark on Senior Day in her final regular-season home match.

“I wasn’t aware of the fact that I had tied a record,” said Hammond. “But that really topped it off because I had all my friends there. It was really cool because everyone I know was watching me.”

Hammond followed up with her 30th win of the season against N.C. State’s Neils Barringer on April 19 to set a new senior mark and tie the Cavalier single-season win mark set by Alison Cohen. Hammond’s 30 wins this year almost double her previous high mark of 16 wins, which she recorded last year. The increased production is in part due to the fact that Hammond has seen more singles action this season than in any other of her career.

While Hammond has been a fixture for the Cavaliers in doubles play throughout her career, she had been in and out of the singles lineup her first three seasons for various reasons. Having endured three years of uncertainty, Hammond has played this season with a tenacious attitude to stay in the lineup.

“Every match I have to work hard, no matter what,” Hammond said. “I think some people, when they are really good, they get the mentality that they’re going to win their match no problem.

For me, every time I go out there, I know it’s going to be tough. And I think that has helped me win all the matches I have won.”

Hammond has made it easy for Virginia coach Mark Guilbeau to keep his only senior in the singles lineup. Guilbeau noted that Hammond has improved aspects of her game to keep her spot in the lineup.

“The number one thing is that, two years ago, she shored up her serve and that was a major problem for her,” Guilbeau said. “The other thing that she has done probably better than anybody on the team relative to her level is that she has gotten herself fitter. These kids all have to understand that we aren’t fit enough right now to play at our maximum level. She’s done that, and most of that was done on her own [initiative].”

Being a self-starter is nothing new for Hammond. She has been the only member of her class in all of her time with the Cavaliers. Coupled with the youth of the Virginia team (the only other upperclassman is junior Lindsey Pereira) has put Hammond in a leadership role because of her experience.

Guilbeau noted that Hammond has used her four years of experience to push herself to new heights.

“The way she plays, she’s gotten absolutely the most out of herself,” Guilbeau said. “And that’s the biggest example [of leadership]. If we could get every player to get the most out of themselves, we would be an unbelievable team.”

Hammond will have a chance this weekend to set the Virginia single-season record when the Cavaliers host Virginia Commonwealth in the first round of play in the NCAA Tournament. Despite the chance to put herself in the record books, Hammond realizes the role she plays within the team.

“Everyone thinks tennis is an individual sport, but it really isn’t,” the senior said. “Each person has to win their individual match for the team to win.”

 

Charlotte to get chance to bid
on ACC Championship game
Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville in running for '08 and beyond
KEN TYSIAC

The ACC will ask Charlotte and three Florida cities to bid for the right to host the ACC football championship games after 2007.

ACC Commissioner John Swofford said leaders in Charlotte, Jacksonville, Tampa and Orlando have demonstrated continued interest and will be asked to bid.

He said a possible renovation at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando might make it difficult for that city to host in the immediate future.

Jacksonville won the first round of bidding after expansion allowed the ACC to hold a championship game. Turnstile attendance at the inaugural championship game in 2005 was announced at 72,479 at the 77,000-seat stadium for Florida State's defeat of Virginia Tech, but the 2006 game flopped.

The announced attendance of 62,850 was about double the actual crowd for Wake Forest's win against Georgia Tech in the rain, a game featuring schools with two of the ACC's smaller alumni bases. The ACC still gave Jacksonville the Dec. 1, 2007 game, and will announce a decision on the future shortly after that.

Swofford said the ACC's original plan was to develop a permanent site as the SEC has in Atlanta. Now the ACC might consider a multiyear site or a multi-city rotation, he said.

"Our game is an infant, in a sense," Swofford said.

"I think we've gotten off to an excellent start, but it's developing, and it's a little hard to tell how it's going to do in certain cities without those cities having the game."

Officials in the Baltimore-Washington area have expressed interest, but Swofford said weather is a concern. Miami is out because it hosts the ACC champion in the Orange Bowl.

Charlotte Regional Sports Commission executive director Jeff Beaver said he was excited about the opportunity to bid.

"We'll be prepared to make our case to bring the game to Charlotte as early as 2008 and hopefully as long as the ACC will stay with us thereafter," he said. "In a perfect world, they would select us and keep it here in perpetuity."

The Gator Bowl Association lost money on last year's ACC title game but erased that deficit with a successful Gator Bowl, association president Rick Catlett said. He predicted last week that if the weather is great and the '07 game sells out, Jacksonville's future will look "pretty good."

Catlett said it will take time to build local support so it's a sellout annually. He would like the ACC to let the game grow with Jacksonville as a permanent site.

Orlando officials are keeping Swofford apprised of efforts for a massive renovation of the Citrus Bowl. City and county officials could approve a renovation plan in late June that could be completed by 2010, said Florida Citrus Sports executive director Steve Hogan.

Those plans wouldn't necessarily preclude Orlando from bidding for the 2008 and 2009 games, he said.

Ken Tysiac: 919-834-8471

PROS AND CONS

Breaking down the cities that will be asked to bid to host the ACC football championship games beginning in 2008:

CHARLOTTE: Has great stadium and is located at geographical center of ACC, but has cooler weather than Florida sites.

JACKSONVILLE: Municipally owned stadium allows big financial bid. Attendance was good in 2005 but lousy on a rainy day in 2006.

ORLANDO: Anticipated Citrus Bowl renovations make tourist haven a darkhorse -- until 2010, when renovations might be finished.

TAMPA: Has beautiful weather and an excellent stadium, but some ACC fans grumbled about being far from home during the 2007 men's basketball tournament there.

 

The clock is ticking for a troubled Vick
Thursday, May 10, 2007 - 12:07 AM Updated: 01:19 AM
By BOB LIPPER
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST

Whatever Michael Vick was up to over the past few days, it seems fair to assume he didn't fill out an application for next year's Westminster dog show or compose an indignant letter to his congressman to vent about delays at the Atlanta airport.

More likely, he was lying low.

Lying low being his (and his agent's) preferred alternative to appearing nightly on the 6 o'clock news.

Once upon a time -- which is to say, before tricked-up water bottles, stiffing Capitol Hill and losing his starting spot on the Humane Society All-Stars -- we tended to view Michael as the more responsible, dependable and domesticated Vick brother.

Now?

Now we're not quite sure.

The one point of separation here is that Michael Vick has an NFL job and a bazillion-dollar contract, and Marcus Vick does not. Otherwise, they've become brothers-in-alarms. Marcus had the under-age girls thing. Michael had Ron Mexico. Marcus had the middle finger in Morgantown incident. Michael had his middle finger in the Georgia Dome firestorm.

Marcus makes headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Michael ... well, you get the idea.

The difference is Michael Vick is the face of a franchise -- $130-million quarterback for the Falcons, mover of replica jerseys, only thing that stands between his team and empty-seated irrelevance. It's a heavyweight calling, which is why Vick gets paid heavyweight money to fulfill it.

Problem is, Vick's development as a quarterback seems to have stalled some.

Bigger problem: He's gotten into the habit of embarrassing himself, his team and the do-right rich guy who signs his paychecks.

Playing quarterback in the NFL is all about making decisions. Knuckleheads need not apply. Swashbucklers with bionic arms who try to squeeze lasers into double coverage might stick around for awhile. But they and their teams invariably wash out.

It's a mind game as much as an arm game. Consider Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. They're the best in the business. They can zip it. But what sets them apart is their ability to manage the game and dissect opponents. That's why they're great. They've got the trophies and MVP plaques to prove it.

Michael Vick can outrun Manning and Brady and out-velocity them, too. But he's only a 53.8-percent marksman through six NFL seasons. He's got 52 interceptions to go with 71 touchdowns. He has oodles of talent and wins games, and the Falcons would suffocate without him. But he seems to have trouble figuring when to run and when to pass and who to throw to and how much to rely on God-given ability alone.

That's decision-making, and in Vick's case, you wonder if there's an off-field correlation. Bad decision to no-show an appearance before U.S. congressmen and claim you couldn't make a connecting flight in Atlanta (the airline said otherwise).

Bad decision to attach your name to a Surry County dog-breeding operation on property you own and -- unless you're fibbing about "never" visiting the place -- trust a cousin not to be investigated for training dogs for fighting (a felony in Virginia) and abusing them. At best, you're a negligent landlord. At worst, you're a liar with legal issues.

At bottom, you're piling up a list of priors.

"I want people to perceive Mike Vick in a totally different way," Vick told ESPN at the NFL draft, where the league's tough-guy commissioner, Roger Goodell, chatted him up about his, umm, problems. "A lot of things got to change, and I mean that from the heart. It's time for me to grow up."

He's oh, so right. Vick turns 27 next month. He won't be 27 forever. He's now officially on the clock.