Howdy!
Hey, my name is Teddy Grodek and I have been covering the women's soccer team so far this season. I'm a freshman Poli. Sci. major at Martel with a minor in IM sports. I originally hail from Cleveland, so am therefore quite a jaded and disgruntled human being, having to live through so many heartbreaks.
I'm an avid Indians fan; I practically grew up at Jacobs Field. 1997 and Jose Mesa was probably the single most depressing day of my life. The Browns were gone for most of my childhood, and have brought nothing but misery since they came back, so I begrudgingly associate with them. I'm trying to distance myself from the Cavs to avoid heartbreak this year when Lebron leaves, but I can't help but pray that he brings a championship to Cleveland. Before becoming an avid Owl, I loved the Tar Heels. I might be the only person in the state of Ohio that genuinely dislikes both Ohio State and Michigan. They're both a little too full of themselves for losing in title games.
Volleyball Team Heads into Big Weekend
The Rice volleyball team turned in a solid, yet disappointing 2-1 week. The Owls were able to defeat cross-town rival Houston in three sets on Wednesday and conference foe SMU in four sets on Saturday. Yet a three-set loss to Tulsa on Friday evening prevented the Owls from recording an undefeated weekend.
Rice traveled across town on Wednesday to take on the Cougars. Three sets later, the Owls emerged with a victory, a crucial win for a team that was looking to respond positively to a three-set loss to Tulane. Sophomore setter Ashleigh McCord had 13 kills, and junior setter Meredith Schamun notched 35 assists. Schamun’s play during the week would earn her Conference-USA Setter of the Week honors, the first time this year Schamun has earned that distinction.
Rice was unable to build on the momentum from Wednesday’s match, however, dropping their match to Tulsa in a shocking three sets. The Owls’ low hitting percentage played a large factor in their loss, as Rice cannot afford to make so many errors against one of C-USA’s best teams. The loss dropped Rice’s record to 12-5, and 3-2 in the conference.
While the loss to Tulsa constituted another disappointed defeat for the Owls, Rice bounced back solidly on Saturday against SMU. The Owls and Mustangs played three closely contested sets to begin the match, with Rice winning two and SMU taking one. The Owls were able to close out the match strongly, recording a 25-18 victory in the match’s final set. Rice had four players record double-digit kills, with McCord’s 23 leading the Owls.
Rice will once again look to start a winning streak when they travel to Orlando, Florida to take on Central Florida. UCF sits in the bottom half of the conference standings. The Owls must not look ahead to Saturday’s matchup against conference leader Southern Miss in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. A solid weekend by Rice could leave them on top of the C-USA standings.
A little bit more on women’s cross country…
With the women's cross country article going online this week, I decided I'd post a few extra pieces of info here on the blog.
In this week's article - see ricethresher.org - I allude to the team's use of a "principal rhythm" for the race. Here's how Coach Bevan explained it.
The "principal rhythm" race plan was to run at a pace appropriate for its length. However, when an inexperienced runner competes in a field of very fast runners, sometimes it is a challenge to maintain the appropriate tempo, which may increase the overall time of that young runner.
“You go into debt earlier than you should,” Bevan said. “You’re just not able to run the race as fast as your body’s able to run the race because you didn’t run the right race rhythm.”
The difficulty of sticking to a race plan is one of the greatest challenges posed by any cross country race, not only elite ones, Bevan noted.
“It’s different from when you’re on a track because then you can see where you are,” the coach said. “But in a cross country race you can’t say, 'This is the right place and I know this is right.'”
The Glass is Half-Full
The Owls lost their fifth straight game last Saturday against the University of Tulsa to drop their record 0-5. Thus, it would be easy for me to craft a blog post about everything on the team that’s upsetting me (the offensive line, a combined QB rating of 54 over the past two games, Nick Fanuzzi’s shoulder, etc.), but I’m a glass-half-full kind of person and therefore would rather write about a few things that are going well.
THE TALL TARGET
Wardlow, who played behind current Houston Texan James Casey last year, is doing well as a starter and notched a team-high 51 yards on three carries against the Golden Hurricane. He brought in the only touchdown of the day with a 29-yard reception from Ryan Lewis in the second quarter.
“Taylor’s invested a lot of years this program, a lot of years in that weight room, and it’s paying off now. He’s a big, tall target for us,” coach David Bailiff said of the 6-foot-6 tight end. He’s currently second on the team with 159 total yards.
POSSESSIONS & PENALTIES
Against Vanderbilt, the Owls tossed four interceptions but lowered that number in the Tulsa game to one, which came on the fourth quarter during the last drive. (Rice also hasn't lost a fumble since playing Oklahoma State.) In their last two games at home, the Owls have accumulated nine penalties, compared to 15 by their opponents.
KICK BACK AND RELAX
...when punter Kyle Martens is on the field, anyway. Bailiff succinctly put it best: "Kyle Martens had another fabulous game."
Martens may be getting too much practice, but at least it's doing him good. He's averaging 48.5 yards per punt over the last two games, which includes 450 total punting yards last week against Tulsa. His overall season average--46.5 yards--is good enough for 11th in college football, though he's fifth among those with at least 15 punts (Martens has 30). He also ranks fifth in total punting yards with 1395.
So let those positives and the following encouraging words by Bailiff keep your spirits up until Rice plays Navy at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday:
"I can tell you the players still believe in themselves and believe in what we’re doing. They have a tremendous attitude. There’s no give up in them, it’s nothing but fight. I think going in to that game, as we do every game, we expect great things to happen. We expect to win, it hasn’t happened. We’re not going to change our mentality or our attitude or let our expectations drop."
Key decision for women’s cross country
For the first month or so of this women's cross country season, every week there was a new twist. Coming into the season, veteran runners Allison Pye and Nicole Mericle were both battling injuries, but at the season's outset, both had the possibility to return. Luckily, a healthy group of 11 new runners was there to offset the lack of these two upperclassmen.
After each competition, the freshmen improved and the upperclassmen remained injured. During last week's interview with head coach Jim Bevan, I saw that he had a big decision to make: redshirt two other upperclassmen, Britany Williams and Becky Wade, and save them for the 2010 season to run when Allison and Nicole returned healthy or run them this season and hope that the freshmen would be able to offset the loss of the injured runners.
Bevan's goal clearly was to put forth a team that could gain national notoriety and qualify for the national meet. When freshmen Heather Olson led the Rice runners at last weekend's Island Splash, she showed that the youth on the team would be contributing to the team this season.
When I met with Bevan on Monday, he stated that he had not yet decided who would run at Notre Dame this weekend and therefore for the rest of season. He also knew he was under a deadline, as the decision needed to come by Wednesday evening or Thursday morning at the latest. Clearly feeling the heat of indecision, the only thing I could gather from him was that he was weighing both options.
I could sympathize with Bevan. On the one hand, he has two, healthy runners who had been preparing for the season all summer. However, the possibility to run a loaded squad in 2010 is also very tempting. With the plethora of freshmen talent, they will only improve over the course of this season. To say the least, I was very curious to see what he would finally decide.
Wednesday evening around 6 PM, Bevan sent me his roster for Notre Dame, without Nicole, Allison, Britany and Becky. Certainly Bevan made the gutsy decision. The 2010 roster, with those four, sophomores Michaela Reynolds and Marie Thompson, and outstanding freshmen Olson, Johanna Ohm and Halsey Fowler on paper has the potential to be one of the best in Rice history, if not outright on top.
However, the 2009 squad is not one to be discounted either. The outcome of this weekend will say a lot about where Rice stands on the national stage, and each week will bring more improvement. Thus, for all Rice fans, I would caution you not to wait for 2010 for greatness but to expect nothing less of the youthful group representing the Owls in 2009.