Pacific Athletics In The News

Here is the latest edition of our media links highlighting the world of Pacific Athletics...
FROM MOLOKAI TO FOREST GROVE: The Sept. 11 issue of the Molokai (Hawaii) Disaptch did a feature on homegrown product Kelsy Takashima. The sophomore is having another great year in her second season on the Pacific volleyball team.

PACIFIC INDEX: The Pacific student newspaper covered a number of topics in their Sept. 17 issue. Stories included the quest to find a home field for Pacific football, including negotiations for use of Lincoln Park, a brief fall sports preview and an interview with men's basketball with Ross Bartlett on his decision to return for one more hoops season while starting grad school in Pacific's School of Graduate Psychology.

HISTORIC: The "Water Under The Bridge" column of the Daily Astorian (a this day in history piece) makes reference to a football game between the then Badgers and Oregon Normal School (now Western Oregon) to be played in Astoria in 1934. The two teams played after a high school game between Astoria and Ilwaco (Wash.). "Very few colleges play more spectacular football than Larry Wolfe's Oregon Normal team or Anse Cornell's Pacific University eleven," the article said. The game proved to be a defensive struggle with the Badgers and Wolves playing to a 0-0 tie.

FOOTBALL RAMPS UP: Friday's (Sept. 25) Honolulu Advertiser highlights a trip by Head Football Keith Buckley and Director of Athletics Ken Schumann to Hawaii in efforts to recruit and fundraise for Pacific's new football program. The two have spent the week in the Islands looking to spread the word about the team and attract players for the Fall 2010 start. It's a natural recruiting ground as roughly 25 percent of Pacific's undergraduate student body is from Hawaii. Also note the video clip with Buckley on the right side of the page.

TAKING THE "B.S." OUT OF BCS: Not directly related to Pacific athletics, but a cool story about a Pacific University student who has developed a computer program that, she says, better predicts a Division I-BCS champion than the current Bowl Championship Series computer indices. Maggie Wigness has created a computer algorithm that she says is more accurate at predicting winning football teams than the BCS. Wigness will present her program at this weekend's New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports at Harvard University.

FOND FAREWELLS: As the late Paul Harvey used to say, "This is partly personal." Two close colleagues of mine, Barb Richey and Billy Merck, are leaving Pacific University for the next chapters in their live. Richey, Pacific's associate vice president for marketing & communications, leaves after two years on the job. She spearheaded the process of Pacific's recent branding initative, including the development of the University's new logo. Barb leaves to return to the Spokane, Wash., area, where she lived before coming to Pacific.

Merck departs after a a little over a year as the University's director of media relations. Billy built the foundation for Pacific's media efforts as the first full-time PR person the school has had in almost 10 years. He leaves to teach classes at both Portland Community College and Clark College (Billy holds a Ph.D. in literature). Both have been tremendous supports to me in our mission to further the word about Pacific athletics. I will miss them both dearly. Read more about their departures in this Pacific Index article.

Volleyball Stats: An Early Apology

For those who are following Pacific volleyball as they make their trip to Southern California, I offer a apology in advance. The stats from the four matches will be slow in coming.

This is a part of the the collegiate volleyball world that I do not understand, nor do I neccesarily agree with. At the small college levels (Division II, Division III and NAIA), teams are often left keep their own stats at tournaments. This means two or three reserve players, armed with clipboards, are tracking those all important kills, blocks, sets and errors.

Such will be the case for Pacific as they compete at the Cal-Lu-Fornia Invitational this weekend. With the exception of their match against tournament host Cal Lutheran, team members will have to track their teammate's stats. After each day of action, Head Coach Lena Chan will fax Pacific's stats to me back to the Pacific Sports Information Office in Forest Grove, where I will input those stats into our statistical software.

As far as the other team goes, I will have to wait for our opponents to send their stats to me or to post them to their respective school's site. And I could be waiting a long time. Two of those other three schools that Pacific plays have yet to post any of their stats to their school's web site. One of schools even hosted their own tournament over Labor Day weekend. As another Northwest Conference SID told me, I shouldn't hold my breath when I ask for them either.

Over the past few years, I have taken the opportunity to travel with the volleyball team to their off-site tournaments in order to ensure that complete stats are kept. They have been fun trips that allowed me to get the know the team better and experience other parts of the country, such as Colorado Springs and St. Louis.

This year, however, I couldn't make the trip. There is much going on for me back at home, including a pair of Portland Timbers matches (I am the team's official scorer), a home women's soccer match on Saturday night and the start of rebuilding a fence at home. It's a bummer. I enjoy the chance to get to know the teams and my in-laws live two hours away from the tournament site in Thousand Oaks, Calif. And I am missing out of being able to cheer against the Dodgers with the SID from George Fox, Blair Cash.

So, as I said, accept my early apologies. Know its not my fault. I will be working hard to get them up as soon as I can.

With that said, why hold a tournament and not keep any stats? There are a couple of reasons why this is the status quo.

• The Cal-Lu-Fornia Invitational is a 14-team tournament, with four matches going on during each session. There are not enough sports information directors around that their SID, Scott Chisholm, could draw on to help (and likely without the expectation of payment).

• Not keeping stats is the norm in Division III, not only for tournaments but for regular matches. Except for the Northwest Conference and the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, teams keep their own stats for all regular season matches. The team's SIDs then compile stats after the fact and post to the Web and report to the NCAA.

• I have heard some SIDs from other parts of the country say that keeping in-game stats for volleyball is too hard because you are recording something into the computer for nearly every touch. I don't agree. Yes, it can be hard to grasp at first. But I have managed to train student Work Study employees nearly every year to do it. It can be done.

Stats is one of the selling points that Pacific uses to bring teams out to our annual Boxer Kickoff Volleyball Invitational. We do in-game stats for every match of the tournament, which means that teams can participate purely in playing the game on the court. For the teams that come from east of the Rockies, it is likely the only time this season where they can do that. The Boxer Kickoff is one of the few tournaments in the nation outside of the Division I level to provide stats for all teams.

It's a little thing in the grand scheme of things, but the little things are often the biggest selling points. And as parents and fans of Pacific volleyball, seeing those stats aren't a small thing, are they?

Pacific In The Media: Week 2

Here is this week's list of media mentions for Pacific Athletics...
• The Forest Grove News-Times ran previews for the Pacific men's soccer, women's soccer and volleyball teams in its Sept. 9 issue, which feature previews for all of the area's high schools and, of course, the hometown Boxers.

• In Pacific's second mention in two week in The Oregonian's recently revived Small College Notebook, writer Norm Maves, Jr., makes note of the Pacific volleyball team's quick 4-0 start. The print piece appeared in the Sept. 8 print edition. Editor's Note: Norm, a retired writer who worked for The O for many years, pushed to bring the regular notebook back after a couple years of hibernation. All of us in the small colleges owe Norm a debt of gratitude for his persistence and dedication to the DII, DIII and NAIA schools.

And So It Begins...

It's not the most exciting way to herald the start of the season, but the 2009 Pacific fall sports seasons have officially commenced with a sit-down meeting.

Trialists for the Boxers' men's soccer, women's soccer and volleyball squads met in the University Center on Thursday afternoon for their official welcome to campus. Players received their Student-Athlete Handbooks, filled out required NCAA eligibility paperwork and filled out biographical forms for the sports information office.

The on-the-field and on-the-court action begins on Friday. Women's soccer players rise early for 8 a.m. practice at Lincoln Park Stadium. Volleyball gets underway at 9 a.m. and men's soccer follows at 10 a.m. All three teams will also participate in a second session in the afternoon, with two-a-day practices running well into next week. The teams will have their first day off a week from day, Aug. 27, when New Student Orientation gets underway.

Cross country does not begin their practices until Aug. 31, the first day of classes for the fall. By then Head Coach Tim Boyce will be back and recovered from his trip to the IAAF Track & Field World Championships (yes, he saw Usain Bolt run both of his astounding world records).

It's hard to believe that the game schedule begins in just 12 days. Join us for the trifecta on Sept. 1 as the women's soccer, men's soccer and volleyball squads all play at home.

Well Dunn, Melissa!

Pacific volleyballer Melissa Dunn is the subject of a nice feature story in her hometown newspaper, the Napa Valley Register. The story appears in today's edition of the paper.

Dunn talks about her career and how emotional it will be to play her final home match, against Pacific Lutheran on Nov. 6. She also talks about being the end of the line of a volleyball playing family. Her oldest sister, Heather, completed a four-year career at Gonzaga in 2007 and her other sister, Stephanie, played one season at Sonoma State.

Melissa has been a four-year starter at Pacific and continues to be one of the conference leaders in both service aces and digs.

Headline News

A couple of articles have appeared this week involving Pacific athletes.

• The Honolulu Advertiser ran a story on Pacific's Big Island golf connection, specifically featuring the "Waiakea Three" of Jasmine Ching, Tami Park and Valerie Kitamori. The three have been impact players for the women's golf program over the last year. The story also features men's golfer Max Bonk, who continues to impress after going to the 2008 NCAA Championships as a freshman.

• The local Forest Grove News-Times featured Pacific's breathtaking 4-3 double overtime victory over Linfield as the top story on the sport page this week. Despite the by-line, know that no goods or services were traded for the publication of the story.

• Expect to see later this week or early next week a story in the Napa Valley Register (Calif.) on Pacific volleyball Melissa Dunn. A native of Sonoma, Dunn is finishing off a fine Boxers' career this fall.

Something For The Entire Family

It's not Ringling Bros., but there will certainly be something for everyone this weekend in Forest Grove for the Boxers' sports fan. A busy weekend for those of us working at the PAC and Lincoln Park, but also for anyone hoping to see a little volleyball, soccer or softball (no, that's not a typo).

Here's the weekend rundown and preview...
VOLLEYBALL: If it wasn't for practice, the Pacific volleyball team might not remember what their home floor looked like. The Boxers have not played at home since they began the season with four matches at their own Boxer Kickoff Volleyball Invitational. Six matches later, the Boxers are home for a weekend set against Whitman on Friday and Whitworth on Saturday.

This has the possibility to be a momentum-building weekend for Lena Chan's team, who enters with a 1-1 NWC record. Whitman has struggled so far in 2008. They have gone 0-11 and are dealing with a depth problem. The Missionaries have only nine players on the roster (six plus the libero start a match) and are without their their top players from 2007: Rosa Brey and Lydia Hayes.

A quality win over Whitman could give the Boxers some confidence as they enter their Saturday match with Whitworth. The Pirates are much improved, entering with an 8-6 record and 1-1 conference mark, but have lost five of their last seven matches. The losses included a four-set loss to an improved Lewis & Clark squad and losses to a pair of like opponents to Pacific, UC Santa Cruz and Cal State East Bay.

Lena Chan said that her team felt good about their performance against the No. 10 ranked Loggers last week, despite falling in three sets, and that she was pleased about how the lineup is picking up on her system of play. We will have a chance to...finally...see that in action this weekend.

WOMEN'S SOCCER: The question for the Boxers is how do they keep the run going? Pacific is enjoying their first three-game winning streak since the 2005 season thanks to last Saturday's 2-0 shutout of Pacific Lutheran and Sunday's 1-0 double overtime victory over Lewis & Clark...their first over the Pioneers since 2004.

The Boxers have done it with a very stingy defense, allowing their last three opponents a total of 28 shots and 16 shots on goal. Goalie Erin Ichimura was named NWC Defensive Student-Athlete of the Week after holding Warner Pacific, PLU and L&C scoreless. On the offensive end, Pacific has shown a much faster pace of play then they showed in the first three matches of the year. And they have played with more urgency and haven't been afraid to pull the trigger. The Boxers have taken 47 shots in the last three matches as compared to 14 in their first three matches.

If Pacific can keep up the offensive intensity against Linfield, who took a total of 19 shots combined in a 2-1 overtime loss to Whitworth and a 3-0 shutout at the hands of Whitman last weekend, the Boxers should come out of Saturday with their first 3-0 conference start since 1994.

MEN'S SOCCER: The good news that the Boxers have posted two consecutive shutouts against NWC teams. The bad news is that they haven't been able to put the ball in the net over the last 220 minutes. The numbers don't quite tell the tale. Pacific has outshot opponents by a 36-20 margin in those two matches, but have been unable to finish things off.

The defense, meanwhile, has done its job and more. Goalkeeper Andrew Stevermer has made 11 saves in the last two matches and the starting back line of Brandon Porter, Taylor Kane, Jared Komo and Anthony Jaeger have held their own well. Kane, a freshman out of Portland's Central Catholic High School, has been especially impressive with his pace in both the defense and midfield.

Saturday's match against Linfield will be the last at home under the lights in 2008 (they will, however, play a night match at Linfield on Oct. 26). The Wildcats will be looking to right the ship after losing their first two NWC matches to Whitman and Whitworth.

SOFTBALL: The team's non-traditional fall practice season will end with a game against a team of Pacific alums Saturday at noon. This will be a great first preview of this spring's team, in particular the newcomers to the program. Head Coach Tim Hill said he will break the team into two teams, one playing half of the game and then the other playing the final innings. Each team will feature six freshmen each. Pacific will hit the field this spring with somethng to prove. Their 31-9 record and second place finish to defending national champion Linfield was not enough to earn the team what should have been a well deserved playoffs berth.

California Dreamin'

Hello all from sunny Southern California! I am in Claremont with the Pacific volleyball team as they play at the Pacific Coast Classic, which is co-hosted by Pomona-Pitzer and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps colleges (which is actually all one consortium of colleges along with Scripps and Harvey Mudd Colleges, but I digress). The team arrived Thursday night, but I flew in this morning after working our men's soccer match in Forest Grove Thursday night.

I knew it was going to be a good trip when right across from our hotel was a In-N-Out Burger, some of the best burgers and fries in the world. My combined breakfast and lunch was a Double-Double, fresh cut fries and a Coke. Can't beat it!

I don't travel too much with our teams. When you have 20 sports to work with there is no way that you can go every place (or any place) with the teams. Volleyball is a notable exception, however, when it comes to tournaments. Unlike our own Boxer Kickoff Volleyball Invitational, most tournaments at the Division III level do not keep stats for any of the participating teams. They have to be kept on the bench by players.

So...here I am, keeping stats on my third volleyball trip in four years. No complaints, though. It's a great way to get to know these young women a lot better. A better connection to our players never hurts.

Speaking of stats (or lack thereof)...parents and fans of Northwest Conference volleyball should thank the sports information directors of those schools, who all keep stats for both teams during the course of a match. At most Division III schools, particularly east of the Rockies, schools keep stats for just their school and combine the two teams the next day. With the NWC schools, you have complete stats the same day. What a deal!

And the conference must have found a deal to get teams into the Ontario Sheraton. In the hour I was actually on the property I saw the Pacific Lutheran volleyball team and the Whitman women's soccer team. Whose next??? Perhaps we should contract the Sheraton to be a conference host hotel (attention Matt Newman...).

Some news and notes from the World of Pacific Athletics...
VOLLEYBALL: Four matches for the Boxers at the Pacific Coast Classic. Pacific faces Chapman this afternoon and the host Sagehens this evening. Tomorrow it's over to the other side of campus and a rematch with UC Santa Cruz, followed by a meeting with Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Very hot here in the Southland. Too warm even for Keleigh Kremers, who is used to that "dry Texas heat, y'all!" Caitlin Gollehon, however, predicts that freshman Kelsy Takashima will have a great match because of the sweat she has built in pre-match warm-ups in the non-air-conditioned Voekele Gymnasium. We shall see soon.

The wireless connection here at Pomona will not allow me to access our Web servers back in Forest Grove, so Web updates (such as stats) will have to wait until this evening. We will, however, be able to post stories on the site not long after the conclusion of our matches.

MEN'S SOCCER: In their season opener on Thursday, Pacific looked incredible for the first 45 minutes against Warner Pacific. The defense was incredibly tight. At one point, the backline managed to knock down a Knights' flurry that gave them three looks at the net, yet not a shot. Danny Williams' first half goal was well played and a credit to the team's passing ability.

But a full match is a 90-minute affair. I don't know if the Boxers got tired or complacent, but the defense was not as tight in the second half as it was in the first. After the free kick goal by the Knights in the 68th minute, Warner Pacific picked up a lot of confidence and quickly parlayed it into the game-winner. If the Pacific defense can learn to play a full 90, this team will be very good.

The Boxers will play a match against an alumni squad on Sunday afternoon and return to action on Monday against LaVerne. This will be the Boxers' first ever meeting in men's soccer with the Panthers, who made it to the SCIAC's postseason tournament in 2007, are 1-0-0 on the year and play NAIA member William Jessup this afternoon.

CROSS COUNTRY: Tim Boyce's first full season at the helm begins on Saturday. The Boxers open the season at the Whitman Invitational in Walla Walla. The races will be short course affairs, with the men running 6,000 meters and the women racing 4,000 meters. Even though this year's NWC Championships will be run in Walla Walla, this race is not on the conference course at Veterans Memorial Golf Course. It is, instead, being run at Ft. Walla Walla Park, where I ran my first ever conference XC race for the Boxers back in 1994 (won't divulge my time...wasn't all that great anyway).

The Boxers will be a building team once again. The Boxers return just three runners who competed last fall: All-American Kelsey Owens, Whitney Nelson and Casey Nishimura. The men do, however, return a couple of runners who took last season off in Adrian Shipley (NWC track qualifier in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters) and Dylan Taylor.

The full Pacific cross country season preview will be posted later today on GoBoxers.com (wrote it on the plane this morning while I was free to move about the country, but the FTP limitations keep me from posting from the Pomona campus).

That's all from the Southland as we come up to a half hour before first serve. Go Boxers!

Weekend Observations

Some notes from the first weekend of Pacific action...

• Don't take the women's soccer team's 0-2-0 record as a sign of another dismal season. This team appears to be much improved over the squads of the recent past. Against Cal State East Bay, the Boxers showed some great job passing the ball through the midfield and made some strong defensive stops. Their pace, in particular, was noticably faster, and they were markedly more aggressively.

Joy Boswell's squad didn't exactly get an easy start. UC Santa Cruz opened the season ranked No. 25 in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America poll. Cal State East Bay, meanwhile, is no pushover. they finished 11-7-1 in 2007 and returned eight starters from last season. Very experienced.

• The Pacific volleyball team still has some kinks to work out. They got a good first win in the Boxer Kickoff Invitational against Neumann (Pa.), who competed in the 2007 NCAA Division III playoffs, but struggled in their final three matches, falling to Cal State East Bay, UC Santa Cruz and Christopher Newport. It is obvious that the Boxers are still adjusting to head coach Lena Chan's new system...and an adjustment to a new coach and a new style of play always takes time.

In the meantime, the Boxers have to concentrate of tighter passing and keeping down the unforced errors. In four matches, Pacific committed 95 attack errors and 11 ball-handling errors.

• A common opponent for the Boxers over the last few years, this may be some of the last times we see Cal State East Bay in competition for a while. A long-time dual affiliate between NCAA Division III and the NAIA, the Pioneers are in the first year of a three-year transition period to NCAA Division II. They are slated to become full members and join the California Collegiate Athletic Association in 2011. Their teams will transition to playing primarily a Division II schedule beginning in 2009.

• Prayers and thoughts for those in Louisiana as Hurricane Gustav bears down. The storm, currently at a Category 3, is expected to make landfall Monday morning.

I wrote some stories on some sports information directors who survived Katrina back three years ago and their strggles with moving along with their athletic programs across the south, seeing jobs eliminated, seasons cancelled and homes destroyed. One SID, Jack Duggan at New Orleans, had to ride out the storm as his wife gave birth to twins as the storm ripped through the Bayou.

Hearing those kind of stories makes me very thankful and blessed to live here in the Northwest. I can handle the winter rain and snow just fine.

Let The Games Begin!

There won't be any parade of nations, torch relay or lighting of the cauldron, but it is time to declare the Games of the 2008-09 Pacific Athletic Season open.

And if you are a fan of women's soccer or volleyball, this is your weekend to be in Forest Grove.

The women's soccer season begins today with not one, but two matches. Pacific Lutheran and Cal State East Bay open things in a neutral site match that begins at 4 p.m. The Lutes are looking to move up in the Northwest Conference standings after finishing with just five wins in 2007. They have been picked to finish in a tie for sixth with Pacific in the conference in the preseason coaches poll. Cal State East Bay, meanwhile, recently announced that they have applied for member in NCAA Division II after years as a dual member of NCAA Division III and the NAIA.

The hometown Boxers, meanwhile, open their season against Division III independent UC Santa Cruz under the lights at 7 p.m. Head Coach Joy Boswell hopes to open the season by building on the momentum that they built in their 2007 season-ending double-overtime victory over Puget Sound, the first in the program's history.

The four teams flip-flop opponents on Sunday, with the Lutes taking on the Banana Slugs at noon, followed by the Boxers and Pioneers at 2:30.

If you can't make it to Lincoln Park Stadium, we are able to offer Live Stats for the first time for both men's & women's soccer. This allows you to follow the stats of the game real time. Log in at goboxers.com/live.

The Pacific volleyball team, meanwhile, begins the Lena Chan era by hosting the fourth annual Boxer Kickoff Volleyball Invitational, Saturday and Sunday at the Pacific Athletic Center. Seven teams and 14 matches in two days will make for a lot of volleyball, but it will be some fast-paced action with four participating teams ranked in the preseason Division III national poll.

Pacific opens the tournament against Neumann (Pa.) Saturday morning at 10 a.m., and close action at 8 p.m. against Cal State East Bay, who is 1-2 all-time against the Boxers in the Kickoff Tournament. On Sunday, the Boxers face UC Santa Cruz at 1 p.m. and Christopher Newport at 8 p.m.

Rounding out the tournament field is defending NWC champion Pacific Lutheran, who went a perfect 16-0 in conference play in 2007, and Puget Sound, who finished second in the NWC and then beat the Lutes in the NCAA west semifinals before advancing to the national quarterfinals.

Log on to the Boxer Kickoff Web page for a complete schedule of events. Live Stats will be available for all Pacific matches, with box scores of all matches posted on the Boxer Kickoff page throughout the day.

Here's to a great weekend of Boxers' action and another relatively sleepless weekend for your local neighborhood SID. But before we go, an enduring question for the audience...how tough can a slug really be? And if you go after one with a can of Morton's, is that "a-salt and battery?"

Hope to see you in Forest Grove this weekend!