Men’s soccer rolls past Rebels
Shane Mulvihill
Sports Writer
The Xavier men’s soccer team rolled out the red carpet on their 2007 campaign this weekend with two games in the Ramada Xavier Challenge.
The Musketeers were matched with the Aggies of UC Davis on Friday night. Both teams entered the season opener focused and determined.
Erika Breese
Sophomore forward Kennedy Nakwa is harassed by the backside of UNLV’s Mark Owens last Sunday.
The Musketeers may have had a case of the nerves to open the game, as UC Davis seemed to control the ball for much of the beginning of the match.
After surviving three early corner kicks by UC Davis, the Musketeers played the Aggies to a 0-0 tie after one half of play.
Coach Dave Schureck had his players ready in the second half.
“Once the game settled I felt we did a terrific job of sticking to our game plan and possessing the ball,” he said.
It was a hard-fought, physical game on both sides. Five yellow cards were issued during the game, with three coming in the second half.
The Musketeers missed opportunities in the second half, including a pair of corner kicks late in the game.
At the end of regulation the teams were still deadlocked at 0-0.
The tie was not broken until the 97th minute when senior Jimmy Cummings scored on a pass from freshman El-Hadji Dieng.
Schureck said of the performance, “Jimmy’s goal in overtime was class. You enjoy plays like that as a coach, especially when it translates into a win.”
The Musketeers’ next game came on Sunday afternoon against the UNLV Rebels.
After recording his first shutout against UC Davis, junior goalkeeper Adam Sokolowski felt ready for the Rebels.
“After our first victory versus UC Davis, we decided that we were not satisfied,” he said.
“We decided to come out even harder against UNLV and stop some of their key players.”
The Musketeers came out of the gate fast against what appeared to be an overmatched UNLV team.
The eventual game-winning goal came in the 4th minute when Dieng scored on a header in the box.
An insurance goal came in the 19th minute when Cummings recorded his second goal of the season on a chip shot over the keeper.
Goals were later added by senior Joe Fleckenstein in the 31st minute and by senior Matt Soldano in the 58th minute, making the final score 4-0 in favor of the Musketeers.
Xavier boasted four members named to the All Challenge Team including Cummings, Dieng, Sokolowski and sophomore Jake Vollmer.
Cummings was also named the Challenge MVP.
Schureck said he felt good about his team so far. “The weekend was a terrific start, but it was just that– a start,” he said. “We need to build off these games. We have to continue to work and get better,” Schureck added.
The Musketeers will be back in action this Friday in Milwaukee against Marquette.
The Spectator
Weekly Commentary On the World of Sports
John LaFollette
Sports Editor
There is no greater champion of progress in the conservative world of major athletics than the Spectator. Fans of his writing know this well; past progress-minded columns have ranged from Big Conference biases in college basketball, to social stigma in the NBA, to the odd fascination with historical mysticism in college football.
Nowhere is the latter more astonishingly typified (and increasingly so) than at Notre Dame.
Far be it from the Spectator to bash Catholic brethren in the pages of the Xavier Newswire without good reason; success-related bitterness does not become him. Injustice-related bitterness does.
This football season more than ever, the Notre Dame travesty is remarkable. Despite minimal recent success, the Fighting Irish enjoy a television contract more shamelessly lucrative than Paul McCartney’s CD deal with Starbucks.
Every Irish home game is televised live and unconditionally on NBC, complete with redundant camera shots of players ironically slapping the storied “Play Like a Champion Today” sign during their walks to and from the locker room.
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NBC helped modernize Notre Dame Stadium by installing field lights to make the action, especially the night action, more photogenic. The network’s deal to show every Notre Dame home game is the only contract of its kind in college football, and a symbol of the Notre Dame travesty.
The Spectator could not suppress the chuckles during last Saturday’s telecast of Notre Dame’s 33-3 loss to the Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech in the season opener.
A sold-out crowd (that’s 80,795 Golden Domers) sat in the House That Rudy Built (with field lights bought by NBC) and watched another mediocre team dance a jig all over their Irish.
Those Irish, who experts at Sports Illustrated forecast to finish 4-7, are a lucky bunch. Notre Dame’s fan support is never tied to a given team’s success on the field.
Instead, dementia-aged big shots at NBC, ESPN and the BCS dote on the achievements of the famed Four Horsemen (from the 1924 team), Paul Hornung (1956), Joe Thiesmann (1973) and Joe Montana (1979), nostalgically hoping that every new Notre Dame squad can fill those tall shadows.
In college football, success on the field breeds more success off it– in recruiting, television contracts and scheduling. Thanks to Notre Dame’s well-oiled hype machine, which churns out propaganda that would make Kim Jong Il blush, the Irish are able to enjoy the benefits of real football success without having to actually achieve it.
A broad, wealthy base of alumni guarantees strong attendance in post-season bowl games, so Notre Dame needs only win six out of 12 games every season in order to receive a premiere bowl invitation.
This is a conveniently simple task without bothersome conditions like conference affiliation. Notre Dame is one of four Division I-A schools that are so-called Independents.
In “declining” conference affiliation, Notre Dame joins the ranks of perennial punching bags Army, Navy and Western Kentucky.
As importantly, Notre Dame’s “decline” frees the Irish from pesky BCS rules regarding conference limits. In their infinite wisdom, the brains behind the BCS decided that a maximum of two teams from each BCS conference would be allowed to compete in BCS bowl games.
Last season, after blowing out its Independent peers, along with Stanford and North Carolina, Notre Dame found itself ranked 11th in the BCS standings at the end of the season.
Since they are effectively BCS bowl eligible every season in which the Irish win six games, and since Wisconsin and Auburn were excluded by virtue of the conference affiliation, Notre Dame was invited to play the LSU Tigers in the Sugar Bowl. Overmatched and inexperienced against good competition the Irish (just as naturally) got caned.
The Spectator is hardly a conspiracy theorist, professing skepticism as to conspiratorial competence more often than not, but he finds it hard to reach any other conclusion when it comes to Notre Dame.
Conglomerates like NBC and the BCS cash in on Notre Dame’s historical allure and give the Irish kickbacks (in the form of field lighting, gold flecks for their helmet paint and free commercials for touching Notre Dame student projects like eradicating Elephantiasis in Haiti) to keep quiet.
Meanwhile, deserving teams are often left out of the mix because of tradition-minded conservatism.
The Spectator is interested to see what happens when the losses start to pile up on this year’s team of Rudy’s.
He doesn’t expect much to change.
The helmets will still be painted and the sign will still be slapped.
The Irish will eke out six wins against weak teams and still end up somewhere like the Cotton Bowl, where they’ll lose their tenth straight bowl game.
The Irish will still link arms after every home game, like they did after last Saturday’s pasting, and sing the Alma Mater with their fans.
ill think back to brighter times, to their sporadic contemporary championships.
They will remember their storied history, their greatness of the past.
Still they will stand and sway and sing their sad lovers’ lament.
Volleyball goes down (under) in Aussie Invite
Netters’ effort comes up short, Muskies lose first match of year
Paul Moeller
Assistant Sports Editor
Erika Breese
Senior hitter Jenni Horvath, left, and junior setter Jenn Welsh prepare for a point in Saturday’s match against Eastern Michigan.
Cintas Center is home to the Xavier volleyball team, hundreds of rowdy fans, and this past weekend, it was the home of the Aussie Xavier Invitational.
The two-day volleyball tournament included volleyball squads from Eastern Michigan, Delaware State and Evansville, and was named for its sponsor, a producer of Australian hair products.
Xavier entered the tournament with a perfect 5-0 record, coming off of a big win last Tuesday over Butler and nearly breaking the student attendance record in the process.
The Musketeers started the tournament with a bang, winning their first match over the Evansville Purple Aces by a score of 3-0.
Leading the Muskies to wins of 30-16, 30-20 and 30-25 were the team’s two seniors, Jenni Horvath and Jill Quayle.
Horvath notched 15 kills and 14 digs while Quayle added a dozen kills to her five total blocks.
The Xavier squad moved its record to 7-0 on Saturday morning after a minor challenge from the 0-6 Delaware State Hornets.
Jumping out to an 8-1 lead in the first game and a 7-0 lead in the second, the Musketeers set the tone from the start.
Despite valiant efforts and impressive late-game runs from Delaware State, the deficits were too large for them to overcome.
Xavier took the match by a score of 30-21, 30-21, 30-16. Junior Megan Hellmann had a great match for the Muskies, leading the team with 11 digs.
The win marks Xavier’s best start to a season since 2001 when they also began 7-0.
As fate would have it, both the 2001 squad and this year’s team would lose their next contest.
The final match of the Aussie Xavier Invitational featured Xavier against the Eagles of Eastern Michigan.
With both teams undefeated, the victor of the match would claim the tournament title. Unfortunately, it was not the Musketeers’ day as the Eagles prevailed with scores of 30-22, 30-26, 21-30 30-23.
Despite the loss, two Xavier netters were named to the All-Tournament team.
Senior Jill Quayle and sophomore Hillary Otte earned the honors, with Quayle providing a team-high 21 kills and posting a .447 hitting percentage in the final match.
Not to be overlooked is sophomore Kelly Ruth, who notched 20 kills and 20 digs while junior Jenn Welsh had a career day with 72 assists.
The team will travel to Huntington, West Virginia on Tuesday evening to face the Marshall Thundering Herd.
Following Marshall, the Musketeers will attend the Michigan Challenge and the San Francisco Invitational on consecutive weekends.
The Musketeers will return to Cintas Center at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 21 to face the Duquesne Dukes to open a three-match homestand and Atlantic 10 Conference play.
Doug Tifft
Sports Editor
Women’s soccer drops season opener
The Xavier women’s soccer team opened its season with an upsetting double overtime loss to their arch-rival, the Cincinnati Bearcats.
XU senior Jillian Chuck scored the game’s first goal with just over 13 minutes remaining in regulation. With just 1:57 left, Cincinnati was able to slip one by the Xavier defense and send the game to overtime. Cincinnati scored with 2:03 remaining in overtime to steal the season opener.
The Musketeers then battled 20th ranked University of Illinois. The Illini jumped out to a 3-0 lead by halftime and added two more goals in the second half to complete the 5-0 shutout victory. The Muskies will face Purdue on Wednesday, Sept. 5, in a match to be televised at 8 p.m. on the Big 10 Network.
Men’s basketball assistant named
goxavier.com
The Xavier men’s basketball team officially has a new assistant coach, the athletic department announced on Tuesday.
Emanuel Richardson, known to many as “Book,” was selected by head coach Sean Miller to fill the coaching gap left by Kenya Hunter, who left the team after last season for an assistant coaching job at Georgetown.
“Emanuel Richardson is an extremely talented basketball coach,” Miller said. “We are excited to have him join our staff and Xavier family.”
Most recently, Richardson served as Director of Basketball for the New York Gauchos, an AAU program in New York City. He has worked with high school basketball players in the Bronx since 2003, and was an assistant at Marist College for the 2004-05 season. Richardson is likely to expand Xavier’s recruiting base because of his experience with high school basketball in New York City.
“It is an honor and a pleasure to work for Coach Miller and to work with coaches Whitford, Mack, Comar and Mercurio,” said Richardson. “To have an opportunity like this is anybody’s dream. I am extremely excited.”
