We really like downtown St. Pete, right along the waterfront, and if you have the time and transportation, check out St. Pete Beach and Pass-A-Grille. Not super revved up night life but great for the day and evening. As mentioned, Ybor is the hotter late night destination.
For what it's worth, our experience with our daughter's recruitment was based first on her own initiative. Club coaches facilitated contacts in some cases but their roles were more advisory in terms of how to contact the coaches (directly by email or telephone) and what information to provide to them. The rules governing when and how college coaches can contact athletes dictated that our daughter initiate most of the contact, up until July before her senior year of high school. The club team our daughter played on ended up with every player on a college team and something like 80% of them at DI schools. Watching the process unfold for all but a couple of these girls (very elite players pursued by the college coaches) really drove home the point that coaches were looking for the girls themselves to drive their own recruitment. Many coaches claimed to be able to tell by the wording of emails and even IP addresses whether a prospective recruit or a parent/coach was contacting them. Telephone calls to coahces were the best but very difficult for 16 and 17 year old kids to do. As a coach, the biggest help you could be, in my opinion, would be as a provider of support and encouragement in helping to overcome the anxiety of talking to or corresponding with a college coach.
As a a parent, I would recommend that you simply provide encouragement and support to your athletes in contacting schools that they are interested in. If the interest is reciprocated, you can be a useful point of contact for the college coaches. In our case, our daughter ended up visiting about a dozen programs and ended up choosing her destination largely on her own (I wanted her to go somewhere else for selfish reasons ... 4 years of visiting Chicago on weekends sounded good to me). Her club coaches answered questions from college coaches (I believe our high school coaches had no contact at all, or if they did it was without our knowledge) but contact between them was usually in person at showcase tournaments. In the end she is right where she belongs and we couldn't be happier for her.
Great suggestions. Especially love Bayona. Also, strongly recommend cocktails at Napolean House (Chartres and St. Louis in French Quarter) ... feels like a Dashiell Hammett or James Cain setting (if you ignore the geography).
just using this thread as a leaping off point since I can't start a new thread.
I know the money for the MBB center and the other renovations to Crisler and the stadium were specifically raised for those projects. Simply juxtaposing these large ticket items with cuts elsewhere, given the bigger picture of the economics of collegiate sports. To use your analogy, I fear that we are looking at borrowing from Peter (cuts to season length, cuts to off-season training, etc., for some sports) to pay Paul (that $2k per athlete stipend money has to come from somewhere).
Just looking for other perspectives on where the balance of the big budget in athletics departments is going to end up.
love the pics and see the whole project as a much needed boost to MMB's status in comparison to "like" programs (gotta keep up with the Joneses).
Big but time ...
I can't start a new thread here and this seemed like the best place to insert this information. My daughter just finished her freshman season as a D1 soccer player (partial athletic and partial academic scholarship leading to a full ride). As a parent of a second-tier-sport athlete, I do not begrudge the iPad hook-up locker to the bball players. Dollar bills follow the interest garnered by the sport and the participants should get to share in some of the spoils. But here is an excerpt from an email my daughter just got as this season was winding down:
As has been communicated in previous messages, NCAA President Work Groups are making recommendations to transform intercollegiate athletics. Among the Work Groups from which numerous recommendations will be made, the Resource Allocation Work Group is preparing to recommend three changes that will impact Division I College Soccer. Following are the recommendations.
1. Elimination of non-championship season competition.
2. Reduction of regular season competition by 10 %.
3. Elimination of all foreign tours for all sports.
End excerpt.
Further digging reveals that item 1 applies only to soccer, volleyball, softball, field hockey, women's lacrosse, cross country. While I do not find any sport-specific limitation for item 2, I find it difficult to imagine they are thinking of applying this change to football and basketball. Item 3 also does not call out a limitation to particular sports but football does not do this type of thing and basketball seems to be going to more of a conference-team travel format (the elimination of foreign travel also applies to both institution supported or privately funded trips ... my daughters team is traveling abroad in the spring, an every-four-years thing that is funded by the players themselves).
All of these proposals seem intended to cut costs in parts of athletic budgets while other parts of these budgets are seeing proposed or in-progress increases in expenditures. These cuts, at the expense of the "little-guys" sports.
Again, not trying to start a sports equivalent of "class-warfare", but these other sports are a source of great pride to the fanbases of universitys (M softball and last years M men's soccer run, for examples). Just throwing this info out there to see if it generates a more in depth discussion of the financial side of intercollegiate athletics (new student center for basketball team, $2k stipend for athletes, addition of varsity sports, cuts in sports, cuts in expenditures for certain sports, etc.).
In Ann Arbor this afternoon...is Conor's the best place to find enthusiastic fans? Don't want to sit somewhere where the channel gets changed to NASCAR.
, minus newcomer Nebraska. IU has a very nice central campus with a unified architectural quality that makes it the best in my opinion, when combined with the natural features and the bar/entertainment area. All the campuses in the Big10,11,-12, have something going for them. Madison's student union sitting on the edge of the lake and serving beer is nice, for instance. And I agree with the other posters that give credit to MSU, the older part of campus is pretty nice, but the stuff on the south and east end of campus is starkly hideous (prison architecture). I travel with friends to a different college campus every year for a game and in our 20+ years have seen some pretty good campus settings. Ironically, the place that always bottoms out when we re-rank the campuses after every trip is Purdue ... the destination for our first trip. Good thing we didn't let that stop us way back when. IU always gets a nod near the top, with Virginia, North Carolina, and Ole Miss. Oops, went outside parameters.
I immediately renewed with the arrival of the email letting me know renewal time was here (so as not to forget), and my usual seat numbers were there. When the paper stuff came in the mail, I discarded it as I had already renewed and, as has been the case for many years now, I suspected that all that remained within the envelope with the paper format was now entirely junk ... lesson learned, I guess. In the end, still in the Big House, just expect better.
Got the same notice yesterday of a move from section 33 to section 7. It was the first I had heard of this new reality, as I renew my tickets online and was not prompted while doing so that this would be happening. I'm very disappointed as I had no chance to at least request staying in the north endzone. A free seat cushion for a few games doesn't really make it a whole lot better.
My family works out at a gym by the airport in Ann Arbor (HyperFit USA) that does the same grind-you-to-a-metal-toughness workout as Tamer does at "Sticks". He is a frequent guest at our gym and is a good guy. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in a good gym environment. The Michigan women's rugby club works out with us also ... tough ladies. Not sure about the fighting on skates but I'm sure you could learn to defend yourself against attack by someone with a banana, passion fruit, or bunch of grapes ... pointed sticks extra.
I travel every fall to a different college football venue with friends (going to Alabama in 2009, this the 18th year). It amazes me that on any given Saturday there are dozens and dozens of tailgates going on and that M can't find a better solution by looking around. For a case in point, one need only look at the mecca of college football tailgating (if not a mecca of college football), Ole Miss. They blow a horn at 6 PM on Friday and the Mississippi equivalent of the Oklahoma land rush ensues. Hunter, Anna Belle Lee, and their wagon 'o tailgating paraphernalia find themselves competing for spots within a chalk-lined grid. Tents are set up cheek-to-hog-jowls and anyone that puts so much as a pinky toe across the line is moved or removed. The tents can hold everything from persian rugs and candelabras to styrofoam coolers and paper cups, but by-god ingress and egress is assured. Not to mention it makes it easy to wander through the tents admiring and marveling at the lengths tailgaters will go to (no surprise to find the Ole Miss motto is "we may lose the game, but we will win the party"). If they want a good fix, they can find one.
After asking if we were from Australia upon hearing our yankee accents, I was immediately accosted by Vols when we visited their stadium last fall. Truthfully, I may have invited abuse by virtue of the number 2 Michigan jersey I was wearing. By the way, this particular visit was the 17th year of our annual college football trek to a college football venue and Knoxville ranks near the bottom for me.
Recent Comments
As a Liverpool fan, thought he'd turned a corner. That's just inexcusable behavior. Stupid too ("What cameras?"). Such talent wasted ...
apologies ... simply thought it was amusing to see similar use of metaphor
Manchester United legend Ole Gunnar Solskjaer says Manchester City are like a "little brother" who will never take their "big brother's" place.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20634523
We really like downtown St. Pete, right along the waterfront, and if you have the time and transportation, check out St. Pete Beach and Pass-A-Grille. Not super revved up night life but great for the day and evening. As mentioned, Ybor is the hotter late night destination.
M makes first 2 pk's with PSU missing first 2 ... PSU makes last 3 and all the rest of M's saved by PSU keeper.
Good run!
on to penalties ...
Go Blue!
Go Blue!
Go Blue!
all hail Coyote-vision!
For what it's worth, our experience with our daughter's recruitment was based first on her own initiative. Club coaches facilitated contacts in some cases but their roles were more advisory in terms of how to contact the coaches (directly by email or telephone) and what information to provide to them. The rules governing when and how college coaches can contact athletes dictated that our daughter initiate most of the contact, up until July before her senior year of high school. The club team our daughter played on ended up with every player on a college team and something like 80% of them at DI schools. Watching the process unfold for all but a couple of these girls (very elite players pursued by the college coaches) really drove home the point that coaches were looking for the girls themselves to drive their own recruitment. Many coaches claimed to be able to tell by the wording of emails and even IP addresses whether a prospective recruit or a parent/coach was contacting them. Telephone calls to coahces were the best but very difficult for 16 and 17 year old kids to do. As a coach, the biggest help you could be, in my opinion, would be as a provider of support and encouragement in helping to overcome the anxiety of talking to or corresponding with a college coach.
As a a parent, I would recommend that you simply provide encouragement and support to your athletes in contacting schools that they are interested in. If the interest is reciprocated, you can be a useful point of contact for the college coaches. In our case, our daughter ended up visiting about a dozen programs and ended up choosing her destination largely on her own (I wanted her to go somewhere else for selfish reasons ... 4 years of visiting Chicago on weekends sounded good to me). Her club coaches answered questions from college coaches (I believe our high school coaches had no contact at all, or if they did it was without our knowledge) but contact between them was usually in person at showcase tournaments. In the end she is right where she belongs and we couldn't be happier for her.
Pretty serious cheek blow-up for each throw in the video ... ala Dizzy Gillespie.
... and the officiating tolerated it.
3-3 is a bitter pill to swallow, but at least the u.s. side was game in the second half.
Great suggestions. Especially love Bayona. Also, strongly recommend cocktails at Napolean House (Chartres and St. Louis in French Quarter) ... feels like a Dashiell Hammett or James Cain setting (if you ignore the geography).
The pants need a Taco Bell (or the like) logo to go with the Domino sugar product placement, making them ... Taco Pants.
Blind loyalty, I guess. These students could pause to recognize that the victims of Sandusky are their peers.
just using this thread as a leaping off point since I can't start a new thread.
I know the money for the MBB center and the other renovations to Crisler and the stadium were specifically raised for those projects. Simply juxtaposing these large ticket items with cuts elsewhere, given the bigger picture of the economics of collegiate sports. To use your analogy, I fear that we are looking at borrowing from Peter (cuts to season length, cuts to off-season training, etc., for some sports) to pay Paul (that $2k per athlete stipend money has to come from somewhere).
Just looking for other perspectives on where the balance of the big budget in athletics departments is going to end up.
love the pics and see the whole project as a much needed boost to MMB's status in comparison to "like" programs (gotta keep up with the Joneses).
Big but time ...
I can't start a new thread here and this seemed like the best place to insert this information. My daughter just finished her freshman season as a D1 soccer player (partial athletic and partial academic scholarship leading to a full ride). As a parent of a second-tier-sport athlete, I do not begrudge the iPad hook-up locker to the bball players. Dollar bills follow the interest garnered by the sport and the participants should get to share in some of the spoils. But here is an excerpt from an email my daughter just got as this season was winding down:
As has been communicated in previous messages, NCAA President Work Groups are making recommendations to transform intercollegiate athletics. Among the Work Groups from which numerous recommendations will be made, the Resource Allocation Work Group is preparing to recommend three changes that will impact Division I College Soccer. Following are the recommendations.
1. Elimination of non-championship season competition.
2. Reduction of regular season competition by 10 %.
3. Elimination of all foreign tours for all sports.
End excerpt.
Further digging reveals that item 1 applies only to soccer, volleyball, softball, field hockey, women's lacrosse, cross country. While I do not find any sport-specific limitation for item 2, I find it difficult to imagine they are thinking of applying this change to football and basketball. Item 3 also does not call out a limitation to particular sports but football does not do this type of thing and basketball seems to be going to more of a conference-team travel format (the elimination of foreign travel also applies to both institution supported or privately funded trips ... my daughters team is traveling abroad in the spring, an every-four-years thing that is funded by the players themselves).
All of these proposals seem intended to cut costs in parts of athletic budgets while other parts of these budgets are seeing proposed or in-progress increases in expenditures. These cuts, at the expense of the "little-guys" sports.
Again, not trying to start a sports equivalent of "class-warfare", but these other sports are a source of great pride to the fanbases of universitys (M softball and last years M men's soccer run, for examples). Just throwing this info out there to see if it generates a more in depth discussion of the financial side of intercollegiate athletics (new student center for basketball team, $2k stipend for athletes, addition of varsity sports, cuts in sports, cuts in expenditures for certain sports, etc.).
I immediately renewed with the arrival of the email letting me know renewal time was here (so as not to forget), and my usual seat numbers were there. When the paper stuff came in the mail, I discarded it as I had already renewed and, as has been the case for many years now, I suspected that all that remained within the envelope with the paper format was now entirely junk ... lesson learned, I guess. In the end, still in the Big House, just expect better.
Got the same notice yesterday of a move from section 33 to section 7. It was the first I had heard of this new reality, as I renew my tickets online and was not prompted while doing so that this would be happening. I'm very disappointed as I had no chance to at least request staying in the north endzone. A free seat cushion for a few games doesn't really make it a whole lot better.
My family works out at a gym by the airport in Ann Arbor (HyperFit USA) that does the same grind-you-to-a-metal-toughness workout as Tamer does at "Sticks". He is a frequent guest at our gym and is a good guy. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in a good gym environment. The Michigan women's rugby club works out with us also ... tough ladies. Not sure about the fighting on skates but I'm sure you could learn to defend yourself against attack by someone with a banana, passion fruit, or bunch of grapes ... pointed sticks extra.