Monthly Archives: August 2010

August 26, 2010 · 12:32 am

TODAY’S COOL-NAMED SPORTS TEAM – UC-SANTA CRUZ

Location: Santa Cruz, CA

Division: NCAA Division 3

Conference Affiliation: Independent

Major sports: basketball, soccer, tennis, volleyball

Comment: The Banana Slugs have been the Gold Standard for unusual team nicknames for so long I even included a note in my D3 20 Coolest List saying why I was leaving them off. For all their fans who were wondering, here they are at last! And it takes more than table salt to stop THESE slugs!

For more of NCAA Division 3′s Coolest-Named Teams click here: https://glitternight.com/d3-20-coolest/

For the NAIA edition of The 20 Coolest College Sports Teams You May Never Have Heard Of click here: https://glitternight.com/2010/06/21/the-20-coolest-named-college-sports-teams-you-may-have-never-heard-of-naia-edition/

And for The 20 Coolest College Sports Logos click here: https://glitternight.com/2010/07/20/the-20-coolest-college-sports-logos/

And for The 20 Coolest Football Helmets In NCAA Division 3 click here: https://glitternight.com/2010/08/23/the-20-coolest-football-helmets-in-ncaa-division-3/

Balladeer’s Blog is not affiliated with or operated by the NAIA or the NCAA or any of their member institutions.

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

UC Santa Cruz arboretum going strong (sfgate.com)

23 Comments

Filed under Cool names and cool logos

Tagged as basketball, California, Santa Cruz, soccer, sports, University of California Santa Cruz

August 25, 2010 · 2:32 am

NAIA FOOTBALL SEASON STARTS THIS THURSDAY NIGHT, AUG 26TH

Forget all this preaseason NFL stuff, if you’re hungry for games that matter the NAIA has you covered this Thursday night with 5 games and 3 of the NAIA Top 25 in action! For a composite schedule of all the games scheduled from August 26th through September 11th click here: http://naia.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/2010CompositeSchedule.html

And for a look at tomorrow night’s matchups just read on:

SAINT XAVIER COUGARS (#4)

VERSUS

BETHEL (TN) WILDCATS

MINOT STATE BEAVERS (#14)

VERSUS

BEMIDJI STATE BEAVERS

DICKINSON STATE BLUE HAWKS (#18)

VERSUS

ROCKY MOUNTAIN BATTLING BEARS

GEORGETOWN (KY) TIGERS

VERSUS

HANOVER INDIANA PANTHERS

SOUTHERN VIRGINIA KNIGHTS

VERSUS

CONCORD MOUNTAIN LIONS

DON’T MISS ACTUAL, HONEST-TO-GOD FOOTBALL GAMES THAT MATTER

Football helmets courtesy of The Helmet Project at: http://www.nationalchamps.net/Helmet_Project/

Sioux Falls atop NAIA poll (sportingnews.com)
Ga. State starts new program in tough economy (sfgate.com)

1 Comment

Filed under college football

Tagged as College and University, NAIA, NFL, sports

August 24, 2010 · 11:54 pm

“CAN NOTHING STOP THESE WOMEN?” THE NAIA VOLLEYBALL WORLD WONDERS

gregusova kill

When it comes to NAIA volleyball, it’s been the Fresno Pacific Sunbirds’ world and everyone else is just part of the dig-counters. The Sunbirds are coming off a perfect 38-0 season which found the ladies winning a 3rd straight national championship. They also went undefeated at home for the 7th straight season and won their 10th straight Golden State Athletic Conference title. Needless to say they are starting this season ranked number 1.

Having won 110 of their last 112 matches, the Sunbirds volleyball team felt up to the challenge of seeing if I could conduct a lucid interview for once. When I offered to meet the ladies for a face-to-face interview to get the inside story on their team’s phenomenal run, Head Coach Dennis Janzen gave the okay, despite my ice-breaking joke in which I told him I really loved watching reruns of him in The Fugitive and Harry O. Janzen just rolled his eyes. (Maybe he was just peeved that I didn’t mention Richard Diamond episodes) (DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING IS ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE BITS WHERE I PRETEND TO ACTUALLY BE INTERVIEWING THE PEOPLE COVERED IN THE ARTICLE…ALSO NO VOLLEYBALL PLAYERS WERE HARMED DURING THE WRITING OF THIS BLOG POST)

I asked senior All-American Lisa “Worth More Than A” Shilling how she and her teammates deal with the non-stop pressure of the streak they are on and she replied:

“It’s there in the back of your mind, but it ‘s only what you make of it.”

She also stated the common thread running through the last 3 national championship teams has been the close-knit team chemistry. Shilling, along with Libero Mariah Mandelbaum, is trying to complete her Fresno Pacific career without ever having experienced a season-ending loss. Volleyball newcomers can find out all they need to know about the Libero position by going here: http://www.strength-and-power-for-volleyball.com/volleyball-rules-libero.html

I told Mandelbaum I once wrote a libretto about a Libero who was a Libra and she asked Coach Janzen if she could go. For a quick round-up of the other Sunbirds volleyball players who, if there’s any justice, will soon have a major motion picture made about them, here you go:

Martina Gregusova, the NAIA Tournament MVP last year. She led the Sunbirds with 444 kills last season (And left nearly 500 opponents seriously wounded. I’m kidding!).

Keke Wang, an All-American at two positions. She will play middle blocker and opposite. (As opposed to playing Dan Blocker and similar)

Wang teams with the aforementioned Lisa Shilling to form one of the best middle blocker duos in the sport. Shilling was 2nd Team All American last year and is described by FPU as one of the driving forces behind the team’s success.

Mariah Mandelbaum, comfortable in her role as a “shortstop of volleyball” AKA Libero, led the Golden State Athletic Conference in digs last season.

Sophomores Erica Adachi and Emily Carroll return as the team’s primary setters. This Titanic Twosome combined for 1,482 assists in 2009.

Newcomers to the squad include Kathleen Anderson, Jessica Berg, Karah Mitchell and Brittany Sumpter.

The Sunbirds return the bulk of their 2009 title team but lose two players, including Tiffany Marinos, who has joined the team’s coaching staff. Coach Janzen, proving that for coaches the glass is always half-empty, said the team has a long way to go to get where they need to be and added this vintage example of coachspeak:

“We want to be better defensively. This program defensively has a higher standard than most. We have got to push defensive intensity.”

Do you get the feeling that a perfectionist coach like Dennis Janzen wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat over the 2 games his team has lost out of their last 112?

And the Sunbirds play in the GSAC, which may well be the best volleyball conference in the NAIA, boasting 4 of the nation’s Top 5 teams at the end of last season. Think about that as you absorb this next stat: FPU has won 52 straight against conference opponents.

The Sunbirds have got their eyes on history and if they can win their 4th straight NAIA volleyball title they will stand at the top of the sport along with the only 2 other teams to accomplish that task: the 1981-1984 Hawaii-Hilo Vulcans (Team motto: Live Long And Prosper) and the 1994-1997 BYU-Hawaii Seasiders (Team motto: Our Team’s Nickname Doesn’t Lend Itself Easily To Lame Jokes By Bloggers…That motto may sound a bit unwieldy but it looks great on a T-shirt.) There’s no doubt about it, Fresno Pacific University is to volleyball what UConn is to women’s hoops.

For streaming video of Coach Janzen and I singing the Fresno Pacific fight song click here: http://fpuathletics.com/

For another tongue-in-cheek yet informative NAIA volleyball story click here: https://glitternight.com/2010/07/23/multiple-choice-quiz-on-sioux-falls-volleyball-programs-recent-honor/

Balladeer’s Blog is not affiliated with or operated by the NAIA or the NCAA or any of their member institutions.

UMKC Volleyball Team: ‘Roos Tabbed Third In Summit League Preseason Poll (volleyballvoices.com)
IPFW Women’s Volleyball Team to Host Free Volleyball Camps, Clinics (volleyballvoices.com)
Tulsa Volleyball Team Begins Practice Today Monday (volleyballvoices.com)
UNLV VOLLEYBALL NEWS: Rebels Picked Eighth in Preseason Poll (volleyballvoices.com)

10 Comments

Filed under college sports

Tagged as Coaching, College and University, Fresno Pacific University, Golden State Athletic Conference, Head coach, sports, United States, volleyball, volleyball tribe

August 23, 2010 · 3:18 pm

THE 20 COOLEST FOOTBALL HELMETS IN NCAA DIVISION 3

Well, from the e-mails I’m getting people want another Top 20 Contest. On top of that Division 3 fans have been complaining that I’ve done 2 NAIA Top 20 lists but only one for them, but that’s only because I didn’t branch out to D3 sports until recently. To keep everyone happy I’ll continue to feature NAIA football teams in my Cool Helmet Of The Day posts and do a Top 20 List for D3 football teams. These rankings are in no particular order and the votes of my readers will, as usual, dictate the winner. As always you can reach me at Thtcom15@aol.com to cast your vote. Football helmets courtesy of The Helmet Project at: http://www.nationalchamps.net/Helmet_Project/

20. MARY HARDIN-BAYLOR CRUSADERS

Location: Belton, TX

Conference Affiliation: American Southwest Conference

Comment: Crusaders is easily one of the coolest names a sports team could have. Out of all the Crusader teams throughout college sports I think Mary Hardin-Baylor has the coolest helmets! The only way their helmets could get any better would be if they had a picture of Crusader Rabbit on them!

19. URSINUS BEARS

Location: Collegeville, PA

Conference Affiliation: Centennial Conference

Comment: What better name for sports teams at a school called Ursinus than the Bears? (Maybe “Da Bears”) And using the same reasoning I used with Mary Hardin-Baylor above I picked Ursinus because out of all the Bears teams throughout college athletics Ursinus has the coolest helmet! Should I apply the Mary-Hardin Baylor template even further and say the only way the helmets could be any better would be if they had a picture of Yo- naaah!

18. TRINITY BANTAMS

Location: Hartford, CT

Conference Affiliation: New England Small College Athletic Conference

Comment: When you hear the word Bantam you think “scrappy” and “hard fighting” and “feisty” so it’s the perfect nickname for sports teams. And the Bantam on the helmet looks like he could kick Foghorn Leghorn’s butt all over the barnyard. Still, I’d like to see a team called The Orpingtons but I’m kind of eccentric .

17. MERCHANT MARINE ACADEMY MARINERS

Location: King’s Point, NY

Conference Affiliation: Liberty League

Comment: What better name for – okay, I’ll stop! But you do have to admit that the Mariners is the perfect name for the academy’s sports teams. And aside from people sometimes throwing mean-spirited Seattle Mariners jokes their way there’s no real down side to the nickname.

16. ANDERSON RAVENS

Location: Anderson, IN

Conference Affiliation: Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference

Comment: Go ahead and insert your own Edgar Allan Poe joke here. All I’ve got to say is that out of all the Ravens teams in college sports the Anderson helmets will definitely stay with you, or my name isn’t Annabel Lee. (Get it? The obvious joke would have been some kind of “Nevermore” reference or something like that, so I – oh, forget it!)

15. UMASS-DARTMOUTH CORSAIRS

Location: North Dartmouth, MA

Conference Affiliation: New England Football Conference – Boyd Division

Comment: I don’t care if it’s The Black Pirate or Captain Blood or The Black Swan or Nate And Hayes, people love the romantic image of pirates! The Corsairs have such a cool helmet, nickname and logo it’s easy to imagine that the fans don’t even care what their record is…I’m just kidding, of course. You know how fans are!

14. LAKE FOREST FORESTERS

Location: Lake Forest, IL

Conference Affiliation: Midwest Conference

Comment: The helmet makes sense when you know that one of the school’s mascots is a Bigfoot-type creature. It’s not the least bit true that Quentin Tarantino went to Lake Forest and the helmets are an odd tribute to him.

13. WASHINGTON AND LEE GENERALS

Location: Lexington, VA

Conference Affiliation: Old Dominion Athletic Conference

Comment: Okay, I know it’s just a W and an L but it’s the coolest possible rendition of a W and L conjoined into one great-looking helmet! Personally I think we should launch a movement to have this logo added to our alphabet as a combined W and L sound. It could be used in words like owl, bowling, etc.

12. CARLETON KNIGHTS

Location: Northfield, MN

Conference Affiliation: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

Comment: What’s not to love about a helmet this eye-catching? What kid wouldn’t want to strap this on his head on Saturday afternoons? The city flies under the radar, but Northfield, MN is known just as much for college football as it is for the time when the residents rose up and kicked the butts of the Jesse James Gang in the 1800’s! “Don’t call us Squareheads” should be the town’s official slogan (People who’ve seen The Long Riders will get it).

11. MORRISVILLE STATE MUSTANGS

Location: Morrisville, NY

Conference Affiliation: New Jersey Athletic Conference

Comment: Forget about SMU, these Mustangs know how to rock a helmet with an equine mascot! Just keep your “Jack Woltz in The Godfather” jokes to yourself! By the way, the Morrisville State helmets would make great “knight” pieces in a chess set made out of tiny football helmets. We could just use plain helmets as pawns since I doubt any school’s administration will have such low self-esteem that they’d call their teams The Pawns.

10. SAINT OLAF OLES

Location: Northfield, MN

Conference Affilation: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

Comment: The Oles, another Northfield football program, sport an incredibly cool logo that looks great on helmets, T-shirts, etc. And by the way, there’s no truth to the story that the school’s teams are named after “Ole” Olsen from the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson. (Say what you will, it takes guts to try to get away with an Olsen and Johnson reference in the year 2010!)

9. OHIO NORTHERN UNIVERSITY POLAR BEARS