New MountAthletics.com Feature/Bel Air Patch

As you may have noticed, my time is limited since my site has launched. If you live in or have interest in Harford County, namely Bel Air, hit up BelAirPatch.com. A14-year-old music and athletic star who was fatally hit by a car last Friday has dominated coverage lately. It's a sad, but inspiring story.
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One thing thing I have to bring attention to while I'm here, though, are the new segments on MountAthletics.com. I've watched most of both "Up Against Atupem" episodes and plan on catching up with Leah Westbrooks, too. A genius segment that is entertaining and informative from the Mount's athletic department. Check them out and sorry for the short and intermittent posts.

MountAthletics.com to launch YouTube page today

The MountAthletics.com staff is expected to announce the launch of its official YouTube channel today. Videos have been available for days featuring an interview with new women's lacrosse head coach Lindsey Munday, as well as player profiles with all the men's and women's soccer teams. One of the most recent interviews is with women's soccer head coach Tom Gosselin after last night's draw with George Mason. With updates like this being put up immediately after games, this site will be the place to go for up-to-the-minute videos. Eventually each student-athlete will have their own intro page. I would have loved to have had my own intro video last year! Why couldn't they unveil this one year sooner??


Regardless of my selfish desires, this is another great idea and addition to the MountAthletics.com resources. Also be sure to check out and "Like" its Facebook page.


Update 12:09 p.m.:


Here is the link to the full release, which is pasted below.

Powell predicts national championship for women's lacrosse? Fine with me

I should have read the the entire press release (below in full) before I wrote the last post, because I would have seen what President Thomas H. Powell said about the women's lacrosse program's future under Lindsey Munday:


"We're excited to welcome Coach Lindsey Munday to the Mount," said President Dr. Thomas Powell.  "She brings a national presence along with great talent and experience and exemplifies the formation of character we try and instill in our athletes. I am confident this dynamic coach will take us to the next level and bring home a national championship."


My first reaction to this was, "A national championship at the Mount? Powell is one crazy son of a gun, and has no idea what he's talking about."


Then I thought, you know what? I have been complaining all this time about us setting our standards too low and hiring people for cheap. I don't know what we hired Lindsey Munday for, but damn, it has to be worth it.


So I have zero criticism for Powell's quote. Props to the president for dreaming big. Who cares if our only team national championship came in the 60's in basketball's "College Division"?

What could be bumping my top six?

With the men's basketball team's Robert Morris comeback at No. 7, Megan Kinsella's second place finish in NECs at No. 6, and Lizz Christiansen's record-breaking game/season at No. 5, I can't figure out what moment has knocked half of my top six choices down a slot. While I'm positive that Andrew Scalley's game-winning goal at the buzzer to give the men's lacrosse team the MAAC championship is the top moment, I have no idea whether Tom FitzSimon's double decathlon victories and Kent Worthington's no-hitter will end up at No. 2, 3 or 4, respectively. And I certainly have no clue what moment will join them in the top four.

I must also acknowledge my grave mistake in attempting to compile the countdown. In some ways I was correct, but my list turned out to be very wrong until we reached the top seven. My instincts told me that some of the events I selected would not make the countdown, but I included them anyway on the whim that each sport might have its own moment. The countdown does not - and rightfully so - have a moment for each sport. If I hadn't been preoccupied with this notion I may have been more likely to remember Chad Brown's being named the most outstanding performer at the outdoor NEC meet. Or women's lacrosse's six-goal comeback against George Washington.

That being said, I don't agree with all the picks so far, but as I said before, what good would the countdown be if everyone agreed with it?

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Although the sample size is very small, quite a few people have selected the matchup in American in the poll (at the top right of the page )as the one to which they are most looking forward. This is impressive because I assume most of these people made that selection knowing that head coach Robert Burke comes to us from American. Although this was a well-publicized fact when he was hired, I'm glad that so many people realized it, and look forward to that game more than Robert Morris or Loyola (Md.).

Top 15 moments is a great idea

These hot summer months, hotter than the collection of female team MVPs from various Mount teams this year, are as fertile for fresh stories as they are for planting corn. Fortunately a hot male MVP, if I may say so myself, (and I'm talking about myself, before you think I switched teams) continues to find loopholes.


This week it's the fact that MountAthletics.com is unveiling the "Top 15 Sports Moments" (no hyphen between top and 15) from this past academic year. While Nos. 15, 14 and 13 were revealed on Monday, Tuesday and today, respectively, there's still plenty of time to predict what Nos. 12 through one will be as the countdown continues Thursday.


Before I get to that, I want to throw my support out in front of the countdown. This is a great idea and a nice summer token for the fans other than schedule releases and personnel changes. I sense a pattern in the countdown already, but I'll get to that later.

First (no pun intended), I hate to ruin to for you, but the No. 1 moment is more of a lock than the Baltimore Orioles missing the playoffs. (I went to Sunday's 10-1 loss to Toronto - it was ugly. Amazing triple-comeback last night against the Rays, though.)

Any time you can put the words "buzzer-beater," "tournament MVP," "game-winner" and "championship" in the same second of the same moment - that's your winner of just about any countdown unless it involves Oprah or Beyonce - for completely unrelated reasons.

Then-freshman Andrew Scalley scored the game-winning goal for the men's lacrosse team in the 2010 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship game as the buzzer sounded and he was named tournament MVP. What makes the goal even more special is that it was the last game to be played by the Mount in the MAAC as it will join the rest of the school's sports in the Northeast Conference next season.

After that selection I have three picks that are all great individual accomplishments (No. 1 was Scalley's "moment", but it was more of a team accomplishment than these next three), but a step below the rare combination provided by the top moment. At the same time, these are all certainly a step above any other Mount moment I can recall this year. If I'm wrong I'll put my foot in my mouth.

No. 2, in my opinion, is the dual accomplishment of rising redshirt senior Tom FitzSimons winning the decathlon in the Penn Relays as well as IC4As. Although FitzSimons did not qualify for nationals, he is surely expected to do so in his final two seasons of outdoor. What makes this an even greater accomplishment is the fact that FitzSimons was plagued by a stress fracture in his foot for parts of the last two seasons (outdoor in his sophomore year, indoor in his junior year) that caused him to redshirt unexpectedly.

The battle for the third spot is between two athletes of similar ilk. Kent Worthington allowed no hits (so yeah, he threw a no-hitter) in an 18-0 shellacking of NEC opponent Quinnipiac on March 28. Worthington's nemesis in this situation is rising junior Lizz Christiansen, who is the starting first baseman for the softball team. In her freshman season, Christiansen looked poised to break a number of single season records before incurring a season-ending leg injury while sliding into him during a mid-season game. Not quite 100 percent as the season began, Christiansen captured records that were inevitably going to be broken by the Harrisburg-area native.

In the May 7 season finale against St. Francis (Pa.), Christiansen belted a homer and knocked in five runs to give her single seasons records of 11 home runs and 50 RBI.

My nod goes to Christiansen for a number of reasons. Title IX probably won't allow us not to have a female in the top three of our countdown and she set two records in one game. Also working in her favor, and against Worthington's, is the fact that the baseball team won its game 18-0, so he had less pressure to hold a lead, and Quinnipiac was winless coming into that series (the Mount dropped the first game before taking the next three). So Christiansen's overall accomplishment was a season-long one, while Worthington's took place on a single day, although her moment was pretty big in itself since she truly "stepped up to the plate" (I couldn't resist) to get the record in the regular season finale.

To be fair, a couple things are working against Christiansen as well. The first of which, and most obvious, is that she plays softball. I'm sorry, but yeah, I said it. Secondly, the season finale against St. Francis (Pa.) was a make-up game, which neither team needed because they were about as far from the playoffs as the Orioles considering it was the last game of the season for both teams. I realize that is an unfair hit against her credibility, though, since the game was originally on the schedule and would have had to have been played if A. It influenced playoff scenarios or B. It hadn't been postponed in the first place.

With all that being said, both are great, unprecedented accomplishments as far as the Mount goes. When two moments are seemingly this close, you have to be critical to separate them. But let's not forget that they are likely top four moments for a school's entire athletic department in one season.

Outside of my top four, I can think of no other large-scale events that are locks for the top of the countdown. Two other moments stand out to me from the past year, but it's because I was involved in both of them and am completely biased.

(Skip ahead if you don't care about my first self-centered story.)

If I may wax poetic about my own accomplishment, I had a double eagle in the first round of the Rutgers Invitational in the fall. It was raining steady all day and I came to the fourth hole at +4 with six holes remaining. After hitting my drive in the right rough of the par five, I selected three iron from 229 yards as it was downwind and I didn't want to go over the green. I normally hit three iron about 200 yards to give you an idea of the wind and the rollout I was expecting.

At impact I immediately knew that I had executed the shot perfectly. That is, it was headed on a laser down my intended target line and I had hit the ball in the sweet spot. Exactly what happened next is anyone's guess because the front of the green is the upslope of a valley the begins in the last 50 yards of the hole and ends around the middle of the green. With the pin up front that day, I striped my shot, watched it disappear into the distant valley and walked down the fairway toward the green. When my two playing partners and me reached the green, we couldn't find my ball for two minutes. We searched probably 600 square yards of greenside rough without a trace of my ProV1X. Finally, the kid from Rutgers said I should check the hole. I insisted that was a bad idea as I'm very superstitious, and didn't want to unnecessarily look in the hole if my ball wasn't there. After my Judas-like denial of three times in succession, he finally checked the hole for me. Informing me my ball was at the bottom of the cup, I literally told him I would punch him in the face if he said it one more time and he was lying. Then he said it one more time and I found myself in a win-win situation: I was either going to have a double eagle - the rarest shot in golf - or get to punch a kid from New Jersey square in the face, probably multiple times, with no repercussions. It turns out he was not lying as the rain-filled cup yielded the blue markings on my ball indicating that I had in fact made an albatross. Just then my coach, Kevin Farrell, came walking through the trees of an adjacent hole like he was on the set of Field of Dreams. He just giggled that red-headed, potbelly giggle when I told him. Then I decided to yell across the course to Danny what had happened, except that it wasn't Danny it was Sage, who is considerably taller. I didn't really care, I had just hit the best shot of my life.

When we got inside for the round I found out some other bastard from Rutgers had made a hole-in-one on the par three 11th (ironically I had hit the pin on that hole earlier) and tried to steal my thunder. The next day, in the irony of all ironies, we were paired together along with the same kid from USC-Upstate that I played with in the first round. His name was Josh Gallman and he was a top 100-ranked amateur in the country. He shot 71-66 - always in the rain - and won the tournament going away. Suddenly the hole-in-one and double eagle didn't seem so amazing.

(Stop skipping now.)

The other great memory I have this year in which I was involved was the men's basketball season finale against Robert Morris. Trailing by what felt like 30 (actually 13) in the early parts of the second half, we erased a seven-point deficit with less than three minutes remaining to beat the Colonials 63-61. It was an important victory for a rivalry that was headed toward life support due to RMU's recent dominance, but suddenly turned into THE best regular season game of my five years as manager. It also guaranteed us the No. 3 seed and a home in the playoffs.

I won't begin to rate my golf moment, but I think the RMU comeback victory has to fall in the top six or seven. I would say No. 5, but I'm sure the experts in the athletic department have a surprise up their sleeves for the next moment on the list. With only one team conference championship this season, there are a number of moments in the running.

Now back to the pattern I think I'm sensing already. The first three events in the countdown were women's soccer goalie Sadie Winship scoring in a game, Chelsea Johnson winning a bunch of tennis matches to become second all-time in singles victories at the Mount and the women's basketball team scoring 86 points in a win against Quinnipiac.

I don't mind Nos. 15 and 14 because, as I said, I wouldn't know what else to put there, but No. 13 is a little shady to me. The women's basketball team had its worst season in the NCAA Division I era based on the fact that it missed the NEC tournament for the first time ever. So a high-scoring road win is hardly a top-15 (hyphen between top and 15) moment for all of our sports this season. If it had to be included, I think it should be right at the end as the 15th-best moment.

Since it was included, though, what I suspect is that each sport may get a moment in the countdown since we have - ta dah! - 15 varsity sports at the Mount. There are, however, some holes in my own theory. First is the fact that there are two teams each for cross country and track, which could cause problems. Additionally, some sports probably didn't have any moments worthy of making the countdown (ahem, women's basketball - a team of which I'm a huge fan of its players and coaches, but they just didn't do enough, along with other teams.)

So assuming that is the case with each team getting one slot, and it very well may not be, here are my selections for the best team moments this year and what order they would go in.

Actual:

No. 15: Women's soccer/Sadie Winship, above

No. 14: Women's tennis/Chelsea Johnson, above

No. 13: I don't want to say it again.

Predicted:

No. 12: Men's tennis, something involving senior Thad Mostowtt or freshman Mike Salomon. It's difficult to pick a top moment for a team sport full of individuals whose points are all worth the same.

No. 11: Women's golf, Autumn Serruta finishes fourth at team's home spring invitational.

No. 10: Women's swimming, All swimmers allowed to wear two-piece swimsuits. Oh wait, that didn't happen. Uhh, something involving Jeanne Benedetti. If it were a two-piece announcement, we shouldn't complain.

No. 9: Men's soccer, Chris Wheeler's penalty kick conversion to beat Quinnipiac 4-3 in a shootout

No. 8: Women's lacrosse, something with senior Jackie Kearney, (possibly Ashley Johnson, though) maybe being selected for North-South All-Star game

No. 7: Men's golf, if I had to pick, yeah, I'd pick my own moment, but I'm randomly putting it at seventh so it's in the middle and I don't actually think we have a moment (as I don't think women's golf, men's tennis or women's swimming will either), so there's another hole in my theory.

No. 6: Men's basketball, RMU comeback

No. 5: Cross country, Freshman Megan Kinsella second at NECs

No. 4: Baseball, Worthington no-no

No. 3: Softball, Christiansen records

No. 2: Track and field, FitzSimons decathlons

No. 1: Men's lacrosse, Scalley game-winner

So there you go. I'll be honest, the only ones I'm confident about being included are one through four. The rest are based on my theory, and are shaky selections at that. I love the idea regardless, especially the fact that it's spaced out over 15 days. Again, great idea, and let the debate begin.

Men's lacrosse is the favorite son in Emmitsburg (or should be)

Men’s basketball is no longer the top priority in the Mount St. Mary’s athletic department. At least it should not be.

The men’s lacrosse team, and to some degree, the women’s lacrosse team, need to be the big boys (and girls) on campus.

That does not mean the basketball teams should be neglected, nor should they receive any less attention or funding than they do now (in fact an increase in both would be fine), but they cannot be the top priority.

Not with Tom Gravante’s men’s laxers coming off of what is probably the best season in school history. School record 12 wins, second-ever NCAA tournament appearance, defeated two nationally ranked teams – both on the road, and best of all, almost all of the team’s big guns are coming back next year.

If there were ever a chance for a sport at the Mount to be nationally ranked in the NCAA Division I era, this is it. The men’s lacrosse team was this close to being ranked this year after beating No. 19 Robert Morris, and if it had followed up a win at No. 10 Lafayette with a win against No. 11 Georgetown, it would have been a top 15 team.

Alas the men fell to Georgetown 11-6 – it was the Mount’s fourth game in 11 days, three of which were on the road, and just three days before a game in Detroit for which they would have to fly – and the pollsters stopped voting for the Mountaineers, who were three spots from the top 20 the week before playing Lafayette and Georgetown.

After going nearly unblemished in MAAC play (and eventually avenging the only loss to Siena in the MAAC championship) the men showed that their early season victories were no fluke.

We already have a wonderful stadium, brand new locker rooms and coaches we want to keep around in both the men’s and women’s programs. Now we need some capital.

Gravante stated last week that he believes the team has won five MAAC titles since he’s been here even though only two of them qualified the team for the NCAA tournament. As for the women, Sonia LaMonica kept the women’s team afloat this year with a shorthanded roster in her first season as head coach.

LaMonica is better known, however, for her work ethic and uncompromisingly high standards she sets for her players, who love her.

And for the first time this season, both teams had two paid assistants who received a stipend. Next year, however, one of those assistants will become full-time for both teams. Let’s make it worthwhile. I’m not talking a $10,000 salary for each team’s full-time assistant and a $5,000 stipend for the other one.

Pony up the cash, Tommy P (our president). Twenty-thousand dollars should be the absolute minimum we’re willing to pay a full-time assistant to coach any of the sports here, let alone some of our most successful. Both teams have capable assistants in place, so why scare them away with an insulting salary when they will need to work for full-time pay at some point? Let’s give them an offer they would have some trouble refusing, and if they do, we’ll be paying enough to bring in a capable successor.

(Or did we not learn our lesson with Denise Wescott? I mean, we got lucky with LaMonica, but really, how many bullets can we dodge? Just because we're a Catholic school doesn't mean God is going to throw us a lifeline every time stupid athletic decisions are made. Oh yeah, see ya later, coach Brown and staff. You get the point. Right? You know who I'm talking to and it's not Lynne Robinson.)

Maryland is the hotbed for lacrosse – how lucky we are to reside in the state that is home to the best prep lacrosse in the country (sorry, New York). It would be foolish to run a program that many of the Maryland high school players would consider second-tier.

With all that being said, I can guarantee you that Tom Gravante never wins another MAAC championship for as long as he coaches at the Mount.

That’s because the Mount is joining the NEC next year, making every sport at the Mount a member of the NEC. While that may not seem like a big deal, the NEC will operate with teams that have been uncapped for quite some time while the MAAC just recently became uncapped. What I mean by that is that until recently, MAAC members were only allowed to give out a capped number of scholarships regardless of how much money each school had to offer recruits. Each year that number increased by two scholarships until it recently allowed its members to grant the NCAA maximum of 12.6 scholarships to each school. Unfortunately, the Mount never got the memo and still caps itself. (Take that in as many ways in which you can interpret it.)

There will be no such lag in the NEC and many of the teams the Mount will be joining – such as well-heeled Bryant in Sacred heart – in that conference have been operating under a full budget for years.

The Mount, however, only has four scholarships to give, according to Gravante. That’s the same as Wagner, which has a 2-74 in its last five seasons including going 0-45 from 2006 – 2008.

Gravante is doing a lot with a little and has been for years. He could accept a Wagner performance to match his Wagner budget, but he doesn’t.

Of course the Mount has had down years, but that is to be expected with this shoestring budget. If we want to compete on a consistent basis, we’re going to need more cash. Like 8.6 scholarships and $25,000-plus for a full-time assistant – times two (to cover both programs.)

Like someone rich always said; scared money don’t make money. It’s time for the Mount to stop being scared. Although there’s probably a better chance this administration will take the statue of Mary off the mountain before it starts investing some serious money into athletics.

If it does not act soon, this window of opportunity will close. Focusing just on the men’s team, the future could not be brighter. (The women and their not-bad-looking head coach are more than welcome to tag along for the ride, and any other activities for which they wish to tag along.)

First of all, junior goalie T.C. DiBartolo needs a nickname. I’m thinking Barnum, Bailey or both. The man is a circus act inside the crease and best of all, the team MVP is back next year.

So are offensive stalwarts Brett and Bryant Schmidt (the BB guns?), Cody can’t-decode-me Lehrer – fourth in the nation in goals per game this season, even without a goal in his final two games – Andrew “Agent Zeros” Scalley (he scored the MAAC championship winner with zeros on the clock, a buzzer beater. You can’t think of anything better so stop making fun of these nicknames), Ben “Bear” Trapp (because he wins so many faceoffs, it’s like he gets the ball in a bear trap and won’t let it go) and a slew of other important players are all coming back.

Thanks for everything, Matt Nealis, Russell Moncure, Drew Dunn, Jim O’Shea and all the other seniors. You will be missed. But hopefully not too much.

At least not if the Mount does what any sensible school would do and invests in the one program that has glimmering hope to become a national power.

All eyes are not on us – but they could be. What are we going to do about it? What are you, Mount administration, going to do about it? (It's not a rhetorical question.)

Mount administrators serve stiff drinks

Members of the Mount's athletic department as well as a few more well-known figures at the school partook in a "celebrity bar tending event" last night at the Ott House that raised $1,300 for the Emmitsburg Food Bank.


Lawyer, Mount professor and King of Emmitsburg, Kevin Robinson Sr. was among the first wave of bartenders at 7 p.m. I can vouch for his heavy hand with the liquor as he gave patrons more than their money's worth in his 30 minutes of labor.


Director of Public Safety Barry Titler and director of athletics Lynne Robinson were featured in a later shift as was Dean David Rehm. Titler's highlight was carrying empty kegs out the back door - something we would all love to see him do on campus.


In the last shift of the night Mount women's soccer coach Tom "Goose" Gosselin was joined by his brother Jon garnering the most attention behind the bar than at any other point during the night - because of Tom's charisma. Goose, although not as heavy-handed as KRob, was also generous with the drinks.


The top tip of the night was $101, but the jack-of-all-trades Tom Gosselin dropped a generous $27 tip before the evening was over.


Although this has little to do with sports, it was one of the more fun (and expensive) nights I have spent at the Ott House in the last five years. And because of the athletic figures who took some time out for a good cause, I thought it deserved a mention.


And thanks again to KRob and Goose for the well-mixed Coke and rums.