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NEWS, NOTES &
COMMENTARY
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The Bradsher Beat
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
By Bethany Bradsher |
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Eventful spring for ECU
athletics
By
Bethany Bradsher
©2010 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
Collegiate athletics
may be divided into three distinct seasons, but fall and winter combined
don’t put as many teams into play as spring. More than half of the 14
East Carolina teams compete between March and May, and that spring
frenzy produced ample opportunities for triumph, inspiration and
heartbreak.
Some highlights and
noteworthy trends:
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The softball team
emerged from the wings of the national stage to take a little bit of
spotlight. Just as 2007 was a seminal year for women’s basketball
because of that invitation to the Big Dance, the Pirate Nation will
likely remember 2010 as the year everything pivoted for the Lady Pirates
softball program. They toppled giants like 12th-ranked Texas, they
featured a pitcher (Toni Paisley) who led the nation in strikeouts and
they came within five runs of advancing to a Super Regional. Maybe it
wasn’t exactly a storybook season, but the plot was captivating enough
to ring in the hearts of the seven departing seniors for years to come.
Every team misses its seniors when they go, but I can’t think of many
groups that have defined their team like Cristen Aona, Marina Gusman-Brown,
Nicole Jordan, Christina Merrida, Vanessa Moreno, Charina Sumner and
Kaui Tom. There is one bright spot amid all of those sad goodbyes,
though: Gusman-Brown is listed on the Pirates volleyball roster as an
outside hitter. Like Greg Paulus, who went from Duke basketball to
Syracuse football last year because he completed his undergraduate
eligibility in four years and gained permission to compete in another
sport during the same year, Gusman-Brown, a 5-8 outside hitter, will
change venues but remain a Pirate.
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More individual
Pirate athletes than ever got the chance to see how they measure up in
national competition. Even if some of their teams were stopped at the
conference level, golfer Harold Varner and track and field athletes Drew
Kanz O’Shea, Dennis Aliotta, Matthew McConaughey, Tynita Butts and
Maegan Lewis exhibited enough excellence to qualify for NCAA Regionals
without their teams.
Varner, a sophomore from Gastonia, went to New Haven, CN, for the NCAA
Regional and finished tied for 33rd with a three-over score of 213 over
three rounds. He was the first ECU men’s golfer to qualify for the
national tournament as a walk-on since 1993.
The six track and field athletes are headed to Greensboro, to the track
at North Carolina A&T, where they will compete for the chance to move on
to the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, OR, on June 9-12. Several
runners have had solid seasons as well, but there is absolutely no doubt
that the coaches who recruit and train field events are doing something
right.
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At least the cranes
and bulldozers that seem to outnumber cars on campus right now boast a
nice gold paint job. Heavy construction equipment might not be the
typical canvas for Pirate spirit, but the dirt movers and builders are
doing their part to ensure Pirate success well into the next decade.
The new softball stadium needs only finishing touches, the football end
zone project with its 7,000 new seats is progressing on schedule, and
the new soccer stadium is underway with plans to open when the Lady
Pirates play their first game in August. Track and field and tennis
complexes aren’t far behind.
It might be a mess on campus at times, with giant cranes hovering
overhead and roads closed from time to time, but when every Pirates team
is playing in a venue that measures up to the ones they see on the road,
ECU athletics will have what it needs to create an enduring winning
spirit. And, if an ECU recruit hears that fans are checking webcams
every day for visual confirmation of the construction progress, that
will be an indisputable testimony of the uncommon passion this Pirate
Nation has for all things purple.
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05/26/2010 02:50 AM |
