When we were kids all our parents told us not play with weapons for fear of poking an eye out. After being inspired by the duals in the movie “Hook" as a young child, my cousin and I took it upon ourselves to make our own weapons out of my dance batons (from my short-lived ballet days). We took off the protective rubber ends to make them look like real swords. This was a great idea . . . until an eye was indeed poked. Not out, but still painful according to my cousin. Lesson learned.
Being a first-year student at Whitman is an experience akin to watching a bad Michael Bay movie. You don't really know what's going on and you're not sure if you even should, but things are exploding left and right in great heaping balls of fire. The special effects are perplexing but engaging and your adrenaline is pumping for a reason you can't even quite identify.
To be honest, I never really knew what the hype was with IM football. I cheered for my first-year section—tenderly known as “Eat Shit!"—and soon started rooting for my sorority's team, KKGFSU (you can guess the expletives there).
With the regular season still months away, the brief offseason interruption known as the Wilson/ITA Pacific Northwest Fall Men's Tennis Tournament offered a glimpse into the undeniably bright, but still somewhat distant future of Whitman's team. In a field that included almost 60 players from seven of the nine teams of which the Northwest Conference (NWC) is composed, Whitman, which went 16-0 in conference play last season, employed a mix of depth, talent, veteran savvy and youthful zeal to reestablish itself as the conference's preeminent power in front of its home crowd.
For true competitors, mere respectability is rarely worth striving for. In the hearts and minds of such people, it is an underwhelming result that typically inspires indifference or, worse, a moderate form of disgust. Scott Shields, head coach of the Whitman women's soccer team, leaned towards the latter reaction as he discussed his team's fourth-place finish in the Northwest Conference (NWC) last season.
After tying their first game of the year against Northwest University on Sept. 4 and losing to St. Martin's five days later, the men's soccer team was anxious to earn their first win of the season.
Almost 18 months have passed since construction and improvement work began on the old Sherwood Athletic Center. To Athletic Director Dean Snider, the new and improved center has a lot to show off.
After a year of competing, the Whitman athletic department enters the summer with two vacancies to fill. Baseball head coach Casey Powell and assistant athletic trainer David Howell will both move on to other programs next year.
Powell, Whitman's baseball coach for the past seven seasons and the 1996 NWC Player of the year at Linfield, will transition into an assistant coach position for the Division I Seattle University Redhawks Baseball team under head coach Donny Harrel. Seattle University hasn't played varsity baseball since the mid-1980s and not at the Division I level since 1980. The 2009-10 school year will be their first season back.
Powell and Harrel worked together before when Harrel was the head coach of the semi-pro Bend Elks in 2000 and 2001 and Powell was his assistant coach. Powell listed a chance to work with Harrel again as one of the major reasons he took the job at Seattle University.
“We have a great relationship off the field, we work well together on the field, our families get a long great, our kids get along great, and our wives get along great. All that, tied in together, made it seem like a perfect opportunity," said Powell.
