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NEWS, NOTES &
COMMENTARY
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The
Bradsher Beat
Friday, February 16, 2007
By Bethany Bradsher |
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Seek and ye shall find good news
By Bethany Bradsher
©2007 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
Seven East Carolina head coaches. One question.
“What was the high point of the past week?”
For Sharon Baldwin-Tener of the Lady
Pirates basketball team, this week has been like a continuous play highlight
reel. Her favorite moment was Sunday night, when junior guard Jasmine Young
lofted a shot with one second remaining to give her team a victory over
Tulsa.
Of course, Baldwin-Tener answered my question
before last night’s game against Texas-El Paso. That game ended with senior
Cherie Mills sinking four consecutive free throws with 9.2 seconds left
after Miners player Shalana Taylor was charged with a foul and a technical
foul. That perfect charity stripe outing for Mills, who finished with 26
points in the game, gave ECU a 66-64 lead and the victory.
It was a crucial win that left the Lady Pirates
(13-13, 8-5 C-USA) tied for fourth place in the Conference USA with three
games left in the regular season. They close out their home schedule
Saturday at 2 p.m. against Tulane.
It’s not always the earth-shattering things that
make a week special. Men’s golf coach Press McPhaul was impressed
this week with the diligence and development of a player named Chris Ault.
McPhaul has carried high expectations for Ault — expectations that he will
help lead the team — and little by little in off-season practice this week
that, goal has been taking shape, McPhaul said.
“He’s been having great practice and being
intentional about being a leader,” McPhaul said of Ault, a junior from
Levittown, PA.
The best news of the week for softball coach
Tracy Kee came not on the field, but from a doctor who cleared sophomore
Vanessa Moreno to play this season. Illness forced Moreno to miss the Lady
Pirates’ season-opening tournament in Chapel Hill, where they won three out
of four games.
“That’s huge for us,” said Kee of Moreno’s
return. “We played the first weekend without her, and she’s the heartbeat
and soul of our team.”
The softball team’s next stop is the Dunkin’ Donuts Classic, hosted by
Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Men’s track and field coach Bill Carson
has seen plenty of triumphs in his 37 years of coaching, but this week’s
installment came at Penn State University, where the men’s team took home
seven top-ten finishes to improve their heat and lane assignments at the
Conference USA indoor championship meet in two weeks.
One of the runners Carson cited as having an
outstanding weekend was Jerek Hewitt, who recently came to the track team
from the football squad and placed sixth in the 60-meter dash and seventh in
the 200 at the meet.
Kim Lewellen is planning for her women’s
golfers to hit their highlight today, when they leave for Miami to compete
in their first tournament of the season. The women will play in the Papa
John’s Intercollegiate Tournament, and they are more than ready to end a
hiatus on competition that has lasted since the fall season ended in early
November.
“We seem prepared and ready to go, and we’re
looking forward to getting down there to play well, and also for some warm
weather,” Lewellen said.
Pirate fans who enjoyed watching Lewellen on the
Golf Channel’s “The Big Break” reality series can catch her again on “The
Big Break” reunion series, which she taped in the fall but will begin airing
on Feb. 25.
Men’s tennis coach Shawn Heinchon saw his
men’s tennis team’s high point grow out what could have been a setback this
weekend. Several members of the team were struck with food poisoning on a
road trip to the mountains.
They were circumstances that could have easily
led to the Pirates’ fourth defeat, but they rallied in the face of illness
and defeated UNC-Asheville 4-3 Sunday in an outing that bodes well for
future matches against teams like High Point and Davidson.
“We’ve got a lot of new guys that are getting a
chance to compete and play, and it’s refreshing to see that we’re going to
be in there really against anyone we play,” Heinchon said.
Finally, women’s soccer coach Rob Donnenwirth
was just thankful for an end to the heart of recruiting season, which closed
with National Signing Day on Feb. 7, and the introduction of full team
off-season workouts this week.
“All this recruiting and conditioning, and finally we can get to what we
really like to do, and that’s coach,” Donnenwirth said.
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02/23/2007 01:14:37 AM |
