JDM to cover games in San Antonio

sports Thursday, 21 March 2013 // The Collegian4

CHRIS BILS @ChrisBils

With 11:46 to play in Monday’s

NCAA Midwest Regional Final at

Kates Gymnasium, it looked like

the dream might be about to die.

Ashland found itself down

50-42 and struggling to stop the

bleeding after Wayne State came

out of halftime on a 24-6 run.

Senior forward Kari

Daugherty—who scored a com-

bined 63 points and grabbed 27

rebounds in the two previous tour-

nament games—sat on the bench

with three fouls.

But after the final buzzer

sounded, it was AU head coach

Sue Ramsey who raised her hands

in celebration and swung the net

over her head after the Eagles

secured a 72-63 victory and a sec-

ond-straight trip to the Elite Eight.

It took a lot of people to get

there.

“These young ladies are amaz-

ing,” Ramsey said.

It was senior forward Daiva

Gerbec, drawing the third foul on

WSU’s Juanita Cochran seconds

later.

It was Daugherty, coming back

in the game to score eight points

down the stretch and finish with

team-highs of 17 points and 15

rebounds after a dismal shooting

display in the first half.

It was senior forward Beth

Mantkowski, playing the four big-

gest minutes of her life, including

back-to-back buckets that tied the

game at 58 with 6:08 to play.

“Every day in practice as we’re

rotating people around, she’s like

‘I got it,’” Ramsey said. “And she

had it.”

It was junior guard Alyssa

Miller, finding her jump shot at

the most crucial time to tie it again

at 60 a little over a minute later.

It was sophomore guard Taylor

Woods, coming out fearless, drain-

ing 4 of 5 3-pointers in the first

half and making several big plays

near the end—including a huge

steal and run-out with 2:58 to play

that extended a one-point lead to

a 64-61 advantage.

And Miller again, draining

another jump shot while getting

fouled and draining the free throw

to make it 67-61.

It was the crowd of 2,832 that

packed Kates, rising at the right

times and chanting ‘DEFENSE’

at the top of their lungs when the

team desperately needed stops.

“They totally get and embrace

what these young ladies are all

about, and that’s the beautiful

thing,” Ramsey said.

It was a close-knit team dig-

ging deep and remembering the

principles that got them there,

something that is much easier said

than done when the walls are clos-

ing in on a season that has taken

on a life of its own.

“I thought (assistant) coach

(Jennifer) Bushby said it really well

when she said, ‘Do what we’ve

done all year,’” Ramsey said.

“‘Don’t play for the crowd, don’t

play for anyone else, but play

for each other and play for the

Lord.’”

Ashland started the game on

fire, hitting its first three attempts

from 3-point range to jump out to

a 9-4 lead, and extended the lead

to seven on a fast break layup by

senior guard Lindsay Tenyak.

That got the crowd on their

feet and forced a timeout from

WSU head coach Carrie Lohr.

The hot start would not last.

Despite a stellar display from

Woods — who had 12 points in

the first period and finished with

17 points, five rebounds and three

assists — the Eagles shot just 35.1

percent (13 of 37) in the first peri-

od and went into the locker room

up 10 (36-26) after the Warriors’

Talisha Bridges drained a 25-foot

3-pointer at the buzzer.

Daugherty had just three

points at halftime on 1 of 7 shoot-

ing and Gerbec had six points (3

of 7) in a physical battle down low.

The Warriors grabbed the

momentum out of the break

starting with a 3-pointer by Lena

Thomas and took the lead when

Deanna Crumpton scored to

make it 42-40 with 14:38 left.

Then, Wayne State used their

advantage with Cochran down

low to extend that lead over the

next several minutes.

Cochran finished with 15

points and 17 rebounds, including

eight on the offensive end, and

five blocks.

“I tried to do more pull-ups

and attack the high post instead of

banging inside because Juanita’s

gonna win the banging battle

every time,” Daugherty said.

Bridges was also a force. She

had 18 points and nine rebounds,

none bigger than the shot before

halftime.

Bridges and Cochran were

joined on the all-tournament team

by Woods, Gerbec (11 points, 10

rebounds) and Michigan Tech’s

Sam Hoyt.

Daugherty was named the

player of the tournament.

Miller was the fourth Ashland

player in double digits with

12 points, four assists and two

rebounds.

Ashland and Wayne State each

had 48 rebounds, but the Warriors

held a 23-17 advantage on the

offensive glass.

“It was a battle for us,” Ramsey

said. “We knew that was gonna be

an important factor in the game.”

Afterwards, Ramsey addressed

the crowd on the loudspeaker and

thanked what felt like the entire

city of Ashland for its support.

“This has been absolutely

wonderful,” she said. “We have

the best fans in the nation. Thank

you for believing in us and sup-

porting us.”

Ashland moves on to face

Gannon at 9:30 p.m. next Tuesday

at Bill Greehey Arena on the cam-

pus of Saint Mary’s University in

San Antonio.

The other teams making the

trip to Texas are No. 24 Augustana

(S.D.), No. 1 Clayton State, No. 10

Dowling, No. 4 Colorado Mesa,

Nova Southeastern and No. 5

Western Washington.

The Department of Jour-

nalism and Digital Media is

sending a crew of students

and staff to San Antonio to

cover the women’s basketball

team’s run at a national cham-

pionship.

“We are excited to send

our students down to San

Antonio,” said JDM chair

Gretchen Dworznik. “It’s an

excellent opportunity for them

to get some real-world experi-

ence for their resumes, as well

as a great time for us to show

what JDM students can do.”

The department will be

producing content for www.

ashlandcollegian.com as well

as the JDM Facebook page.

WRDL 88.9 will stream

broadcasts of the Eagles

NCAA games, with Colle-

gian sports editor Chris Bils

and WRDL sports announcer

Colin MacDonald calling the

games.

Additionally, Collegian

photo editor Elizabeth Bu-

cheit will be shooting still pho-

tographs of the games as well

as behind-the-scenes photos

of the Eagles’ trip.

Photo galleries will be post-

ed on The Collegian’s website

throughout the week and

on the JDM Facebook page,

which can be found at www.

facebook.com/JDMatAU.

JDM operations man-

ager John Skrada and JDM

alum Dan Shade will be in

San Antonio producing video

highlights from the games as

well as video interviews with

players, coaches and other

AU representatives in Texas.

Finally, you can follow the trip

on Twitter with @ChrisBils

and @AshlandJDM.

“We think we are in a

unique position to be able

to provide coverage that you

won’t be able to get anywhere

else,” Dworznik said. “The

community really loves this

team and we hope they will

take advantage of what we are

going to offer.”

Dworznik said the depart-

ment will use social media

extensively during the week of

games.

“Social media provides

a great platform for us to be

able to provide coverage of

the team that is easily acces-

sible,” she said. “We plan to

offer new content each day so

that people can keep up with

the team even though they are

far away.”

PHOTOS ABOVE BY HALEE HEIRONIMUSPHOTOS BELOW BY TYLER REMMEL

The women’s basketball team is head-ed back to Texas for the Elite Eight after 72-63 victory over Wayne State in the NCAA Midwest Regional ! nal on Monday night. The Eagles played in front of a record crowd for women’s basketball with 2,832 fans packing Kates Gymnasium in its ! nal game before it undergoes renovations.

Keeping the dream alive

ashlandcollegian.com // Thursday, 21 March 2013 sports 5

In that mo-ment, you

really think, ‘I have come

so far.’”

Richard Quicknational champion

CHRIS BILS @ChrisBils

Set aside the speed at which they can run or swim, the dis-tances that they can throw and the heights they can vault and jump. Forget about all of that stuff for a second.

College athletes are amazing. They have all of the classes and commitments as most regular stu-dents, and then they have more: morning practice, class, afternoon practice, dinner, homework, sleep, repeat. The stress and monotony of it all can be overwhelming and downright awful.

All of these athletes—over 100,000 compete at the Division II level—do all of that in search of one thing: a national champi-onship. They all have the dream of lifting a trophy and being able to say that no one in the United States of America (or Simon Fra-ser University in Canada) is better than them at what they do.

When all of the events were over and the dust had settled at the Division II National Champion-ship Festival in Birmingham, Ala. on March 9, 10 Ashland athletes had accomplished that feat.

Julie Widmann and Rachel Aus-denmoore, junior Gaby Verdugo-Arzaluz and freshman Kaylyn Murphy. The quartet won the women’s 200-yard freestyle relay at the national swim meet March 7.

Widmann started things off with a 50-yard split of 22.60 sec-onds, which was her fastest time ever and just .04 off the national record.

“I really needed that because

that was the only way that our re-lay was gonna do well was if we all went best times,” Widmann said.

Murphy (22.76) and Ausden-moore (22.43) kept that advantage before Verdugo-Arzaluz (23.41)

time of 1:32.20, which was 0.49 seconds faster than Wayne State.

For Widmann, it was her 23rd NCAA trophy and the fourth na-tional title (three relays, one in-dividual) of her storied career. In four years, she was recognized as an All-American in 27 events.

She has more experience with the feeling of winning a nation-al championship trophy than any other current AU athlete.

“There’s a shelf at my house and we put them up and just to look at that is

cause I can just take a deep breath and know that I did something at college that I’m really proud of,” Widmann said.

At this year’s meet she took second in the 50 freestyle and the 100 backstroke and was on relay

freestyle (Long, Ausdenmoore,

relay (freshman Elizabeth Long, Ausdenmoore, Murphy), 12th in the 400 medley relay (junior Sara Reidler, freshman Hannah Mat-tar, Murphy) and 12th in the 400 freestyle relay (Murphy, Ausden-moore, Verdugo-Arzaluz).

nior Richard Quick realized his dream of winning the national championship in the weight throw.

68-feet, 3.25-inches, and after two

round nobody had topped it.“It actually felt easy,” Quick

said. “I haven’t had a throw feel like that in over a year.”

The mark was over four feet further than those of second-place

Ryan Smith from the University of Indianapolis and Ashland senior Garret Grey, who each threw 64-feet, 10-inches. Grey lost the tie-

ished third.The Eagles

place with the 63-foot throw by sophomore Zac Ball. That put Ashland on top of the men’s team standings

day and made a statement to the

“We’re the Ashland University Eagles and we’re gonna kick your ass,” Quick said.

The performance by the throwers inspired the rest of the team, including senior pole-vault-er Katie Nageotte.

“It was so motivating and in-

day and just realizing that it could be anybody’s day,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what you were ranked coming in.”

she too brought a national title to

Ashland on March 8 with a vault of 13-feet, 11.25-inches. There

(14-feet, 3.25-inches) when she

attempt and missed.Fortunately, the standards were

not set when she was told to go

and said that the vault would not count. Nageotte was told she could go again right away or wait until the other competitors had made their attempts.

She chose to wait — knowing that she held the tiebreaker — and watched both of them hit the bar.

“As soon as the second girl missed I looked up at my mom and my family up in the stands and I just started smiling. It was kind of surreal,” Nageotte said.

The moment was extra spe-cial for Nageotte because of ev-erything she has gone through in her college career. After starting off at Dayton, she transferred to AU when her coach left after her sophomore year. As a junior, she had mono for most of the indoor season and struggled to get her momentum back in the spring.

At one point, some of her teammates never thought she was going to vault well again and were trying to convince vault coach Denny Steele to let her quit. After

the summer, she came back ready to give it one last shot.

“I can do this,” Nageotte told herself. “This is my sport. Go out and get it.”

When Steele handed her the trophy on top of the podium, the emotion of being the best in the nation rushed over her.

“It was just amazing to know that everything that I had been working toward had paid off,” she

said.Despite some jaw-dropping

performances from Ashland ath-letes, there was one that stood above the rest at the festival.

Sophomore Drew Windle blew

run with a time of 1:48.75 and ran a key leg in the Eagles’ 1600-meter relay victory that secured second-place overall in the men’s team standings.

tional championships of his career within two hours of each other and was named the National In-door Track Athlete of the Year.

“It’s really special just to repre-sent Ashland in that way,” he said.

In the 800, Windle sat back for

340 meters to go threw in a surge

ish line, he was leading by almost two seconds.

I saw a couple of my teammates standing there and you could just tell from the expressions on their

title wrapped up,” he said.After receiving his trophy, Win-

dle had about an hour-and-a-half to collect himself and get ready for the relay.

Senior Cory Lamar ran the

Windle in the lead. “I knew that since I was worn

out I had to make sure I got my

ters,” Windle said.Even so, James Quarles from

Saint Augustine’s passed him with-

caught him and gave what he called a perfect handoff to junior Jacob Cook to give the Eagles a one-second lead halfway through.

Cook ran a 47.10 split to make the gap almost two seconds when junior Keith Cleveland took over.

“Jacob Cook stepped off the track and that’s when I knew that unless something really horrible happened I had gotten my second national title in the four-by-four,” Windle said.

This time, he got to celebrate with a great group of friends.

“It’s cool in a different way and it’s equally as special,” he said.

Since it was a festival year, all of the champions got to relish in the moment at the closing ceremo-ny. No matter the sport, the one thing that ties all of them together is hard work.

In fact, most of them even

have endured in preparation for the winning moment.

“It was almost like a movie

said. “I just remembered in like a

ever tried to throw a weight and I threw it backwards or the one time that I almost threw it at someone’s car or the one time I released it too early and almost hit people in the head or all the countless distance runners I’ve almost killed with a

times I’ve hit the ceiling and all of the weights that I’ve broke.

“In that moment, you really think, ‘I have come so far.’”

ZACK LEMON @zack_lemon

Track and Field

Kates Gymnasium with top-level placements in the national tour-naments. Indoor, outdoor, men’s, women’s, it has not mattered for Jud Logan’s programs, and this year is no different.

The men took second place at the NCAA Indoor meet March 7-9, scoring 59.5 points.

Sophomore Drew Windle was named National Indoor Track

Athlete of the Year, winning the 800-meter run. He owns three of the top eight times in NCAA Divi-sion II history.

Windle also was a member of the national championship 1600m-relay team, joining senior Cory Lamar and juniors Jacob Cook and Keith Cleveland on the championship team.

Senior Richard Quick won the national crown in the weight throw with his winning mark of 68-feet,

national title in his last indoor meet of his career.

Along with the national cham-

pionship winners, several other AU athletes placed highly at the meet.

Cleveland was third in the 400m and seventh in the 800m. Sophomore Brian Baum was third in the mile, sophomore Elijah Ow-ens was seventh in the 60m hur-dles and senior Eric Klucar tied for eighth in the pole vault.

The Eagles led the meet going

ish from Saint Augustine’s pushed past them. Saint Augustine’s scored 72 points and Adams State

The women’s team also per-

despite only sending eight athletes to the meet. Ashland scored 37 points, behind the Academy of Art’s winning score of 59 points.

Senior Katie Nageotte led Ash-

pionship of her career in the pole vault, vaulting 13-feet, 11.25-inch-es.

fourth in the pentathlon, and

sophomore Jennifer Foster in the pole vault and sophomore Jessica Bridenthal in the shot put.

The men’s team ended the

indoor season with 18 All-Ameri-cans, while the women earned six All-American honors. This year

meet for the Ashland men, ty-

2011. This continues a remark-able streak of scoring in 26 con-secutive indoor meets. Wrestling

Freshman Michael Labry and sophomore Joe Brandt earned All-America honors at the national meet.

pounds and Brandt took seventh at 197. The results were good

enough to secure 15th place in the overall team standings with 19.5 points.Swimming

Outside of the performance by senior Julie Widmann (above), Ashland’s top swimmer at the na-tional meet was freshman Hannah Mattar. She took third in the 200-yard breaststroke.

Senior Cheyne Fisher took 10th in the 200 breaststroke and 12th in the 100 breaststroke.

Junior Alex Sheil placed ninth in the 200 freestyle.

the men took 22nd.

We’re number one!10 Eagles are national champs

Ashland well-­represented at National Festival

NCAA.COM

Senior Katie Nageotte clears the bar in women’s pole-vault at the NCAA Division II Indoor Track and Field Championships. She won the national championship.

KAREN WINDLE

Sophomore Drew Windle raises his arms in celebration after destroying the ! eld in the men’s 800 meter run at Indoor Nationals.

spotlight Thursday, 21 March 2013 // The Collegian8

ELIZABETH BUCHEIT

Know someone who deserves the spotlight?Email suggestions to design editor Tyler Remmel at tremmel@ashland.edu.

row 1 (left to right)Katie NageottePole Vault

Richard QuickWeight Throw

row 2Keith Cleveland Jr.4x400 Relay

Jacob Cook4x400 Relay

Cory Lamar4x400 Relay

Drew Windle4x400 Relay

left to rightJulie Widmann200 Free Relay

Gaby Verdugo-Arzaluz200 Free Relay

Kaylyn Murphy200 Free Relay

Rachel Ausdenmoore200 Free Relay

2013 SWIMMING & DIVING

CHAMPIONSHIPS

2013 INDOOR TRACK & FIELD

CHAMPIONSHIPS

Go to youtube.com/ashlandedu

for a video interview with these athletes.

TYLER REMMEL