Louisville Spring Sports Media Day -- TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

SIX COACHES, SEVEN SPORTS FEATURED ON LOUISVILLE SPRING SPORTS MEDIA DAY.

On a crisp, cool Monday morning representatives from Lacrosse, Softball, Men's Golf, Men's Tennis, Women's Tennis, Men's Swimming and Women's Swimming gathered on the second floor of the YUM! Practice Facility to discuss the hopes, dreams, progress, expectations and goals of their respective programs. 

We concentrated on softball, lacrosse and women's tennis...the three we'll be covering most and got some nice interviews with the players and coaches. 

PAULIE GETS THE LOWDOWN FROM KELLIE

LACROSSE is going through a rebuilding phase of sorts...with just four seniors and a highly decorated and influential class just departed. There is still plenty of talent left, though...good enough to get Kellie Young's squad a #18 preseason ranking...and optimism and excitement about what lies ahead in the 2017 season. I sat down with Young, junior defender Emily Howell and senior midfielder Heidi Smith to ask a few questions. They being their season in a mere five days and seem to be ready to get after it. Here's the audio from the fun and informative 10 minutes...

LINK: YOUNG, SMITH AND HOWELL

ELLE AND OLIVIA SERVE AN ACE

WOMEN'S TENNIS is already in full swing...excuse the pun...and I got a chance to talk to head coach Mark Beckham and seniors Elle Stokes and Olivia Boesing. The squad is 4-0 so far in the spring schedule with wins over Tennessee-Martin, Murray State, Detroit Mercy and Western Kentucky. Stokes is out for several weeks with an arm injury but excited for her teammates and promises to be back to participate in most of the ACC slate if things go well.

Louisville Cardinal sports editor Dalton Ray and I teamed up for the chat with the "serve and swing" Cards and their coach: 

LINK: BECKHAM, STOKES AND BOESING

JORDAN STILL THE FASTEST! 

SOFTBALL heads to Vegas to begin their season on Feb. 10th. We've chatted a lot in the past couple weeks with head coach Sandy Pearsall and senior left-fielder Jordan McNary and both were present again Monday to "field" questions from Paulie. I did coax Coach Pearsall to share her fun story about "The Christmas Bull" and reviewed campaign strategy and the future with Jordan. 


LINK: COACH PEARSALL

LINK: JORDAN McNARY

A great time getting together with the faces and futures of Cardinal athletics this spring. We even got a brief glimpse of women's basketball head coach Jeff Walz, Christine Herring and a important-looking man carrying blueprints...not there on an interview or comments capacity, mind you...but possibly there to see what changes and designs will be made to the second floor of the YUM! Practice facility office space and reception area after women's basketball season. 

Or maybe where the "mad scientist" will be putting the secret entrance to his laboratory where he comes up with the Walzian Theorems.  

An impressive showing by the media as well...a couple of TV stations, our pal Howie Lindsey, daring and debonair Dalton Ray and others. We hope that they'll continue the coverage on a consistent basis as these seasons unfold.  

SWIMMING DOVE INTO THE DISCUSSIONS

I'm not sure if I'm totally in favor of the different format used from the Fall Sports Media Day, where each coach got to field questions before the reporters were turned loose to talk to the players. This was a "eat your lunch and go talk to people" concept. Time constraints may have been in play...with Football having a press conference later in the afternoon and having six instead of three coaches at the table might have taken awhile...but it was a great couple of hours with the players and coaches, nevertheless. 

We look forward to the upcoming seasons for these sports and we'll be here to give you our unfiltered and unique coverage on them.

tuesday's gone with the wind...
paulie
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