Team Allison and Cars Turning Left -- SUNDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Cars Turning Left

In the past few weeks, we've had weekends where the predominant sporting event in our culture has been all about horses running and turning left.  This weekend is still about turning left, but it's cars this time.  We here at Cardinal Couple emphasize women's sports, and car racing, and in this specific case, Indy car racing is one of very few sports where women and men compete on an equal footing.  OK, yes, the racing world is dominated by male drivers, but there is one woman running the Indy 500 this year, Pippa Mann.  Running in the Susan G Komen #63 car, Mann will be starting 28th, but she will be easy to spot as she hopefully works her way up through the ranks with a white and pink paint scheme.  Pink, as you would expect from a car primarily sponsored by the Susan G. Komen organization.

Team Allison

During The Cardinal Couple Radio Hour yesterday, Paulie were discussing the Women's Soccer schedule being announced and got to talking about some of the players returning on that squad.  Two Allisons were mentioned; Allison Whitfield, and Alison Price.

It's been a while since we formally named a Cardinal Couple honorary team, though we have talked
quite a bit about Team Sid/Syd/Szyd and Team Jordan during the Softball season.  But it's time to formally name another CC honorary team: Team Allison.  These are Allisons (or close variants of that spelling) that currently appear on the Cardinal team rosters on the gocards.com website.

We'll start with the aforementioned soccer Allisons.  Allison Whitfield plays in #23, and is a hometown hero, playing her high school soccer at duPont Manual, just across Cardinal Blvd from UofL.  Whitfield is a 5-9 sophomore.  Alison Price comes to us from West Forsyth HS in Clemmons NC.  She is a 5-5 senior and wears #20.  Both soccer Allisons are listed as forwards.

Our next Allison is on the Lacrosse team.  Allison Ferrara is, unsurprisingly for a Lacrosse player, from the east coast.  Playing her high school Lacrosse at Morristown in Morrisstown, NJ, she made the ACC Honor Roll in this, her freshman season.  A midfielder, Ferrara wears #8.

Rowing is always good for these all-name teams, with their expansive roster (they managed to come up with two unrelated rowers with the last name of DiTommaso one year), and sure enough, they make a contribution to Team Allison.  Allison Zimmerman hails from Florida, which generally makes sense for rowers, except that she comes from the only major landlocked city in FL, Orlando.  Olympia HS is proud of this one, having made the All-ACC Academic Team, and the ACC Honor Roll among other academic honors.  Zimmerman is a good enough rower that she spent some time in a seat in the varsity eight boat this past season, her sophomore season, and ended the season in the second varsity eight boat which claimed a 5th place finish at the ACC Championships.  Prior to coming to UofL, she was also a competitive gymnast, and pole vaulter.  Now that's an interesting combinations in multi-sports athletics.

Alison "Mike" Szydlowski gets, I believe, the honor of being the first person ever on two different Cardinal Couple all-name teams.  A CC favorite, Mike has cemented her place as a valuable member of Team Sid/Syd/Szyd, with the third variant being added just for her, as well has anchoring the Softball defense with an unexpected move from her normal catcher position over to 3rd base to be the answer for the Cardinals when they were looking for answers in the left side of the infield.  Szyd also sent several yellow orbs over the outfield fence this year contributing much to the Cardinals offense, while wearing #6.  I expect, and hope, to see her spending time back behind the plate next year in her junior campaign (when fellow Team Syd'er, Sydney Melton, comes back from recovering from ACL surgery to play SS, I expect Caitlin Ferguson, who filled in for Melt at SS and did a remarkable job, to take over the 3rd base position next year).  Mike is a 5-5 Junior out of Speckman HS in Imperial, MO.

We're going to stretch here to pick up an honorable mention.  Al Greener is the director of the UofL Pep Band. Greener originally hails from Iowa, something you will certainly learn about him if you hang around him much at all, he's a Cubs fan, and can frequently be found at various UofL sporting events, both men's and women's, even when the pep band isn't playing. He's a trombone guy.

Greener is also responsible for the fantastic organ music and interludes at UofL Baseball games. In addition to his pep band duties, he's the author of All Hail UofL, one of the fight songs for the Cardinals.

His full first name is actually Alan, so he doesn't really fit Team Allison, but "Al" could be short for Allison, right? We just generally like Al around Cardinal Couple, so we wanted to give him some attention.  Al is a fixture around UofL athletics.  Charlie Springer wrote a piece about Al back in 2012.  Paulie usually gets one or two interviews with him a year. 

Congratulations to Team Allison.

-- JMcA