Tuesday Cardinal Couple -- Laundry and more Laundry

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TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

(Columnist Sandy Walker grabs the hamper and yells out "last call" as she descends the steps to do her weekly load of CARDINAL COUPLE laundry. She takes us through the spin, rinse and fluff cycles and reminds you to empty your pockets...anything left will either be cleaned, go into her pocket or fed to Bill the Goat) 

THE LONDON PARALYMPICS 2012!

The London Paralympics are nearing their end. Videos from members of the 2012 U.S. Paralympic Team are available on our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/usparalympics. Note: Oksana Masters of Louisville, KY  and Rob Jones of Lovettsville, VA  took bronze in the first ever Paralympic medal in the trunk and arms mixed double sculls event for Team USA.   You can also check out http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-st-john/london-paralympics-2012_b_1866584.html? where a former medal winner, Bonnie St. John, has recapped some of the results. For more information and results visit www.usparalympics.org .

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BASKETBALL SCHEDULE

Anyone who follows the Louisville Women’s basketball knows that the long anticipated 2012-2013 schedule is now published.   A quick scan made it immediately obvious that it will be much easier to be an actual attendee of home games.   Gone are the barrage of mid-day work week games and the weekend actually features some of the games which are more of a broad fan based interest. It is great to have a local team where nine of the games are of such interest that they will be nationally televised. 

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HOW IT WAS

One reader is taking us back to Ursuline Academy in the 1950 's.  Girls play was conducted from a court which was marked on a room in a campus building basement with beams that hung down across the ceiling.  Those whose shots had arches found themselves ducking as the balls rebounding back at them.  One quickly learned to create a home court flat shot but game strategy primarily focused on shooting layups which worked great as long as you followed through by targeting the end of court walls open doorway instead of the water cooler which sat to the left of the basket.

Readers Submitted Comments of How It Was Stories

Anonymous wrote: We had a deal set up years ago with a popular drive-in restaurant where they would pay our referees with gift certificates to their restaurant. Not sure how "legal" this is/was, so I'm not naming the restaurant. It was a popular place, though and referees would always request to work our games at home in basketball because of the set up. And, we seldom got very many "bad" calls.  Somewhere in Wisconsin

And from Skinny Pete: I played my high school basketball in a small western Kentucky town where the gymnasium was not large enough to have a full length basketball court. We had no center court line, just two lines on the court that were the distance of what half court was on a regulation court. This was confusing to "big city opponents" and we used it to our advantage quite frequently for ten second calls and "over and back" with our press.

We also had a second floor bleacher area that hung over the sidelines out of bounds areas and our students would sit in this area and harass opposing players who would attempt shots from the corners of the court. Imagine 75-100 screaming kids directly over you when taking a corner jumper from the sidelines. Not too many went in.

Consolidation eventually closed our school, but we had a pretty good home record because of our gym and the smallness of it. The town really showed up for these games and I remember one time our mayor actually ran out onto the court to argue a call made by the refs. He got tossed from the gym! Those old brick walls could really magnify the sound and it was a tough place to play for visitors not used to it.

UL Football History Whose Contributor Shall Be Nameless Unless They Volunteer.

I remember the days of going through the northwest corner gate at Cardinal Stadium dragging coolers, buckets of chicken and anything else we could think of and getting in by just flashing our student ID. We would take the fraternity bell and ring it in the end zone after Cardinal scores and we'd just drive the pickup truck in, park a few yards behind the end zone and tailgate right there. We had a player from Memphis once score a touchdown in front of us, toss US the ball instead of to the referee and he asked us for a beer and piece of chicken.

(Sure...I'll volunteer it. Ol' Paulie himself and I remember some of those days still.) 

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WEEKLY EVENTS

Overall  the women had a powerful week.   Total count shows field hockey with two wins and one loss, soccer balanced out at 1 win of 2 matches while volleyball hit the perfecta with not only two wins with no losses but were also the winners of the Big East/Big Ten Challenge.

Golf is participating yesterday and today in the Ptarmigan Ram Classic in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The VolleyCards have now beat No. 10 Kentucky, No. 11 Purdue and No. 20 Illinois.

Candice Wiley

This weekend is extremely busy with most of our women’s teams playing out of town.  Fortunately Volleyball is playing this weekend in the Louisville Tournament at the YUM center.   Play begins Friday against Middle Tennessee at 7:30, UNLV at 11:00 on Saturday then again that evening at 7:30 against Miami.  Also on Saturday there is all day Rowing at the G. Garvin Brown III Rowing Center.  It is Red/Black day so if you attend, dress for success.  All of these activities can be squeezed between the men’s 3:30 Cardinal Stadium football game against North Carolina.

For those of you who are able to recover from the weekend games, there is always Women’s Golf being played at the Cardinal Club on Monday.

The golf team completed 36 holes Monday in the Ram Classic hosted by Colorado State. They are in third place...Emily Haas with a 144 and Katie Petrino with 146. Both are in the top ten. 

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SOCCER

Women’s soccer ( 12^th ranked)against Notre Dame is set for Friday at 4:00 ET and is being shown on ESPNU with UL bringing in a 5-1 record to the match.  Last week Junior Angelika Uremovich scored twice to lead the 12th-ranked Louisville women's soccer team to a 3-1 victory over Toledo.

Angelika Uremovich

 Free clinic Saturday the 22nd at 10:30 to be held at Cardinal Park Soccer Stadium.  The clinic is open to the first 30 girls ages 14-16 with an RSVP required.  E-mail  Jing Hughley at j0hugh02@louisville.edu. 

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FIELD HOCKEY

The field hockey team defeated Ohio University 2-1 Saturday afternoon at the IU Field Hockey Complex in Bloomington, Ind. Senior goalkeeper Erin Conrad

Erin Conrad

 posted nine saves in the win.   U of L takes their 4-2 record into East Lansing Michigan on Friday when they play Central Michigan with either Michigan State or American University on Sunday.

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                                                                     VOLLEYBALL

The Cards jumped to #12 in the polls after the weekend wins over Illinois and Purdue. Nice job, ladies! 

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BASKETBALL PRACTICE START DATES

First date of practice guidelines for women has been adjusted which allow teams to start preseason practice 40 days ahead of their season opener. U of L’s first game is set for November 9 against Texas A & M at the YUM! Center so the first allowed date of practice counts back to around September 30. Teams are limited to 30 practices during the extended time frame.

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BASKETBALL THIS AND THAT!

UL women are reported to be 3 deep at almost every position which will feed perfectly into Jeff’s upbeat and up tempo style of play.  As one gets slightly winded there is another to step into her place which makes for exciting and crowd inspiring entertainment.  As an old and broken down former player... there is nothing that provides an extra unknown internal spark than the opponents turnover which developed into a score from your teammates defensive pressure and extra effort.  While we read that others want to try again this year to play the “up pace pressure ball” which was discarded early during last season as ineffective – Louisville has been successfully playing this exciting style of ball for a few years now.  This team is already going to be terribly exciting and competitive this year but RECRUITS PLEASE TAKE NOTE: If next year we can continue our upbeat style of play while adding some additional height in the  front court with a great point/wing guard rotation in the back, we will be totally unstoppable.

Imani Wright and Brianna Ruiz were on campus last weekend.  Saniya Chong, Alexandria Harris, Emmonie Henderson and Mercedes Russell are reportedly still anticipated with                                                                             

Mercedes' visit scheduled for the weekend after her Tennessee visit.  Hopefully her saving us until last is a good sign as every UL fan is primed to hear the good news of her signing with a team and fan base that is already primed and ready for a championship.  I believe that she would be the key to a long list of additional signees which  we are prepared for as fortunately, the scholarships are available. 

Sara Hammond has tweeted that she has returned to her 00 high school playing number.

It’s a day late but it appears that yesterday was Angel’s birthday.  Better late than never on the shout-outs.   Happy Birthday Angel!

(Excellent work from Sandy today! The prospect of such talent hitting the Louisville campus and combining with the existing talent makes for a very exciting time for Cardinal basketball fans. One bit of sad news to report...softball pitcher Chelsea Leonard's injury to her knee in the Michigan game will keep her sidelined for the softball season...she'll continue to serve as possibly a student mgr. or assistant ) 

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Tuesday Cardinal Couple -- Featuring Sandy's weekly escape from Cardinal Couple Headquarters

TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

  Sandy Walker with tidbits on The 

Olympics, soccer, Ms. Solo. boxing and rowing. Have some ! 

Photo by Mott the Hoople

OLYMPICS

The Olympics are now past history but with plenty of new history also now in the books.

ü  For the first time, every country that brought a team included at least one woman on that team – 5000 women representing over 200 countries – including Saudia Arabia participated in the games.

The United States women (earlier coined as “Team Title IX”) while good in the past, have experienced a break-through year in 2012.

 Courtesy of AP. Photo
by Elaine Thompson

 Women’s basketball now has a record 5 consecutive Gold Medals – observers are calling Candace Parker (Tenn.) shown here passing to a teammate

as the player who lead the team to Gold.

                                    

ü  Gymnastics now has the team gold medal

ü  Women’s doubles beach volleyball duo of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings now possess a record 3 consecutive Gold medals.

Picture by Richard Mackson USA Today Sports

Add Women’s Soccer, swimming track, boxing, judo… 29 of the US total 49 gold medals and with the exception of China and Great Britain, the women have won more gold than the totals for any of the remaining countries.

As a break-through year for women in general and the attention they have received -- younger girls around the world are seeing them as examples of what is possible but there will always be challenges ahead.  Next, in addition to adding an even greater % of female participants in Rio – we also need to conquer the International Olympic Committee itself whose membership should look like the population it represents.  The current 22 women spread among the 109 Olympic Committee members does not reflect the population of participants but this change should be a piece of cake compared to what has already occurred.

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ROWING HIRES NEW ASSISTANT COACH

Sarah Zelenka pretty much left her Olympic rowing position in the women’s pair event which was held just last week and jumped into a new position as assistant coach of the Cardinals.  She rowed during college at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich where she was named MVP in 2008 and 2009.  She has been a member of the US Rowing senior national team during the last two years and was a member of the U-23 team in 2009.

Picture by US Rowing.org
Courtesy of Garett Wall, UofL

After the announcement of her hiring, Sarah was quoted as saying “The reputation of the Cardinal athletic department is second to none and it is a great privilege to be joining their family. Derek has shared his passion for the sport of rowing with me and I am looking forward to assisting on his coaching staff. I hope to be a positive influence on these student-athletes and help push them to new levels.”

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SOLO ON SOLO

Hope Solo’s new book, “Solo: A Memoir of Hope” is set for release today.  Love her or hate her, it seems that no one says Hope Who? and that everyone has an opinion. 

Bing.com\images

 The social media sites appear to attract some pretty severe extremes of thought.  That’s OK , at least they are talking and it always includes her involvement in women’s sports so we all win.

Like Ginger Rogers, she does everything the men do except she does it going backwards and in heels!

Adam Taylor ABC

( Editor note: Solo is a soccer goalkeeper who has been on the
USA women's soccer team since 2000.  Whether or not she plays soccer in heels or not is probably subject to debate, but her news/media coverage has spiked again since the Olympics have surfaced. USA's exciting win over Japan to win the Gold in London shows how the Americans have maintained a strong, exciting and successful program in a sport that has had European domination in past years. The American women won the vast majority of Team USA's medals in the 2012 Olympics. WE approve of this. What we'd like to see is increased coverage of all women's sports on a regular basis. We're doing our part.)

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WOMEN’S OLYMPIC BOXING

Tickets to the women’s boxing matches were reported to be almost as difficult as those for women’s beach volleyball.   The unveiling of the women’s tournament received enthusiastic reviews from fans, boxers and Olympic officials who loved the sold-out crowds and the emergence of new heroines.  US teenager and Gold Medal winner, Claressa Shields

Patrick Semansky AP Photo

drew attention by answering an interview question by answering,  “I just like to hit people”.

(Sandy Walker is a featured columnist for CARDINAL COUPLE and you can watch her sort out the laundry each Tuesday here at the site, in addition to other small loads she'll be handling throughout the upcoming UofL sports seasons. She's a favorite of Timmy the Intern...that is scary.)
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