Eric Nichols Fan Club Meeting

The BGSU men's soccer team defeated Indianapolis, 1-0 in overtime, in the team's final scrimmage this afternoon (Sat., Aug. 28). From my perspective, the Falcons look to be an improved team, with a lot of talented youngsters and some very good leadership from the upperclassmen, and they are going to be fun to watch in 2010.

I just posted a recap at BGSUFalcons.com, but wanted to put this video here on the blog. I'm not ashamed to say that Falcon men's soccer coach Eric Nichols is a good-looking guy, and events like this probably happen to him all the time. But, as someone who has never been good-looking, and has NEVER had this happen to him, the video below seemed quite blog-worthy to me. Take 28 seconds to watch it, and see if you agree ...

BGSU Women's Basketball Photo Shoot

You might have noticed that I shot some video of the women's basketball team's photo shoot on Wednesday -- I will attempt to improve the quality of my filming, but that's another subject for another time. The main page of BGSUFalcons.com contains some video of the team picture and individual shots outside Anderson Arena, along with the photo shoot of the seniors inside the building.

Here, as a special bonus to you, the BGSUFalcons.com blog enthusiast, are a few additional videos of the individual sessions involving Lauren Prochaska and Tracy Pontius. Enjoy!

News and Notes From Around The Office

As we head into the 2010-11 season, things are beginning to really move quickly around the Athletics Department. It's hard to believe we are just four days from the first real game when women's soccer hosts Cincinnati Sunday at 1 p.m. Remember -- free admission for all home soccer games all year long in celebration of BGSU's 100th Anniversary!

Anyway, we've had a lot of really exciting news over the past couple weeks around here and I thought I'd give my two cents worth on some of them, as well as let you know a couple of things we've got coming up.

1 - BGSU captured the Mid-American Conference Institutional Academic Achievement Award for the 2009-10 school year. That's a mouthful to say that our student-athletes had the highest GPA in the MAC this year. That's an awesome accomplishment and we are proud of the work our student-athletes are doing. We've had so many teams and individual receive academic awards over the summer that it's difficult to keep track of them all. There is no doubt that our athletes are putting in the time and effort to do well in the classroom and in competition.

2 - The women's basketball non-conference schedule came out this week and we're excited about that slate. If you haven't seen it, the big game on the schedule is a home tilt with Vanderbilt. I'm sure Vanderbilt will be fired up to come into Anderson Arena in the final year of The House That Roars to avenge a couple of recent losses to the Falcons. I hope we have a PACKED house for that game and we can show the SEC what real basketball fans are all about!

3 - Speaking of basketball schedules, I've got a men's non-conference schedule sitting in front of me right now. There's still a couple of contracts that have to get the proper signatures before we can release it, but expect that to come out either Friday or next Monday. There's a few new opponents on the slate and, as a teaser, a road game against a Final Four team from a year ago. And that contract is a 2-for-1 meaning that team will come play us in the Stroh Center in 2012. But that's all I can say about that (and maybe more than I should have, but why else would you read all this?)

4 - Along the academic lines, BGSU gymnast Megan Chronister received the Bob James Memorial Award this week, which is a $5,000 post graduate scholarship given to one male and one female in the MAC each year. BGSU has absolutely dominated this award, receiving 12 of the 44 scholarships given out all-time. No other school has had more the seven recipients of the award. In fact, our athletes have been given the scholarship in eight of the past 10 years.

5 - I'm also excited about the start of the men's hockey season in October. We've released the schedule at BGSUFalcons.com and I've had the opportunity to sit and talk with new coach Chris Bergeron on many occasions. If you listen to him talk for any amount of time, you can't help but believe in what he says. I don't know how that will translate into wins and losses this year, and honestly, I don't know that it matters at this point. The biggest thing is for Coach to instill his system and his values into the players and the program and we'll see positive returns soon.

MAC Football Media Day in Detroit

9:25 a.m. -- You are looking live at Ford Field in downtown Detroit. After a number of technical difficulties, I (Mike Cihon, athletic communications) have finally been able to get internet access here in the Ford Field press box. Several of us athletic communications types are here, along with head coach Dave Clawson, linebacker Champ Fells and running back Willie Geter.

Coach Clawson, Fells and Geter are in the midst of BGSU's electronic media portion of the festivities. Each of the three has already done multiple radio and television interviews. The East Division schools are in the electronic media area until 10 a.m. At that time, the print media folks will get their chance to speak to the BGSU contingent.

Even though it took me seemingly forever to get onto the web this morning, Assistant AD Jason Knavel has been hard at work sending out some updates on Twitter and posting video links. You might have seen his tweet from last night, which contained the link to a sneak preview of the new football commercial. I'm biased, but I think the commercial is great. You can view it here. I won't spill the beans re: who did the voiceover, because I think Jason will be sharing that info sometime later today. I will say, however, that I believe it was the first-ever voiceover work for the mystery voice, which rules out Tim Conway. Back in a few...

9:40 a.m. -- And, as I check the BGAthletics twitter feed, I see that Jason Knavel has announced the identity of the mystery voiceover man. It is none other than our own Champ Fells. Nice job, Champ! By the way, if you're not already following BGAthletics on Twitter, you should do so immediately.

10:15 a.m. -- The electronic media portion of the morning has ended for the MAC East schools, and the BGSU group has headed over to meet with the print media. A lot of NW Ohio media members are on hand, and Coach Clawson, Champ and Willie each did a ton of TV and radio interviews. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most, if not all, of the Toledo TV stations will have interviews on their sportscasts tonight.

10:28 a.m. -- Let's try to upload a few of the videos from this morning, shall we? Apologies in advance, because the voiceover guy on these videos is nowhere near the caliber of Champ Fells. Here are two brief videos from BGSU's electronic media portion of the morning festivities ...





10:41 a.m. -- A few other things going on here in Detroit ... the MAC announced a regional television agreement with SportsTime Ohio. In the first year of the agreement, the MAC will have a few football games, but will have a minimum of 33 basketball games aired on STO. You can read the release at the MAC site here.

Additionally, the MAC and ESPN Regional Television have announced a regionally syndicated football package that will air in 24 television markets. The package will consist of six weeks of MAC conference and non-conference matchups, beginning Saturday, Sept. 18.

BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock and ESPN's Desmond Howard are on hand here in Detroit, and have done their share of interviews as well.

10:51 a.m. -- Here's the latest in the award-winning (??) series of expertly-shot, but poorly-narrated videos ...



10:53 a.m. -- I don't know about you, but this morning's events have me ready for some Falcon football! Here's some information from the "Things You Already Know" file: the 2010 season begins on Saturday, Sept. 4, at Troy. After a game at Tulsa the following Saturday evening (Sept. 11), the Brown and Orange open the home portion of the schedule against Marshall on Saturday, Sept. 18. Kickoff is set for 7:00 p.m. at Doyt Perry Stadium, but you already knew that.

11:00 a.m. -- As you probably already read at BGSUFalcons.com, the Falcons were picked to finish fourth in the East Division by the league's media members. In some other preseason polls, BGSU was picked to place anywhere from second through sixth. The Falcons were picked to finish second in the East by the Sporting News, third by USA Today, fourth by Lindy's, fifth by Phil Steele's and sixth by Athlon. Temple has been the consensus choice to win the East, while Northern Illinois is atop the West Division in the bulk of the polls.

11:43 a.m. -- Things are wrapping up here in Detroit, as the players and coaches are conducting a few final interviews prior to the luncheon. At some point later today, we will post a few videos of Champ and Willie interviewing each other. It'll be well worth your time to check back sometime in the near future.

1:15 p.m. -- And, here are those videos ... we've got Willie interviewing Champ ...



... and Champ interviewing Willie.



Thanks for reading, and Roll Along!

In Their Own Words -- Dr. Lee Meserve Part 3

Dr. Lee Meserve has just about seen it all. With 37 years at Bowling Green, he's seen more athletic events than almost anyone. As the Faculty Athletics Representative at BGSU, he represents the department in a variety of ways. This is his third blog post on his memories of BG athletics.

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To the Present Day

In the fall of 1994, Shelley Appelbaum returned to BGSU as Associate Athletics Director and Senior Woman Administrator. Shelley was a “townie” who had taken my anatomy and physiology course as part of her undergraduate degree program. During those years, she had also worked summers at Forrest Creason Golf Course on campus, where I saw her on a regular basis. We kept in touch through her careers as BG Junior High Girls Basketball Coach and on to Director of Student-Athlete Academics at the University of Toledo. She contacted me upon return to BGSU and asked “Have you ever thought of running for the Faculty Senate Intercollegiate Athletics Committee?” Long story short, I became a member, and then Chair of that committee, and then, when my predecessor Marv Kumler decided to retire, Dr. Sidney Ribeau appointed me Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR), beginning summer, 1997. Thus began what has turned into a 13-year quest to attend every home contest of every BGSU sport that is staged when we are in Bowling Green (usually accompanied by my wife Marge). We have missed a few because of overlapping contest schedules, but not many for other reasons, and we’ve traveled to a few away ones, as well. It has been my feeling that as FAR, if I expected the student-athletes to perform well in the classroom (and I did, and they do), it behooved me to come out and watch them perform in their sports venues.

An early new sport for us as spectators was soccer. When I was in graduate school at Rutgers University (before I was married, so that was a while ago) I was shanghaied by a group of the other students in the lab where I worked to attend a pro soccer match in Yankee Stadium (the old one). Knowing virtually nothing about the game, I thought that watching it, even in person, was a lot like watching paint dry, but less exciting! About the time I began the elevated level of interaction with BGSU athletics, women’s soccer was added to the roster of sports. A number of the members of the team were also students in my Anat and Phys course (are you detecting that connection?), so we were motivated to go watch them, as well as the men’s team, play this game. I still knew virtually nothing about the game, but that year my Christmas gifts from Marge included a book by Mia Hamm (always start with the best), and Soccer for Dummies. I finally got a grasp on off side (they still need a blue line on the pitch!), and defensive plays. We’ve had the excitement of seeing two of Andy Richards’ squads win MAC championships. Although men’s soccer has been through a bit of a rough patch, Eric Nichols has them going in the right direction. I can honestly say that we have set through a more diverse sets of meteorological conditions as soccer fans than for any other sport! Marge appreciates soccer because the clock starts at the beginning of the match, and when it runs out the match is over (usually). She likes a finite sport!

A second sport that we sort of adopted is softball. We broke our streak of making spring break trips about eight years in a row this past March because the team had no trip during the break itself. We made up for that toward the end of the season by traveling an away weekend with them to Ball State and Miami. Since it was not their most successful of away swings, they may not ask us to do that again! :-) There have been a number of softballers who have been my academic advisees. A couple who stand out are third baseman Lynsey Ebel (now Lynsey Ebel, D.O.) and current centerfielder Lindsay Arney, who will be attending pharmacy school after the coming academic year, her senior year. On behalf of the Department of Athletics, the softball program paid the ultimate complement to Marge and I at homecoming 2008 by naming their facility the Meserve Softball Field. The hair on my arms still stands up every time I think of that.

Running, jumping, throwing heavy things! Since my high school in southern Maine was a relatively small one, we didn’t have football, so our ‘big’ sport was track and field. We also had cross country. Since the body in which I find myself trapped has never done any running (!), I didn’t take part in either, but I always enjoyed watching members of those teams aspire “to boldly go (you’re splitting an infinitive, Captain Kirk!!) where no one has gone before.” It’s been my pleasure to see Stephanie Heldt set an indoor record for the high jump, and just this year see Sabrina Forstein set a new mark in the indoor pole vault. Being a spectator at cross country in Maine worked like this: You stood at the start line yelling and hollering until the gun was fired. The runners ran off into the woods for ten to fifteen minutes while you stood by the finish line. Then the runners came out of the woods to cross the finish line and throw up! It’s really a pleasure to watch cross country from the top of Mount Jerome where you can see nearly all of the entire race without moving. Additionally, the runners come close to you as they run over the Mount.

Not to slight the golf teams, tennis, and swimming. We love to watch them too and get out to their sites as often as possible. We even attend the swimming biathlon at the beginning of their season every year. I thought ‘biathlon’ consisted of cross country skiing and shooting, and wondered how that would be adapted for life in the pool. I learned that in the swimming lexicon it consists of swimming and running (the latter part of which might as well involve cross country skis, according to the swimmers!).

To wrap this up, I’ve been blessed to work with a great bunch of coaches over the past 13 years who really respect and support the ‘student’ portion of the student-athlete couplet. Without their concern for and attention to the academic sector of it all, our women’s sports would not have received the MAC Faculty Athletics Representatives Academic Award for Women this past year, and 420 student-athletes would not have completed spring semester 2010 with an overall accumulative grade point average of 3.07! Keep up the good work coaches, and I really would like to work with you another 13 years (more realistically, we’ll try for seven more to get to a total of 20).

My stock line is that Marge and I don’t have any kids of our own, so we borrow other people’s and then we give them back! Many of them have been BGSU graduate students, more have been BGSU undergraduates, and a goodly number have been student-athletes. And many of them retain a connection when we give them back. For example, we have attended many student-athlete weddings, last summer one between a gymnast and a football player. We had the pleasure of seeing Stephanie Swiger, volleyball, at the NCAA National Convention in Nashville when she was part of the National Student Athlete Advisory Committee (NAT SAAC), and then of writing a letter of reference for her successful application to law school. Of all the medical school aspirants I’ve advised, the only one to honor me by asking me to bestow the hood emblematic of the MD degree at graduation (from the MCO in Toledo) was another volleyballer, Marin (Ferlic) Wayner. If you’ve been following this entire string, you recall Ton Shehab (football). We hear annually (many years, several times) from Tom and Jos and their family. Thanks to you all. You have been and continue to ne, the greatest family in the world.

And finally a shout out to my dear friend Janna Blais. Janna and I spent over ten good yeas together before she moved on to bigger things. As long as there’s email, we’ll remain in contact as a mutual support team. And to my life partner of 42 years this fall, Marge, for accepting and participating in this life.

So that’s it up to now. There may be more blogs, but not soon. Hope that these three have not cured anyone’s insomnia! Keep rolling along!!

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P.S. So, you’re probably wondering how I could have been here for the past decade and omit basketball!!! Chalk it up to trying to get a research poster ready to go and getting ready to get on the big bird to San Diego for the Annual Endocrine Society meeting where the research was presented. Believe it or not, about an hour out of Detroit headed west, I sat bolt upright in my seat on the plane and said to myself “Oh crud, I didn’t include anything on basketball!” Of course I remember basketball. I chatted with Curt Miller when he came on his job interview and could sense the passion and the vision. And it took only a year for him and his staff to begin realizing that vision. Six-peating as MAC regular season champions and making it to the Sweet Sixteen are hichlights, and Marge and I were able to attend four of the NCAA ‘dance’ games. What a thrill. And it makes us all proud that Curt has maintained the staff that he began with, plus a couple of additions, for the entire sweet, sweet run. Keep it rolling women’s b-ballers! And the men’s team has made some steps in the right direction under Coach Orr (who I also chatted with at interview time), a trend that we expect to continue during the year to Close the Doors on the House that Roars and begin a new set of roaring traditions at the Stroh.