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E. P. McKnight performs " 'I Question America' : The Life and Legacy of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer" on Sunday at the Whittenberger Auditorium. McKnight wrote the one-woman play herself. Knight's performance was booked in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.
E. P. McKnight performs " 'I Question America' : The Life and Legacy of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer" on Sunday at the Whittenberger Auditorium. McKnight wrote the one-woman play herself. Knight's performance was booked in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Will Bruin traded in his uniform for a suit and the soccer field for a chair as he waited for his name to be called.In Baltimore, the fifth city he’d been in during the last four weeks, Bruin listened as 10 names were called before his during the 2011 Major League Soccer SuperDraft. The former Hoosier soccer star was getting nervous. Coming into the morning, people gave him their predictions. Some predicted he would go in the top 10. But when five Akron players were picked in the first ten spots, Bruin realized that nothing goes according to plan.Then, MLS Commissioner Don Garber walked to the podium. He announced that the Portland Timbers traded their 11th pick to the Houston Dynamos and with that pick selected forward Will Bruin from IU. Just a month prior, Bruin was a standout IU soccer athlete in his junior year. Then came the end of the season, the signing of a Generation adidas contract — a contract used to entice the best in college and high school soccer players into the MLS — and the withdrawal from his spring semester classes.When his name was finally called, Bruin hugged his dad and mom before joining his new team.***On a fall afternoon six years earlier, Eva Bruin sat in the stands overlooking her son’s high school soccer field. A lot of changes had taken place during the last few months, and she was trying to grasp it all. That June, Will walked off the soccer field after participating in the freshmen camp and called his mom. He was invited to the varsity camp that took place in early August.“What?” Eva replied, shocked. “But you’re a freshman!”At the end of varsity camp in August, Will called his mom again. He was invited to six grueling days of varsity tryouts.One day after the next, the coaches called Will back. Then, the same day Eva and her husband were moving the final pieces into their eldest son’s dorm room in Lawrence, Kan., Eva’s phone rang again. Back home in St. Louis, Will had just looked at one of many sheets of paper that would change his life. “Mom, they posted the list,” Will said. “And I made varsity.”“What?” Eva shouted with excitement. “But you’re a freshman!”The soccer players were lined up on the field. The past few months of her son’s success didn’t prepare Eva for the realization she got that afternoon sitting in the stands.“At starting forward, freshman Will Bruin,” the announcer had said.“I was sitting there like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is really kind of something,’” Eva said. “His high school career just took off after that.”A 69-18-13 record, a No. 1 national ranking in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America poll and 102 career goals later, Will was staring at another piece of paper that would change his soccer career: a letter of intent to play for the Indiana Hoosiers, a soccer program embedded with the pride that had come from seven national titles and the second-most championships won by any college program.***At the center of Jerry Yeagley field, dressed in a grey baseball cap and sweat-filled jersey, stood Bruin, now a junior, embraced in a bear hug with teammate, roommate and long-time friend Luis Soffner.Near the two Hoosier soccer players was a black and gold trophy. A 2-0 deficit after the first 45 minutes of play ignited a flame in Bruin’s feet. He scored one goal, then another to tie, before sophomore teammate Joe Tolen sent the final ball sailing into the goal for the game winner and the team’s first Big Ten Regular Season Championship trophy in three seasons.It wasn’t the trophy that added an eighth star to the IU soccer logo, but it was a start.IU’s season ultimately ended two games into the NCAA tournament, falling to Akron 2-1 on the Zips’ home turf. Akron went on to win the National Championship that season.But it was in the previous game against Tulsa that Bruin netted his 17th and 18th goals of his junior season. They were his last in a Hoosier uniform. “My goals showed people how much more mature I got from freshman year to junior year,” Bruin said. “I just felt like this year, I got it. When I was a freshman, it was just transition. Sophomore year could have gone a lot better, but it didn’t. This year, I just was a lot more comfortable, and it showed with production on the field.”Four weeks later, for the third time in his career, a paper was put in front of Bruin, offering him something that would again change his soccer career. And like all the papers before, he used it to take the next step forward in his career.***Sitting in the expansive room at the Baltimore Convention Center, Bruin was almost 890 miles from the church soccer field in St. Louis where he first started playing as a pre-kindergartener. He isn’t the first soccer star to go from De Smet Jesuit High School to Indiana to the MLS. Three men have paved the path before him. One is current Seattle Sounders FC forward Pat Noonan.“Will and I were both fortunate enough to go to two of the best systems at the high school and college level,” Noonan said. “We definitely had two of the best coaches and coaching staffs any player could ask for to get to the professional level.”Bruin’s road was also helped by De Smet coach Greg Vitello, who coached De Smet greats Mike Ambersley, Chris Klein, Harry Weiss and Noonan to IU stardom. Vitello’s soccer team captured four state titles and compiled a 70 percent win rate during the past 42 seasons. “It’s been an honor really,” Vitello said. “Will is a totally different player than the rest. In high school, everybody thought, ‘I’m going to mark him out of the game’ until they stand next to him and see how big he is. Then they have a couple of encounters with him, and they pick up an elbow here or a push here or a knee there, and then they’re not quite as brave as they thought they were before the game. He was a force to be reckoned with — still is.”Current IU soccer coach Todd Yeagley also helped lay the road to soccer success for Will. As a former seven-year MLS professional, Yeagley offered Bruin the pros and cons of his next decision.“With whatever decision I made, he supported me 100 percent,” Bruin said. “He just wanted what was best for me, and we ultimately came to the decision that it was the right time.”After his final class ended in Bloomington, Bruin headed to St. Louis to spend a couple weeks with family and to attend the MAC Hermann Trophy Award Ceremony for the best player in college soccer — which was won by Akron’s Darlington Nagbe — before heading to the MLS Combine in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. that he followed up with a flight to Baltimore for the SuperDraft.Now he’s a plane flight away from a press conference that will have a paper announcing him as one of two draftees to join the Houston Dynamos. He’ll throw on an orange jersey at the start of preseason on Feb. 24, one month before his roommates, his friends and his teammates throw on their crimson jerseys back in Indiana.“We were very fortunate to have him for three years,” Yeagley said. “Will did a lot for IU soccer, and he will continue to be an ambassador for IU soccer.”skuzydym@indiana.edu
Indiana soccer star junior Will Bruin was drafted into Major League Soccer during the 2011 MLS SuperDraft in Baltimore, Md.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Will Bruin has junior-itis.The fitness specialist major has withdrawn from all his spring semester classes and will forgo his senior season — all in the name of Major League Soccer.Bruin is one of nine soccer players in the country to sign a Generation adidas contract. The contract is an enticement to draw the top soccer players out of college, or to make them skip college completely, and bring them into the MLS.“Sure, I’m going to miss it,” Bruin said. “I’m going to miss everything about college in general. I’m leaving all my friends, my teammates, school. I’m definitely going to miss college soccer a lot. Everybody I’ve played with has had a huge impact on me.”The junior forward scored 18 goals in 2010, doubling his total from 2009. He was named a MAC Hermann Trophy semifinalist, an honor given to the best player in college soccer. He was also distinguished as a first-team All-American.First-year IU coach Todd Yeagley and assistant coach Brian Maisonneuve, who served a combined 16 seasons in the MLS, talked with Bruin before he made his decision.“With whatever decision I made, he supported me 100 percent,” Bruin said about Yeagley. “He just wanted what was best for me. They only had good things to say about it.”Although Bruin’s decision means the IU coach will be without his top goal scorer, Yeagley was still proud of Bruin’s chance to be able to make this decision. Since IU was on holiday break, Yeagley said he did not contact his players individually to inform them of Bruin’s decision.“The discussion has been going on for some time now,” Yeagley said. “A lot of the players, I think, knew the situation might happen so it’s not going to be a shock to the group ... We obviously will discuss our team when we get back. Every team is unique and different every year. With the omission of (Bruin), it’s even more different. I think our other players are excited for Will and we’ll figure out a way to fill the void as we have through the years with some of our best.”So now, the Hoosiers are Bruin-less. And for now, they are in search of a goal scorer, but Yeagley said he isn’t too worried.“This next team is going to be much more balanced in our scoring,” Yeagley said on the phone from a recruiting trip in Orlando, Fla. “We’re going to have to be. I don’t know if we have an 18-goal scorer right this minute within the team.However, (Bruin) doubled his total from last year. I think we’re very capable of getting some players to increase their goal production.”Bruin will be a part of the MLS SuperDraft, which takes place on Jan. 13 in Baltimore. Foxsoccer.com’s Ives Galarcep projected he will be selected seventh or eighth.Although Bruin was never able to bring IU a national championship trophy, he scored four goals on the Hoosiers’ way to a Big Ten regular season championship this season — the team’s first since 2007.“I’m excited,” Bruin said. “It’s another challenge that hopefully I’ll be able to overcome.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>British filmmaker Peter Yates, best known to Hoosiers as the director of “Breaking Away,” died Sunday in London at the age of 81.“Breaking Away,” which premiered in 1979, is a coming-of-age story about four teenagers growing up in Bloomington. The movie follows their adolescent struggles and a cycling race based out of IU that changes the main character’s life.Yates’ film did more than just show a collegiate cycling race. Former Acacia rider George Huntington said the movie elevated the profile of the race and of Bloomington, as well.“When I travel professionally and tell people I’m from Bloomington most people ask me, ‘Oh do you swim in the quarries? Do you ride in the race?’” he said.Huntington rode in the Little 500 and later became an extra in the movie. He remembers that as an extra, he and his fellow riders weren’t sure the movie would be anything special.“The stands weren’t full when they filmed it, and there was a lot of standing around and waiting for a shot that would last for a minute or two,” Huntington said. “It really was an exercise in the Hollywood magic that the Peter Yates of the world really do know what they’re doing. Making a good movie is something that they have a vision, they know the scenes that they need and know how to edit and splice it together and make it really work.”In 1980, the film was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and won an Oscar for Best Screen Writing. It ranks eighth on the list of America’s 100 Most Inspiring Movies, which was compiled by the American Film Institute in 2006.“‘Breaking Away’ is a wonderfully sunny, funny, goofy, intelligent movie that makes you feel about as good as any movie in a long time. It is, in fact, a treasure,” Roger Ebert wrote in his critique of the film.Yates is best known in the film world for directing the film “Bullitt,” his first U.S. movie, which featured a famous chase scene in which actor Steve McQueen drove a Mustang through San Francisco.Yates also directed three actors to Oscar nominations, one of which was actress Barbara Barrie for Best Supporting Actress in “Breaking Away.”Tom Schwoegler, a former 20-year coach of Acacia and the current coach of Wing It and Sigma Chi, worked as the technical adviser for the film.“When we started to look at Little 500 sequences, Peter was like, ‘OK when a team rides in, what’s going in their heads for the exchange? We want to shoot it, but we want to do more than shoot it. We want to capture the emotional context of this aspect of the race,’” Schwoegler said.Doug Rafferty, who announced for the Cinzano 100 in the film, worked next to Yates for about only two weekends, but said he recognized the fact that what Yates was doing was special.“His death, it saddens me because it’s another episode of Indiana University life that is slipping away,” Rafferty said. “There’s two generations now alive that didn’t know what that film was all about. That’s why I have a copy.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“IU Anthem” stars seniors Brice Fox and Daniel Weber want to be more than frat bros that can sing or white boys that can’t dance. And they definitely want to be more than a pair of mustaches and an anthem.They’ve made a career out of what Indiana is all about. And Indiana is where it all started.They’re releasing a new song today, ‘This Is Indiana,’about IU basketball. During the fall of 2009, Fox and Weber met behind the scenes of sorority Zeta Tau Alpha’s philanthropy, Big Man On Campus.Now, the two Hoosier seniors are a long way from the tunes that started both their music careers in high school. Fox, who started tapping rhythms to make fun of his friends, now produces all the duo’s beats.“Then, after I got over my vocal insecurities, I finally got serious about it,” Fox said. Weber started belting out notes in music class his senior year in high school.“I have to admit it,” Weber laughed. “I was the dorky choir kid.” Once at IU, they became inspired by the people around them. Neither enrolled in the Jacobs School of Music, but each took a music course — an introduction to voice class for Fox and History of the Beatles for Weber. “If that counts,” Weber said.“It really helped tune my rap skills,” Fox said of his voice class with a jesting tone. “But seriously I’ve never had any vocal training.”“I think rap skills are secondary,” Weber added. “We’re both primarily musicians and singers, and the rapping is kind of a fun thing to do.”Since Big Man On Campus, they’ve rapped it out and laid down the beats. “One banner. Two banner. Three banner. Four. Five banner. Six banner knockin’ on your door.”After a 60,000-plus hit video, “IU Anthem,” brought them fame on YouTube, at Kilroy’s and across campus parties, Fox and Weber decided to give an IU-themed song another shot. This time, they said, they wanted it to reach a wider audience. In order to do that, their video had to be more “family-friendly.” So, they lost the mustaches and the costumes, got permission from the Athletics Department and teamed up with senior Danny Olson to produce “This is Indiana,” complete with a Cook Hall party and Coach Knight flashbacks. The song was released on YouTube and iTunes today. Fox, a Bloomington native, and Weber, a Chicago suburb native, spent two months writing, recording and producing. The song portrays the relaxed personalities and humorous outlook of its two stars. However, the thread that ties the net together is the legacy and tradition of Indiana basketball. “We decided with our next song if we wanted to go big, we had to do Indiana basketball,” Fox said. “Even though our team’s not as good as it’s been in the past, it’s definitely getting better than it has been in the last two years. We just want to get everyone excited about it again.”They want everyone to get excited for those candy-striped pants, to sit on the edge of the seat, whether a child or a grandparent. The song’s music video, also released today, portrays the fandom of Hoosiers across the generations.“My favorite part of making this whole video was tying the different generations of Hoosier fans together,” Fox said. “It was definitely a lot of fun to help direct like the little kids and the old ladies. They had a little coffee table to stand on and go nuts. The TV wasn’t on, but I stood there and was like, ‘He’s dribbling down the court. He breaks to the right side. He releases the ball. It’s a last second shot. And ... IT GOES IN!’ All the kids just started going crazy. It was just the funniest thing ever. It was the exact same thing with the older ladies, only they weren’t able to jump up on the coffee table, but they still got crazy.”“This is I-U-U-U. We got banners on the wall. This is how we ball.”“This is Indiana” covers it all, including the hype of new recruits.“This just in. Got a top recruit committed while you rottin’ like PU.”“Conveniently we’ve landed a lot of amazing recruits recently, and we put a part in the song talking about recruits just to kind of be a slap in the face to the other Big Ten schools that missed out on Zeller and Ferrell,” Fox said. And they couldn’t forget to mention the current leader of Indiana basketball, coach Tom Crean, and the hopes of a return to glory. “I love Tom Crean, and I like what he’s doing with the program,” Weber said. “In the video, you can see that we have a clip of Tom Crean, and we say ‘Follow Tom Crean,’ and we flash over to Bobby Knight and say ‘He gon’ take us back to greatness.’ It’s kind of implying that Tom Crean has the potential to be the next Bobby Knight or the potential to be the next great IU coach.”The music video is even complete with a rendition of one of Knight’s most famous scenes at Indiana. “We didn’t want to mess up the court,” Weber laughed about the shot that was filmed in the hallway of Assembly Hall. “I think through IU Athletics, they don’t necessarily want to bring that up, but to all of the fans that know Bobby Knight, we couldn’t let Bobby Knight go. He was such a big part of the school and brought us so many championships that we had to incorporate some sort of Bobby Knight in there and what better way to do that then by having a Hoosier-looking girl throw a chair?” Now “the IU anthem guys” have a song about Indiana’s hopes of returning to basketball greatness. Fox and Weber know that although the clock may be running out on their collegiate careers, Crean’s coaching could turn back the clock to IU’s winning ways.“We might be struggling this year so far, but we have a bright future ahead of us,” Fox said. “But, I think this song could be used in reference throughout our near future.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Will Bruin has junior-itis.The fitness specialist major has withdrawn from all his spring semester classes and will forgo his senior season -- all in the name of Major League Soccer.Bruin is one of nine soccer stars across the nation to sign a Generation Adidas contract. The contract is an enticement to draw the top soccer players out of college, or skip college completely, and into the MLS.“Sure I’m going to miss it,” Bruin said. “I’m going to miss everything about college in general. I’m leaving all my friends, my teammates, school. I’m definitely going to miss college soccer a lot. Everybody I’ve played with has had a huge impact on me.”The junior forward scored 18 goals in 2010, doubling his total from 2009. He was named a MAC Hermann finalist, an honor given to the best player in college soccer. He was also distinguished as a first-team All-American.First-year IU coach Todd Yeagley and assistant coach Brian Maissoneuve who served a combined sixteen seasons in the MLS talked with Bruin before he made his decision.“With whatever decision I made, he supported me 100 percent,” Bruin said about Yeagley. “He just wanted what was best for me. They only had good things to say about it.”Although Bruin’s decision means the IU coach will be without his top goal scorer, Yeagley was still proud of Bruin’s chance to be able to make this decision. Since IU is on holiday break, Yeagley said he did not contact his players individually to inform them of Bruin’s decision.“The discussion has been going on for some time now,” Yeagley said. “A lot of the players, I think, knew the situation might happen so it’s not going to be a shock to the group … We obviously will discuss our team when we get back. Every team is unique and different every year. With the omission of Will, it’s even more different. I think our other players are excited for Will and we’ll figure out a way to fill the void as we have through the years with some of our best.”So now, the Hoosiers are Bruin-less. And for now, they are in search of a goal scorer, but Yeagley said he isn’t too worried. “This next team is going to be much more balanced in our scoring,” Yeagley said on the phone from a recruiting trip in Orlando, Fla. “We’re going to have to be. I don’t know if we have an 18-goal scorer right this minute within the team. However,Will doubled his total from last year. I think we’re very capable of getting some players to increase their goal production.”Bruin, a DeSmet Jesuit High School grad, will be a part of the MLS SuperDraft which takes place on Jan. 13 in Baltimore. He is projected by Foxsoccer.com’s Ives Galarcep to be selected either seventh or eighth, with Penn State’s Corey Hertzog snatching the other slot.The last DeSmet Jesuit High School- to-IU-to-MLS soccer star was Pat Noonan, who earned three All-America distinctions while playing for the Hoosiers from 1999 to 2002. Noonan just completed his eighth year in the MLS.?Although Bruin was never able to bring Bloomington a national trophy, he scored four goals on the Hoosiers way to a Big Ten regular season championship this season – the team’s first since 2007.Now, he’s preparing for wherever the draft takes him. Bruin plans on slowly starting back up on classes from whatever city he goes to next, hoping his IU credits will transfer. First, he’ll have to adjust to a new city while all his Hoosier teammates adjust to a season without No. 11.“I’m excited,” Bruin said. “ It’s another challenge that hopefully I’ll be able to overcome.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU forward Will Bruin spent three years playing under a seven-star logo.Now, the junior striker is one of seven soccer stars across the nation who signed a Generation adidas contract, according to Foxsoccer.com’s Ives Galarcep. Generation adidas is a joint venture between U.S. Soccer and the MLS to help raise the talent of young soccer players across America. It entices young soccer players to turn professional by leaving college early or avoiding college altogether. The MLS SuperDraft will be held in Balitmore on Jan. 13. The Early Bath, a soccer blog, has Bruin slotted as the No. 4 pick for Chivas USA, a Los Angeles-based club. However, a site called Draftsite doesn’t even have Bruin being selected in the first three rounds.Galarcep thinks Bruin will be selected either seventh or eighth, with Penn State’s Corey Hertzog snatching the other slot.The junior striker was also recently named a first-team All American. He is one of three finalists for the MAC Hermann Trophy, given to the best soccer player in the nation.The last DeSmet Jesuit High School- to-IU-to-MLS soccer star was Pat Noonan, who earned three All-America distinctions while playing for the Hoosiers from 1999 to 2002. Although Bruin was never able to bring Bloomington a national trophy, he scored four goals on the Hoosiers way to a Big Ten regular season championship this season – the team’s first since 2007.The seven signed are Bruin, Akron's Darlington Nagbe, Kofi Sarkodie, Zarek Valentin and Michael Nanchoff, Penn State's Corey Hertzog and Maryland's Zac MacMath.
Indiana forward Will Bruin spent three years playing under a seven-star logo.
Former IU midfielder Eric Alexander, a 2009 graduate, was invited. to the U.S. National Team training camp by U.S. coach Bob Bradley. Alexander is one of 24 players invited. The training camp is held at the U.S. Soccer's National Training Center in Carson, Calif.
Yes, this news is a week late. But, if you had any finals during last week then I figured you might have missed this news too. So, last Monday the National Soccer Coaches Association of America named Bruin a first team All-American. He is the first Hoosier to be honored with the award since Brad Ring was honored in 2008.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There wasn’t a scratch on it.The riding jersey freshman Eric Brodell wore that rainy October day lay ripped beneath him in his hospital bed, but the helmet he wore remained undamaged.On Oct. 13, Brodell and three of his Cutters teammates were hit by a blue Honda Civic on IN 446. Thrown in the air, Brodell landed on the pavement with only his bicycle helmet protecting him. He was taken by ambulance to Bloomington Hospital where, within hours, he was in surgery.Two months later, Brodell declined comment, saying his lawyer had advised him not to speak, but teammate and senior Eric Young said the rookie Cutters rider is attending physical therapy and should be ready to ride in January or February.The three other Cutters riders — junior Thomas Walsh, junior Michael Schroeder and Young — are all back to riding.Young, who had shards of glass in his arm when he hit the windshield and a swollen ankle from hitting the car, has already ridden the route the Cutters took the day of the accident.“The first time I rode past the spot was a little weird,” Young said. “You could see the glass from the windshield on the ground, so that was a little strange. But I don’t know. You just kind of keep going.”But to Bloomington Hospital registered nurse Terri Morris, it’s a miracle those boys survived.Driving on her way home with her son and daughter, Morris was a car’s length behind the pack of riders when the crash happened.Morris initially passed the pack of riders on IN 446 before pulling into the Fishin’Shedd, a gas station down the road from the scene of the accident.With rain pouring outside, Morris decided getting gas wasn’t worth the outside ailments.“We went to pull back out on 446 and the bicyclers had caught up with us at that point,” Morris said. “I remember my daughter saying, ‘Get in front of the bicyclers Mom, so you don’t have to pass them again’ and I said, ‘We’ll just let them go ahead, and we’ll go around them on the causeway if it’s clear.’”After pulling out behind the pack of Little 500 riders, Morris said she saw a car, coming in the opposite direction, cross the midline before striking the boys.Both Brodell and Young flipped over the car while Schroeder hit the side. Walsh was the only one who avoided the car.“Eric Brodell was parallel with me,” Walsh said. “I heard a huge crash and the next thing I knew he was gone. I looked behind me as they were both kind of in the air. My first thought was that the worst had happened, and it was possible that we could have lost somebody. I hit the brakes, threw my bike on the ground and ran over to see how everybody was doing. Everybody was moving a little bit.”By this point, Morris had rushed from her truck to the riders. She saw Brodell was hurt the worst.“He was trying to get up, and I was shouting at him to lie down and that he didn’t need to be moving because I didn’t know what kind of traumatic injury he had,” Morris said. “I was on my cell phone with the emergency operator and holding pressure on his left leg at the same time.“We’d gone through a shirt while waiting for the ambulance,” Morris said. “He kept asking me if his leg was broken, and I kept telling him it didn’t matter because it was bleeding.” Hours later, when the bleeding had gone down and Brodell was in surgery, the Cutters riders evaluated their equipment. While the bikes were bent and broken, senior teammate Zach Lusk realized the condition of Brodell and Young’s helmets. Young’s helmet only had a single crack.“None of them were concussed or anything like that,” Lusk said. “No major head injuries. Just looking at the damage done to the car, it’s like, ‘How in the world is this the only thing that happened?’”Walsh wondered the same thing.“I think the fact that the car was a Honda Civic, and I think the fact that they were able to flip over the car instead of hit a grill really played a big part,” Walsh said about the minor injuries his teammates walked away with. “They took a pretty big hit. Helmets probably saved a couple lives.”Morris, who is a relative of Dennis Shoup — the Bloomington High School South teacher who was killed on IN 446 in May 2010, also spoke of how lucky the Cutters were to walk away from the crash.“In my family’s loss, a vehicle had crossed the center line and hit Dennis’ car head on,” Morris recounted. “The vehicle wrapped around him and killed him instantly. That these four kids had nothing but a bicycle underneath them and Eric flew 20 feet in the air and landed slam on the pavement — I mean when I got out of the car I thought that one or all of them had been killed.”Chris Wojtowich, a former Cutters’ rider from 1997-2000 who rode the IN 446 route many times, said there were many incidents of drivers trying to run Little 500 riders off the road during his riding days but never an accident like the ones the Cutters recently suffered and never on IN 446.“I would say they were very, very lucky, and they were wearing helmets,” Wojtowich said. “Eric Young probably would have died if he wasn’t wearing his helmet. The car had more damage than Eric did.”About four months remain until the 33 Little 500 teams take the track. Regardless of injuries, the Cutters want to be one of those 33. After all, they have a four-year title to defend.“I’ve tried to find something we could have done differently to stop it from happening, but I don’t think there was really anything I could have changed,” Young said. “It was just horribly, unlucky and bad timing that he slid right into us.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The fans’ cheers escalate each time a shot goes off anywhere inside the 30. They’re dressed in hats and gloves, and some of them even wrap up in fleece blankets. They wouldn’t miss this game. They do their part off the field, and their team does its part on the field. They finally get to see their team hoist a championship trophy. But those fans aren’t rooting for IU. They’re decked out in the blue and gold of Akron, cheering on the surging Zips.While the Hoosiers haven’t made the College Cup since 2004, Akron made its second straight appearance this weekend, winning its first national title Sunday in a 1-0 victory against Louisville in Santa Barbara, Calif.The home of the Midwest’s premier soccer program arguably relocated six hours northeast of Bloomington to Akron, Ohio.The Zips have blossomed under Caleb Porter, a former IU player and assistant coach. Which means some soccer fans can’t help but wonder: Has a prodigal Hoosier son managed to unseat his former school as the premier soccer program in the Midwest?Their heroIn 2005, Porter, a former recruiting coordinator for the Hoosiers, recruited what College Soccer News ranked as the No. 1 class in the country.A year later, he took the head coaching job at Akron. He left behind IU’s No. 2 recruiting class — one that included former Hoosiers Ofori Sarkodie and Eric Alexander — and inherited the No. 25 recruiting class of 2006.Five seasons into his head coaching career with the Zips, Porter’s list of records are beginning to surpass records held by his former coach, Jerry Yeagley. From 1982 to 1985, IU had the second-longest unbeaten streak with 38 matches. Porter passed Yeagley’s record last weekend when his team defeated California to earn 39 straight wins at home.Their hero's mentorIn his 31 years as coach of the varsity Hoosier squad, Yeagley won 544 of 690 games.Then there are the 10 Big Ten championships and the 28 NCAA tournament berths and the 16 College Cup appearances — 12 of which ended in the national final — and, of course, the six national championships. His team had a 68-22 record in the tournament, the best winning percentage.Then there's the fact that in 31 years of leading IU's program, Yeagley never had a losing season. Many considered IU THE soccer program.Yeagley was named NSCAA National Coach of the Year six times during the year and Big Ten Coach of the Year eight times. He was inducted into the United States Soccer Federation Hall of Fame in 1989 for his accomplishments.
Volleyball vs. USC in the NCAA Tournament, Sweet 16 in Dayton, OH, 12/10/10_Mike Dickbernd
Senior defender Rich Balchan is one of 54 seniors who was chosen to participate in the 2011 adidas Major League Soccer Player Combine.
Will Bruin is one of three finalists for the MAC Hermann Trophy, college soccer's best player of the year.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When Jerry Yeagley planted the soccer seed at Indiana, he didn’t just grow the Hoosier program. His seed pollinated and spread to Akron, Ohio, and St. Louis, to Birmingham, Ala., and Winston-Salem, N.C., and even to another Big Ten school in Madison, Wis.However, Yeagley’s seeds didn’t just spread soccer across the nation. They implanted their main root in the one thing IU soccer wins by: that the team is not just a team, it is a family.Yeagley’s influence on the program for 31 years and 544 wins have led to 19 former players either at a head or assistant coaching position in college soccer programs. Former Hoosiers coaching across the nation even extend to the high school and youth levels. Getman’s GrowthMike Getman’s seed was planted in Hoosier soccer as a defender in 1977. After 33 years, Getman said he feels as close to the Indiana soccer family as he did the first time he put on that Indiana jersey.“The strength of Indiana soccer is the fact that every player that has ever come through has felt like they are part of that family,” Getman said from his office at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. “When a young player is looking at different colleges to attend, he has to be impressed by the number of alums that come back to games and that stay in touch with the coaching staff and the true family atmosphere that surrounds the program.”During his years playing and assistant coaching around Yeagley and Hoosier soccer, Getman learned that pride in the results on the field were just as important to the program as pride in the results off the field.“It’s not just, ‘What did you do on the field today?’” Getman said. “It’s ‘How are you doing in the classroom?’ and ‘How are you doing socially?’”Even after Getman left the program, the IU soccer family reached out to him, still asking about, first and foremost, his blood family and then his soccer family. Since Getman arrived at UAB 19 years ago as head coach, the program has changed drastically, adding alumni weekends and phone calls to former players to give it that Indiana touch. It has also produced five trips to the NCAA tournament to a team that had only three winning seasons in its first 13 years. Getman doesn’t speak with somebody from IU soccer every week, but they keep in touch often.“We don’t have a designated day,” Getman said. “We end up in communication for so many reasons. Sometimes it’s professional. Sometimes it’s a call just to congratulate on another good win. Just as a family, you live apart, but you don’t lose touch with each other.”But communication is one of the keys to the chest of success — at least, it was for Yeagley.“A day doesn’t go by where I don’t talk to at least one of the past players,” Yeagley said. “Staying in touch, communicating and keeping interested and informed and reaching out to the extended family — the fans the parents, the students, the alums — are all part of it.”Trask’s TrialsJohn Trask planted his seed in Bloomington in 1984, earning letterman status for four years. He was a full-time staff member for seven years (1993-1999), helping IU to a 136-20-6 record.Trask became head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers in 2010. In his first year, Trask’s team stumbled to a 4-13-3 record, but he said he is taking what he learned from past experience about a tradition of excellence and pride in the jersey to apply it to his program.“Slowly, but surely,” Trask said about the changes in Madison. “I think what coach would be proud of in all of us is we’ve taken all the good stuff he’s taught us, and we’ve not lost who we are. Yeah, there are some components of Indiana soccer, but there’s a lot of John Trask as well.”That management of players and coaches is also something Trask wants to implement into his program. In his mind, he is going through the rolodex of Yeagley’s lessons one at a time to help his young team, but he said it’s going to take time.“(Coach Yeagley) remains an unbelievable resource even today in my career,” Trask said. “When you work for a legend like that, I think you end up being better prepared. The moments when coaches make or break themselves is in adversity. Coach had just an unbelievable way of dealing with people. We’d all agree, throw out the X’s and O’s, and management is what it’s really all about.”Management of players and a deeper understanding of the player is also a key to Yeagley’s chest of success.“I was able to still establish the difference between coach and player, but I really, really enjoyed getting to know them as more than just soccer players and being part of their life and their being part of mine,” Yeagley said. “Those bonds, you hear about that in service where soldiers talk about that brotherhood — it’s a special thing that’s hard to explain in words, but it’s very, very strong and very meaningful. We have that.”Porter’s PrestigeIn 1994, the seed of Caleb Porter was dug into IU soccer. He was a three-year captain. In 1997, Porter was runner-up for the Hermann Trophy, awarded to the nation’s top collegiate player.As Indiana’s recruiting coordinator, Porter attracted the talents of four national players of the year, 14 Youth National Team members, 18 All-Americans and 12 state players of the year. Now, Porter leads an Akron team that has the No. 1 winning percentage in the last five years and has only lost two home games in the same amount of years. This weekend, his team is making its second consecutive appearance in the College Cup. “I learned how to build a program, and I learned what it’s about and what it takes to run it from top to bottom from IU soccer,” Porter said.The experiences Porter had around IU are what, he said, makes him a strong coach today. “We had an obligation, the current players, to uphold that tradition at Indiana,” Porter said. “Those are a lot of same things that I preach at my program. At Akron, you’re joining something special, something bigger than yourself, and you have a chance to do something that has never been done.”While IU has hoisted the national championship trophy seven times in its program history, Akron is still in hopes of its first national title. Luckily for Porter, he was around IU soccer during a time when the team made regular College Cup appearances.“While I was a player, we were competing for national champions,” Porter said. “While I was a coach, we were competing and winning national championships, and I lived in that environment for 11 years. My standards are based off of the standards that I’ve learned from being a part of the IU tradition of excellence.”Before that tradition was born on the field, it was strengthened across campus. When soccer was a club, the players used to hang up sheets across campus to advertise their games.“The family started, very honestly, when we were a club for 10 years from ’63 to ’73,” Yeagley said. “We had to do everything from lining our fields to my wife washing the uniforms. We had no money. That was the root.”Once the club became a varsity sport, it didn’t matter to Yeagley that they had administrative support or finances — they still hung sheets to advertise games.“I think it brought the team closer together, and it just helped in terms of establishing trust and respect among the players and coaches and giving everybody a bond, a family-type bond,” he said. “If you talk to anyone, or most people, about IU soccer at some time or another, the word family will come up. “There’s great pride. Establishing pride in the uniform and establishing pride in the program, the alums are very, very proud to have been part of it, and that’s important.” Yeagley’s YearTodd Yeagley’s seed in IU soccer could have been planted in the early 1970s when he was in diapers around the program, or in 1991 when he competed in his first of four years as an All-American.Regardless, in December 2009, his seed was once again sewn into Jerry Yeagley Field when the younger Yeagley took control of the program six years after his father’s retirement.In his first year, Todd led his 10-8-2 team to the third round of the NCAA Tournament and a Big Ten regular season championship.Although Todd Yeagley’s head coaching experience is not the same his father’s, their branches grow in the same direction.“Jerry Yeagley and Todd both are just really nice people, and they genuinely care about the people they’re working with,” Getman said. “Whether you’re a reporter or a player or an alum or just a booster of the program, they’re not just out to help the program. They generally care about how you’re doing.”Many times, without realizing it, Todd’s first question to his players or coaches is, “So, how’s the family?” “Friendships, relationships, are important to me. Period. Soccer aside,” Todd said. “To build a program from the ground up with core principles and values and the importance of what family truly is, is really some of the backbone of our program.” In 1963, Jerry Yeagley planted a seed in Bloomington that grew into the standard. Now, his seeds are trying to meet and surpass those standards.“The real rewards for a coach,” Jerry Yeagley said, “especially at the end of his career, are his products, are the people that worked with him and how they do as they go out.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The ball lay on the field in front of her. Time on the clock rapidly ticked away with less than two minutes remaining in the game.Never had Tyra McGrady and her teammates for the U.S. National U-20 rugby team — or any past members of the team in its history — beaten Wales.There were four defenders blocking her path, but her goal wasn’t to get past them, it was to go beyond them.***Senior year of high school meant choices — the choice of which college to attend, the choice to continue athletics or give up on the glory days, the choice of a future. For her entire youth, McGrady was a soccer player. Quick on her feet, she blazed the across the turf. But McGrady lacked foot skills. So when the time came to choose a college, she chose whether or not she wanted to continue playing.“I wanted to do something in college,” McGrady said after the idea of playing collegiate soccer fell through. Since she was 4, the IU senior had kicked around a soccer ball. She even spent some time in gymnastics. But when she came to IU, McGrady found a new game to play on a grass field: rugby.McGrady has spent some childhood years on the sideline of her older brother’s rugby games, but the 10-year age difference caused her to be uninterested during his prime years of playing. After the elder McGrady failed to convert his little brother from a football to a rugby player, he turned to his sister.“He basically forced me to try rugby at IU,” McGrady said. “I was terrified. I had no idea. But now I love it. I couldn’t imagine not playing.”When McGrady first stepped on the field to play with the IU Redstorm, the women’s club rugby team, she knew nothing about rugby. Like most schools across the nation, neither of IU’s rugby teams have been granted varsity status. Collegiate rugby around the U.S. is currently under a three-year transition into conference-based competition to try to provide a better structure for college rugby. Now, she laughs as she looks back at her three-year journey that took her from unknown to All-American. She might not have known that rugby players maul, but not in the same way tigers do, and that a dummy pass was actually an act of deceit, but she quickly learned. After her freshman season, McGrady was named a second-team All-America selection by USA Rugby; the honor made her the first All-American in the program’s 14-year history. Two more seasons of practices and games with the club team, as well as conditioning with a private trainer three days a week, brought the exercise science major two first-team All-America recognitions. “I just love how ruby is so different than any other sport,” McGrady said. “I can look at other sports and just pick out a million reasons why rugby is so much better. I love the people mostly. There’s a stereotype that soccer players are mean and catty and cheerleaders are girly, but with rugby players, it’s that they’re so down to earth.”The IU team made it to the Sweet 16 of the national tournament in both 2007 and 2008. The team ended its 2010 campaign at 8-3. “She’s just a natural,” senior teammate Rikke Fulkerson said. “She’s really, really fast, but she also worked at it. From our freshman year, she just started lifting weights and training. “She gained at least 30 pounds in muscle from our freshman year.”In the last few years, McGrady undoubtedly has transformed into a rugby player, and although she said her brother sparked her interest in the sport, she said her Redstorm coach, Vaughn Mitchell, and his guidance is the reason she still plays today.“She started off not really understanding the game to now really understanding the game of rugby and being a really good player,” Mitchell said. “She’s grown to be one of the better players in the country.”***The ball sits just a few inches from McGrady.Her experience from the U-20 national team that played in South Africa, as well as her time with regional teams, all-star Midwest teams and a USA Sevens team, helped her to this moment. She hunches her back as she runs and scoops up the ball. Seconds of time waste away as she runs.While there’s no intense money-making future in rugby, McGrady has already decided that once she graduates, she wants to move to Chicago and join the Chicago North Shore team, a team that finished third in this year’s DI Women’s Club tournament. She also was recently invited to the 2011 Elite Trials Camp for the Women’s High Performance Program, which develops rugby players for the U.S. Olympic team. McGrady runs for a breakaway, beating four tackles. She sprints down the field and is taken down, but not before she crosses the goal line.She scores the winning try, and her squad beats Wales for the first time in U-20 national team history.“My heart still races,” McGrady said. She’s recently watched the highlight clip of the game on YouTube. “Whatever happens, I want to play rugby as long as I can,” she said. “I want to play rugby until my body breaks. That’s my plan.”
With 18 goals and 5 assists for a total of 41 points, junior forward Will Bruin has been named a MAC Hermann Trophy Semifinalist, and you can be sure this is the first of many of these posts. Indiana's last semifinalist was Brad Ring in 2008. Also, Bruin's 18 goals are the most by any Hoosier this century.
