Region

Around the Game

Senior leads cross country team

Young people are impressionable. So impressionable that when a second grade teacher tells his students to try out for the cross-country team when they reach the sixth grade, they listen. Such is the case with Aaron Gillen, a fifth-year senior.

Weekend sweep boosts Volleyball's Big Ten chances

A stats sheet is a notorious liar. Often its ingredients -- kills, blocks, hitting percentage -- are worth little more than a toss to a trashcan. But anyone keeping tallies of the volleyball team's contests this weekend in an effort to uncover the most tell-tale statistics likely ran out of ink; circling and underlining numbers, which, in this case, told no lies. Instead, the black and white slip of paper turned into the IU volleyball bible for a couple nights in a row. The Hoosiers (12-6, 3-5) used gutsy, consistent play and a solid week of practice to snap a five-game losing streak and turn around their Big Ten season in a heartbeat, pounding Illinois and Purdue.

Cross country team emerges from meet

In a meet like the Pre-NCAA Invitational in Ames, Iowa, Saturday, most teams just try to not get lost in the crowd. The No. 22 men's team emerged from the 53 teams at the meet with a 17th place finish.

Football embarrassed 58-0, Cameron blames self

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- There's a lot of words that can be used to describe what happened to IU Saturday against No. 18 Michigan. The Hoosiers were destroyed, embarrassed and shutout by a Wolverine team determined to erase last weekend's disappointing loss at Purdue. Whatever frustrations the Wolverines' had after their loss to the Boilermakers were let loose in their 58-0 victory against the Hoosiers. And whatever frustrations IU (2-4, 1-2 Big Ten) had after its 52-33 loss at Northwestern only increased after getting hammered on national television and before a Homecoming crowd of 110,909 at Michigan Stadium.

No. 2 Hoosiers knock off Wisconsin

Wisconsin, a team that has knocked off top-25 teams this season, worried Coach Jerry Yeagley. He stressed to his men's soccer team that it needed to capitalize off of corner kicks and free kicks in a game that could determine this year's Big Ten champion.

Stop wasting your time, start supporting soccer

Let me just start by saying I really hoped it wouldn't come down to this. Although the thought has been in the back of my mind for months, I truly hoped I wouldn't have to write this column. With that said, here it goes.... Students of dear old IU... what the heck are you thinking?

Men's soccer team tops Wildcats

Coach Jerry Yeagley knew before his men's soccer team took the field Sunday that it wasn't ready to play Northwestern.

Women's basketball appears in first Midnight Madness

While the men's basketball team waited patiently inside their locker room, much of the women's team hovered around the floor of Assembly Hall waiting for their first official practice to begin.

Fans support team despite Knight's firing

Freshman guard A.J. Moye rolled on the court laughing as junior forward Kirk Haston struggled from the three-point line. Even interim coach Mike Davis had trouble keeping a straight face as his big man competed against junior guard Heather Cassady in the final round of the three-point contest Saturday morning at Midnight Madness, the first official basketball practice of the season. Cassady outshot Haston 17-12.

Hoosiers please crowd at Midnight Madness

The excitement of Midnight Madness concluded with a flurry of fast breaks, alley-oops and 3-point bombs.

McBride adds signature to neoclassical jazz

Jazz -- the unbridled interpretation of emotion through music, invented by former slaves who applied African rhythms to European musical traditions -- is the only purely American art form. Wednesday night, Jazz from Bloomington, the city's jazz society, brought a few of its practitioners, the Barber Brothers Quintet and the Christian McBride Band, to the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre, 114 E. Kirkwood Ave.

Yoga relieves stress, keeps students healthy

Students who walk into Cherry Merritt-Derriau's one-credit yoga class at the Student Recreational Sports Center take a deep breath. They are part of growing number of people who are using yoga to relieve stress and stay healthy. Since the 1960s, when instructors from India began teaching in America, yoga has adapted through two generations to meet health and stress management needs.

Technology stocks take sharp dive

Investors appear to have lost their love affair with technology and Internet-related stocks, marked by the nearly 35 percent drop from its high in March of this year. Technology bellwethers such as Yahoo!, Intel and Lucent Technologies have been hit especially hard by the continued sell-off.

Raise the Roof bolsters homes for winter

Soaring fuel costs and plummeting temperatures of an Indiana winter will soon force residents to do all they can to bolster their homes for the harsh months ahead. But for the 12,000 people in Monroe County the U.S. Census Bureau reports are living below the poverty line, preparation for the harsh months ahead can be difficult, even impossible. One Bloomington program developed to fight the onslaught of winter was last week's second annual Raise the Roof program. Organized by the city's Housing and Urban Development department, Raise the Roof employs area volunteers to help needy residents by fixing up homes and tuning furnaces at no cost.

Mystery author leads writing workshop at local Barnes & Noble

The world's largest writing workshop started out small Saturday in Bloomington. Just two writers appeared at the Barnes & Noble at 218 E. Third St. for the start of what was, according to Barnes & Noble, the 'world's largest' writing workshop. Co-sponsored by Writer's Digest Books, the workshop took place at 2 p.m. in 500 Barnes & Noble bookstores across the country. Brown County native Michael Newton, author of crime novels such as "Armed and Dangerous: A Writer's Guide to Weapons," "The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers" and "Century of Slaughter," led Bloomington's workshop. Newton, who has had 165 books published, is best known for his true crime novels.

A pitiful rallying call

Millions of Americans are asking the same question: When will this campaign be over? As much as I'm supposed to enjoy all of this politicing, I sympathize. How much more can we read into Al Gore's sighs? How many more times do we want to talk about George W. Bush's boyish charm? Is it doing us any good to hear repeatedly from one candidate that the other candidate's prescription drug plan requires seniors to crawl naked under barbed wire on their way to the pharmacy?

Teammates turned rivals

They played on the same grass field for the last time in 1997, when the men's soccer team lost to UCLA in the NCAA Final Four in Richmond, Va. They left behind a 23-game winning streak crushed by the Bruins in a triple-overtime loss. Chris Klein, went on to a professional soccer career with the Kansas City Wizards after the 1997 campaign. Dema Kovalenko stayed at IU for the 1998 season, when the Hoosiers won their fourth NCAA championship. He then left school a year early and joined the Chicago Fire in 1999.

Gore's plan offers targeted tax cuts

America's priorities can be determined by how we decide to spend our collective resources. This year's election highlights the key distinctions between how Democrats and Republicans spend our money. Democrats support targeted tax cuts focused on our national priorities, such as education and health care, just to name two.

Conflict requires U.S. leadership

In Israel and Palestine, the situation might get worse before it gets better. Israel confirmed Sunday that a soldier was kidnapped by a militant Islamic group.