The Litter Box

The Chico State men’s lacrosse team begins its fall season Sunday afternoon in the second annual Red-White Scrimmage under coach Paul Rocchio. The Wildcats will sport a 48-man roster to begin what is technically a 17-day combined slate of practices and scrimmages, so it will be a 24-on-24 evaluation for Rocchio.

“What it will tell me is who’s coming in in shape and who hasn’t done much in the offseason,” Rocchio said. “By the fourth quarter, some guys will be going strong and others will be dying, and that’s what we’re looking at.”

I’m thinking I’ll roll over, day off or not, to check things out. Yeah, lacrosse is a club sport — or, as the athletics department calls it, “virtual varsity” — but last season Chico State had the 15th-toughest schedule in the country while constrained to Division-III recruiting rules. Rocchio is making it a real deal. I’m not necessarily down for getting into a legitimacy of sport debate in terms of intercollegiate popularity, but carrying around lacrosse gear on campus definitely sets a dude apart as an athlete.
That, and I have nothing better to do than homework and laundry on Sundays, and the prospect of the Eagles/Giants isn’t really making me want to stay home, either.

Posted by Travis Souders at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday morning will mark what’s widely considered among the Chico State cross country teams to be the most important preseason race of the year, the Stanford Invitational. Coach Gary Towne, the competitive human being he is, sounded smitten with the amount of talent bound to be running this weekend in Palo Alto.

“The fields are going to be as good as they’ve been in quite some time,” he said, noting the enlistments of Arizona, Baylor, California and, of course, the Cardinal itself. Perennial Division-II powerhouse Adams State (the women are tops in the nation; the men rank at No. 2) will also be there, as well as Wildcat nemesis-of-sorts UC Davis.
“We’ll have our hands full, definitely,” Towne said. “It’s a number of pretty darn good schools competing, and we’re looking forward to the opporunity to see how things shake out.”

Part of the reason — actually, a rather large part of the reason — Towne and Chico State have such an affinity for the Stanford Invite is the opportunity to look at top-tier teams well before the NCAA national championships. Its three-and-a-half hour drive makes it a nice locale, sure, but the competition is the biggest perk.

“More than anything, it will be a great opportunity to have an environment that will mirror the national championship more than any other event,” Towne said. “That caliber and intensity of running is there, plus Stanford always seems to draw some high-caliber competition, and we need that. We need to get used to situations where we’re not winning races, where our runners aren’t controlling the paces and tempo. We need to fight through the pack and get used to it. That’s what it’s like at an NCAA meet.”

Posted by Travis Souders at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wildcat volleyball team (11-4, 4-1 CCAA) can keep itself in the upper echelon of the California Collegiate Athletic Assocation with a pair of match victories this weekend, starting Friday with Cal State Monterey Bay and Saturday against Sonoma State. Chico State is bested in the CCAA only by No. 1 Cal State San Bernardino and Cal State L.A., which beat the Wildcats earlier in Chico this season.
It is a bit early in the season to do any kind of scoreboard watching, and especially given the Coyotes and Golden Eagles' opponents this weekend (ninth-place Cal State Dominguez Hills and seventh-place Humboldt State, respectively), it's unlikely that much damage could be done in the standings. No doubt, any instance of the CCAA's top three teams losing this weekend would be a case of upset on a massive scale.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to cover either match. Friday is prep football time, and while the game I'm covering is a Division III, small-school tilt, it's between two teams in our coverage area — so the lesser of two evils, from a story-assigning point of view, would be to assign me to the football game (which has all the makings of a bona fide dud) to avoid short-shrifting two teams on coverage as opposed to one.
Pigskin continues to kill on Saturday, though indirectly — it takes one member of the E-R's four-man staff to cover Butte, which leaves two in the office to put out pages, and one of those happens to be me.

Posted by Travis Souders at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Unless compiling golf scores is some ridiculously tedious, difficult task, I'm at a loss as to why media outlets (the Chico Enterprise-Record and the Chico State SID included) aren't hearing about tournament results from Washington the day of the event. The Western Washington tournament, in which the Wildcats men's team took third place, didn't have its results relayed until Wednesday afternoon despite finishing Tuesday (for a daily newspaper, that's what we call "old news" and it looks terrible when we print it). Even then, it's better than what we got from St. Martin's, which was nothing.
The California Collegiate Athletic Assocation provided the only inkling of information about where Chico State ended up. It's a shame, because while we would love to get in everything as early as possible, we sort of depend on this information to do it.
Even coach Travis Brown, who had to race to get his team on an airplane and back into California almost immediately after the Western tournament, can't be held responsible. He knows what his guys did, but until the school gets the stats put together, he doesn't know about placing or results. And, conversely, a phone call to him wouldn't do much good if 1) he was on an airplane or 2) the results weren't available.
Hopefully things will get a little more structured now that the team's back in the Golden State. I'm not sure I like how the Pacific Northwest rolls when it comes to media release.

Posted by Travis Souders at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, I bet Tim Tollefson's never been called that before. I suppose there's worse things you could be called than the name of a South Park bit character.
Regardless, this week he's being called the California Collegiate Athletic Association's Men's Cross Country Runner of the Week (ow, my shift keys), the second straight time he's earned the honor. It probably helped that the Chico State senior was the top collegiate finisher and second-place overall runner at the West Regional Preview in Boise, Idaho on Saturday.
Oh, and if you hadn't heard, the Wildcat men won. Left Potatoland in ruins, actually.

Posted by Travis Souders at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chico State's Linday Macias has a shot to challenge the school record for career kills this season -- as a junior.
The current record-holder is Stacey Clifton and her 1,166 kills; Macias sits at 980, and there are 13 remaining regular-season games for the Wildcats this fall.
Here's some math (from a journalism major; this could get ugly): Macias is currently hammering down just over four kills per game (a rate that, if it stuck, would also give her the highest kills per game mark in WIldcat history). Assuming she keeps going at said rate, if you spanned that out to just the minimum three games per match, she'd have roughly 12 kills every time the Wildcats played. If they only went three every time out, Macias would finish this season with 1,136 kills.
But let's face it: Chico State isn't going to beat every team in three games, and it certainly won't lose every match 3-0.
It's a stretch, but to quote the greatest Matthew McConaughey movie of all-time, "It could happen."
Yes, that was an "Angels in the Outfield" reference.
Onward.
We've finally got word from Washington on the Wildcat men's golf team, according to the California Collegiate Athletic Association's Web site. Chico State, now ranked No. 25 in the Golf World/Nike Preseason Coaches Poll, finished up in fourth place with 571. The 'Cats' top swinger was Lucas Delgado, who tied for fourth with a 4-under 138.
See, nasty, rabid e-mail senders? We're not avoiding the golf team. St. Martin's SID was avoiding us. We can all hug now.

Posted by Travis Souders at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kari Gonzales probably owes Katherine Bagwell a steak (or whatever it is people owe each other these days when they help you out. I'd want a steak).
Bagwell scored two goals, including the overtime winner, against Cal Poly Pomona to give the Wildcats a win Sunday and make Gonzales the all-time winningest goalkeeper at Chico State.
Congrats to both.

On not quite as happy a note, the Enterprise-Record (basically me, when it comes to Chico State sports) hasn't heard anything from St. Martin's, all the way up in the wonderful state of Washington, regarding the tournament it hosted and in which the Wildcat men's golf team played. The only info St. Martin's has on its Web site is stuff pertinent to St. Martin's only, which doesn't really help us.
Chico State SID, I'm assuming, has its hands full with other endeavors Wildcat-related and therefore couldn't exactly make the hike up to Tumwater. My guess is that they know about as much as anyone else until they get a call from coach Travis Brown.
Long story short, the last I knew of the men's golf team was that it was in fourth place after Day 1. Phone calls haven't been returned (although I can't fault anyone, coaches included, for wanting to enjoy their weekends). Hopefully we find something out sooner than later.

Posted by Travis Souders at 05:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The good news for the Chico State cross country teams from Boise, Idaho was that both the men and women had solid showings — the men won the West Regional Preview in a rout, while the women came in second.
Man, Hannah Dillard sure knows how to spoil a party.
The freshman, a Chico High grad, had missed the early part of the season with what was first believed to be shin splints. But Dillard called coach Gary Towne at the Preview on Saturday to relay the news: X-rays on Friday revealed a stress fracture in her tibia, an injury that will force Towne to redshirt the touted prospect for the rest of the cross country season.

The silver lining is that the injury doesn't look like it will keep Dillard from the track season. Another high note for the Wildcats is that with the slew of promising young talent likely to alternate redshirt seasons, a delay could actually be a blessing in disguise.

"We might be thankful someday in the future with a crazy group of fifth-year seniors," Towne joked.

Fellow freshmen Kara Lubieniecki and Shannon McVannel both had strong races, coming in 10th and 17th, respectively, so it's easy to see what he means.

Posted by Travis Souders at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't know where Tumwater, Wash. is, other than to say that "it's in Washington." I'm assuming that it's somewhere near Olympia (and now, as I think aloud, an office cronie informs me that my assumption is correct).
Regardless, the Wildcat men's golf team stroked its way to a fourth-place tie in the first round of the St. Martin's Tournament on Friday.
Thinking of golf reminds me that I've been assigned to cover the Chico City Championship tomorrow, and thinking of Washington reminds me of rain, which is a distinct possibility for tomorrow's play. Putting the two together reminds me of the classic "Rat farts!" scene from "Caddyshack," and a phone call to the golf shop to see if they'd play through rain only confirmed it: unless there's lightning, they're swinging away out at Bidwell.
Either way, I'm gonna be driving a cart.

Posted by Travis Souders at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kari Gonzales and the Chico State women's soccer team grabbed a 1-0 win over Cal State San Bernardino, giving Gonzales a share of the school record for career wins with 32 and tying Nicole Adams' 13-year-old mark. She extended her own Wildcat best for shutouts with her 24th. There are no fireworks planned, but considering that Gonzales started her Chico State career as a third-stringer, it's a pretty remarkable accomplishment — especially given that the win had huge California Collegiate Athletic Assocation implications.
We know she won't be celebrating it too hard just yet, but congrats to Kari from the E-R sports desk.

Posted by Travis Souders at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The second Golf World/NIKE Golf Division II Coaches Poll released this season has the Wildcats men's golf team at No. 23, two spots ahead of its last ranking.
While it's obviously good news, I'm still a bit unclear on how golf rankings work, but that's nothing new. For me, Tiger Woods is far and away the best player in the world, maybe just because he's the only one who can get me to watch golf on TV, and everyone after that may as well be unranked. It's not like college football or even pro tennis, where it's easy to gauge who's doing what and where they deserved to be ranked and why.
But, that would also explain why I don't have a vote in the Golf World/NIKE Golf Division II Poll. I just get to write about it, assume that Chico State is unequivocally the 23rd-best team in D-II, and get on with my life.
Works for me.

Posted by Travis Souders at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Chico State women's basketball team will host the Tipoff Reception and Scholarship Fundraiser on Nov. 7. More food and drink by Baccio (which has been pretty tasty, in my limited experience) out at Lakeside Pavilion at California Park. There's going to be a silent auction, a raffle and — most interesting to yours truly — the introduction of the 2007-08 Wildcats.
If you RSVP by Nov. 1 to coach Molly Goodenbour (mgoodenbour@csuchico.edu or 898-4265), you'll get in for $25; otherwise it's gonna cost you 30 bucks at the door.

Not as distant on the horizon (Oct. 27, to be exact) is an open scrimmage that will target youth players. They'll get to play with the Wildcats and learn about different aspects of the game like sportsmanship, how to get into college, living life as a student athlete and more. There should be more info on this as it gets closer, but Goodenbour sounded pretty certain that there's going to be a barbecue afterward.
That alone seems like it makes the thing worth checking out, right?

Posted by Travis Souders at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Women's soccer tries to snap a three-game skid tonight at Cal State San Bernardino, and that potential win will give Kari Gonzales her 32nd career victory, tied for the most in school history.
More on that can be found at the Enterprise-Record.

The men are also looking to build off momentum from Wednesday's win over Simpson by picking up their second California Collegiate Athletic Association win over the Coyotes. Meanwhile, the Travis Brown coaching era gets underway as the men's golf team heads to the St. Martin's Tournament in Olympia, Wash.

Another point of interest for Wildcat followers: In mid-October, the Chico State Athletics Hall of Fame will hold its 22nd annual awards ceremony. These kinds of events are always a good time, so quite honestly, I'm hoping I get assigned to cover it. Schmoozing, speeches and sports talk usually comprise a nice evening, and prestigious as it surely will be, it will also likely be a lot of fun. The Chico Baseball Hall of Fame dinner and the E-R's own Sportsperson of the Year banquet were similar events, and I had the privilege of having a blast while covering both.
Ceremonies rock.

A bonus of this particular one is that E-R sports editor Dave Davies was going to Chico State while one of this year's inductees, Brett McNamar, was wrestling for the Wildcats in the mid-'80s. A former wrestler himself, Dave can get pretty geeked up if he's talking reversals and takedowns. Upon getting the press release from Chico State SID, Dave wheeled back in his office chair and waxed nostalgic on McNamar: "He was freakin' GOOD, man."

Let's face it: When your immediate supervisor is happy, you're happy. At least, that's enough for me.

Posted by Travis Souders at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you weren't in attendance for the Wildcats' 8-0 men's soccer win over Simpson on Wednesday night, I don't blame you. It was rainy and cold, and we all know just how wet, chilly aluminum bleachers can affect your main sitting apparatus.
It seems a little off to think that just a week and a half ago, I reported the same sport in shorts and a T-shirt, spraying Off! on my legs to fend off West Nile under the muggy conditions of University Soccer Stadium. On Wednesday night, I went to the trouble of putting on socks and a thermal undershirt, and I still was wishing I hadn't lost my favorite zip-up hoodie when I moved recently.
However, Chico State overcame its offensive impotence, though playing NAIA's Simpson University is probably akin to popping a Cialis. Still, eight goals are eight goals, the Wildcats are taking shots and capitalizing on them and it appears that, at least for now, they're playing with some offensive confidence.
Now, if only my car's heater worked a little better...

Posted by Travis Souders at 01:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With an overcast sky and significant threat of rain in Chico today, the Wildcats have no plans to abandon their 7 p.m. non-conference men's soccer showdown with Simpson.
The only thing that will stop play, according to the Chico State sports info department, is game-time lightning; otherwise, the show will go on as planned.
I'll bring my waders (or at least not wear flip-flops).

Posted by Travis Souders at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A couple jumps in Division II ranking for several Chico State teams this week.
The Wildcat volleyball team moved up two spots in the regional rankings, as voted on by the American Volleyball Coaches Association, from No. 22 to No. 20, largely fueled by Friday's 3-0 defeat of then-No. 16 UC San Diego (the Tritons fell to No. 21).

Meanwhile, the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association kept the Chico State men's cross country team at No. 1 in the West Region while moving the women up to No. 2, one spot behind Cal State L.A. Both rankings for the Wildcats were undoubtedly influenced by the squads' second-place finishes at the Chico Invitational.
On Friday, they'll get to flex their muscles (or endurance, I guess, would be the more relevant point of flexing) at the West Regional Preview in Boise, Idaho.

Posted by Travis Souders at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I sprained my pinkie toe pretty well yesterday in a game of RGL (random goof-off league) football.
Waking up this morning to go to a 9:30 class, coupled with the knowledge that I'd be getting off work no earlier than 11 p.m. — with homework, studying, deadline and a purple right foot sandwiched in between — it was pretty easy to think my life is hectic.
But, as usual, sport was able to throw some perspective on things. I hobbled into Butte Station to grab my usual pre-class morning coffee and string cheese, and camping out front were several players from the women's soccer team. Seeing them out of their natural element — on a soccer field, no earlier than the afternoon — was a little weird.
They basically have the same schedule that I'd mentioned before (minus the deadline), only they throw in practice and games. Oh, and I'm sure they suffer from far worse than sprained pinkies.
A lot of collegiate athletes don't get credit for being true student-athletes (as evidenced by the fact that I started this sentence by calling them "athletes").
Just a thought, here, and not even necessarily a call to action, but I know it helped me wriggle out of the feeling of being overwhelmed to think of how hard other people work. What's even more impressive is that many of the Wildcats succeed at it all.

Posted by Travis Souders at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's usually a bad play to say a team is better than its record indicates, but that really is the case with the Chico State soccer clubs.
The women haven't looked overmatched in any of their games in California Collegiate Athletic Association play, yet the women (1-3 CCAA) have dropped three straight since their conference-opening, 8-0 blasting of Cal State Monterey Bay. Through those three games, the Wildcats have scored just once. Even though they've allowed only four goals, they have nothing to show for it.
The goals-allowed stat isn't even the most confounding. Through those three games, Chico State had outshot San Francisco State, Sonoma State and Humboldt State 40-15; they had a 26-1 corner kick discrepancy. The ball is just not getting into the net.

The men (1-3 CCAA), meanwhile, have two scores in their last four contests, one of which was an overtime thriller that was also coach Mike O'Malley's 150th career W. But they hadn't been outplayed, really, until the Sonoma State loss. Before that defeat to the Seawolves, Chico State had a 49-27 shot advantage; only Sonoma State (who, for the record, leads the CCAA in wins as well as goofiness of nickname) really contained the Wildcats -- five shots, one corner kick, and ... oh yeah, no goals.

I doubt anyone in the Acker Gym offices is freaking out quite yet, but frequently not being able to get the halos off the scoreboard could affect the Wildcats' confidence down the stretch. The women were all swagger, as well they should have been, after the crushing of Cal State Monterey Bay; even a 1-0 loss to Seattle Pacific before that was a positive step. It will be interesting as well to see if the men can put their talent and potential together.

At some point, the law of averages says the shots are going to start going in. The Wildcats are just wondering when that will be.

Posted by Travis Souders at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)