Cardinal vs. Crimson

As finals come to an end, we're gearing up for the battle of the nerds. Come down to the pool at 7 PM tonight to watch us welcome the Harvard Women's Water Polo Team to the Farm! Go Card!

Polo in Every Pool!

For the last few years, freshman Skylar Dorosin has been working with Brenda Villa on Project 20/20, which aims to give opportunities to young girls to try out water polo. Brenda (Stanford '03) was able to play and love water polo thanks to a community program set up in her hometown, and now has 4 Olympic medals. She wants to make sure others have the same chance she did -- who knows, maybe some of the girls from yesterday will end up at the 2020 Olympic Games!

A few of the girls from the team headed over to Bell Haven Pool yesterday to help out and get involved. Here are some great pics!

Earning Top Dollar for Camp Kesem!

Congrats to the freshmen of Women's Water Polo for having the highest team earnings towards Camp Kesem, a great philanthropy that provides support for families that have dealt with or are currently dealing with cancer. Click here to find out more about Stanford's involvement and watch the video from Athlete Date Auction, the fundraising event from last night!

Putting in Work

Stanford Invitational 2013 -- 1st Place!

4 games. 2 days. 1 incredibly successful weekend. Gotta love this place (:

Showing Our Support!

What's one of the best things about Stanford Athletics? The support we all show each other! Here's our team at the Women's Basketball game this past Friday night. The girls beat the UCLA Bruins 75-49, keep up the good work!

Defender Twins!

Great minds think alike!!

Going For It!! // by Annika

Exciting week here for Stanford Athletics. Last month, we received the Director’s Cup for the 18th straight year. You might wonder how we do it year after year.

This week might just give you an indication why we deserve such an award. We have Women’s Volleyball starting up their NCAA tournament as the number 2 seed. Women’s Soccer is going down to San Diego to go for their second straight championship. And football will be playing here at home for the PAC 12 Championship. Pretty amazing. Not to mention that everyone on campus is buckling down and preparing for finals just a couple weeks away.

I know a lot of us are close with the soccer team, and it is always inspiring to see another Stanford team go for a championship. I remember when I was away last year training for the Olympics, I still felt a great connection to not only our water polo team, but also to the other teams at Stanford. This great sense of athletic community is what brings the best out of Stanford athletes. Not only are you striving for your best for your team and your teammates, but also for what it means wear that Stanford jersey, or in our case swimsuit.

Win or lose, you always bleed cardinal red. Playing for each other. Playing for Stanford. Can’t wait to see our teams go for it!


Get Pumped for the weekend -- click here!

Stanford's Reputation - A Response

I hope everyone has been enjoying all the fun stories included on this blog. As much as I would like to continue this entry with a fun story or something similar, I would like to take some time to address a recent article that was published in the Stanford Daily and has now become news nationwide. The article is titled “ Stanford Athletes had Access to ‘ Easy’ Courses,” and much like the title suggests, this article attempted to prove that a list of courses available in the Athletic Academic Resource Center (AARC) at Stanford is a list of easy A classes that student athletes could take to fill their course schedule each quarter. To clarify something right off the bat, this list, which is available each quarter, is essentially a compilation of a large variety of courses offered in the current quarter, which both fulfill GER requirements and meet during the hours that most athletes take classes. The classes are organized based on the time of day they meet, which is a very important criteria that student athletes must consider when organizing their class schedules. My own first impression of this list when I first looked at it as a freshman was that it was a helpful resource to get a feeling for the academic breadth of classes that the university offers and to find classes that fulfill GERs. And by the way, this same information is available to every student at Stanford via Courserank, a website used by numerous colleges nationwide that ranks courses based on popularity, grade distribution, and average weekly hours dedicated to the course.

Now that you have the background, I can give you my own personal reaction to this story. The biggest issue that I have with this article is its effect on the reputation of Stanford as both a top tier athletic and academic university. So many people regard Stanford as a great example of a place where students can excel both academically and athletically. Unfortunately, this article, although not fact-based, soils this reputation. Since it has been publically released and is now presented on several news websites including Fox Sports and ESPN, there is no way to take back what the article says, no way to remove it from the public eye. The article opens the door to a wide variety of people nationwide to question what they had always thought about Stanford student athletes as being the real deal.

In light of all of this, I must now take some time to try to restore the reputation of Stanford’s athletic department, an athletic department that I have always been and continue to be honored to represent. It would be hard to miss the 15 consecutive Director’s Cups lining the Hall of Fame Room in Arillaga, a true testament to the athletic achievement. And for the student portion of Stanford student-athletes, look at the number of academic accolades that we receive each season, including Academic All- Americans, Conference All-Academics and the NCAA Elite 88 recognition, all earned by true student athletes that populate a variety of majors here at Stanford. Other recent news about the Stanford athletics program that was not included in the article is that the only two major Division I NCAA football programs whose athletic departments are without a major NCAA violation are Penn State and Stanford. We take our responsibility to Stanford, our teammates and our supporters seriously, but I guess doing things the right way just isn’t news-worthy.

I would like to end with a quote taken from another Daily article posted on the Daily’s website the afternoon that the initial article was published: “ ‘ Stanford athletes work hard in the classroom, hard in athletics, and are good people. Don’t let anything bring you down.’ ”

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/NCAA-trouble-is-a-UConn-firstList-of- unpunished-schools-now-4-54247260

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/perspective-on-the-list/

Bending it like Bender

On the Stanford campus I have come to find a new home, a place full of comfort and solitude. When the day is done, practices and classes are finished I often look forward to spending my evenings there where I can relax and just think. Where might this place be? None other than the library, but not just anywhere in the library, in particular the Bender Room. What makes this room so special is that not many people know where it is, because it takes effort to get to it. When you enter the library you must weave your way making different left and right turns down different hallways until you arrive at an elevator, and once there you have to take it all the way to the 5th floor, that’s right the very top floor in the library. Once you arrive on the top floor there is a wooden door leading its way into the brightly lit room filled with windows and comfortable couches and chairs throughout. On most weeknights you can find my purple bike parked out in front of Green library I have made it a weekly routine. On some nights I even treat myself to a free mocha or a vanilla chi latte at the café located just outside this library, thanks to the occasional Twitter Word of the Day put out by the café in which you just have to whisper a certain word to the cashier to get a free drink. For example:

Stop by any Coupa Cafe today for a Small Mocha. Whisper "Mark Linsey" @mlinsey and get one for FREE! Plz-RT 8-)

I have even mastered the ability to sneak my drink into the library so that I can happily enjoy it while doing my work. As Kelsey previously mentioned, what better way to spend our day off than doing homework in the library. On Monday Kaley and I spent our usual afternoon in the library and sure enough 15 minutes into studying Annika showed up. Then 10 minutes later, Kate, Kelsey, and Melissa entered the room. We continued our studying and then sure enough both the team captains made their way to the Bender Room, Kimbo and Kim. It is safe to say we had a very studious afternoon with the women’s water polo team taking over the library. More importantly we were able to get all the K’s on the team in the library hence (Kaitlyn, Kaley, Kelsey, Kate, Kimbo, Kim). Lately I have been thinking about mixing it up and exploring the massive library and finding a new spot to study (once I do I will be sure to let you know) but for now if you wish to find me on a week night try the Bender Room first.

Stanford Athlete Love

For me, this week has been all about Stanford Athlete love. Every year the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee for the Stanford Athletic Department called Cardinal Council organizes and puts on a fundraiser for the non-profit organization called Camp Kesem. Our very own Kim Hall is the Secretary for Cardinal Council and she was very integral in making sure our team was as involved as it could be in this year’s fundraiser. Camp Kesem is a community of college campuses, on which student leaders develop and operate free one weeklong summer camps for children in families coping with cancer. Camp Kesem was first founded in 2001 on Stanford Campus and has since spread to 22 college campuses across the nation.

Because Stanford is the birthplace of Camp Kesem the fundraiser held every year is extremely popular and student-athletes, alumni, professors and students fill the auditorium. The fundraiser that Cardinal Council puts on is called Athlete Date Auction. This fundraiser is an auction of athlete teams to the highest bidder, promising everything from field passes to Big Game to an inner tube water polo game and pool party with the Women’s Water Polo Team. How it works is that representatives from each team (usually freshmen) put together a routine/dance that they perform at the auction and then after the performance people in the audience can bid on them. All of the money earned from the fundraiser goes directly to Camp Kesem and the teams provide the “dates” for free.

This year our freshmen performed an awesome routine with three fellow synchronized swimming freshmen (Leigh Haldeman, Liane Lovitt and Danielle Rossoni) to an incredible mash up of songs, including “All of the Lights” by Kanye West, “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha and “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus. Our team was bought by the Women’s Field Hockey Team for $150. Other than our own team being bought, our team was exceptionally giving that night. We also bought Men’s Gymnastics (with a promise of pizza and a day in the gymnastic’s gym with the team) and Men’s Volleyball (with a date to the beach with the team). We will see if those “dates” actually end up happening, but the real exciting thing about Athlete Date Auction is being able to support your fellow Stanford Student-Athletes and raising money for an incredible organization like Camp Kesem. All in all it was a very successful fundraiser and Stanford Student-Athletes were able to raise $4290 for Camp Kesem.

However, the athlete love does not end there. Last night after a long practice Melissa, Monica and I were on our way home to Roth when we discovered that a wallet had been left in my car. It turns out it was Eric Mochalski’s wallet who is a very talented freshman on the Men’s Volleyball team. Unfortunately, Men’s Volleyball at that very moment were on a bus to the San Jose Airport to catch a flight to socal to play USC and Pepperdine. Now this is where teams find out how much love they have for each other and the lengths one team is willing to go for another team. Even though the three of us were starving and tired from a long practice we knew what we had to do. Sure enough we immediately hopped onto 101 South and made our way to the San Jose Airport to drop off the lost wallet and ensure that Eric was able to get on his 8pm flight. We were able to make it there on time and he was able to board his plane promptly with the team. Being able to help out another Stanford Athlete is not only rewarding but it really shows you how close athletes are at Stanford. So, from the entire water polo team we would like to wish Men’s Volleyball a big good luck on their road trip and we look forward to the “date” we bought the other night.