The Super Bowl is between two teams: the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. New York is a state in America but New England is not—that’s a region. I’m not sure why they can’t settle on one state. However, the Giants typically play in New Jersey, so perhaps they should switch to a regional team name. Contrarily, the Giants are in fact, not giants, but regular humans. Some of them are quite tall, but I believe being a giant also requires wielding a club and trying to kill demigods. The Patriots could be patriotic. That’s their own personal choice and it’s difficult to judge someone based on their appearance. This is especially so when their bodies are covered in ceremonial armor and are physically hurting others for sport.

These teams have played each other before in recent history, so many believe this match may be round two. In their previous encounter, the Giants were victorious, but the Patriots didn’t commit ritual suicide to save their honor. That’s not part of the culture of this sport, apparently.

Many watch the Super Bowl strictly for the advertisements. They watch the sport for the opportunity to not watch the sport and have products sold to them. Perhaps watching grass grow will become a new activity for them as well.

During one of the long breaks when they were not smashing their bodies into each other, a woman that appeared to be the queen of an ancient civilization arrived. Everyone watched in silence as the queen sang and wooed many men with her mating dance. There was a woman named Nicki Minaj who was very beautiful. Hit me up, Nicki and we’ll get sushi with my meal points. At the end of her courting ritual a pillar of light consumed the matriarch and left the words “world peace” burning on the field.

In this bout the two teams seemed to be quite evenly matched. A curious thing to me is that the fat men sumo wrestling did not suffer from heart attacks due to their sudden movements. The Giants were victorious over the Patriots, with much jubilation from my neighbors. The queen’s champion was chosen to be Eli Manning. He was the man on the Giants responsible for throwing the ball to the other men on his team.

If this sounds enjoyable, it’s a shame you have to wait several months to start watching, as you missed the finale. If this doesn’t sound enjoyable, hockey is currently in season.

The Quidditch World Cup was hosted on Randall’s Island in Manhattan through November 12 and 13. This world cup, the fifth of its kind, hosted over 108 teams from five countries—the U.S., Canada, Finland, Argentina and New Zealand.

The Stony Brook quidditch team was eliminated in the preliminary round, winning one game out of the three played on the 12th and losing their final game the next day.

Stony Brook’s first match at 10 a.m. last Saturday was against Michigan State, ranked 15th overall and 3rd in the Midwest Region. Stony Brook, significantly outranked at 46th overall, held up well during the beginning of the game, but quickly lost their tenacity. Michigan caught the snitch, a 30-point boost to a team’s score, to win the game 140-70.

During their second match at 3 p.m. against Villanova, ranked 10th overall, Stony Brook faired slightly better. While the game reminded the audience that quidditch is classified as a full contact sport, Stony Brook’s planned strategy fell apart.

Gameplay was fairly unorganized with players on both sides remaining unguarded. Several penalties were called against Stony Brook throughout the game, one of which was never explained by the referee. The game stood at 50-30 until Villanova caught the snitch to make the final score 80-30.

“They wouldn’t let us play,” said Co-Captain Daniel Ahmadizadeh after the game in reference to the penalties.
For the final match of day one, Stony Brook faced off against Virginia Tech at 7 p.m. Livid after their first two losses, Stony Brook took Virginia Tech by storm. It began with the snitch, a neutral player who does not belong to either team out of fairness, mooning Stony Brook’s seeker, Jason Caballes.

The match was by far the most physical of all the Stony Brook matches at the cup, with gameplay stopping at least twice for injuries. In one instance, a Virginia Tech chaser wearing shiny gold spandex shorts was brought to the ground in pain after being accidentally hit in the chest by the blunt end of a broom.

Stony Brook remained ahead for the majority of the game. The score stood at 130-30 before Virginia Tech caught the snitch in a self-sacrificial move; they caught the snitch knowing they would lose because that would be a better outcome than potentially getting scored on further and suffering a loss in rankings. Stony Brook won the game 130-60.

With their record at 1-2 by the morning of day two, Stony Brook entered their final match with the University of Minnesota Twin cities, ranked 81st overall. The match determined which team would continue to the next round of competition.

The game was based much more on evasion and sprinting, opposed to the physicality of the first three. The weight of potential elimination gave the game a much more intense atmosphere. It lacked the edge of humor that most quidditch games carry—the caveat to this being the snitch who decided to put a banana peal on the quaffle, the ball used for scoring.

Minnesota caught the snitch to end the game with a final score of 50-40, eliminating Stony Brook from the Cup.

According to Ahmadizadeh, Stony Brook expected to beat Minnesota, but still believed them to be a very good team. He mentioned his offense not pulling through as one of the largest contributing factors to their loss.

Middlebury College—the originators of muggle quidditch—won the World Cup overall, beating University of Florida. They continue to be ranked number one in the world and have only lost one game ever in their history.

Stony Brook quidditch will continue to train through the winter for other upcoming tournaments. They will also be hosting the Northeast Tournament on Saturday, March 31 on the Stony Brook campus.

“There’s no off-season in quidditch,” Ahmadizadeh said, smiling after the last game.

The Concept of a Snitch

By far the most unique position in quidditch is the snitch. Unlike the mischievous flying golden ball in the books, the muggle snitch is a player dressed in all yellow. To catch the snitch, a seeker must grab a ball in a sock-like bag that is attached with velcro to the back of the snitch’s shorts.

Snitches and their seekers have especially unique positions because, unlike the other players, they are allowed to leave the quidditch field.

Before the start of each game the snitch confers with the head referee.  During this discussion the referee is notified if the snitch plans to use any special tactics, such as water balloons or banana peels, and the snitch is given a time frame within which he or she must return to the designated field, normally between eight and twelve minutes.

At the beginning of the game both teams kneel over their brooms with their heads down and eyes closed. The snitch is then released to roam the general area as he pleases. “Brooms up!” is then called and gameplay begins.

After five minutes of gameplay, the seekers are released to find the snitch.  After the snitch returns to the field within his or her allotted time frame, he or she must stay there and begin to evade the seekers within the field. It is extremely unusual for the snitch to be caught outside of the field.

Although snitches practice with their own teams, they are never allowed to play with them for matches.  To create equality within the match, the snitch must not be a player from either team.

There is also the rare occasion of a “lone wolf” snitch, where a snitch will come to compete in matches but does not belong to any team. An unaffiliated snitch, Nate Huntley, said he came to the World Cup alone because his team at Shenandoah Valley had just started up and was not ready to compete. “It’s on my bucket list,” he said. “It looked like exactly what I wanted to do.”

Snitches are also controlled by very few rules in comparison to other players, especially when it comes to the physicality of the game. Moves, such as throwing seekers into empty audience chairs, a favorite past-time of snitch Kyle Williams from Middlebury, are allowed.

“You do see a lot of different strategies,” said Brian Herzog, a snitch from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Snitch tactics such as putting banana peels on the quaffel, diving through the pitch hoops, general acrobatics and commandeering the announcers microphone all took place at the World Cup. During one game a snitch carried around a pink fleece blanket, taunting the seekers with it as if they were bulls, and then wrapping them in it every time they attempted to catch him.

“Don’t be afraid to look stupid,” said John Glynn, a snitch from R.I.T. The snitch provides an added element of humor to most games and is often the most talked about player by the commentators.

Glynn pondered after being asked about the rules he has to follow, responding with “no guns and no killing.”

“We just have to keep general safety in mind,” said Ethan Giventer, head snitch for the World Cup.  This sentiment was echoed by the head referee for the International Quidditch Association, Chris Beesley.

Multifarious Fans

Thousands of fans dressed in full Harry Potter garb poured into the event, stopping to cast unforgivable curses on their siblings and to participate in the occasional U.S. vs. Canada dodgeball game on the empty quidditch fields.  Professor McGonagalls and Harry Potters strolled casually together past confused cable television reporters. “They’ve been more entertaining than I have,” said Kryssy Kocktail, a sword swallower who performed at the World Cup.

Margaret Walchak and Debbie Schneider attended the event to support their community team, the New York Badassilisks. They both belong to “The Group That Shall Not Be Named,” the New York City and Tri-State Area Harry Potter meet-up group. A stuffed Hedwig was perched on Walchak’s arm throughout the event, carrying a sign about their meet-up group.

“It shows that there’s so much to the whole Harry Potter fandom,” said Schneider. Their meet-up group shows that Harry Potter is here to stay, at least for the near future. The group participates in regular meetings and holds a monthly quidditch game in Riverside Park. It has grown to an astounding 999 members and has met almost 350 times since its inception.

Paul Gallo, godfather of David Demarest, a chaser for the University of South Carolina, road-tripped with his family and friends to see the World Cup. Like many other patrons, Gallo had never seen quidditch before.

“It’s pretty interesting…very physical,” said Gallo. “He just likes the broom between his legs,” he said jokingly about Demarest.

An Entertaining Commentary

Although the eccentric fans and quidditch teams animated the event, the commentators peppered the atmosphere with comedic speech that truly brought it to life.

Dan Wilbur, Alex Zalben and Alex Edelman were all commentators for the world cup.  Normally each game would have two to three commentators who rarely seemed to say anything related to the games, unless it was an insult.

“We’re all stand-up comedians,” one said. “Yes, they cloned us all.”

“I haven’t made it,” Ron Krasnow, another commentator, said bluntly about his comedic path. He became a comedian three years ago after leaving restaurant management to fulfill his passion. He called quidditch, in general, pretty adorable.

“It’s an amazing group of nerds,” Krasnow said. “It seems like a big group of happy people.”

Many of the commentators said they had never announced a quidditch match before, but would be more than willing to do it again. “I did once narrate a kite festival for ten hours. I’ve also been at a meat festival,” one of the commentators added. “I was also a member once of the Ministry of Magic.”

A Mug-arvelous Main Stage

While quidditch play buzzed in the background, the main stage for the World Cup displayed acts of all kinds and appreciations.

Sasha the Fire Gypsy, who currently resides in the city of Stony Brook, performed several times over those two days, normally for about seven minutes each. She used things such as fire belts and fans, and performed acts such as fire-eating.

Kryssy Kocktail also performed for the event. Although she only did sword-swallowing at the event, she says she does “all things carney,” including aerial and fire tricks.

“I’ve been doing it way too long—non-stop for around seven years,” Kocktail said. “I just had too much time on my hands.” Currently she performs in the Coney Island Side Show.

Along with Sasha and Kocktail, several other performers drew large crowds to the main stage, including a man who hammered a nail into his left nostril with the help of a member of the audience. The teenage girl grimaced with disgust as she removed the snot covered nail.

Magic rock, a musical genre literally created out of Harry Potter, showcases bands that bring the pages of the series to life, the most famous of which performed during the cup. Some groups included Draco and the Malfoys, Diagon Alley and even Harry and the Potters.

Often after their performances, the largest bands would set up tents selling their CDs and t-shirts, competing with the other vendors selling magical merchandise.

The Vendors

Alyssa Thralls, owner of The Deathly Hallows Shop, sold jewelry at the event. Thralls, along with Sean Beard, hand-makes all of the jewelry. While Thralls owns another line of “dark jewelry,” The Deathly Hallows Shop uses only the deathly hallows symbol, a triangle with a circle inside it and a vertical line dividing it in half, from tip to base of the triangle. The symbol represents a child’s story from Harry Potter, which became pivotal to the plot.

Thralls also sells t-shirts with witty phrases involving the series, such as “Team Jacob, Team Edward, Team Weasley.” and “Not my daughter, you bitch!”

Thralls says she enjoys only catering to the Harry Potter crowd, calling the fan cult, “very nice all around, it attracts a very specific type of person.”

After confusing the monopod case on my camera bag for a wand case, she laughingly explained, “You just end up in that mind set.”

It has been a year of precedents for Stony Brook Football.

For the first time in history, the Seawolves (9-3) played in and won their conference championship on November 19 against Liberty University. That 41-31 romp gave the Seawolves their first bid to the NCAA Division 1 playoffs.

In the nascent weeks of the season, this was all unfathomable. Stony Brook was off to a less-than-auspicious 0-3 start. They opened the year all the way in El Paso, losing by a touchdown in overtime to UTEP, a worthy adversary. Then Stony Brook slipped up the next week against lowly Buffalo (3-9), and then again to Brown in week three. For a minute, I couldn’t help but reminisce about my freshman year in 2008, when the Seawolves boasted a lackluster 5-6 record and I an embarrassingly large head of hair.

One of their losses that year came at the hands of Liberty, in fact, who ran up a 33-0 score at Williams Stadium in Virginia. Things have changed quite a bit since then. Let’s just say I’m keeping with a more closely cropped look.

And these are not your strange older cousin’s Seawolves either (He says that he graduated Stony Brook with a BA in Art History in 2001, but the family all knows that he dropped out of school and used the last of his tuition money to roadie with Bon Jovi.) Stony Brook is sitting pretty after winning nine games in a row after losing their initial three. This year’s attendance of 39,009 is nearly double the 19,531 that showed up to LaValle Stadium in 2008.

More than 8,000 football fans witnessed Stony Brook’s comeback win against Albany. That’s about the amount of undergraduates living on campus.

On the back of senior running back Brock Jakolski, the Seawolves managed to erase an 18-point deficit, scoring three touchdowns in the second half, including one 55-yard touchdown reception in the third quarter.

Now down by three points, with just less than six minutes left in regulation and the ball on their own 45-yard line, Albany had a cozy amount of time and exceptional field position to sour Stony Brook’s dramatic resurgence.

Over the span of five minutes, Great Dane senior quarterback Dan Di Lella led his team to Stony Brook’s goal line. On the seven yard line, Albany called for a pass. The Albany offensive line completely collapsed. Di Lella slyly shoveled the ball to his running back. The nifty chest pass brought Albany to the three-yard line, just an arm’s length away from the end zone with under a minute left in the fourth quarter.

In lieu of opting for the safer and more conventional run play, Albany opted for a play-action pass. They were out of time outs and hoped to fool an overeager Stony Brook defense.

Di Lella snapped the ball and dropped back. The clock started ticking down from 54 seconds. By the time he faked to his running back and positioned himself, his offensive line had already folded, once again. Seawolves linebacker Jawara Dudley broke into the backfield untouched. He and lineman Junior Solice were thronging. Di Lella, pressured, threw what would be his last pass as a collegiate athlete off his back foot, deep into the end zone.

“It’s just something I’m going to have to live with,” said a somber Di Lella in the post-game press conference. His pass was tipped and Albany’s entire season was intercepted right there in the last few feet of end zone by Stony Brook defensive back Dominick Reyes. “This one goes right on my shoulders…I probably should have just thrown it 50 feet into the stands.”

With the win Stony Brook will advance to the second round of the FCS, traveling some 1,400 miles to Huntsville, Texas to toe up against Sam Houston State University, who are coming off a 36-14 win to Texas State.

“Wow,” coach Chuck Priore said, after coming out on top of his alma mater (University of Albany class of 1982). “I know I say it a lot, but good teams find ways to win…We’re excited for the opportunity to play another week.”

The Quidditch World Cup was hosted on Randall’s Island in Manhattan over November 12 and 13. This world cup, being the fifth of its kind, hosted over 108 teams from five countries—the U.S., Canada, Finland, Argentina, and New Zealand.

The Stony Brook quidditch team was eliminated in the preliminary round, winning one game out of the three played on the 12th and losing their final game the next day.

Stony Brook’s first match, at 10 a.m. last Saturday, was against Michigan State, ranked 15th overall and 3rd in the Midwest Region. Stony Brook, significantly outranked by Michigan State at 46th overall, held up well during the beginning of the game, but quickly lost their tenacity. Michigan caught the snitch, a 30-point boost to a team’s score, to win the game 140-70.

During their second match at 3 p.m. against Villanova, ranked 10th overall, Stony Brook faired slightly better. While the game reminded the audience that quidditch is classified as a full contact sport, Stony Brook’s planned strategy fell apart.

Gameplay was fairly unorganized with players on both sides remaining unguarded. Several penalties were called against Stony Brook throughout the game, one of which was never explained by the referee. The game stood at 50-30 until Villanova caught the snitch to make the final score 80-30.

“They wouldn’t let us play,” said Co-Captain Daniel Ahmadizadeh after the game in reference to the penalties.

For the final match of day one, Stony Brook faced off against Virginia Tech at 7 p.m. Livid after the loss of their first two games, Stony Brook took the game by storm. It began with the snitch, a neutral player who does not belong to either team for fairness reasons, team mooning Stony Brook’s seeker, Jason Caballes.

The match was by far the most physical of all the Stony Brook matches at the cup, with gameplay stopping at least twice for injuries. In one instance, a Virginia Tech chaser, wearing shiny gold spandex shorts, was brought to the ground in pain after being accidently hit in the chest by the blunt end of a broom.

Stony Brook remained ahead for the majority of the game. The score stood 130-30, in favor of Stony Brook, before Virginia Tech caught the snitch in a self-sacrificial move; they caught the snitch knowing they would lose because that would be a better outcome than potentially getting scored on further and suffering a loss in rankings. Stony Brook won the game with 130 points to Virginia Tech’s 60.

With their record at 1-2 by the morning of day two, Stony Brook entered their final match with the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, ranked 81st overall. The match determined which team would continue to the next stage of competition.

The game between the two was based much more on evasion and sprinting, opposed to the physicality of the first three. It also lacked the edge of humor that most quidditch games carry, having a much more intense atmosphere from both sides due to the weight of potential elimination, the caveat to this being the snitch who decided to put a banana peal on the quaffle, the ball used for scoring.

The snitch catch was executed by Minnesota to end the game. The final score was called at 50-40 in favor of Minnesota, who continued on to the next round.

According to Ahmadizadeh, Stony Brook expected to beat Minnesota, but still believed them to be a very good team. He mentioned his offense not pulling through as one of the largest contributing factors to their loss.

The World Cup was won by Middlebury College, where muggle quidditch began. They continue to be ranked number one in the world and have only lost one game ever in their history.

Stony Brook quidditch will continue to train through the winter for other upcoming tournaments.

“There’s no off-season in quidditch,” Ahmadizadeh said while smiling after their last game.

Albert Pujols: Arguably the best hitter in baseball over the last ten years. The 31-year-old has consistently been at the top of the league leaders in nearly every offensive category, has won gold gloves for his defensive skills, and has won two World Series Championships. However, whatever team gets him is also buying the eventual decline of his career. He is either at, or nearing, the end of the prime of his career. Also, as an ESPN commentator brought up, there have been issues regarding Dominican players lying about their age in order to appear younger and called into question Pujols’ actual age.

C.J. Wilson: Over the last two seasons, Wilson has been one of the most consistent starting pitchers in baseball. He was a major reason that the Texas Rangers were able to reach the World Series the last two years. Wilson has struggled in the post-season, but with starting pitchers being one of the most desired positions in all of baseball and a rarity in the free agent market, he should be getting a big contract wherever he goes.

Jose Reyes: There is no doubt that Reyes is a talented ballplayer and could probably provide help to a team in need. He has been with the Mets since 2003, which is a situation that nobody wants to be in. It’s like realizing your dream of becoming a musician and being asked to cover Nickelback songs. Reyes’ biggest issue as of late has been injury, but he is still young and has a great deal of talent still left to offer.

Carlos Beltran: It shocks me that people actually still talk about Carlos Beltran. I’d rather have one of my roster spots filled by a magnet; at least magnets have a positive side. I can only imagine that the reason Beltran still gets attention is because he had some great years with the Kansas City Royals nearly ten years ago, helped lead the Houston Astros to their first ever World Series appearance, and then sucked Los Mets dry for $119 Million. The guy has been a disappointment every single year since 2004. At this point, any time Beltran does something impressive it’s like a blind rabbit finding a carrot. It will happen eventually.

Heath Bell: Bell is not a household name, but if he played in a large market he would be. Bell has been the most consistent closer in baseball over the last three years. However, playing in San Diego can skew numbers a little bit. The Padres ballpark is a pitchers park, and Bell could underperform were he to play in an American League hitter’s park. Bell has said he would take less money to stay with his home team, and that seems like the most likely scenario.

Jonathan Papelbon: If Heath Bell is the Cadillac of closers, Papelbon is the station wagon. Closers are always hard to come by, and the fact that Papelbon is seen as such a commodity further proves what a dearth of talent there really is at the position. Granted, Papelbon has performed on much grander stages than most other MLB closers, including Bell, but he lacks strategy. He is that annoying kid you knew in elementary school who would throw anything as hard as he could and not even think about it. If it works, he’s an incredible power pitcher. If it doesn’t work, he’s still an intimidating presence due to his willingness to be nasty and mean, but an intimidating presence that’s easy to hit.

There are a lot of big names that will be on the move and signing big contracts. It’s going to be a fun off-season, and I hope you all enjoy it.

NFL Hall of Famer and former Jets quarterback, Joe Namath, recently said that Jets Coach Rex Ryan was “too damn nice to his players.” Namath is in the Hall of Fame for one great game in which he guaranteed victory, becoming the first mainstream star the NFL had ever seen. His career numbers were horrible. Rex Grossman has a better career TD-INT ratio and Quarterback rating. Ryan responded to Namath’s criticism by saying he doesn’t care, and neither does most everyone else.
Namath is famous for guaranteeing the Jets would win the Super Bowl. Before the season Ryan made a similarly bold claim, promising that his Jets would win the Championship this year. Ryan wants to leave his ‘footprint’ on the New York Jets franchise. You might not get the pun in the last sentence, so let me fill you in. Last year, a story broke that Rex Ryan’s wife was starring in a foot fetish video. I will take this time to make as many jokes as possible:

-Rumor has it that Rex Ryan runs his team like a toe-talitarian dictator.

-The Jets were supposed to do very well but now there are unexpected circumstances afoot.

-I feel bad for whoever the next Jets’ coach is going to be. I would hate to follow in Ryan’s footsteps.
Quarterback Mark Sanchez has not been able to lead the Jets’ offense as effectively as fans would hope. Sanchez is perhaps best known for following USC Football legend Matt Leinart at the popular university. You, know, Matt Leinart. College football legend. Heisman Trophy Winner. Now: third-string quarterback for the Houston Texans. Great story!
Plaxico Burress spent the last two years in prison and is now back on the field with the Jets. He hasn’t played spectacularly thus far, but it’s always nice to see a rags to riches story.
The Jets have already lost to the Patriots and will be playing their only other competition in their division, the Buffalo Bills, in their next game. (I refuse to even mention the Dolphins as a part of the division.)
The Jets still have time to turn things around, and it should be fun to watch.

“I believe in building relationships with your team on and off the field and to show your players that they’re important to you as people” said Anatol, who signed on as the head coach earlier this March. “Once we form those relationships, it helps what we do on the field.”

Last September, while serving as the assistant coach at the University of South Florida, Anatol, 32, had a chance to play against Stony Brook. The Seawolves lost, but Anatol was impressed with what he saw. “Scouting them and playing against them, I knew that it was a team with young, talented players.” Six months later, he was named the Stony Brook head coach.

“I was actually blown away by Ryan at his interview,” said Stony Brook Athletic Director Jim Fiore to a small crowd during the reception to welcome Anatol. Fiore had spent 24 hours with him during the interviewing process weeks earlier. “Most importantly, what really struck me with Ryan is what a quality human being he is.”

Born in Trinidad, Anatol grew up in a soccer-centric environment. He started playing when he was five years old. “Like every other kid, I wanted to do what my big brother was doing,” Anatol said, smiling, “and my brother was a soccer player.” His English mother, who “had soccer in her blood,” nudged him on as well.

Anatol later moved to the United States to play soccer at the University of Southern Florida, where he was a part of the school’s back-to-back Conference USA Championship teams in 1997 and 1998.

When his playing days wound down, he realized that he didn’t want to quit soccer. Upon graduating South Florida in 2002, Anatol landed an assistant coaching job at the University of Akron. In two years, he helped the Zips notch a 28-10-5 record and land two trips to the NCAA Tournament.

He then returned to his alma mater and spent six years there as the assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. When Stony Brook’s erstwhile head coach, Cesar Markovic, resigned in January, Anatol saw an opportunity.

“The more that I looked into it, when I saw the academic reputation; when I saw what was going on in the athletic department and the staff, I realized that there were a lot of positives to [Stony Brook],” said Anatol.

Anatol’s keen eye for talent also played a role in his signing, according to Fiore, who considers Anatol a prime recruiter. “My job is to bring in the best talent. We are going to set the bar high,” said Anatol, who looks to take advantage of his southeast and international ties to recruit out-of-state prospects.

After signing, Anatol went right to work. He met with all of his players individually and promptly began a training regimen.

Every weekday morning, on the track midfield, Anatol is amid the scuffle of blue and yellow practice vests, barking out instructions that can be heard all the way from the Lavalle Stadium parking lot. Dressed in an all black tracksuit with closed cropped curly hair and an exuberant smile, he’s young enough to be confused as a player.

Just two weeks into training midfielder Kyle McTurk has already acknowledged his new coach’s fervor. “He’s an intense person. I was scared at first, but he knows his stuff,” said McTurk after a morning of practice.

Anatol has been training McTurk and the rest of the Seawolves to polish their habits early in the preseason, focusing practices on fine-tuning player reactions to move more quickly on and off the ball. If a scrimmage squad commits a faux pas, Anatol reprimands them the old-fashioned way: ten push-ups.

“I have an intense personality,” said Anatol, unknowingly echoing McTurk. “But once training is over, my door is open. The guys come in and we joke around and spend time with each other so I get to know them more as people.”

As Anatol eases up at the end of practice, players josh him for his odd whistling propensity. “He kind of whistles at us like dogs,” McTurk laughed. “Now it’s become a joke. He whistles at us to try get our attention.”

And Anatol has managed to whistle his way into the hearts of his players just a month after meeting them.

“He means what he says,” said McTurk, a junior. “If he tells you something, he’s going to do it. He’s just a straight up kind of guy.”

By Carol Moran 

The world of athletics is a microcosm of society, says Evelyn Thompson, interim head coach of the women’s basketball team at Stony Brook. They test the limits of the human body—its coordination and agility, its litheness and strength— in activities designed just for that purpose. They exist in a world fashioned by society.

People value the physical ability to dunk a basketball into a 10-foot hoop. They value the mental discipline that pushes a distance runner ahead in the last 200 meters of a 10k race. That much has been true since the beginnings of civilization when the first organized athletic competitions took place. But it wasn’t too long ago that women were given an equal opportunity to prove their athletic ability—from a legislative standpoint at least.

Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the enactment of Title IX, the 1972 amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that combated gender discrimination in education and athletics. Since then, universities nation-wide have bound themselves to the premise of equal opportunity, equal funding, and equal support for women athletes—so much so that young athletes these days may not even know that gender equity in athletics was ever an issue, says Donna Woodruff, the Executive Associate Director of Athletics at Stony Brook.

“Sometimes when you don’t know what you’ve come from, you don’t know how to avoid problems in the future,” she says.

Woodruff’s career as a leader in athletics extends 20 years back, and though she says she hasn’t experienced gender discrimination in the workplace, she points out that whom you work for is important.

Problems in gender equity in athletics at Stony Brook aren’t apparent from an administrative standpoint, though it’s a constant struggle to keep the equilibrium. There are 10 men’s teams and 10 women’s teams—but as football consists of 63 men, it is the administrations obligation to provide 63 opportunities for women—an ongoing issue, according to Athletic Director Jim Fiore. He considers the options: dropping men’s sports—an unappealing choice—or adding a women’s team, like field hockey. But that’s not so simple with financial restraints.

“There are 30 kids on a field hockey team but with that you have to build a field—and that’s a $2 million dollar operation, plus scholarships, plus coaching staff, plus operations,” Fiore says. “How do we manage it?”

Aside from the struggle to keep the men’s and women’s rosters in proportion, everything else corresponds, aside from the yearly budgets of each team that tend to be more heavily funded on the women’s side. They have equal locker rooms; they play in the same gymnasiums, and have the same equipment.

They’re equal, the administration says.

But walk into a men’s basketball game where the sea of red in the stands glares off the shiny hardwood floors of the Pritchard Gymnasium. The fans rise and cheer with the teams successes; they sigh and wince at every missed shot.

Then enter the gym for a women’s game. The team is still there—they’ve trained in the weight room, on the court, and at the track. The coach is still eager on the sidelines, and the cheerleaders still cheer—but the crowd has diminished.

The men’s basketball team averaged 1,555 home game attendees in the 2010-11 season, just shy of filling the Pritchard Gymnasium to capacity. The women’s team averaged less than half of that with 645 people.

“It would probably take a dissertation to explain that,” Coach Thompson says chuckling. It boils down to a problem in society, she says. In the sports arena, men are more supported than women.

Fiore says it’s a national trend. He doesn’t know why. He can’t explain it.  “We certainly haven’t been strong in terms of the win or loss column, so I’m going to put it on that,” he decides.

The men’s team went 15-17 this season, and the women’s 7-23. It’s a catch-22 of sorts, says Thompson. “We all know that when you have support, you tend to play a little harder—especially when it’s here at home in front of your Seawolf family.”

•

Dani Klupenger, a sophomore basketball player, sits on the steps of the sports complex with her straight blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and unknowingly mimics her coach’s words.

“When you win, people want to come watch you, and when you lose, they don’t,” she says.  When a lot of people are in the stands, it intimidates the other team. They bring the team’s confidence back up when things aren’t going your way, she says.

But forget wins and losses and move outside women’s basketball. The statistics are the same.

“Women’s lacrosse just doesn’t draw [attendees] nationally anywhere,” says Fiore. “We’ll host the Final Four here this year, and we’re hoping to get a great crowd, but the men’s Final Four we’d never be able to host because it’s too small a stadium—you know, 50,000, 80,000. We’re hoping to get 10,000 for the women’s Final Four.”

Perhaps it comes down to a society awed by the bigger, faster and stronger. It comes back down to values.

“You’re already an underdog when you’re a woman athlete,” Klupenger says. “People want to see men dunking baskets.”  The more athletic someone appears, the more entertaining it may be, Woodruff agrees.

Her husband calls her in to watch the top ten plays on ESPN. “I do not want to see another dunk,” she says. “First of all, the guy is four inches shorter than the basket—he should be able to dunk.”

Media coverage of intercollegiate athletics parallels the numbers in the stands. When female teams play exceptionally well, they catch the public’s eye, and draw media coverage. Visitors to ESPN’s website today are greeted with the image of Brittney Griner, Baylor University’s 6-foot-8 forward, a phenomenal player—but an exception in female athletics.

“The reality is that ESPN wants our men—not our women,” Fiore says. “You don’t see a lot of our level women’s games on TV. We’ve tried to get them on MSG—MSG doesn’t want women’s basketball.”

Woodruff points out that it’s a business decision. “They know that they are going to have ‘x’ number of views,” she says. “They can sell that to corporate sponsors, to commercials.” And it’s the same for ticket prices at Stony Brook’s basketball games: Athletics can charge more for men’s games because they know people will pay.

The larger market for male athletics also dictates the salaries of head coaches, where there are large discrepancies between men and women. Allison Comito, the head coach of women’s lacrosse, made $63,916 in 2009, according to athletic department budget records. Rick Sowell, men’s lacrosse coach, made $150,800 that same year. Megan Bryant, the head softball coach, made $63,916. The men’s baseball coach, Matt Senk, made $87,831.

“The market really dictates the salaries,” Fiore says. “And to attract and retain people like Coach Pikiell, you have to do certain things, and even on that national level, he’s paid very low.” Pikiell, the men’s basketball coach, made $243, 988 in 2009. Michele Cherry resigned from head coach of the women’s team in January, and her salary was not available.

In explaining the discrepancy, Woodruff says there is not only more of a demand for men’s coaches but also more pressure to win on the men’s side. They receive more attention from the public. It’s similar to the difference in the salaries of athletic directors from one school to another.

Beyond the pay scale, however, the perception of women athletes has changed in the 20 or so years that Fiore has been an administrator. “Where it was almost taboo once upon a time to be a female athlete and lift weights, now it’s part of the culture,” Fiore said. “There’s beauty in a strong body.”

And that’s progress, it can be argued, though there’s still a ways to go.

“All of those fathers that dream of their sons going on to play at the division 1 level and being great athletes—sometimes they end up with daughters,” Coach Thompson said. “But those daughters also have that same opportunity, and that’s what we need them to understand: They deserve the same type of respect, and they also deserve the same type of coverage and they deserve the same number of people in the stands.”

By Vincent Barone 

Over the recent months, construction workers undertook several major athletic renovation projects at Stony Brook, including complete makeovers of the university’s track and baseball field.

Both experienced varying levels of success. Though the Stony Brook Arena construction plans, another major renovation, remains up in the air.

Track Field Renovations

The track field renovation, financed by part of the university’s Central Fund, has gone swimmingly thus far and should be completed on schedule, this April. For Track & Field Head Coach Andrew Ronan, the remodeling couldn’t have come sooner. “How can I say this, [the field] was in horrendous condition. We didn’t, or couldn’t, really hold practices on it,” he said.

The unkempt infield has been replaced with a FieldTurf surface, which is currently hosting soccer practices. Now construction will halt, as workers must wait for April’s sultry weather to lay down the tar for the 400-yard track appropriately.

“The field will help us build a stronger program and attract more recruits. Those are the two most important things,” said Ronan, who is anticipating hosting an America East track & field conference championship on the new premises in four years, an event that he maintains would not have been possible without the reconstruction.

The revamping of the basketball arena and the baseball field, on the other hand, has not gone as smoothly. Unforeseen obstacles have stymied the remodeling of both facilities, intruding on the praxis of both teams.

Baseball Field Renovations

Eighteen games into the baseball season and there is still nary a blade of grass on Joe Nathan Field, home of Stony Brook’s baseball team. Construction should have wrapped up in time for the Seawolves’ home opener against Fairly Dickinson on March 9, but the inclement weather during the winter months significantly hindered production. Instead, there is a spotlight were the pitcher’s mound should be and a work van positioned at shortstop.

“Very simply, it’s been the snow,” said Sports Information Director Thomas Chen. “Work had to virtually halt over January.”

A $500,000 donation from Stony Brook alumnus and Minnesota Twin Joe Nathan completely funded the renovations of the field, which are vast. The dugout and bleachers are getting touched up, the field itself will get a new turf coat and the outfield fences will be realigned. Chen hopes that the field will be game-ready for conference play, which kicks off April 9.

For now, Baseball Heaven sports complex, located roughly 16 miles from campus in Yaphank, N.Y., is the ersatz diamond for the Seawolves, who have won both “home” games they’ve played there.

Stony Brook Arena renovations

Chen could not speculate, however, on the repairs of the Stony Brook Arena. The state-allocated $20,000,000 for building renovations is on an absolute freeze, as the Stony Brook administration works out the 2011 budget. Athletic Director Jim Fiore is speaking with President Samuel Stanley and local politicians to help free the money and begin renovations.

This past season, Stony Brook’s men’s and women’s basketball teams played the majority of their home games in Pritchard Gymnasium, which is about the size of an average high school’s gym, because of the necessary structural repair to the Stony Brook Arena.

This plan is pressing for the men’s basketball team, which cannot support nationally televised games in the intimate confines of Pritchard Gymnasium. For the men’s BracketBuster game against Maine on Feb. 12, which aired on ESPNU, the university had to pump $50, 000 dollars to patch up the arena in order to host the game.

Photo by Vincent Barone

By Vincent Barone

Across Steve Pikiell’s desk hang two pictures that serve as a paradigm of Stony Brook athletics.

One is a photo of Pikiell’s first home game as head coach of the men’s basketball team against Navy in the 2005-2006 season. Visible in the frame are perhaps three or four fans scattered in the largely empty bleachers of Pritchard Gymnasium. The Seawolves finished 4-24 overall that year, dead last in the America East Conference.

“That picture right there, that was my first game. It’s kind of, eh. I think 95 people were there,” said Pikiell.

“And then that’s when we played Illinois,” Pikiell admired, pointing to the picture that hangs directly above, a shot taken from Stony Brook’s first round game of the 2010 National Invitation Tournament against Illinois on March 17, 2010. This time the focus was on a thronging student section, just a fraction of the 4,423 fans that sold out Stony Brook Arena for the game, which was televised on ESPNU. With a final record of 22-10, it was Stony Brook’s first ever postseason bid as a Division I school.

Men’s basketball is coming off another historic season. For the first time in the program’s history, 11 games were televised, four of which were aired nationally by ESPN. It was also the first time that the team competed in the America East Conference Championship, where the Seawolves fell to Boston University, 56-54. Stony Brook came up just two points away from their first ever NCAA tournament bid.

“When I first took over the program we never had a sell out. Now we sell out the arena; we sell out Pritchard,” said Pikiell. “There’s a little buzz here. People are excited about what’s going on.”

Along with men’s basketball, attendance for men’s soccer, men’s lacrosse, baseball and football have all risen over the past four years. This growth and exposure is far cry from the athletic department of eight years ago, when an exuberant 34-year-old Jim Fiore took the role as Athletic Director of the university.

The position opened up in the spring of 2003, while Fiore worked as the Senior Associate Athletic Director of Princeton University. When a search firm hired by Stony Brook contacted Fiore, a Long Island native, about the job, he thought “Stony Brook? I can’t go to Stony Brook, dude. Seawolf? What’s a seawolf?” He grew up on Long Island, and Stony Brook, athletically, would never have been an option, he said.

After some cajoling by the firm, he agreed to meet a university committee at LaGuardia Airport. With a youthful blithe, Fiore presented the committee with bold demands and lofty standards for university athletics. He came out of the meeting thinking that there was no chance of getting the job.

Instead his cavalier attitude worked to his advantage. Stony Brook expressed interest. Fiore decided to come to campus to meet with erstwhile President Shirley Strum Kenny.

“I met with the president alone, and I loved her. I’ll never forget it. I called my wife on my cell phone on the way home and said, ‘Hey, uh, we got a problem.’ She said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘This president is great.’” Fiore, who believes that one’s job is only as good as one’s boss, was on board.

Fiore took the helm of athletics just four years after the Seawolves moved to Division I in 1999—and he was well aware of the work needed to make the fledgling program shine.

“We didn’t have a school color eight years ago. Wolfie was half dead. Now, Wolfie is an icon for this place,” said Fiore. “We won one conference championship when I got here–in our history. One. We had six last year alone.

Still, Wolfie has a long way to go.

Fiore’s grand mission is to one day have Stony Brook sit not only as a top research school, but a leader in athletics in the northeastern region—competing right there with the likes of athletic powerhouses Penn State and Rugters University, both fellow state schools. It’s a tall order that even Fiore admits probably will not happen while he’s at the university. But the potential, he says, is undeniable.

With a premiere men’s lacrosse team that ranks as one of the nation’s best, a budding men’s basketball team that is competing on a national level, Stony Brook has garnered an impressive amount of attention for such a comparatively young university.

“There’s a little mystery here to Stony Brook because these other schools have been around longer,” said Pikiell. “We played [Boston University] in the final. That was their 15^th final. They have 107 years of basketball, while we’re in year 46th of basketball. So there’s a little newness to us, which I think excites TV.

Yet, the New York State budget crisis is challenging the recent growth of the athletic department. The question of where athletics fit in a traditionally academic-minded university is becoming more and more relevant.

Does Stony Brook University have the financial and cultural means to rival the athletics department of a Rutgers, a Penn State or even a University of Florida.

The department is suffering cutbacks in state funding just like every other at Stony Brook. And compared to the $65,297,785 athletic budget at Penn State, Stony Brook’s 2009-2010 athletic budget of $18,097,141 is pocket change.

Thirty percent of that athletic budget came from New York State. That number, which is mostly appropriated to coaches’ salaries, has dropped from 34 percent in 2009, and Fiore expects that number to fall again in 2011.

Despite the drop in state funding from 2009 to 2010, the overall athletic budget has managed to rise to $2,982,640. This growth is possible through a plethora of revenue sources, from self-generating streams (ticket sales, facility rentals, concessions, sponsorships and sports camps), to donations, institutional support, and student fees. All together, these streams account for the large majority of the yearly athletic funds.

But while state funding wanes during the most salient point of Stony Brook’s athletic program, its self-sufficiency is anchoring it through these trying financial times.

“We rent everything; we’ll rent this piece of carpet if you’re going to give us money,” said Fiore, who leases out sports facilities to high school championships, commencements, I-CON, the annual science fiction convention which brings thousands of people to the Arena, and the Undergraduate Student Government’s end-of-the-year concerts. “We rent the hell out of this place.”

Now students will have to wait and see where President Samuel Stanley draws the line for future institutional support. His predecessor, President Kenny was a staunch supporter of the athletic program who helped lift the program to Division I. Last month, administration at Stony Brook announced, much to the ire of students, that there would be an increase in broad-based fees, which includes athletic services, among others.

After the fee increase announcement, the Undergraduate Student Government surveyed 800 students to prioritize what students are willing to pay more to prevent. The results show athletics falling low on students’ concerns.  Just more than 20 percent of the participants said that they were willing to pay more to prevent the elimination of their favorite sports team.

According to the USG survey, which was published on its website, only “campus events” fell lower on students’ priorities, with just less than 20 percent saying that they are willing to pay more to prevent their elimination.

The questions, though, failed to include the cost of preventing these cuts in services,  which, in actuality, is as small as $5 per student. For example, the sports-related question reads: “How do you feel about the following fee-based services? [Eliminating your favorite athletic team on campus.]” And many answers read something like, “As long as fees don’t go up, I can deal with it.”

It is also worth mentioning that USG surveyed just 4.8 percent of undergraduates. Taking the survey with a grain of salt, the top priorities of participants prioritized academics. Preventing the discontinuing of their major, delaying their graduation, and discontinuing other majors in general were recorded as the chief issues.

The survey relates to the long-posed question of t he role of athletics at Stony Brook University and why the department is getting the funding and attention that it is.

“I think people that [ask] that are uninformed. They don’t know the facts,” said Fiore, who noted that SAT scores and out-of-state enrollment have both gone up in the past eight years, coinciding with the athletic department’s growth. “They can’t argue with the school spirit and the fact that the academic profile of the campus has risen since we’ve gone Division I. It hasn’t had any ill effect on [the university.]”

To put state funding of university athletics into perspective, over the past three years $15,924,123 has been pumped into athletics, while $31,272,035 of state funding has been allocated to university research, one of the primary focuses of Stony Brook.

Like the invaluable exposure garnered through the research, the national coverage of Stony Brook athletics is equally beneficial to non-athletic services. During nationally televised games on the ESPN network, the athletics department partners with the medical center to air commercials for Stony Brook Hospital.

Despite the national coverage, Fiore is still challenged to cultivate a sports culture here at Stony Brook’s more isolated campus.

“The college town thing is a big piece. Stony brook is fragmented. You kind of need a downtown,” said Fiore. “It’s a big challenge for us in recruiting, because there is a perception issue that you have to overcome.”

The University of Connecticut, an athletic force, has the same problem, but they are in a sense building an artificial “college town” with restaurants and retail outlets right on campus. For that, Stony Brook simply does not have the capital.

Infrastructure, including Stony Brook’s athletic facilities, is also proving to be an impediment to the program’s growth.

“Academically, we cast shadows on those guys (Rutgers, Connecticut, Penn State), said Fiore. “If we had Big Ten facilities, we would be in the Big Ten, because academically, we’re there.”

Fiore admitted that the 1,700-capacity Pritchard Gymnasium, where the men’s basketball team played the majority of their games this past season, is too small. “I’m concerned that students are going to get shut out. We can get 400 students in there, and then I have a problem.”

Stony Brook Arena has a capacity of 4,000 plus, but it is in dire need of renovations. Structural liabilities have rendered the arena largely unusable.  The men’s basketball team played once in the arena, against Maine, which was aired on ESPNU. More than half of the sell-out crowd would have been turned away had that game been played in Prichard Gym.

Even worse for Fiore, the $20,000,000 arena facelift allocated by the state has been frozen as part of former New York State Governor Paterson’s order to shut down all state funding. The money is still allocated, however, and Fiore is working with President Stanley and local politicians to help free the money.

“We need an arena. We have the least aesthetically pleasing gym in the league,” said Fiore, referring to Pritchard. “The worst one in the league. And look at what Steve Pikiell has done with that program. If we ever get a facility, we can reach that higher level.”

Pikiell’s biggest plight, he says, is not Pritchard Gymnasium, but rather trying to overcome the long winter breaks at Stony Brook, which fall right in the middle of his basketball season. “You have students starting to come to games early and then they go away for break…by the time they come back there’s a month left of the season.”

The silver lining, though, is that attendance of men’s basketball games is not dipping when students go away for break. When the Seawolves faced Albany on Jan. 17, 1,630 fans came to watch the televised game on MSG Plus.

“We have more families coming to games, more of the community here,” said Pikiell. “You just have to reach your net out a little wider and find people who are involved in basketball.”

Fiore has seen much of the same and believes that the community at Stony Brook is the most untapped resource. “Fifteen thousand employees come to work here everyday,” said Fiore. “Twenty-five thousand students. Forty thousand people converged on this place today. Look at that community, the branches. So that’s why I think we can be special.”

With limited resources, Fiore will have to scrap his way to Division I acclaim—something he’s accustomed to.

“I’m a blue-collar guy. I’m Stony Brook,” said Fiore. “I was a tough blue-collar kid. Like you guys, I grinded it out, whatever you get you earn—that’s my background.”

And while a cut to state funding looms, Fiore keeps looking forward. “We’re growing—and I refuse to stop.”