Posts tagged ‘Rec Hall’
More Memories of Indiana-Penn State Hoops
The Nittany Lion basketball team is in Bloomington on Wednesday to take on No. 7 Indiana, which I’ll use as another excuse to expand on our feature on the ’93 Indiana-Penn State game that appears in our January/February issue.
As I’ve mentioned, I was in the front row for that game, as I was for nearly every game during the ’92-93 and ’93-94 seasons. We were right across from the visitor’s bench, standing—always standing, of course—about 18 inches from the court. For much of the tape from that ’93 game, I can see myself and my friends jumping, yelling, and occasionally getting held back by a student auxiliary officer. (What, I was gonna run across the court and tackle Bobby Knight?) What I remember almost as clearly as that game is what my friends and I did afterward.
Back in Snyder Hall that night, my fellow front-row residents—Greg Galli ’96, Guy Licata ’96, Doug Schoenly ’96, Rob Scott ’96, and Chad Weihrauch ’97—and I were an emotional mess. We felt like we needed to do something, and we finally settled on writing a letter to Bruce Parkhill expressing our support. (As Parkhill made clear when we spoke last year, we were hardly the only ones—he still has the dozens of letters he received from around the country in the weeks after the game.) I don’t remember what we wrote, but I remember the handwritten reply, on Penn State basketball letterhead, that we received via campus mail a few days later.
Pretty cool, huh?
But one of my favorite memories from this game is not actually my own. It comes from Loren Crispell ’00, who was a local eighth grader at the time and now works as the marketing manager for the Nittany Lion basketball program. I quote Loren in the story that appears in the magazine, but I didn’t have room to include this terrific story about how some of his friends ended up at the game:
I was born and raised in State College, and games at Rec Hall were events. Indiana coming to town was something that everybody had waited for. Everybody pointed to that game. You’d have the “General” in town, the history, all of it. That was something everybody anticipated from the moment we joined the Big Ten.
I went to Park Forest Middle School, and three or four of my friends got off the bus at school that morning and immediately turned and started walking toward campus. They were skipping school to go to Rec Hall. They went into the men’s room at Rec Hall, which was open then, and camped out all day in the stalls. They read magazines to pass the time, and they just waited. Once the doors opened for the game that night, they were in the building. To me, it just underscored how big that game was, how much people wanted to be part of that experience.
I remember I had a French test the next morning. My parents kept asking me if I was ready. I kept saying ‘Oui.’ Little did I know that game would occupy the whole night.
I’m pretty sure Loren’s out in Bloomington as I write this. Next time I see him, I’ll have to ask him how he did on that test.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
For One Night, Basketball Was Back in Rec Hall
It wasn’t like I remembered, back when I was an undergrad and they played actual basketball games in Rec Hall. But walking into the old gym Wednesday night for Penn State’s Hoops Madness event, I still felt something like nostalgia.
It felt pretty good.
Hoops Madness worked on a couple of levels, reminding old guys like me what a great building Rec Hall was (and might still be, someday…) for basketball, while hyping up students for the upcoming Nittany and Lady Lions seasons. Not much is expected of the men this season, but there’s plenty of excitement about new head coach Patrick Chambers and his high-energy style. The women, meanwhile, enter the 2011-12 season as favorites for the Big Ten title.
On Wednesday, the teams came together in front of a few thousand fans in Rec Hall, (more…)
A New Era Dawns for Nittany Lion Hoops
Tim Frazier was looking for an example that would fully convey his new coach’s intensity. He wasn’t lacking for options.
“Coach is pure energy, all the time,” Frazier said Tuesday. “Even in free throw drills.”
Patrick Chambers is in the middle of the action
That assessment certainly jibes with everything we’ve seen and heard from Patrick Chambers in the five months since he was named head coach of the Penn State men’s basketball program. Whether with fans, the media, or his players, Chambers seemingly is always intense—intensely positive about the program’s potential, and intensely focused on how he plans to maximize it.
Chambers and his players met the press Tuesday at the team’s preseason media day, where they explained how intensity and optimism might translate into wins.
Penn State comes into the 2011-12 season without four starters—and the overwhelming majority of its points, rebounds, and assists—from a team that last year reached the NCAA tournament. Outside consensus is that the Nittany Lions won’t be able to overcome those graduation losses—they’re a popular pick to finish dead last in the now-12-team Big 10. Frazier, a junior guard, is the only returning starter, and he knows his days as a supporting player are over.
“I don’t want to put it all on Tim Frazier,” Chambers said. “But (more…)
More Adventures in Volleyball Photography
I went to Rec Hall on Saturday night to see the women’s volleyball team play top-ranked Nebraska—and to try my hand at photographing the match.
Last year I did a little shooting during an NCAA regional match in Rec Hall and wrote about how hard it is to shoot volleyball. It doesn’t appear to have gotten any easier since then.
I do have a better camera now than I did last December (a Nikon D7000 vs. my previous D90)—it shoots at a slightly faster “burst rate” and it does a better job at high ISOs like 2500 or 3200, which makes for faster shutter speeds and thus lets you freeze the action a bit better.
But it’s still a challenge—you have to anticipate where the action is going to be, and you have to take a lot of shots in hopes of getting a small handful of keepers. I can’t tell you how many bad shots I took, and how many different ways they’re bad: out of focus, a few seconds too late for the decisive hit, the ball is nowhere to be found in the frame, the players are caught in an awkward posture….
As just one example of “players are caught in an awkward posture,” here’s a charming scene of three Penn State players apparently engaged in some sort of new dance—or possibly a cult ritual?—during the match:
You really should click on it to see it bigger, to get the full effect of how bad it is. And I have dozens more where that came from.
I did get one or two good shots at the net; shockingly, most of them feature Deja McClendon, a ferocious hitter and last year’s national freshman of the year. She’s in the photo at the top of this page, and she’s also the one over there on the right. She finished the night with 18 kills, more than any other player on the court.
But trying to get good action shots was getting stressful, and I had had enough stress watching that danged football game with Illinois. So I turned my camera to some of the other stuff going during the match.
Luckily, it was the weekend before Halloween, so some of the students came in costume. So I thought I’d show you a little sampling of who was in attendance.
First, we had one of the Teletubbies, and his buddy, Uncle Sam:
We also had a weird assortment that included Gumby, Pokey, Captain America, and some vaguely Middle Eastern guy with a shepherd’s crook:
The innocent-looking Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man:
And two of my favorites, Mario and Luigi:
There was one other guy I thought you needed to see. He’s the guy in the photo at the right, and I don’t think this is a Halloween costume for him—I think this is regular attire for him at volleyball games. He’s a Nebraska fan who showed up at the game in a corn-cob hat.
(Here again, click on the photo to get the full effect.)
I did not realize that when we let Nebraska into the Big Ten, they would be bringing corn-cob hats with them. But there you are.
You can see more photos from Saturday night’s match on our Facebook page.
Oh, and the outcome of the match? The Nittany Lions upset Nebraska, three sets to one. Nice.
Tina Hay, editor
President Obama Asks for Penn State’s Help in “Winning the Future”
He was only on stage Thursday for 22 minutes, but that was plenty of time for Barack Obama to cover all the bases required for a president visiting Penn State.
Joe Paterno reference? Check. “I just met this guy,” Obama said shortly after he took the stage at Rec Hall,” I hadn’t heard of him before, but apparently he coaches your football team…”
Pointing out his own Penn State connection? Check. Obama mentioned Lt. Col. Sam Price ’95, an Air Force officer charged today with “carrying the football,” aka the nuclear launch codes the president keeps near at all times, just in case.
Giving the crowd a reason to cheer? Check. In fairness, Obama didn’t have to try all that hard to get the crowd on his side — based on his reception, the president (check our Facebook page for more photos) is still wildly popular with younger voters, who made up a sizable chunk of the 3,000 audience members in the Rec Hall stands. But the president made sure he connected with Penn Staters of all ages, and with current students in particular, by emphasizing far-reaching — and, in his words, vital — goals in his brief time at University Park.
“The reason I wanted to come here, (more…)
Waiting On The President
The view from the press area
So we’re camped out on the east end of the floor at Rec Hall, along with dozens of (or maybe a hundred?) media members, a few hundred invited guests, and about 3,000 additional folks in the stands. And while I can’t say for sure it’s the hottest ticket of the week on campus — “Weezyville” seems to be a pretty big deal — I can say the excitement level for a visit from the President of the United State is pretty high.
Barack Obama is scheduled to land at University Park Airport sometime after 11 this morning, after which he’ll tour a few campus labs (including, apparently, the engineering buildings that surround the Hintz Family Alumni Center, which explains why those of us in the Alumni Association aren’t allowed in our offices until this afternoon), and then head over to Rec Hall for a speech focused on energy innovation. The theme ties in with the “Winning the Future” mantra Obama introduced last week in his State of the Union address; Penn State earned the visit in large part due to its lead role in the Philadelphia Energy Innovation Hub, for which it recently received hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal funding.
It’s worth acknowledging that, for a lot of people in the old gym today (which by the way looks terrific after recent renovations), the specifics of Obama’s speech may be less compelling than the simple fact that the leader of the free world is on our campus. According to our friends in Public Information, Obama is the ninth U.S. president to visit Penn State, a run that started when Dwight Eisenhower dropped in for his brother Milton’s 1950 inauguration as University president. Obama of course, was on campus in 2008, when he was a senator campaigning for the job he now holds.
Our editor Tina Hay, senior editor Lori Shontz and I got here around 9 a.m. to go through security, although Tina, who doubles as our crack staff photographer, actually showed up at 4:45 to hold a spot for her camera equipment. Thank goodness for the wireless service in Rec Hall, as there’s otherwise not much to do until the president shows up (and it’s looking like he might be running late to boot). It looks like you’ll be able to watch his speech live on the Big Ten Network, and we’ll post again this afternoon to let you know how that goes.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Adventures in Sports Photography, Wrestling Edition
I had a chance to try my hand at photographing wrestling on Sunday—at one of the biggest duals ever in Rec Hall. Top-ranked Penn State lost to three-time national champion Iowa before a crowd of 6,686, and while I was disappointed in the outcome, I had a great time shooting the action.
I’ve tried photographing other sports before (including women’s volleyball back in December), but I had never shot wrestling. So, after securing a media pass for Sunday’s match, I started doing some homework. I Googled “how to photograph wrestling.” I called (more…)
Tough Day for Penn State’s Wrestling Team
It would have been pretty tough to jam more spectators into Rec Hall, as this photo by our editor, Tina Hay, shows.
It’s really no surprise to hear Cael Sanderson say, “I hate losing.” It’s almost superfluous. This is a guy who never lost a college match, who won an Olympic gold medal on his first try, who took a struggling Penn State wrestling team and, in Season Two, directed it to a 13-0 start, the best in the program’s history.
But it’s another thing to look at Sanderson’s face after a loss. Especially after a loss to Iowa. For all of his success, Sanderson has never been part of a team that’s beaten Iowa—not as an Iowa State athlete, not as an Iowa State coach, not as a Penn State coach.
So No. 1 Penn State’s 22-13 loss to Iowa on Sunday in front of a standing-room-only Rec Hall crowd was particularly disappointing. The loss, of course, would have been bad enough. But this (more…)
Photographing Penn State from the Air—Again
The Blue Course, looking northwest toward Skytop. Click to see larger.
Ever since I got that ride in that state police helicopter last fall, I’ve been thinking about aerial photography.
For one thing, shooting photos from a helicopter is such a blast, I wanted to find a way to do it again. But more importantly, it was clear that Penn Staters love seeing aerial photos of the University—and that there aren’t that many current aerial shots out there. The slide show of photos that I took on that dreary, overcast Saturday afternoon and put up on Flickr has gotten an amazing 106,000 views! I kept thinking, Imagine what we could do on a sunny day.
So I talked to some helicopter companies and eventually hired Cherokee Helicopter Service of Ford City, Pa., to take me back up. And this time I brought a second photographer—Andy Colwell, an exceptionally talented Penn State student who shoots for Penn State Public Information.
We went up yesterday—a gorgeous day—and spent a little over an hour making passes back and forth over campus, hovering in lots of different spots and heading out over Mount Nittany at one point as well.
The Cherokee Helicopter guys had given us our choice of seating plans: anywhere from sitting in a seat shooting out the open window (the most timid option) to removing the seats and sitting on the floor with the door wide open and our feet on the flight step (the most “aggressive” option, as they put it). Andy and I both chose the aggressive plan, so he had his legs dangling out the left side of the helicopter and I was doing the same on the right.
West Halls, with Rec Hall near the top of the image.
I shot more than 800 photos and I’m pretty sure Andy shot more—he’s by far the better photographer, and he brought three camera bodies and assorted lenses with him. I still haven’t gone through all of my photos from the adventure, but I also can’t wait to see what he got.
The point of this whole project is to run a photo essay in our July-August issue—readers are always telling us how much they like seeing photos of Penn State, especially the newer buildings, and we figured this would be the perfect way to do it.
We also hope to do a subsequent photo essay of aerial views of some of the other Penn State campuses. If all goes well, I (and/or assorted other photographers) will be doing some more helicopter rides in various parts of the state in the next few weeks and we’ll run that photo essay in September-October. If we run into snags—such as bad weather or outrageous cost estimates or something—we might put it off until next year instead.
And, once the magazine is out, we’ll definitely put an even bigger collection of these images on the Web for your viewing pleasure. The two shots here are just to tease you.
Tina Hay, editor
Cael Sanderson: Master Motivator
Clay Steadman moves in for a takedown.
Clay Steadman could have been nervous Sunday. As he jogged in place behind the Rec Hall bleachers, preparing for his 197-pound match against Bloomsburg, the Nittany Lions were losing to a team that gives only half as many scholarships as they do.
Which is the kind of thing that, in part, led to Penn State hiring wrestling icon Cael Sanderson as its new coach.
Steadman, however, steadied himself with two deep breaths, just as Sanderson—who often drills with him in the wrestling room—had advised. And then he repeated the mantra Sanderson had given him 30 minutes before, during the “halftime” break: You’re a pit bull on a PBJ.
Funny what works. Steadman, a redshirt sophomore who posted a 5-16 record last season, scored a takedown with 30 seconds left in the third period to win his bout, and the Nittany Lions went on to beat Bloomsburg 23-15 for Sanderson’s first victory at Penn State.
“It was going to be just a pit bull on peanut butter,” Steadman said. “But we started talking about it, and we decided it was better with jelly.”
Well, that’s a superior sandwich, to be sure. But who knew it worked as a motivational technique?
Sanderson, in his dealings with the media, can be dry. He measures his words carefully. But it’s clear that behind the scenes, Sanderson has a sense of humor—it was evident at his introductory press conference and his blog, and now as Steadman told of his pre-match preparation. “We thought about what kind of jelly it would be, too,” Steadman said, although they didn’t reach a consensus.
Like a lot of the Penn State wrestlers, Steadman was blown away when Sanderson was hired. As a young wrestler, Steadman had begged his mother to buy him Sanderson’s wrestling shoes (he keeps a pair in his Penn State locker), and he is constantly beseiged by text messages and e-mails from his high school wrestling buddies, wanting to know what it’s like wrestling someone who has legendary status in his sport. The wrestlers have a tough time explaining Sanderson’s status in wrestling. They tend to fall back on the “it’s like if Michael Jordan were coaching your basketball team” analogy.
“When Cael tells you what to do,” Steadman said, “we just soak it up like a sponge.”
Lori Shontz, senior editor
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