Brian KattenKeisuke Yamashita '10 of Yokahama, Japan; Jory Kahan '10 of Norwich Vt.; Clare Smith '10 of Lexington, Mass.; and Beth Kenworthy '10 from New York, N.Y., were named the recipients of Wesleyan University's Roger Maynard '37 Memorial Award for the 2009-10 academic year. The award is presented annually to the outstanding male and female scholar-athletes in their last year of eligibility. Yamashita, Kahan, Smith and Kenworthy represent the finest combination of athletic accomplishment and academic achievement at Wesleyan. Kahan and Yamashita were starters on the 2009 men's soccer team that posted the first undefeated regular-season since 1940 and set a school…
Ben Cohen ’10 was chosen to receive the 2010 Bill Esposito Memorial Award by the Eastern College Athletic Conference - Sports Information Directors Association (ECAC-SIDA). Named for long-time sports information director Bill Esposito, who served in the profession at St. John's University in Jamaica, N.Y. for 25 years, the award recognizes the outstanding contributions of a senior student among the ECAC membership (more than 300 East Coast Colleges from all NCAA Divisions) who plans to pursue a career in sports information. Cohen has been a stalwart of Wesleyan's sports information student staff for three years. A staff sportswriter for the…
Wesleyan women’s tennis posted a 4-0 mark during its fall dual-match schedule, then added four victories in Orlando, Fla. during its spring training trip in March to head into the meat of its schedule with an 8-0 record. The rest of the season features matches against nine consecutive NESCAC rivals. The outcomes of this part of the schedule will dictate qualification for the NESCAC tournament. Women’s tennis is one of three Cardinal squads to inaugurate the season with an 8-0 start. Both the baseball and softball teams also have started 8-0. The 8-0 record is the best ever season opening records…
David Pesci[youtube width="640" height="385"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9LdSAiX2yQ[/youtube] Mike Whalen ’83 was named assistant athletic director and head coach of Wesleyan University’s football team. He will assume this post on April 1. Whalen was introduced to the campus community at a ceremony on Monday, March 8. Whalen, the 2006 NESCAC Coach of the year, comes to Wesleyan from Williams College, where he had been the head coach since 2004. During that time, Whalen’s teams posted a 38-10 record. “It is an honor and a true pleasure to welcome Coach Whalen back to Wesleyan,” says John Biddiscombe, director of athletics and chair, physical education. “He left…
Olivia DrakeJohn Raba, head men's lacrosse coach at Wesleyan since 1997, has been selected as one of seven inductees for the University of New Haven Athletics Hall of Fame class of 2010. John is a 1993 graduate of U.N.H. and a former standout in both football and lacrosse there. Coming aboard the full-time Wesleyan staff in 1996 and now an adjunct associate professor in the physical education department, Raba enters his 14th season as head coach of men's lacrosse during 2010. Raba has a 155-67 record at Wesleyan, including an 18-3 mark in 2007, the best season ever at the college, and a…
Rick McCarthy, who recently completed his fifth season as an assistant coach for Wesleyan's highly successful men's lacrosse team, was one of seven individuals inducted into the Connecticut Lacrosse Hall of Fame during a ceremony Jan. 10 at Yale University. Serving as the head coach of the men's lacrosse team at Western Connecticut State U. for the 2004 and 2005 seasons, McCarthy came back to join the Wesleyan staff in 2006 after serving in that capacity during the 2003 campaign. In December 2006, McCarthy was honored by the Intercollegiate Men's Lacrosse Coaches Association (IMLCA) as the Division III assistant coach…
Wesleyan head women's ice hockey coach Jodi McKenna returned from the 2010 Olympics with a silver medal for Team USA. In May 2009, McKenna was asked to serve as an assistant coach for Team USA during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia. While in Vancouver, Team USA demolished China (12-1), Russia (13-0) and Finland (6-0) during group play to earn a spot in the medal rounds. In the semi-finals, Team USA defeated Sweden, 9-1, to move into the Gold Medal Game vs. arch-rival Canada. Despite the 10-goal-a-game average for Team USA entering the Olympic Gold Medal Game, the Americans were shut…
In the past decade, the Wesleyan Men's Water Polo Club captured two titles and appeared in six Division III National Collegiate Club Championships. For their efforts, the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) named the team the "Collegiate Club Division III Team of the Decade" for 2000-09. Unlike many teams in their conference, the Wesleyan club runs its program without monetary or administrative support from the Department of Athletics. The students are coached by team captains, and occasionally a graduate student who has played on the team will coach without compensation. Nevertheless, the team won the 2004 and 2005 Division III…
Jodi McKenna, head coach of women's hockey, is taking a leave from Wesleyan to coach the U.S. Olympic women's ice hockey team at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. The games open Feb. 14. In a Jan. 10 Hartford Courant article titled "Career Path Continues to be Covered with Ice," McKenna says, "It's not something, when I got into coaching, that I would even conceive of, being in this situation. It became more of a possibility the more I became involved in the national program." McKenna was named an assistant coach in May, right before her Wesleyan players went home…