Olivia DrakePatrick Tynan, who spent the 2008-09 season as assistant men's lightweight crew coach at Yale University, has been named faculty head coach of women's crew at Wesleyan on July 1. Tynan steps into the position occupied by Beth Emery from 1988 through 2008 and covered on an interim basis by Brian Dawe in 2008-09. "The opportunity to be a head coach in the NESCAC, which is probably the most competitive league for women's rowing in Division III, was a big attraction to me,"Tynan says. "When I met some of the athletes on the team through the interview process, I knew…
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Lisa Drennan ’09 signed a professional volleyball contract in Europe and will play for a team in Brondby, Denmark for the 2009 season. Drennan closed out her Wesleyan volleyball career in 2008 with her second NESCAC Player of the Year honor as well as second-team AVCA Division III All-America laurels. Also named a second-team CoSIDA/ESPN the Magazine Academic All-American in 2008, Drennan ranked among the top five players in Division III for average kills per set for three straight seasons (2006, 2007 and 2008) while leading the NESCAC each of those years as well. She ended her Wesleyan career ranked…
Four Wesleyan spring athletes were named first-team All-Americans in the July/August edition of the Jewish Sports Review, the pre-eminent national publication honoring Jewish athletes. Among those honored from Wesleyan, softball standout Talia Bernstein ’11 (#9), who earned first-team all-NESCAC as well as regional honors from both the New England Softball Coaches Association and the National Fastpitch Coaches Association after leading the Cardinals to a second-place finish in the NESCAC tournament with her .482 batting average, was a first-team Jewish All-American. Two members of the Wesleyan men's lacrosse team, Jason Ben-Eliyahu ’09 (#27) and Lonny Blumenthal ’10 (#13), found spots on…
Cara Madden ’11, a Wesleyan swimmer, won four gold medals and set two records at the Bay State Summer Games, organized by the Massachusetts Amateur Sports Foundation. The Bay State Games provide quality Olympic-style athletic competitions and developmental programs for Massachusetts amateur athletes of all ages and abilities. Madden not only won each event she appeared in, but also broke two records in the Women’s 19-34 Division, representing the Northeast team. Both of the records Madden broke were two-year-old records. In the 100-meter backstroke, she cut four seconds off the previous mark, finishing at 1:12.41. Madden also broke the record…
A former Middletown mayor, Olympic volleyball coach, a three-hour marathon runner, and Baldwin Medal winner are among the newest members of Wesleyan's Athletics Hall of Fame. Wesleyan will formally induct the third class into its Athletics Hall of Fame during a ceremony Nov. 6 as part of Homecoming/ Family Weekend activities. Wesleyan will enshrine four individuals and one team to join the previous two classes of inductees, bringing to total in the Hall of Fame to 20 individuals and three teams. Entering in the fall class of 2009 are Emilio Daddario '39, Winthrop “Wink” Davenport '64, Sally Zimmer Knight '81,…
By Brian Katten, sports information director Q: We understand that you will be umpiring during the World Cup women's lacrosse championships in Prague, Czech Republic in June. How did this opportunity come about? A: The World Cup is every four years. I have been at the last two World Cups representing the U.S. as an umpire in 2001 and 2005. U.S. umpires must apply and are ranked within our country. The number-one ranked umpire is an automatic umpire for the World Cup. This year, that’s me. Each country submits their candidates. A committee of IFL (International Federation Lacrosse) makes the…
By Brian Katten, sports information director The 2009 Wesleyan men’s lacrosse team did something that eluded each of the last eight Cardinals lax squads: winning a NESCAC tournament title and earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III tournament. Reaching the NESCAC playoff semi-finals for the seventh year in a row and the championship game for the fifth time in team history, Wesleyan finally realized its goal of a conference title on May 3 when the Cardinals downed the Tufts Jumbos, 14-10, for the NESCAC crown. Head Coach John Raba, who stands a remarkable 155-67 over his 13 seasons,…
Norm Daniels, who coached five sports in almost 40 years at Wesleyan, died May 11 at the age of 102. He coached baseball, football, basketball, wrestling and squash. Daniels, born March 25, 1907 in Detroit, Mich., came to Wesleyan as an instructor in physical education in 1934 and retired in 1973. He spent 33 years coaching baseball, and 19 years coaching football, which included a 25-game winning streak from 1945-1948. The Hillsdale, Mich. native graduated in 1932 from the University of Michigan, where he played football, basketball and baseball. He also earned a master's degree at Michigan in 1941. Among…
Jodi McKenna, head women’s ice hockey coach, was selected to be an assistant coach for the 2009 U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team. The team will defend its world title at the 2009 International Ice Hockey Federation World Women's Championship from April 4-12, in Hameenlinna, Finland. McKenna's preliminary roster includes four goaltenders, 10 defensemen and 18 forwards, and will be trimmed by 11 players prior to Team USA's March 30 departure for Finland. Highlighting the roster are 24 players who have competed in previous IIHF World Women's Championships, including 23 who have been on gold medal-winning squads, either in 2005 or…
Wesleyan sports fans can view play-by-play action of their favorite events through Wesscores, a new service hosted on Twitter. Twitter is a popular social networking and “microblogging” service used to communicate timely information as well as exchange quick, frequent messages with others. The short Twitter messages, referred to as the "tweets," can be viewed on a web browser or cell phone as text messages. The Athletics Department at Wesleyan has created a Twitter account called wescores to send updated sports information and is inviting all the Cardinals fans to follow this account on twitter by visiting the URL http://twitter.com/wescores and…
Four Wesleyan athletes traveled to Philadelphia in early March to spend the first weekend of their spring break speaking to underprivileged girls about the importance of staying in school and pursuing higher education. The event was organized through the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation (ESYHF), a non-profit organization founded by Ed Snider, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers, to use the sport of hockey to educate young people on how to succeed in the game of life. ESYHF provides after-school hockey, life skills, and educational programming at no cost to the most disadvantaged communities in the Greater Philadelphia Region. (more…)