Former NCAA athletes killed in NY plane crash

This is awful…

Just read via an NCAA update e-mail that two former NCAA Division III athletes were killed in the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 last night in Buffalo, NY.

As a former Division III athlete who competed in basketball against Rowan University, this kind-of hits home for me. Also, I went to The College of New Jersey, which is right down the road from Princeton.

Even though I didn’t know either these ladies personally, my heart goes out to them, their families and their teammates. This is truly a tragedy, one that nobody likes to hear about.

From the NCAA…

Lorin Maurer, manager of the Athletic Friends program at Princeton and a former Rowan swimmer who served as an NCAA promotions and events intern during 2003-04.

Madeline “Maddy” Loftus, a former ice hockey student-athlete at Buffalo State and St. Mary’s (Minnesota), were reported as being among 50 victims of the Continental Airlines crash in Clarence Center, New York.

Maurer, 30, was an all-New Jersey Athletic Conference swimmer and team captain at Rowan. After that, she was a graduate student in sport management and a women’s administration intern at Florida before joining the NCAA branding and communications group as a promotions and events intern.

Loftus attended Buffalo State during her freshman and sophomore years, then transferred in 2004 to St. Mary’s, where she played her junior and senior seasons. She served as a member of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s student-athlete advisory committee in 2005-06, and was instrumental in starting the Cardinal Athletic Council, a student-athlete group at St. Mary’s.

On behalf of the entire women’s sports population who was raised and competed for the NCAA in New Jersey, I’d like to thank these women for their contribution to their sports.

What’s your state’s best female athlete ever?

Yesterday, in celebration of National Girls and Women in Sport Day, Sports Illustrated did something really cool – they featured the best female athletes from each state (totaling 51, of course).

Special thanks to @LegacyDirect for tweeting about this.

The time frame of this feature goes back to the 1920′s. As an athlete, it’s really neat to learn about women who excelled back in the day.

As a native of New Jersey, it was interesting for me to learn about distance runner Mary Decker Slaney, someone who I had previously never heard of (probably because she was successful in 1984, the year before I was born).

Here are some details about her:

She set American records in every middle and long distance event on the books — the 800, 1,500, mile, 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000. She won the 1983 World Distance Championships in the 1,500 and 3,000. After qualifying for her first Olympics at 21, she went on to qualify for three more teams. She is perhaps best known for her failures on the Olympic stage, including a fall at the ’84 Games that sent her onto the infield writhing in pain during the 3,000-meter race she was heavily favored to win.

Currently a resident of Washington, DC, it’s also interesting for me to learn about backstroker Melissa Betole Ripley.

Here are some details about her:

Sixteen at the 1972 Games in Munich, Ripley won three golds (100- and 200-meter backstroke, one with the relay team), setting a world record in the 200 and an Olympic record in the 100.

Who’s the best female athlete in your state? Check it out, here.

Donohue stops at qualifier

Yesterday morning, Erin Donohue ran in a big, BIG race: the 1500m qualifier. Maybe it was all the hype, maybe it was all the attention, or maybe she just wanted it too much. Regardless, her Olympic performance ended on the track in Beijing yesterday, as she finished eighth. She needed to be in the top three to advance.

After the race, it was clear that she was disappointed. As reported in the Baxter Bulletin,

“I really wanted to perform well here. Maybe that was part of the problem,” she said. “I really wanted it bad.”

She was in the top four, on the rail, but didn’t close as planned. She collided with Kenya’s Viola Kibiwott in the home straightaway. However, these type of things are to be expected.

At 5-foot-7 and 143 punds, Donohue is bigger than most other milers, so she said she doesn’t mind physical races.

She said,

“You can’t be surprised when all these girls come up on you,” Donohue said. “You’ve got to be ready to get out and go. I didn’t have it to go. Maybe I’m not as fit as I thought I was.“

Donohue will stay in Beijing until Sunday, but only for closing ceremonies. I think it’s important for Erin (and the rest of NJ) to focus on what’s important -  not winning. but taking part.

Jersey Shore’s Rampone Leads Women’s Soccer

This morning, Christie Rampone, captain of the U.S. Women’s Soccer team, led our country’s finest soccer players to compete in the preliminaries against Norway at 7:45am ET.

But back in 1997, Christie Rampone was not the leader of Team USA. In fact, she was a senior at Monmouth University facing a very difficult decision.

Before attending Monmouth, Rampone had graduated Point Pleasant Borough High School as finest female athlete ever in Ocean County history and was named the New Jersey Female Athlete of the Year. She received a full scholarship to play basketball for Monmouth University, a small-division one school in West Long Branch, NJ. At Monmouth, Rampone competed in two sports, basketball and soccer. But she was a point guard, and basketball was her number one sport.

So why had she just received a fax from U.S. soccer inviting her to training camp?

Turns out then U.S. head coach Tony DiCicco had seen Pearce play in a college match, and he was looking for attackers that he could convert into backs. He decided to take a chance on the 5-foot-6 striker from the Jersey Shore.

But she was right in the middle of her conference basketball season as a senior captain. How could she abandon what she had been working hard on for three years?

She talked to a lot of people at Monmouth, who advised her that his is an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. So she went – and she hung in there with gold medalists. DiCicco called her two weeks later and invited her to travel with the USA to Australia that February.

She said,

“I was committed to two teams. One is your dream, and one is your scholarship, your senior year. Sometimes you are faced with life choices that have long-term consequences, but you just don’t know it at the time. It was scary going into that first camp, but to accomplish great things you have to be brave.”

And from there, she only got better and better.

Rampone went on to make the historic 1999 Women’s World Cup Team, which played its first match of that tournament in front of a sold out crowd at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Now, eleven years lated, at 33 years of age, Rampone has achieved more success than anyone back in NJ could have dreamed.

I couldn’t say it any better than Center Circle,

“[Rampone] is a mother to precocious three-year-old daughter Rylie and an excellent role model for her teammates and the thousands of girls and women playing across the USA, especially those who play at small schools on the New Jersey coast.”

Congratulations, Christie. New Jersey, Monmouth (and the rest of the country) are extremely proud of you.

(Last I checked on today’s game, it was 2-0 Norway, but I don’t have an official score yet).

Erin Donahue Qualifies for Beijing

It’s extroadinarily exciting to see that someone from your hometown has qualified for the Olympics. On Monday, it was announced that Erin Donahue from Haddonfield, NJ finished second in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials to earn a trip to Beijing.

Erin is living proof that hard work can pay off in the end, and that someone from rural south Jersey can actually make their way to the Olympics.

(From the Philadelphia Inquirer) “I wasn’t one of those runners who sticks out, who you say, ’Oh, she’s going to be an Olympian,’ “Donohue said. “When I graduated (in 2005), I didn’t get a whole lot of attention from shoe companies or agents. I had to work for it. I’ve improved a little each year and it’s got me to where I am now.”

I have known about Erin for about eight or so years now. Erin is from Haddonfield, NJ, the town near where I grew up. I actually played against her in basketball a few times, and was friendly with many of her teammates, who were a part of my AAU basketball program, the Penn Jersey Panthers.

Erin was a GREAT basketball player. But she was always a better runner, a true stand-out athlete. In fact, I frequently saw her run by my house and through the neighboring park on her daily runs. In the end, running is what she pursued. That said, if she wanted to, she could have easily played for a small Division I basketball program.

But I’m sure she’s glad she didn’t do that. Erin went on from high school to run at North Carolina, and now she finds herself headed to Beijing, to run on the world’s greatest stage.

“It feels so good to go out there and execute your plan,” Donohue said. “It’s not like the NCAA or the NFL, where there’s always another season. In track, your focus for four years is the Olympic trials and the Olympics.”

And now she’s got her chance. It’s truly exciting to see this, and you can bet, everyone from south Jersey will be watching the women’s 1,500.