Did Someone Say Playoffs?

Interest in the Linfield football program is picking up added momentum after the Wildcats beat Puget Sound on Saturday to clinch at least a share of the Northwest Conference title and the team’s first NCAA playoff invitation since 2005.

Naturally, fans, students and parents are excited about the possibilities of the Wildcats playing in postseason. The inclination is to make some plans in advance.

Here’s a sample email I received Monday:

Hello Mr. Bird,

I am trying to get a handle on the playoff schedule for football.  I understand November 21st most likely will be at Linfield.  Do you have any “guestimate” where the November 28th game might likely be played?

We are from California and trying to make travel plans…Thank you so much.

Best Regards,
Linfield Parent

Dear Linfield Parent,

Linfield has submitted bids to host the first four rounds of the playoffs. That said, there is no way to speculate where the NCAA might choose to place games. Linfield does stand a better-than-most chance of hosting in the first round. Beyond that, I can’t offer a prediction what the NCAA might be inclined to do.

In addition to the relative strength of teams in the playoff field, financial and geographic considerations come into play when choosing home sites.

The best advice is to sit back and let it play out. Do not hedge your bets by booking airline tickets. Some of our baseball parents were burned in the past when they felt sure the Wildcats would be sent to Abilene, Texas, for a NCAA baseball regional, but instead the team was shipped to Moline, Illinois.

Kelly

So, Linfield fans, experience has taught me not to try and guess what the NCAA is going to do. Everything time I thought I had their playoff patterns figured out, they went 180 degrees the other way.

Go ‘Cats!

From Press Row: Puget Sound Edition

Eric Evenson,  a junior English major from Corvallis, will be providing commentary on the blog today.

20 min until kickoff : The crowd is starting to file in to what could be a playoff-clinching win for the Wildcats. The big key for Puget Sound todaywill be wheather the Loggers can put any points on the board. For a team that averages only 9.7 point per game, the matchup is not favorable for the visitors.

5 min until kickoff: Not a very big crowd here today on a Halloween afternoon. Pretty good conditions weather wise, overcast but not very cold.

Kickoff: We are underway here in McMinnville, Puget Sound will start their drive at its own 38

14:27 : Casey Larson rushes for a first down and then a pass play from Spencer Crase puts the ball at the Linfield 39.

11:58: After a 30-yard completion to the tight end Tim Fogarty, Crase rushes it in from four yards out. This is a focused group that came to McMinnville that clearly has a game plan consisting for a shotgun formation with short passes

7-0 UP

10:35 Aatron Boehme pass to Buddy Saxon for 38 yards to the UPS 12

9:25 Boehme sneaks it in from a yard out to tie the game. Good answer for the Wildcats, tying the score at 7. An exciting first six minutes here in McMinnville

7:54: The Loggers continue to move the chains with two more first downs. If there it a blueprint for pulling the upset on the road it is by moving the chains. Interestingly enough, short passes were a key element of what Oregon State did last weekend down at USC. UPS is working the short passing game very nicely.

5:32 Jaymin Jackson with the sack from the blindside on 3rd and 7.

4:41 After a screen pass to Kevin Abbott gave the ‘Cats a first down, Linfield commits a very bad holding penalty which was completly unnecessary.

4:18: Boehme dials up Chris Slezak  down to the UPS 37 after a 43-yard bomb

4:02: The next play Boehme hits Patterson in the endzone ofr a 37-yard TD.

14-7 Linfield, who has regained control of the gain.

3:11 Three and out for the Loggers. P.J Sequira returns the punt 54 yards down to the UPS 11.

1:28 :Linfield can’t punch in its third TD of the day. Maika Kunioka is short from 39 yards out.

Linfield leads it 14-7 at the end of the first quarter. Crace looks good so far, completing 12-of-14 passes, good for six first downs.

Second Quarter

13:01 Interception from Damarkus Milner giving the Loggers the ball at the Linfield 34. Crase then hits Ross Zuhl for a first down to the Lin 19….good for 17 yards.

10:38 roughing the passer calls put the ball at the Linfield 2.

9:49 UPS will not go away. Crace hits Koenig for a one-yard touchdown. The Wildcats pass defense is not slowing down a very solid UPS offense that has clearly figured out a blueprint for how to attack Linfield.

14-14

9:42: Kevin Abbott returns the kickoff  37 yards to the UPS 43

8:41 Chris Saunders gets free for a 17-yard reception to the one yard-line. Boehme sneaks it in for the score. PAT good.

21-14 Linfield leads. This is much closer than more people expected. With just over eight minutes remaining in the first half, Linfield will look to slow down a very efficient UPS club. A stop here will go a long way for Linfield.

7:32 Ross Zuhl is killing the ‘Cats. 28 yard reception to the Linfield 34.

6:25: Larson scores on a screen pass for 36 yards.

21-21 we are all tied up here McMinnville.

5:18: Kevin Abbott catches a screen pass and breaks a big one for a first down, good for 27 yards to the UPS 13 yard-line

4:26: Boehme to Patterson on a fade to the back of the end zone.

28-21 Linfield leads

4:03 Zuhl on a reception for 12 yards to get a first down. Crace who is 20-for-23 on the day is down right now and appears to be injured

2:53 An interception will be brought back because of a pass interference call. First and ten for the Loggers at the Linfield 20.

38 seconds: Peter Topolski’s kick is good for a 28-yard field goal.

28-24 Wildcats lead at the half.

First Half Thoughts: For the first 30 minuts UPS proved they aren’t going anywhere this afternoon. Linfield will get the kickoff to start the second half and could get their first lead of more than seven points with a score. It will be interesting to see if the Loggers can continue this type of offensive day. Winless vs. Undefeated is turning out to be quick a ballgame. Crace has been the star so far, completing 21-of-24 passes.

13:13 Pass interference moves the ball to the UPS 36.

10:25 21-yard touchdown pass to Gunnar Cederberg. 35-24

7:20 UPS picks up a first down on a third-and-one to the Linfield 25

6:33 Zuhl with a 25-yard touchdown reception. He now has 13 catches for 134 yards,  burning up the Linfield secondary.

4:56 Boehme hits Aaron Williams on a shovel pass for 15 yards and first down

2:34 Patterson makes a great catch in the endzone. 14-yard touchdown reception to put Linfield up 41-30.

End of the 3rd quarter… 41-30 Linfield with UPS driving at the Linfield 27 yard-line.

14:48: UPS converts on a 4th down and one to keep the drive alive. Linfield has not found an answer for Zuhl who now has a school-record 16 catches for 155 yards.

13:35 Zuhl with another touchdown… 22-yard reception on a screen pass.

12:23 Boehme scores his third rushing TD of the game on a 14-yard run.  47-36 Linfield.

7:33 Bryce Comfort with the interception in the endzone. Comfort takes the ball out and is tackled at the one yard-line.

5:00 Jaymin Jackson makes the big play…forcing a fumble thaat was recorverd by Drew Fisher. Linfield has a 47-36 lead that should survive the final minutes.

3:04 Touchdown Saxon in the corner of the endzone. This one is over with the ‘Cats up 54-36.

It was a fun one here in McMinnville. Hats off to a very tough UPS team. Ross Zuhl turned a lot of heads this afternoon with his remarkable performance. While the defense struggled, Linfield stays unbeaten in large part because of one of the nation’s top passing attacks.

20 Years On

A good time was had by all visitors to Linfield last weekend during the annual Homecoming gathering.

I wanted to share a story with you about a Homecoming experience I enjoyed. One of my very first work-study student assistants came up to the pressbox after the football game to say hello. I immediately recognized  Charlana (Saniatan) as if I had just seen her last week. Hard to believe that she graduated in 1991.

During my first two falls at Linfield, Charlana worked with me on the football statistics crew and helped out in the office during the week. Her surprise visit sent us both flashing back to the “old” methods we once used to compile stats and how dramatically they differ from today thanks mostly to new technology.

Back then, we worked out of a crude pressbox that was nothing more than some plywood tables pounded into the last two rows of the stands. The “pressbox” was dirty, hard to get in and out of, and difficult to work in because of the crowd noise. Charlana typed the play-by-play on an actual typewriter (anyone remember those?) while other work-study students (Scott Nelson and Debbie Sowell) compiled offensive and defensive stats on worksheets. At the end of games, we would spend about 30-45 minutes totaling all the stats up by hand, then would hang around another hour or two calling or faxing in the stats to the local newspapers and the conference office.

One of the tasks I hated most was hauling all our gear, including a hefty portable copier, up the Memorial Stadium steps each home game. What a pain that was!

Wow, talk about the stage coach era of sports information. But that’s what we had to work in the late 1980s. The 1990s ushered in the age of compterized statistical software programs but the early versions were only marginally better at totaling game stats up and compiling the season totals. I think those early programs were created by some stat geek in Excel in their basement. They were clunky at best.

That seems light years ago. Now, we have a bonafide professional level StatCrew software program that is common among all the schools we compete against. A keyboarder enters the data in for each play, such as “Run 42, tackle 21 and 44, new spot Linfield 32″ and the computer does the rest, including generating a detailed play-by-play.

During the game, running cumulative totals are displayed on monitors throughout our enclosed, heated and secure press box for all the media members to see. Each quarter, we print out a “Quickie” stats report, which is then photocopied on a machine that never leaves the press box! After the game, it takes only a few minutes to finalize the game stats, update the season stats, and export them to the Linfield Web site. One email to all the media outlets that includes links to the story and stats gets the news distributed quickly.

In 20 years, we’ve come a long way.

Live from Southern California

Waiting for what seems like an eternity for tonight’s 7 p.m. kickoff of the Linfield at Occidental football game. I’ve always favored day games over night contests, simply because when game day finally does roll around, you want to get to the field and get the game going, not sit around.

This is the second time in as many weeks that Linfield is taking on a nationally ranked opponent. This should be another enlightening opportunity to see just how good this Wildcats club really is.

The team is spending the day in meetings and “step-its,” their term for walking through each alignment, formation and play they intend to see or use.

Dave Hansen and Tyler Matthews will bring you the Linfield-centric play-by-play on KLYC and our internet stream. Last week’s audio streaming hiccups should be resolved.

A TV station here in LA is intending on streaming live video of the game. You’ll need Microsoft Silverlight software installed on your computer to make it run properly.

I’ll be on the field snapping photos and shooting some video, so there won’t be a live in-game blog going on. We are able to do that for home games only.

Heading over to the pregame barbeque on the Oxy campus, hosted by the College Relations office. About 80 people are signed up to attend, plus there should be some walkups, which means the Wildcats will have some fans in the stands rooting for them tonight.

Lots of college football going on in close proximity today, with Lewis & Clark playing at Pomona-Pitzer, Puget Sound visiting Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, Pacific Lutheran heading to Cal Lutheran, and UCLA hosting Kansas State tonight in the Rose Bowl. And just down the road, the Dodgers and Giants are selling out Dodger Stadium.

A Year in the Making

New site debuts in time for fall sports

It’s new, it’s different and it’s infinitely better.

I’m talking about the latest and greatest incarnation of the Linfield Athletics Web site.

What makes the site better?

There is more color, thanks to the focus on color photography and new Flash slideshow technologies.

There’s moving pictures, in the form of video clips that will spotlight coach and player interviews, game highlights and occasional features. There also a new video archive to view previously published videos.

You’ll notice we have introduced an innovative three-pronged approach to delivering fresh content involving current and former Linfield athletes and coaches. The “Latest News” tab on the home page will always showcase the most recent stories and statistics. A new “Wildcats in the News” section provides links to stories written about people with Linfield connections in the online news media. And the “Feature Stories” tab takes you to slice-of-life profiles written by Linfield students.

The revamped home page Scheduled Events box not only displays the next 7-10 days of upcoming athletic events but also highlights every home event with a shaded background for ease of use.

Each varsity sport page features its own photo gallery, video viewing area, plus an expanded record book section, including lists of letterwinners, season-by-season win-loss records and coaching chronologies.

Fans of Linfield Athletics have easy access to information about the Hall of Fame, past championship teams, the TopCat Club, Wildcat Open golf tournament, and where to order Linfield Wildcats clothing and apparel on-line.

Other features include an improved search mechanism, comprehensive news and video archives, and a complete online Visitors Guide for out-of-town guests.

While you’re exploring the new site, stop by the “Newsletter” section to sign up to receive quarterly email summaries of the happenings of the Linfield Athletics department. Or sign up for the “CatsEyeView” pay-per-view football video Webcast package.

The site offers consolidated commentary section, including links to this blog, and occasional columns by Linfield director of athletics Scott Carnahan and NCAA compliance officer Amy Dames Smith.

Keeping up with the times, Linfield offers fans the opportunity to connect with Wildcat sports through their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

What’s still to come? More content! We’re busy tweaking rosters for the fall sports teams, writing countless athlete bios, and interviewing coaches for season outlook stories. Those will be implemented over the next 10 days, I expect. And once we hit September, you can expect an ever-changing news source about Linfield Athletics.

The new site has been a year in the making. Thanks to the many behind-the-scenes folks who help foster its funding, design and construction.

Summer’s Slipping Away

Though we are still in the middle of the summer doldrums – from any Linfield sports fan’s point of view at least – the sports information office has been working steadily behind the scenes in July and August gearing up for another great sports year.

The initial competitions of the fall are Sept. 1 when the soccer and cross country squads are in action. The first football game is Sept. 12 at home against nationally ranked Hardin-Simmons. Football season tickets are still available, and for $48, Linfield football remains a bargain investment compared to Division I, where it now costs more than that for just a single-game ticket.

I have been hunkered down in the office, working on the many details and decisions that come with creating a new look for our athletics Web site. Rather than going the route of hiring an outside firm to create a site from a standard template, we decided to keep the design process mostly “in-house.” I say mostly, because we did have some graphics assistance from Hinmon Agency here in McMinnville. Company president Dan Hinmon, and designers Sally and Rick Kennedy collaborated with myself, Linfield Webmaster Jonathan Pierce, as well as Dan Preston of Enrollment Services and Jodi Kilcup from College Relations. The size of the group was just right to lob ideas and overall college objectives back and forth. Yet not so large that the process got bogged down by too much input.

Nearly a full year in development, the new site is still a few weeks away from making its debut. We are building the site on our existing database infrastructure, which Jonathan and I developed (along with student programming phenom Kam Figy) seven years ago. The platform still serves us well despite its age.

Think of the Linfield sports Web site like a car. Though it runs just fine, it could use a new paint job and some other parts replaced. It’s time to strip it down to the frame, add new fenders, trunk and hood. It’s a good time too to customize the interior and beef up the engine some more. We expect the end result should be nothing short of outstanding. In addition to Jonathan and myself, we’ve been relying on the programming talents of Linfield graduate Sean Ezell and current student Aaron Cody, both of whom are the real techno-geeks in this venture.

Some of the features of the new Web site include dedicated space for displaying videos, action photo galleries on every sport’s home page, better display of the master schedule, and slideshow presentation tools for the latest sports news.

Digging deeper, fans will find expanded historical and record book sections, as well as enhanced athlete bio display boxes.

Here’s a sneak peak. Leave your comments to let us know what you think.

We do not expect to launch the new site until all the bugs are ironed out, hopefully by the last week of August.

Video in his Veins

Aaron Heston is a natural in front of the camera

Aaron Heston towers above the rest

This is as close to the bench as Jaymin Jackson will ever come

Getting up close and personal

Big man on campus

Carlson knows all the angles

Sign of the Times

Aaron Boehme likes all that hardware

Can you tell how much Ryan enjoys his hobby?

Sunday was H-O-T in McMinnville but that didn’t prevent the sports information office from doing some behind-the-scenes work on campus.

At 4:30, I met up with former Wildcats All-American Ryan Carlson to collaborate with him on his latest electronic masterpiece – the introduction video for the Maxwell Field display board. Ryan’s work in the video realm is well known among the Wildcat faithful. The 2008 intro piece, which Ryan edited and co-produced, recently won a Bronze award from the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators.

Never ones to rest on our laurels, we met up with four upperclass football players Sunday to shoot some scenes for the 2009 video that will make its grand debut Sept. 12 at the Catdome. (Insider Tip: It’s going to be VERY good.)

Alex Tkachuk, Aaron Boehme, Aaron Heston and Jaymin Jackson were our hand-picked spokespersons. You’ll have to wait until the 12th to see just how comfortable they are in front of the camera.

The photo gallery above shows Carlson in action.

As a humorous side note, we videotaped the players in full uniform at various locales around campus. We guided Aaron Heston to the historic steps of Pioneer Hall, where Wildcat football teams from the 1800s once took their team photos. When we arrived at the bottom of the steps, we interrupted some sort of romantic encounter taking place on a couch perched atop the steps. I don’t know who was more surprised – our group or the frisky couple.

Back to Work

Just returned from a three-week hiatus from the office that included a week in San Antonio at the annual College Sports Information Directors convention.

At the CoSIDA convention, Twitter was the big buzzword and consensus was that soon most colleges and universities would no longer be printing traditional media guides. Instead, sports information offices will migrating their content to some sort of electronic format, whether that be the Web, DVD, or email. We SIDs have to stay on top of our game, constantly developing new skills to change with the times.

Twitter remains a hot-button issue, especially for NCAA Division III institutions. The social networking tool is currently banned for recruiting purposes. That rankles the feathers of SIDs, who simply want to use Twitter to quickly and succinctly communicate bits of information to their fan base, whether it be scores, schedules, highlights and so forth. The current legislation is being reviewed and we could see an addendum to the NCAA by-law before long.

After Thoughts

Texas-Tyler 5, Linfield 4 in 8 innings
Texas-Tyler 3, Linfield 2 in 10 innings

Those are difficult scores to ponder for any Wildcats fan as we are left to consider what might have been. A ball that lands fair instead of foul, an overthrow by a UTT player, or perhaps one more favorable umpire call could have turned either of those scores around.

Unlike some sports where champions can be safely predicted before they even compete, the game of softball has so many variables that the outcome is always be decided on the field, not on paper.

This group of Wildcats are outstanding representatives of their college and sport and have brought additional prestige to Linfield’s honor.

I will long have good memories of another fun and entertaining trip to the regional playoffs.

Good job, ‘Cats! I enjoyed every minute!

Countdown to Gametime, Day 4

More quick takes from Taylor Field in Marshall, Texas:

•What thrilling outcome we witness during Saturday’s games against East Texas Baptist and Louisiana College. The seniors, Kendra Strahm and Brittany Miller, playing through pain and providing the neccessary leadership to push their teammates to greatness. The freshmen, Emilee Lepp and Staci Doucette, playing like they are seasoned juniors. With the season on the line, those two produced. And let’s not overlook the great boost given by junior Rochelle Friend, who a few weeks ago feared she may have to sit out the rest of the season with a serious injury.

Coach Jackson Vaughan descibed to his players last night what a great opportunity lay before them. With the exception of the Redlands game, the Linfield offense has been held mostly under wraps during this tournament. And the close calls favoring the Wildcats and timely hits have been fewer than would seem customary. Lady Luck could smile on the ‘Cats today against Texas-Tyler.

•So, for the third time in recent seasons, Linfield will be playing for the regional championship on Mother’s Day. The Wildcats are 4-0 in those games, twice reaching the NCAA Finals in 2006 and 2007. Will history repeat itself here?

•Sitting at the broadcast table, I’m tempted to reach for a jacket as the weather is decidedly more Oregon damp than Texas heat. Rain fell overnight, there is a steady cool breeze and thunderstorms are possible as the day progresses. The Wildcats should have no problem in those conditions, given what a wet and windy spring it has been.

•Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms following their daughters and granddaughters during this tournament!