Note: These are Mr. Little’s personal views. The coach neither supports nor condones these sentiments:

“Hello fellow Bocce enthusiasts,

I hope you are all enjoying the off-season and making preparations for the opening Toss-off of the 2009 season.

The 2008 Championship was a glorious day showcasing some of the best talent ever seen on the Cape Bocce Circuit. Once again the team of Yarworth/Zaucha showed resiliency in the face of challenging opposition, ultimately using their experience (and some questionable tactics, again) to snatch the trophy from the young upstart team of Arsenault and Pete. Heavily favored to challenge the defending champs, “Lane 1″ suffered a humiliating loss, and were eliminated in the second round. Tabloids immediately began reporting dissention within the team, and there were even rumors swirling that two may go there separate ways. But, the lock for the Bocce hall-of-fame team of Brannan/Little have reconciled their differences and will return to form next year. I for one am already heavy into my off-season training and strengthening my injured shoulder. And as there are no rules and regulations, or random drug testing for performance enhancing supplements at this time, I fully intend to throw in a cycle or two.

The league made great strides this year introducing the league approved rulebook, but for all its good, it’s limitations were obvious with the seedings debauchery. Were it not for the quick thinking, due mostly in part to the fact that it was only 10:00 AM and they had only had a six-pack in them, the Koritkoski Brothers succeed in establishing order and salvaging the tournament format.

As I’m sure you all will agree there were many highlights to rejoice about this season; however, there were some poor displays of gamesmanship which cuts to core of the Gentleman’s game of Bocce. Words can’t describe the shame the league felt when a contestant, who after being eliminated from the competition, abused the alcohol policies and caused a 5 minute delay in the championship round by taunting an active contestant which lead to a childish round of chase. The Henry Turner clause will be enacted in 2009. Similarly, the timeout policy for relieving oneself was challenged repeatedly by a member of the victorious team. There were some claims of foul play as this was seen as a tactic to wear down the opposition by increasing the amount of alcohol they had to consume. No official complaints were filed, but the league has taken notice.

That being said I would like to propose a winter hot-stove gathering at John Harvard’s with the rules committee to lay the ground work for the upcoming season. I propose we discuss, in a gentleman’s manner, and of course over several micro-brews, a preliminary list of updates. To which we would re-convene at the spring session in May where representatives of the West Coast Division can be in attendance.

Enjoy the rest of your offseason…see you on the beach b*****s.”

Well, as I mentioned in my previous entry we’ve had to deal with a lot of sickness and a few injuries.  Things seem to be settling down and we’ve had a good two weeks of training since the Turkey Break.  We’ve still got two boys out with mono and a couple of kids with slight hip flexor and groin strains but other than that I think we’re ready to go. 

Finals are next week so we’ll try to get in the water as much as possible to keep the feel and conditioning, then break for a week or so at home.  We return to school on the 29th of December for training camp and depart on our annual Puerto Rico trip on Jan. 3.  After returning on the 12th we’ll go to the Rhode Island Invitational with LaSalle and George Washington (unfortunately no URI men as they eliminated men’s swimming last year).  Then we have a home meet weekend with BC on Saturday Jan 24 and the Steve Jungbluth (UMass 1993) coached Colgate squad on Sunday the 25th.

As we come to the end of the year UMass is anticipating some major budget cuts with the shaky state and national economy.  Hopefully we will not be affected too badly, but I think we must be realistic about our needs.  A strong, motivated, and generous alumni group is of paramount importance to the continued health of the UMass Swimming and Diving program.  Please think of us in your year end tax planning and make a small (or large!) donation to the program to help us defray expenses and portray a solid unified community. 

We’re focusing on presenting yet another Atlantic 10 Championship Squad this February and need you all to be involved.  Go UMass!

The boys brought home a victory at the Terrier Invitational last weekend with some good old fashioned tough swimming and diving.

We avenged our dual meet loss to the host Terriers and posted some great mid-season times as the squad came out on top over BU, BC, Yale (just a few swimmers), Maine, and Holy Cross.  It was especially satisfying as the team has been dealing with quite a few sickness related absences and really pulled together to tough out the win.

Freshman sensation Joey Sbordon led the way with wins in the 200, 500 and mile.  He was helped with individual event wins from Max Butler, Andrew Willbrant, Nate Bromage, and Jason Cook.

This coach is pretty pleased with our progress, and I’m feeling quite confident that once we get everyone healthy we have a real competitive A10 Championship squad.

You can get complete results of the invite at www.umassathletics.com.

We’re taking a Turkey break, then getting into some good training before we break for Finals and XMas.

GO UMASS!!

The squad finished our stretch of 3 straight meets vs. New York based teams with a victory over a very tough Binghamton squad.  This followed a home win against Army and a road win vs. Stony Brook.  Needless to say after two consecutive weekends with long road trips the kids are a little beat up and weary.

The Binghamton meet was awesome as we went up against a coaching staff of UMass alumni.  Many of you know Sean Clark, my long time assistant, who is now dong a fantastic job as Head Coach at Binghamton.  This year marks the first year for RJ Rappe, former All A10 Diver, as head diving coach there as well.   It makes this old coach real proud to see these two running such a great program.

The meet was touch and go the whole way as Clarkie had the Binghamton boys fired up for their first home meet and parent’s weekend.  The meet really wasn’t decided until the 400 Free Relay where our sprint specialist Juan Moliere came from behind to win with a 46.03 split by 1/100th of a second. Of course I told Sean that it was coaching that made the 1/100th difference!.

We head to the Terrier Invitational at Boston University on Nov. 21 -23 for a Trials and Finals mid-season Championship format meet.  We’re planning on a three day rest and will put on the speed suits to see where we are at.  Come on by and watch us if you get a chance.

We are in the middle of our stretch of meets against the New York based teams.  The great win vs. Army was followed up with a solid showing at Stony Brook.  No real highlights in that win other than a great trip there and back on the Port Jefferson/Bridgeport Ferry and an awesome post meet meal provided by Christa Narus’s (Women’s Swim Captain) parents at there house near the campus.

We head out to Binghamton on Saturday to compete against a very strong  Bearcat squad coached by UMass Alums Sean Clark and RJ Rappe.  A little case of the teacher going against the students!!

For complete Stony Brook results go to: http://umassathletics.cstv.com/sports/m-swim/recaps/110208aaa.html

GO UMASS!!

We dropped a tough meet to BU last Saturday in their beautiful new Aquatics Center.  Its really a testament to Boston University’s commitment to the Olympic sports when you visit and see a brand new pool, great meet mangement staff, and some real strong scholarship freshmen.

We countered them with our blue collar attitude and really went after them  Highlights of the meet were produced by our freshmen duo of Joe Sbordon (won the 1000 and 500) with a smoking 4:39 in the 500 and Jason Cook who qualified for the NCAA Zone meet while breaking the 3 Meter School record!

Complete results and asummary can be found at http://umassathletics.cstv.com/sports/m-swim/spec-rel/101808aaa.html.

Next up is a very tough and strong Army team at Boyden on Saturday Oct. 25 at 2:00 PM.  We’re going to give it our best shot and really go after them. Look for some fast swimming on Saturday!

We’ve just completed the first month of training and I’d like to report that the UMass ship looks to be in good shape so far.

The distance lane has averaged over 50,000 yards per week while the middle group is about 45,000 and we’ve been focusing on a very specific sprint program for a small group of the guys.  Couple this with lifting, dry-lands, core work, spinning, and running and you can see why the troops get in shape pretty quickly.

We culminated the first month with a very challenging Saturday workout.  The middle and distance group turned in a 10,000 yard morning with the main set being 20 x 400 every 5th one race, alternating freestyle for 5 and mixed IM for five!!  The expanded sprint group went at it for 3 hours, alternating 1/2 hour of easy aerobic work with 1/2 hour of dedicated power and sprinting work - awesome stuff!!

On this past Monday we ran our 10 x 100 1:15 test set and I was psyched to see an improvement of over 2.5 seconds in the team average from early September!

We’re going to do a mock meet on Wednesday Oct. 8 to give the guys a chance to get on the blocks and race, then take the Columbus Day weekend off.  Once we get back we’ll be getting into the dual meet season.

We’re still seeing real good effort from our freshmen Kyle Jennings and Joey Sbordon, while Ryan Brooks is showing rapid improvement.  Brian Schmidt is swimming his freestyle better than ever, which bodes well for him finishing that 400 IM.  Over in the sprint group Pat Kuehne keeps putting up monster workouts, followed closely by captain Nate Bromage!

UMass Men's Swimming

The leaves are starting to turn up here in Amherst and so are the swimmers.  Not only are they doing turns a each end of the pool, they seem to be turning those slightly out of shape bodies into lean, mean swimming machines.

–Russ