University of St. Thomas Athletics
Webster
Gene's Blog: Fritze, Favre and fun notes
5/7/2009 12:00:00 AM | Softball
In case you've been immersed in American Idol or the new C-Span HD channel, here are a few sports notes you can't go to sleep tonight without knowing:
Dealer
--Former Tommie football standout Tom Fritze will soon make his NBC-TV appearance on the prime-time game show Deal or No Deal.
Now a math teacher in Hastings, Fritze was scheduled to appear on subsequent weeks in January. The episodes, taped last August, were bumped several times, but are now scheduled to appear back-to-back from 7-9 p.m. on Monday May 18, locally on KARE-11 TV.
Click here to read a previous Gene Blog on Fritze:
http://www.tommiesports.com/news/GeneBlog27.html
Click here to see a brief video preview of Fritze's Deal or No Deal appearance:
http://www.nbc.com/Deal_or_No_Deal/video/clips/thomas-fritze-versus-jake-the-monkey/1092763/
Kiln karma?
Hey Minnesota Viking fans: What do Maquoketa, Iowa, Montgomery, Ala., Shreveport, La., Black Mountain, N.C., Ford City, Pa., Grand Forks, N.D., Ocala, Fla., Ruthton, Minn., and Burbank, Calif., have in common?
Stumped? Here's a hint. You may soon add Kiln, Miss., to the list.
If you guessed "Sonic drive-ins," you're incorrect. The answer: These great American communties are hometowns of several recent Viking QBs.
--Montgomery: Tarvaris Jackson.
--Maquoketa: Sage Rosenfels.
--Shreveport: J.D. Booty.
--Black Mountain: Brad Johnson.
--Ford City: Gus Frerotte.
--Grand Forks: Brooks Bollinger.
--Ocala: Dante Culpepper:
--Ruthton: Todd Bouman:
--Burbank: J.T. O'Sullivan.
If Mr. Favre doesn't come on board, they can always trade for the guy from Shelton, Ct., (Dan Orlovsky), or sign the free agent from Woodinville, Wash., (Marques Tuiasosopo).
Sunk
Last week, the University of Washington announced it has eliminated its men's and women's swimming programs. That leaves just five men's teams in the Pac Ten Conference that compete in the sport -- none located in the Pacific Northwest.
One of the reasons cited was the school's six-lane, 25-yard pool, which was bullt in 1937 -- two years before the opening of St. Thomas' Schoenecker Pool. The Huskies have no on-campus diving wells and automatically surrender those points in dual and conference meets.
Elsewhere, Division I Delaware State has dropped wrestling. That leaves no college wrestling programs in the state of Delaware, and no HBUC (Historically Black Universities and Colleges) that field the sport.
According to the National Wrestling Coaches Association, there are now just 260 colleges than sponsor wrestling, despite a pool of 260,000 high school wrestlers. Delaware State joins seven other colleges to drop wrestling in the last 12 months -- Carson-Newman, MIT, Lawrence, Norwich, Portland State, Rose-Hulman, and Wagner.
On a positive note for college wrestling, Minot State (N.D.) is raising money to start up a varsity program after a 20-year absence.
Tommie talk
--UST has three strong CoSIDA Academic All-America candidates on the diamonds, all juniors, with softball's Alison Wright (3.91, Financial Management) and Marta Radcliffe (3.73, Psychology) and baseball's Matt Schuld (3.70, Financial Management). All three made first team CoSIDA All-District and go onto the national ballot for Academic All-America consideration. Wright and Schuld have excellent chances to make on field All-America, as well
--St. Thomas is the lone institution to qualify for all 16 MIAC baseball and softball playoffs held over the last 10 years. The Tommies have won 13 of the 15 championships to date.
--In their combined 24 seasons at St. Thomas, Dennis Denning and John Tschida have won 18 MIAC baseball and softball championships, with five seconds and one third place.
--UST was the lone conference institution to qualify for MIAC playoffs in all 11 sports this school year (volleyball, softball, baseball plus men's and women's soccer, hockey, tennis and basketball).
--UST will finish with top-three conference team places in 18 of 22 sports. If the Toms win the MIAC outdoor track title for women, it will mark the first time in 18 years that one school swept the conference all-sport titles for both men and women by double-digit margins. (St. Thomas did it in 1990-91).
--St. Thomas has won seven MIAC regular-season titles so far in 2008-09 and can make it nine if it sweeps this weekend's men's and women's track and field meets. By comparision, seven of the 13 MIAC institutions will go without winning a single conference team title this school year.
--UST is one of two Division III institutions (along with Texas-Tyler) currently ranked in the top 10 nationally in both softball and baseball.
--The second-ranked Tommie softball team leads all 390 Division III softball teams in batting average at .404. Missy Bruggeman (.531, third) and Alison Wright (.525, fifth) rank in the top five individually.
More baseball
--St. Thomas topped Minnesota last week in baseball, 6-3, with Chris Olean calling pitches as pitching coach. It came nearly 10 years to the date that Olean pitched and lost 2-1 to the Gophers in April 1999. 
That was his only regular-season defeat in an All-American season.
--Prior to last week, the last time the Tommies beat the Gophers, the Minnesota Twins went on to win the World Series.
--Tommie baseball has allowed just nine home runs in 38 games and leads Division III in fielding percentage. The Toms are 26-4 when they score three or more runs and 26-1 when they outhit opponents.
--St. Thomas is 25-2 vs. St. Mary's in baseball since 1996. Both losses were walk-offs in the seventh inning, including last week's 5-4 Cardinal comeback in game two. The other time the Cardinals beat UST in the last at-bat, in 2001, the Tommies went on to win the national championship.
--MIAC champion St. Thomas has just 14 home runs in 38 games, but stands 29-9. By contrast, Concordia-Moorhead hit 42 home runs in 33 games, but finished 15-18.
--UST baseball went 11-1 at Koch Diamond this spring and is 66-11 there over the last seven seasons.
In case you missed it...
--Carleton swept Concordia on Tuesday in Moorhead with a pair of one-run, comeback wins to make the MIAC playoffs for the first time. It was Carleton's first sweep of the Cobbers in 31 seasons.
--Parity: In a 28-hour span this week, Concordia went from having a chance to take fourth in the conference and make the playoffs, to finishing in ninth place in the MIAC.
--Augsburg lost eight MIAC games by one or two runs and missed the playoffs by one game.
--In the last two weeks, two Division III baseball teams (St. Scholastica, St. Olaf) lost the opener of a doubleheader... then scored 30 or more runs in a game-two victory.
--In early April, Hamline was swept by both Bethel (22-2 margin) and by Augsburg (22-7 margin) but rebounded to place third in the conference and return to the MIAC playoffs.
--St. John's finished March with a 7-3 record against Division III teams, including wins over eventual 30-win teams Concordia-Chicago and Wheaton (Mass.). But the Johnnies went 4-12 in April to slide to 10th in the MIAC.
--Macalester had no splits in MIAC twinbills this season. The Scots swept five and were swept five times. Amazingly, Mac swept St. Olaf, Bethel, Concordia and Augsburg, yet still didn't make the playoffs.
--The last time a team had no splits in MIAC baseball... was just last season when St. Thomas lost twice to Hamline but swept its other nine conference twinbills.
--Bethel scored 22 runs in a doubleheader sweep vs. Hamline and 20 runs in a split with St. John's, But the Royals scored just two runs in last Saturday's two key defeats to Macalester and missed the playoffs.
--St. Mary's head baseball coach Nick Winecke is the conference's youngest head coach in any sport at age 24. The oldest coach? SJU football legend John Gagliardi was age 56 when Winecke was born.
--Two weeks ago, the North Central-Presentation games in Aberdeen, S,D., were cancelled. Not by floods, snow or a dust storm. This from the Presentation athletic website:
The Saints games against North Central University on April 22 and April 23 have been canceled with no make up date planned due to North Central not having enough drivers for the vans.
--Lastly, Midwest Conference teams Grinnell and Monmouth also had driving problems. Driving in runs, that is. The teams played to a 19-inning game last week with Grinnell winning 5-3. The game started Saturday, was suspended due to darkness, then resumed and ended in one inning on Sunday. The teams combined to leave 43 runners left on base. That tied a 15-year-old NCAA record held by Hawaii and San Diego State. Monmouth had the bases loaded and none out in the bottom of the ninth inning but didn't score.
