Posted on Dec 8, 2005

John Cagianello (Wethersfield, CT/Loomis Chaffee) had a big week in leading Union to two victories in three games. He averaged 29 points, shot 56% from the floor, 92% from the line (23-25) and had 15 rebounds and six steals on the week. He scored 30 points in a season-opening 86-69 win at NYC Tech, and had 24 in an 82-71 home win over Utica. Cagianello scored 33 at Middlebury Saturday.

On Tuesday at Williams, he led the Dutchmen with 20 points and six rebounds, as he became the fourth player in Union history to break the 1500-point plateau. Cagianello was named the Liberty League Guard of the Week and also the ECAC Division III Upstate Player of the Week.

“John's play this week is a fine example of his continued growth as a player,” stated head coach Bob Montana. “Not only did he provide us with consistent scoring from his position, his floor game gave us an opportunity to win in each game.”

Union, 3-1, returns home to the Viniar Saturday for a date with Carnegie Mellon, a team that enters Friday's game at Skidmore with a 7-0 record. The contest vs. the Tartans Saturday afternoon (3 p.m.) will be a unique match-up featuring two of this week's ECAC players of the week, Cagianello and Nate Maurer (the ECAC Southern Player of the Week).

The Union women's basketball team, like their male counterparts, have had a solid pre-conference schedule. The Dutchwomen, after playing three straight road games to open the season, have the home opener Friday night at the Viniar, with a 6 p.m. contest against 6-1 Rochester. Through three games, sophomore guard Devon Ciliberto (New Paltz, NY/New Paltz) has a team-high 8.3 rebounding average and senior guard Erika Eisenhut (Mohawk, NY/Mohawk) is averaging a team leading 13.0 points per game and has 11 assists. Another home contest is on tap next week, as Springfield comes to Union for a 7 p.m. game on Tuesday night, December 13.

Head Coach Scott Felix had high expectations entering the Liberty League Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving Championships last weekend. His teams did not disappoint, as the Dutchwomen and Dutchmen heated up the water as much as Cagianello warmed up the gym. The Dutchwomen won the Liberty League Championship at RPI, earning 710 points to win their first title since 1997, ending Hamilton's reign as the seven-time consecutive league champions dating back to 1998. Union won the 400 medley relay with a time of 4:06.7, led by Amy Nestlerode (Endicott, NY/Union-Endicott), Brianne Phillips (West Hartford, CT/Conard), Sydnie Wells (Bolton Landing, NY/Bolton Central) and Christa White (Washington, DC/Choate Rosemary Hall). Union also won the 200 medley relay, with Nestlerode, Phillips and White joined by Mary Larkin (Conklin, NY/Susquehanna Valley) with a meet record time of 1:52.79. Larkin won the 100 fly at 59.96, and Phillips took the 100 breast at 1:09.90 and 200 breast at 2:32.65.

Felix was impressed.

“Breaking the 200 IM mark really excited me, with the new meet record,” said Felix. “It was the first swim on Saturday morning, and we got on a roll from there. That time was four seconds faster then a year ago. Our divers stepped up too. The final swim that really helped us was the 200 fly, where we were 1-2-3 and had four of the top seven in that event. This was a team effort all the way.”

On the men's side, Union's Kevin Kewin (Brockport, NY/Brockport) was named Co-Rookie of the Meet. Kewin finished third in the 200 IM with a time of 1:69.59, and helped Union to a second place finish in the 400 medley relay. He was joined by D.J. Hogenkamp (East Aurora, NY/East Aurora), Pat Caniff (Latham, NY/Shaker), and Adam Bisogni (Ithaca, NY/Ithaca) for a time of 3:43.18. Hogenkamp was second in the 100 fly at 53.29 and Kewin was third at 54.42. Union had 732 points for a second place finish in the men's meet.

“Kevin swam four events for us and he was in the top five of virtually every swim,” said Felix. “He played a pretty big roll in the team score.”

The teams are idle until January 7 when Union hosts Hartwick and Springfield.

Posted on Dec 7, 2005

A Chemistry major with a 3.85 G.P.A., Wayman had 51 tackles and 39 solo tackles for the Dutchmen this season. He also had 7.5 tackles for losses totaling 50 yards, five sacks for 40 yards, two pass break-ups, two fumble recoveries and a forced fumble. Union was 11-1, won the Liberty League Championship, and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Division III Championship Tournament. Union was 10-0 during the regular season, the ninth undefeated regular season in school history.

Wayman is from Ballston Lake, NY and attended Burnt Hills High School.

He is the second Union fall athlete honored by this program, joining senior women's soccer player Erika Eisenhut.

The Academic All-America® Teams program honors 816 male and female student-athletes annually who have succeeded at the highest level on the playing field and in the classroom.  Individuals are selected through voting by CoSIDA, the College Sports Information Directors of America; a 2,000-member organization consisted of sports public relations professionals for colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

To be eligible, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.20 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director.  Since the program's inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America honors on more than 14,000 student-athletes in Divisions I, II, III and NAIA covering all NCAA championship sports.

ESPN The Magazine – winner of the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence – is a provocative and innovative sports publication.  Full of insight, analysis, impact and wit, the oversized bi-weekly with a circulation of 1.85 million looks ahead to give fans a unique perspective on the world of sports.

For more information about the Academic All-America Teams program, including the entire listing of the University and College teams, visit www.cosida.com.

Posted on Dec 6, 2005

A group of 29 Union College students spent the past week rebuilding homes, schools and churches in some of the most devastated areas of New Orleans.

As they spent their days nailing together new building frames, memories were hammered into their minds.

Union College student Marty O'Brion said, “You see everything on the news, you knew what was going on, but once you get down there, it was just more personal.”

The students said they worked each day from dusk until dawn, but that their work barely scratched the surface of the rebuilding process.

Union College student Kathryn Desorrento said, “Words can't explain what the conditions are. We met people who were living in their homes without electricity and running water just because they want to be at home.”

Now that the students are home, they said having had the chance to rebuild part of the Big Easy was an early holiday gift.

“We feel like they gave us something rather than us going down to help them,” said Desorrento.

The students also said much more needs to be done.

Union College student Laura Pittenger said, “We did as much as we could in the amount of time that we had, but it's just that people are needed down there.”

The students said if given the chance, they would gladly return to New Orleans and to the people who need their help.

Posted on Dec 4, 2005

Stephen Ainlay doesn't take over as Union College's 18 th president until June, but already there's good news coming from the campus as a result of his impending stewardship.

College spokesman Bill Schwarz was quoted in the Gazette Thursday as saying that Ainlay has “made clear” his intentions to “improve town-gown relations” in Schenectady. Schwarz himself spoke more supportively than anyone at Union has in the past about Mayor Brian Stratton's proposal for the college to pay the city for police and fire services.

Because Union is a nonprofit institution, it has never had to pay any property tax to the city. And yet, according to Stratton, the college consumes roughly $500,000 a year worth of police and fire services alone. That's based on the 275 times fire or emergency medical crews responded to calls at the campus in 2004, and the 207 times police were called there.

Stratton left few stones unturned in his quest for revenue during his first two years in office, and Union – where his wife worked until recently – was no exception. That's to his credit, even if he's yet to reap any benefit from his effort. Obviously, the college is in the midst of a transition, with longtime president Roger Hull resigning last spring. Interim President James Underwood has been understandably reluctant to make a major commitment to the city, and Stratton has been wise not to press for one. It appears, at last, that his patience may pay off.

As we've noted before, it seems only fair for a well-endowed college like Union to kick in a little of what it costs the city. Colleges in other cities have been doing likewise, and even though the Schenectady's financial fortunes have taken a turn for the better since Stratton took office, there's little question that it still needs all the help it can get.

Posted on Dec 4, 2005

Hundreds of volunteers from churches across Louisiana and beyond swarmed all day Saturday over a wrecked sister church deep in New Orleans' flood zone, hoping to start its healing and that of the desolate neighborhood beyond with a furious outpouring of free, cooperative labor.

By some counts, nearly 1,000 crisply organized volunteers from LaPlace to Los Angeles laid gloved, healing hands on Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, which drowned under nine feet of water from Hurricane Katrina. More to the point, they went after the church's ruined sanctuary and first floor with crowbars and power tools. In a ritual familiar to thousands of homeowners, they tossed furniture and carpet, muscled kitchen equipment out the door and gutted walls to the studs.

Donated heavy equipment bulldozed the rubble into growing piles curbside.

The workers were assembled by PRC Compassion, a network of evangelical churches and nonprofits based in Baton Rouge that sprang into existence after Katrina to funnel aid into the storm zone.

Shortly after the storm, the group began pouring truckloads of supplies into disaster areas, then offered displaced New Orleanians housing through two sites in Baton Rouge.

PRC Compassion's roots are thickest in Louisiana, which is covered with independent Christian churches. But aid has flowed to the agency from groups far afield, including Focus on the Family, the potent evangelical educational and political organization in Colorado Springs. Help has also come from the St. Louis, Mo.-based Living in the Word Ministry of evangelist Joyce Meyer, said Gene Mills, one of the founders of PRC Compassion.

Born spontaneously in response to sheer need, PRC Compassion is driven by relationships — by pastors networking rapidly with other pastors, then hurrying help to target areas, said Mills.

Its congregations are both black and white. In their effort Saturday, they reached out to help the Rev. Fred Luter, a popular minister who turned around a dying church in the mid-1980s and who works easily across racial and denominational lines.

Now revitalized into a powerhouse congregation, Luter's predominately African-American church had begun to stabilize and reclaim its neighborhood around the 2500 block of Franklin Avenue. It invested in a new Family Life Center to shelter and occupy neighborhood children with sports and safe activities. It had begun to renovate a public playground next door. Before Katrina, nearly 7,000 people worshipped there every weekend, Luter said.

Raring to return

PRC Compassion's strategy recognized that Luter's was a key church to target as a priceless asset to its neighborhood. Helping Luter now would permit his church to help others later, said Mills.

“He wants to be here. Once he gets back online, he's going to be a machine. He'll turn around all kinds of lives,” Mills said.

Saturday's effort was also a coming-out for a new local enterprise, an alliance of evangelical pastors calling itself the Greater New Orleans Pastors Coalition.

Formed out of a series of post-Katrina conversations hosted by the Rev. Dennis Watson of Celebration Church, the group has assembled dozens of black and white pastors previously not used to working together — some even chronically suspicious of each other — into a group that seems determined to overlook differences and harness their resources to aid post-Katrina New Orleans, Watson said.

They include names like the Revs. Mike Mille of White Dove Fellowship in Harvey, David Crosby of First Baptist Church of New Orleans and Bishop Paul Morton of Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, said Watson.

Members of that organization hope to help rebuild each other's churches, “and from our rebuilt churches, we'll send out teams into our neighborhoods to rebuild homes,” said Watson.

A charismatic pastor

In preparation for their day of reclamation Saturday, volunteer coordinators by dawn had pitched several enormous tents in the church parking lot to shade workers during breaks, and from which to dispense piles of gloves, safety glasses, masks and disposable coveralls.

Stacks of power tools stood ready to be seized. New wheelbarrows were tipped against a fence. There were brooms by the bundle. Joe Cobb and other members of The Healing Place, a Baton Rouge Church, stirred a massive pot of chili for 500 volunteers, served by Janice Cook and friends from New Wine Fellowship in LaPlace. That was supplemented by jambalaya, boxes of fresh produce, and pastries.

On arrival, volunteers were organized into teams, given a leader and specific assignments inside the church's sanctuary or its relatively new, but now destroyed, Family Life Center next door.

Volunteers included Tyresha Williams, a medical records manager from Cottonwood Christian Center in suburban Los Angeles. She is a member of the fourth relief team her church has sent to New Orleans, she said.

Nearby, Mike Simon and Maura Pine, students from Union College in Schenectady, New York, both asthmatics, remained outside the moldy church, dispensing tools and performing other chores. They were among 29 students from Union who flew down on break to help out with Katrina relief and then heard about Saturday's work project, they said.

As hundreds of volunteers took lunch breaks in shifts Saturday, Luter circulated through his parking lot in disposable overalls, greeting and thanking them, telling the story of his church and listening to their stories.

Luter now lives in Birmingham and travels the South preaching in a different pulpit each week, he said. His congregation is scattered all over the country. But next month he has arranged to preach regularly at First Baptist New Orleans and in Baton Rouge on the first and third Sundays of each month, and in Houston regularly on the second and fourth Sundays.

“The lesson of all this is how short life is and how the things we once enjoyed can be taken away in so short a time,” he said.

“That, and now this: That we can do great things together if we just put aside our petty differences.”

Posted on Dec 1, 2005

The proposal that Union College voluntarily pay the city for police and fire protection is “compelling” and “important,” a college spokesman said Wednesday as he praised Mayor Brian U. Stratton's pitch for financial help from nonprofits.

But no decision will be made on the proposed payment of lieu of taxes (PILOT) until at least June, when new college president Stephen Ainlay takes over, college spokesman Bill Schwarz said.

Schwarz declined to discuss whether Ainlay has been persuaded by Stratton's figures, but said he is “committed to improving town-gown relations. He's made that clear to us.”

He added that current college officials were impressed by Stratton's argument that Union should pay for fire and police protection. Stratton had estimated that cost at $500,000, including benefits.

“This is a different approach, a compelling approach,” Schwarz said. “We are absolutely committed to reviewing the proposal at length. We are certainly looking forward to vetting the proposal.”

Stratton said he proposed the fire and police protection payment because he wanted a PILOT that was grounded in actual figures.

His proposal details the number of times police and firefighters responded to calls for help from Union College. In 2004, the fire department was called to the college 275 times for fire or emergency medical services, while the police department went to campus 207 times. Cost of fire department protection was estimated at $239,000, or an average of $869 per visit. The police department's costs were estimated at $240,000 to $250,000, or about $1,183 per visit.

“This isn't just, 'give us this money and we'll take some off the top for plowing,' ” Stratton said. “This is police and fire protection. I think I'm on solid ground.”

Schwarz seemed to agree.

“There's no question this is important,” he said. “We do have a very good relationship with the city, we want to continue that, and we want to make sure we do contribute.” Stratton said he's heartened by that response.

“The fact that there's a willingness to engage in a dialogue on the subject can be interpreted as nothing but positive,” he said. “The college has at least expressed a willingness to talk. They have not dismissed it.”

He doesn't plan to push the college to make a decision before Ainlay takes over, he added. “[Interim] President James Underwood made it clear he's not going to encumber a new administration,” Stratton said.