BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | JUNE 16, 2009 7:11 AM

The Prime Time League got off to a fast start on Monday in North Liberty as two incoming Iowa freshmen took to the pace quickly inside the new gym of the North Liberty Community Center.

Cully Payne of Schaumburg, Ill., and Eric May of Dubuque were pitted against each other for most of the game in their first competitive action since signing their letters of intent with the Hawkeyes.

Payne, whose Imprinted Sportswear/Goodfellow Printing team took a 89-74 win, was upbeat about the game as well as his newfound home in Iowa.

“It was a good win,” he said. “I’ve been up here for two weeks, and I really like it.”

The two Hawkeyes-to-be guarded each other for most of the game, but it was May who won the individual battle, pouring in 20 points, 12 of those after halftime for Mike Gatens Real Estate/McCurry’s.

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Even with the competition, the two seem to be readily anticipating the upcoming season together.

“Me and Eric have been together for the past two weeks, so we’ve kind of developed a friendship,” Payne said. “We’re going to be good.”

Payne managed the game well, controlling the ball and setting up the offense each time down as well as handling constant pressure from the defense which he easily broke down on his way to the hoop, on the way to a 12-point, three-assist performance.

Neither of the young additions to Iowa seemed fazed by the competition; each roster was filled with current and former college players, some of whom are stars in their own right. May noticed the difference right away, not that it changed the way he played.

“Speed. It’s a lot quicker,” May said. “Everybody is a good player on the court. There are no bad players out here.”

The speed may have been a factor early in the game for May, but once the tempo became more natural, he really turned it on en route to the huge second half he had, highlighted by a dunk off of a Payne turnover.

“I got into the flow of the game a little more, but I also haven’t played in a couple days,” May said. “So it was nice to get out here and get the dust off.”

If there was any dust, it was gone quickly. Monday night’s performances from both May and Payne made the losses from the Hawkeyes’ tumultuous spring a little easier to swallow.

Other Hawkeyes joining the new guys on the court were redshirt freshman-to-be John Lickliter, who played with May for Gatens/McCurry’s, and sophomore-to-be Aaron Fuller and senior-to-be Devan Bawinkel joined Payne on Imprinted/Goodfellow.

Bawinkel was quiet most of the night, scoring only three points on a first-half 3-pointer, and Fuller finished the game with eight points on 4-for-9 shooting for Imprinted/Goodfellow in the win.

Lickliter went 0-for-2 from the field with one assist in the loss.

With one game under their belts, the two young Hawkeyes are on their way to being ready to compete with the best the Big Ten has to offer.

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | JUNE 17, 2009 7:20 AM

After months of strenuous training and competing filled with many highs and lows, the Iowa women’s track and field team’s 2009 campaign ended with the conclusion of the NCAA outdoor championships on June 13.

The third day of competition in Fayetteville, Ark., saw two of Iowa’s three entries, sophomore Karessa Farley and senior Renee White finish in 17th and 14th places in their respective events. Farley, who placed sixth in the 60-meter hurdles at the NCAA indoor championships, was unable to repeat the All-American performance.

White, meanwhile, capped an impressive senior outdoor season in which she shattered the Big Ten and Iowa school record in the triple jump with a monstrous performance at the Big Ten championships, where she jumped 43-103⁄4 for the conference title. The jump ranked 10th in the nation.

Iowa head coach Layne Anderson was pleased with the way his squad responded after a last-place finish in the Big Ten indoor meet. Even though the Hawkeyes didn’t manage to get themselves out of the last place in the Big Ten during the outdoor portion of the season, there were plenty of good things to find.

“I felt the outdoor season was better overall, just not quite at NCAAs,” Anderson said. “We got a little more experience and a little more comfortable in each event.”

The entire team did better during the second half of the season, he said, and there was no one athlete he could single out as being the only improved one of the bunch.

“It’s hard to pinpoint any one person because I felt we really did get better across the board,” he said.

The important thing going forward for Iowa will be to build off the base of solid young talent it has in its favor. Those such as Farley, freshmen Betsy Flood and McKenzie Melander, and sophomores Hannah Roeder and Bethany Praska will be catalysts for the team.

The Hawkeyes will miss White and fellow seniors Racheal Marchand and Mandy Chandler, who brought a lot to the team (in Chandler’s case, the entire throwing squad).

“I will definitely miss my past head coach and bonding with the team,” White said after four years at Iowa.

The Hawks will have a very good chance to replace the losses with their recruiting class, which, between transfers and new freshmen, will be large. Headlining the class is graduate transfer student Megan Lessard from Columbia.

“She is someone who can come to our program or any program in the country and be an All-American right away,” Anderson said. “We’ll definitely have some weapons to work with going into next season.”

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | JUNE 18, 2009 7:21 AM

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When Iowa swimming head coach Marc Long came to the Hawkeyes’ summer camp in 1983, the program was the hottest team in the Big Ten, fresh off back-to-back Big Ten championships in 1981 and 1982. Since then, Long earned himself six All-American awards and two Big Ten championships as a Hawkeye, and he now finds himself running the camp for the fourth year.

The camp, which is held at the Field House pool, is made up of two sessions for kids between the ages of 9 and 17, with this week being the first of the two.

Each day consists of two-to-three training sessions a day, a mix of everything from dryland training to time in the pool, where the campers are able to get hands-on help from the Iowa coaching staff and athletes.

Growing up in Cedar Falls, Long was a self-described “small-town kid” whose team didn’t have the kind of things a Big Ten university could provide. Through the weeklong camp, he hopes to provide that for kids with similar backgrounds.

“We do a lot of things that these kids don’t have access to with their home teams,” Long said.

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One of those is a personal DVD of the swimmer that the coaches take to analyze their stroke and work out any kinks in order to improve. Also, there are presentations on nutrition and strength training for the campers to participate in.

When Long came to the camp 26 years ago, he remembers being amazed at the college facilities and the attention he got during his time there.

“I still think it’s a neat experience to come to a university facility and experience and see the different ways we can coach,” Long said.

Accompanying the coaching staff with the campers are some of Long’s Hawkeye swimmers. Junior Hilary Leigh is helping out with the camp while staying on campus during the summer months.

“It’s interesting coming from the collegiate level and having to simplify things so much,” Leigh said. “We’re trying to really break down every element of each stroke to make it as good as possible.”

The difference comes in the intricacy with which Division-I swimmers critique their own stroke and technique. By comparison, the younger swimmers are just learning the proper way to get themselves through the water.

During Long’s visit, the Iowa pool was one of the best in the Big Ten. Now, while young swimmers methodically glide through the water back-and-forth through their lanes to the soundtrack of their coach’s stern instruction, it is easy to tell the new facility being built is eagerly anticipated.

“The place is a bit antiquated,” Long said.

For now though, the camp will continue to go on in the same place that Long came to for extra instruction over two decades ago with the hope the camp might help one of the 150 campers in attendance to a similar road of success

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | FEBRUARY 19, 2009 7:51 AM

The hurdles event is one of precision. One small mistake can make the difference between first and last place.

Karessa Farley knows this.

Last week at the Iowa State Classic, she was perfect, clearing the 60-meter hurdles with ease en route to an 8.30 finish.

The time earned the Hawkeye sophomore first place, but maybe more importantly, ranks as the best time ever for an Iowa women’s hurdler.

“It felt good,” Farley said. “For some reason, I wasn’t nervous. I was able to go out and ran fast.”
For someone who is described by her coach Layne Anderson as shy and soft-spoken, the record was a big statement.

Born in Bridgetown, Barbados, she came to Iowa upon being offered a scholarship out of Queen’s College High School, where she was named high-school athlete of the year as a senior while also being crowned the 100-meter hurdles champion.

While for her the cold weather has taken some getting used to, part of her decision to come to Iowa was that she felt comfortable with then-coach Victor Houston, also a native of Barbados.

No stranger to big meets, Farley competed in both the Central American and Pan American Junior Games while in high school. She managed to run a 8.46 at the Meyo Invitational before her freshman season at Iowa was cut short by injury.

That time ranked as fifth in school’s history before last weekend.

After redshirting during the outdoor season because of injuries, Farley came into this season with a new mindset based on working harder and keeping track of her health.

“I started to take better care of myself all the time,” she said. “I started to pay more attention to my body.”

Saying this while drying off from a dip in the ice tub, with two more bags of ice in her hand, it was evident that she has stuck with this mentality.

She also has worked with her coaches to focus more on her technique.

“The main thing for me is keeping my arms moving and sprinting between the hurdles,” Farley said.
The new mindset has paid off. The time from this past weekend also provisionally qualified Farley for the NCAA national meet, which Anderson believes she will find herself at eventually, if not this season.

“It’s just a matter of time for Karessa; she should be at the national meet soon,” he said.

By shaving a couple of fractions of a second off her time from the Iowa State Classic, she will be assured a chance to compete at nationals.

The Big Ten championship meet on Feb. 28 will be her last chance to automatically qualify — she will sit out this weekend’s Iowa Invitational in order to rest her legs.

Farley is taking it easy this week by concentrating on light workouts and opting to continue to perfect the technique that can be so difficult. She will, of course, continue with ice baths and training-room sessions.

Farley will need another “rocket start,” as Anderson described the beginning of her race last weekend, in order to better her performance and continue to set records.

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | FEBRUARY 24, 2009 7:29 AM

In 2008, the Iowa women’s track and field team had four All-Americans. Coming into this season, only one of those four, senior Racheal Marchand, returned.

The makeup of this year’s team is much different. Losing that much talent to graduation can be devastating for a team to handle, but luckily for Iowa, it has a solid group of underclassmen to lead the way for the next few years.

In previous seasons, freshmen and sophomores have not had as much asked of them, but this year’s crop of youth hasn’t felt any added pressure.

“We have an absolutely great staff of coaches who don’t put that much pressure on us,” Iowa sophomore Bethany Praska said.

The lack of pressure and chance to compete more often has allowed the women to blossom on the track. Nowhere else is this more evident than in the middle- and long-distance events, home of the lone all-American, Marchand.

In most meets this year, Iowa’s top finishers in those events have been Marchand, followed by a swarm of young Hawkeyes not far behind. Seniors such as Marchand have gone out of their way to help the younger women in their first couple years on the team.

When Karessa Farley got hurt during her freshman year, she turned to the older women for help.
“They have been very supportive and were great in helping me to get back to the track,” said Farley, now a sophomore.

The support doesn’t stop there. Praska spoke of a “mothering” attitude around the team in which each group of upperclassmen takes care of those below them.

“If you get to a meet and are a little nervous, they will sit you down and talk to you to get rid of that fear,” Praska said about the older girls.

That is a major asset for a freshman such as Betsy Flood, who describes herself as a very nervous person by nature before a competition.

This is the same Flood that Iowa head coach Layne Anderson describes as having “the talent and level of commitment to be an All-American.”

She’s not the only one the coach feels that way about. The feeling on the team is the freshman and sophomore classes can be compared with those containing former All-Americans Kineke Alexander and Meghan Armstrong.

“They’ve come in, and they’re at about the same level,” Anderson said.

Along with Praska, Farley, and Flood are other standouts — including freshmen Mckenzie Melander and Nicole Erickson and sophomores Tiffany Hendricks and Amanda and Lauren Hardesty.

The group has come together through the bonding of dinners out and long trips on the road. This team, however, is even closer. Many of the members are neighbors, and Flood even said she doesn’t have many friends who aren’t on the team.

The philosophy of the coaches paired with the general demeanor of the team has produced an atmosphere in which the young members of the team can prosper.

“We all know that we don’t have to compete like freshman and sophomores.” Praska said, “We can step up and compete with juniors and seniors at any school.”

That confidence permeates graduation years.

“I feel that there is a lot of potential in everyone, we can do big things together,” Flood said.
This weekend’s Big Ten championships in Bloomington, Ind., will be another chance for Flood, Praska, Farley, and the rest to try to put their names next to Alexander, Armstrong, Marchand, and all the rest of the great Hawkeye runners to come through Iowa.

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | FEBRUARY 27, 2009 7:30 AM

Leading up to a championship meet, it is a given that coaches would stress to their athletes about good technique and taking care of their bodies.

Iowa women’s track and field head coach Layne Anderson has added confidence to the list of things needed to prepare his team for this weekend’s Big Ten indoor championships in Bloomington, Ind.

“We’ve been looking at the season as a whole, just really reflecting on the successes we’ve had,” Anderson said.

There has been plenty to reflect on. Since the beginning of the season on Jan. 17, the team has competed well, with almost everyone on the team earning a personal best in her event.

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One of those top performers, senior Mandy Chandler, feels her best performances are still to come after a great meet a week ago at the Iowa Invitational.

“I feel like I’ve been training well and peaking at the right time.” Chandler said. “It’d be great to beat some people who have finished higher than me in the past.”

Sophomore Bethany Praska went to the Big Ten meet last year and feels more relaxed going into the weekend.

“I definitely know what to expect with the atmosphere and everything else that goes along with a meet like that,” Praska said.

Someone who will feel right at home this weekend is senior Renee White, last year’s Big Ten indoor triple jump champion. By winning last year White became one of 30 Big Ten champions in Iowa’s history.

When asked about the meet, White was cool and collected.

“I trust my preparation, and I trust my coach, and I’m just excited to see what the team and I do this weekend,” she said.

The Hawkeyes have traditionally done well at the championships, finishing as high as third as a team in 2004.

This year, Iowa hopes to add a few more names to that list of champions and have a good chance with such runners as senior Racheal Marchand and sophomore Karessa Farley performing well in their events lately and being well rested after not competing Feb. 20 at the home meet.

Joining those two will be 16 other Hawkeyes, all of whom make Anderson feel confident himself.

“We’re excited about the 18 we’re taking,” Anderson said. “They’ve put themselves in a position to compete well.”

Anderson and his staff have been doing all they can to ensure that those going perform as well as they can.

“We’re doing everything we can to give them a boost of confidence.” Anderson said.

Now coming into the biggest meet of the season, the Hawkeyes have been focused, enjoying the light workouts before heading to Bloomington on Thursday.

While confidence is an important component, the athletes still have to run their races and Anderson knows this.

“We’ll see where we’re at when we load up the bus on Sunday to come home,” he said.

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | MARCH 3, 2009 7:20 AM

Finishing last at the Big Ten indoor championships is not what Iowa women’s track and field head coach Layne Anderson expected when his squad left for Bloomington, Ind., on Feb. 26.

But with a team short on experience and numbers, that is what happened over the weekend.
The meet was not a total loss for the team, though.

Sophomore Bethany Praska scored points for Iowa, finishing sixth in the 600 meters with a time of 1:31.08. Senior Renee White earned three points for her team with a third-place finish in the long jump. Sophomore Karessa Farley made it to the finals of the 60-meter hurdles after posting a time of 8.35 in the prelims but failed to finish the final race when she fell going over a hurdle.

Also scoring in the meet was the distance-medley squad of freshmen Betsy Flood, McKenzie Melander, sophomore Tiffany Hendricks, and senior Racheal Marchand. The Hawkeye relay team came in third place with a time of 11:27.34.

Marchand, competing in the final Big Ten meet of her career, blazed past the field for second in the 5,000 meters with a collegiate-best time of 15:55.70 that also serves as an automatic qualifier for the NCAA indoor meet.

The time was only 0.07 of a second behind Wisconsin’s Gwen Jorgensen, who took first.

“I was going out to win the 5K,” Marchand said. “But I was happy getting second because the woman I lost to was very good.”

Iowa’s finish was a reflection of the work still left to be done by this young Hawkeye squad.

Anderson feels as though the addition of some more experience to the team will help them become more competitive going into the outdoor portion of the season.

“It’s hard to enjoy individual achievements when the team doesn’t do well,” he said. “We’ve got to develop everyone and improve in a lot of different areas.”

Certainly looking forward to the second half of the 2009 season are the Hardesty sisters, Amanda and Lindsey. The two posted collegiate bests, Amanda Hardesty in the 3,000 meters and Lauren Hardesty in the 800. The two make up a core of the team Anderson hopes will continue to improve.

The rest of the Hawkeyes will be looked to even more with the departure of a major point scorer such as Marchand, who is now deciding between whether to continue her running career post-college.

So far, Iowa has recruited eight scholarship athletes and hopes to have two more to go along with the 10 non-scholarship athletes it hopes to bring in during the fall semester.

Marchand leaves with some words of wisdom for both the incoming and current Hawkeyes.

“It never gets easy in the Big Ten,” she said. “It only gets harder.”

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | JULY 14, 2009 7:15 AM

Even though the matchup of Iowa’s two sophomore guards was seemingly the evening’s highlight on Monday, the past and the future of Hawkeye basketball stole the show.

The combination of incoming Iowa freshman Brennan Cougill and former Hawkeye Darryl Moore proved to be the difference for Vinton Merchants in a 105-103 victory over Jill Armstrong of Lepic-Kroeger Realtors.

Iowa sophomore Anthony Tucker, one-half of the obvious attraction on the court, dropped 19 points on four 3-pointers in the first half against Armstrong while managing the game well en route to the win.

Cougill poured in 35 points, most of which came in the paint off of second-half chances and hard-nosed battling in the post against former Drake player Aliou Keita. He did have one 3-pointer in the first half, which reminded the crowd in the North Liberty Community Center that he is no one-trick pony.

The Sioux City native still believes he has work to do though before the 2009-10 season gets into gear.

“I thought I played well, battled down low,” he said. “I air-balled a free throw, but there’s always something to work on and get my legs back under me a little bit this summer.”

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Moore, a 1998 graduate of Iowa, had 18 points of his own highlighted by a monster dunk in the first half over one of the Armstrong players. The solid overall play of the old-timer made it feel like Bill Clinton was still in office, as he took over the game from the start.

Cougill, just entering his first season as a Hawkeye, has learned a lot from playing with Moore.

“He’s just been telling me how physical the Big Ten can be and the sort of things you can get away with under the hoop that you might not have in high school,” Cougill said.

Iowa sophomore Matt Gatens, who made up the other half of the evening’s attraction with Tucker, had a quiet night. His shot was off, with many of his attempts falling off the front of the rim on his way to a 3-point performance.

“It was difficult,” he said. “I tried to regroup at halftime, but I couldn’t quite get my legs under me.”

With a rough time putting the ball in the hoop, the City High product focused on setting up his teammates, tallying 10 assists.

Cougill is not the only one to get a few tips from an older guy. Half of Gatens’ teammates are ex-college players who have proven to be helpful.

“Guys like Matt Schneiderman have been here before,” Gatens said. “They’ve been here before and been through college and had success in college, so to watch how hard they play all the time is beneficial.”

The game was a 20-point blowout in Vinton’s favor for most of the night, but Armstrong turned it on late in the second half, pulling within two at the buzzer on the third-consecutive 3-pointer from UNI-bound Matt Morrison.

“Matt had a great game, especially at the end with those 3s,” Gatens said.

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | SEPTEMBER 10, 2009 7:15 AM

Garrett Dunn has always been the tall kid.

You’ve seen his type —standing in the back middle of the class picture, a head above everyone else. The one with the awkward lean in his neck from craning over friends and feet too big to buy shoes at a traditional footwear store.

Usually, these kids are also the awkward ones who trip over themselves and have difficulty getting around. At 6-8 and 18 years old, one would think Dunn would fall under the “all of the above” category.

But the freshman on the Iowa men’s tennis team is not your average 6-8 athlete.

A four-star recruit according to tennisrecruiting.net, Dunn was recruited heavily out of high school by Michigan State, Penn State, and Arizona before signing with the Hawkeyes.

After spurning the obvious sport for someone with his height — basketball — Dunn fell in love with tennis at a young age and focused on the game all through high school. He never tried another sport except for cross-country during those awkward middle school years, when he went for a trial run.

His height, while a definite oddity on a tennis court, has its own distinct advantages and disadvantages.

While he’s able to get around the court with relative ease, there are still some hiccups along the way.
“I feel like I’ve really grown into myself as time has gone on,” he said.

That’s saying a lot — Dunn was ranked 115th nationally by tennisrecruiting.net. He must have been able to move pretty well in high school as well, making further improvement a nightmare for opponents.

Of course, being 4 inches taller than his next tallest teammate has its advantages, too.

“In terms of pure reach, I am able to reach for a ball much farther than shorter guys,” Dunn said. “It also helps on my serve and getting certain angles without having to jump.”

While it may look as though he would have the advantage over any opponent he faces, what it really comes down to is preparation and being ready for players on the other side of the net.

That is another way in which he helps his team. While it’s rare to compete against someone his size, the challenge does arise, and no one is more ready for a tall opponent than the Hawkeyes, who practice against Dunn day in and day out.

Senior Patrick Dwyer sees the benefit of practicing against someone who may be similar to a future opponent.

“Guys like that are great at the net,” Dwyer said. “It’s just great for us as a team to be able to compete against a guy like Garrett everyday.”

For now, the freshman giant is focused on getting acclimated to school and a climate that doesn’t stay above 75 degrees year-round.

And of course there’s always those questions in the air.

“Everyone always asks me about my height,” Dunn said. “How tall I am. Do I play basketball. But I don’t care. It’s not a big deal. It’s just part of me.”

BY JAKE KRZECZOWSKI | SEPTEMBER 09, 2009 7:10 AM

When it comes time for college, normally most people want to get as far away from home as possible. Upon graduation, they normally get a job somewhere other than where they lived or went to school.

Nowadays, modern American life has made it increasingly difficult to find families who stay in one place from generation to generation.

But the Houghtons are one of those families.

Iowa head coach Steve Houghton grew up in Iowa City, and when it came time to depart for college, he went with what he knew rather than explore the unfamiliar.

Then when it came time to get a job, he found a way to stay close to the town he has always known.
Today, after 29 years on the job, he is called the “Dean of Big Ten Tennis.”

“It’s a reference thing to my longevity in the Big Ten,” he said.

And that longevity is nothing to thumb your nose at. In a era in which most college coaches have the same kind of job security offered to a Detroit factory worker, Houghton has proved that a coach can stay in one place as long as he likes.

Of the 11 teams in the Big Ten, Michigan State is the only team with a coach whose tenure comes anywhere close to Houghton’s. And the Spartans’ Gene Orlando started more than a decade after Houghton began with the Hawkeyes, in 1980.

Being from the town you coach in and recruit for can be a definite advantage when trying to woo the top prospects each year to come to Iowa City.

Senior Patrick Dwyer remembers his first impression of Houghton when he came on his visit to Iowa.

“You could tell how passionate he is,” Dwyer said. “Being from here and having played here, you can tell he is having fun with what he’s doing.”

Houghton says it is an asset to have coached in Iowa City for so long. When potential recruits come through they know that they will have Houghton as their head coach for all four years they are at Iowa.

“Recruits like that they will have the same coach for all four years, that I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

While it may seem small in the college decision-making process, stability can have a large effect on an 18-year-old from Sweden, Germany, or Canada. To recruits, Houghton becomes someone they can look to for help and guidance as they feel their way through their first year on campus and beyond.

“They’ll come to me if they need to buy something or need somewhere to eat — something like that,” Houghton said.

These small endeavors can overwhelm a first-year student-athlete at a big university, so Houghton’s familiarity with the area becomes an asset in not only recruiting but also in creating a family-like atmosphere within the team.

For the 29 years that he has coached at Iowa, he has played a father-type role while standing at the helm of the men’s tennis team, helping to intertwine many different nationalities and customs in the Hawkeye squad. And there doesn’t seem to be an obvious end in sight.

“I got the chance to stay here and have been here all 29 years,” he said. “I’ve loved every minute of it.”