THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2014
PAGE 7B
SOFTBALL
FILE PHOTO/KANSAN
Sophomore infielder Chaley Brickey fields a ground ball in a game against the UMKC Roos on April 24, 2013. The Jayhawks defeated the Roos 4-0.
Kansas returners hope to start season strong
AMIE JUST
sports@kansan.com
The winter storm that hit Lawrence on Tuesday isn't holding back the Kansas softball team from preparing for its season opener on Feb. 7.
The team is coming off of a successful 2013 season, the team's most successful season in more than 20 years. Kansas finished one game away of making it to the Women's College World Series. This season, the Jayhawks were voted at fourth place in the preseason Big 12 coaches' poll.
Helping the case for the Jayhawks are seven returners. Five of those come from the infield: senior Ashley Newman, junior Chanin Naudin, junior Maddie Stein, sophomore Calley Brickey and sophomore Kylee Kennedy. Newman, the senior leader, had a solid season last year, starting in 45 games
Newcomers to the infield are freshmen Taylor McElaney, Taylor Dodson and Lily Behrmann.
Stein put her slugging skills to bat last season, hitting .337 with 10 doubles and two home runs. She led the team with 49 RBIs, being just one of three players on the team to record 40 or more in the season.
white committing only four errors. On offense she hit a .331 with three triples and a double last season.
Naudin, a third baseman, was one of eight Jayhawks to hit higher than .300 last season. She hammered out seven doubles and seven home runs over the course of the season.
Brickey started 48 out of 50 games, while hitting 12 doubles, slugging four home runs and bringing in 24 RBIs. All of her efforts landed her on the 2013 All-Big 12 Second Team as a freshman.
The newcomers in the outfield, sophomore Shannon McGinley and freshman Katelyn Schumacher, will be great additions due to their high school success.
The two returning players
Central Florida, Kansas first opponent of the year, is coming off of a 29-25 season. The Jayhawks swing into action on Feb.7, spending the first five weeks of the season traveling before they host their home opener March 14-16.
— Edited by Julie Etzler
from the outfield are seniors Alex Jones and Taylor Hatfield. They have some work to do, due to the departure of Maggie Hull and the plethora of newcomers joining the squad.
Jones started 42 games as a centerfielder last season, racking up 14 assists and committing just three errors. Behind the plate she had a 324 batting average with 43 runs on 56 hits.
INTERNATIONAL
Olympic flame arrives after world's longest relay
MOSCOW — The Olympic flame reached Sochi Wednesday, following a 65,000-kilometer (39,000-mile) route, the longest in the history of the games.
During the journey, the torch relay reached the North Pole, went to the top of Europe's highest mountain, plunged into the world's deepest lake and was even taken into space by Russian cosmonauts. The torchbearers included a 101-year-old man.
The relay generated genuine public enthusiasm, featuring famous cultural figures, athletes and other celebrities, and drawing big crowds across Russia.
But it also has seen some spectacular gaffes, with the flame flickering out on dozens of occasions and, in some cases, even engulfing the bearers.
A look at some of the memorable moments of the Sochi Torch Relay:
It started in Moscow on Oct. 7
and stopped at more than 130 cities and towns across Russia. For most of the route, the flame traveled by plane, train, car and even reindeer sleigh, but about 14,000 torchbearers took part in the relay.
The torch reached the North Pole in October aboard a nuclear-powered icebreaker. The ceremony involved torch bearers from eight Arctic nations.
On Nov. 7, a rocket emblazoned with the emblem of the Sochi Games carried the torch to the International Space Station. Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazanskiy then took the torch on an unprecedented spacewalk Nov. 9. For safety reasons, the torch didn't burn aboard the space outpost.
In November, divers plunged into Lake Baikal, the world's biggest and deepest freshwater lake, with special torches burning underwater.
Russian mountaineers lit the torch atop Mount Elbrus, at 5,642 meters (18,510 feet) the highest mountain in Russia and Europe.
through Chechnya and other provinces in the restive North Caucasus, which have been engulfed by an Islamist insurgency that issued threats to the Olympics. No incidents occurred during the relay.
In December, 101-year-old table tennis referee Alexander Kaptarenko ran with the flame in Novosibirsk, becoming the oldest Olympic torchebeaker in history. He trained for his 200-meter run by jogging with a frozen salmon in his hand.
The torch relay has been marred by repeated cases of the flame flickering out. The first such incident occurred at the very start of the relay near the Kremlin. A security guard quickly took out his lighter and reignited the torch. Dozens of other such cases followed, drawing mockery and sardonic observations from some commentators.
In recent weeks, the relay went
Associated Press
FRANK WEIRICH/KANSAN
TENNIS
Jayhawks looks to continue streak against Buffaloes
TORI RUBINSTEIN
sports@kansan.com
The tennis team will try to keep the momentum going when it hosts the Colorado Buffaloes this Friday at the Jayhawk Tennis Center. The team enters Friday's match with a 2-0 record. The win against Nebraska marks the third time in 10 years that the team has taken down a top-50 ranked opponent.
Sophomore Maria Jose Cardona returns the ball to Liberty opponent Rebekah Jenkins. Cardona won the set 6-4, 6-2.
The Buffaloes come in with a record of 3-1, boasting impressive wins over Northern Colorado, Air Force and Colorado State.
Kansas will have some work to do against sophomore Alex Aiello and freshman Nuria Ormeno Ruiz of Colorado, who both come into Friday's match undefeated. Another force for the Buffs is doubles team Julyette Steur and Ashley Tiefel who are 4-0 on the spring season.
The key word for the team this year is confidence. As Coach Todd Chapman has previously stated, the girls are really starting to believe that they can compete with anyone. The motivation seems to be there for the Jayhawks after the big win against Nebraska.
In order to keep the success coming, Kansas will need strong performances by seniors Paulina Los and Claire Dreyer. Both are off to hot starts this spring and must continue their dominance in order for Kansas to keep rolling. Doubles team Maria Jose Cardona and Maria Belen Luduena are also ones to watch out for this year, winning their last
two matches including one against the nationally ranked Huskers.
Although conference play doesn't start until mid-March, the squad is preparing for the rigorous matchups. The Big 12 is stacked this season. The conference is home to six nationally ranked teams: Texas Tech, Texas, TCU, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Kansas State. These tough opponents will test the Jayhawks and give them a chance to show what they are made of.
After all, the team has
already proved that it can contend with ranked opponents. Conference play begins March 14 when the team will take on the Cyclones at Iowa State. After facing Colorado, the team will continue its four-game home stand at the Jayhawk Tennis Center with a doubleheader on Sunday, Feb. 9. The players will face Eastern Michigan at 10 a.m. and then go up against UMKC at 3:30 p.m.
Edited by Alec Weaver
Please join us for
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE DAY
Reporter - Leader - Editor of reporters who have won 18 Pulitzer Prizes including the first Pulitzers for online journalism
Honoring PAUL STEIGER
NATIONAL CITATION PRESENTATION & LECTURE Friday, February 7 • 10:30 a.m. • Alderson Auditorium, Kansas Memorial Union
2014 William Allen White Foundation National Citation Recipient
Wall Street Journal managing editor 1991-2007, during which newsroom staff won 16 Pulitzer Prizes; Wall Street Journal staffer for 26 years • Founding editor-in-chief/now executive chairman of ProPublica, which won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to an online news organization in 2010 and the first Pulitzer Prize awarded for stories not published in print in 2011 • Former chair of the Committee to
Protect Journalists, which advocates freedom of the press around the world · Member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Pulitzer Prize Board member 1999-2007, chairman 2006-07 Former business reporter, Washington correspondent and the business editor for the Los Angeles Times Member of the Council on Foreign Relations Lifetime Achievement Emmy Recipient for Business and Financial Reporting
KU WILLIAM ALEN WHITE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATIONS The University of Kansas