Inside Sports
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Sports
Kansas students might not know Matthew Bowles, but martial arts competitors fear him.
Out of Trouble
Thursday
October 7, 1999
Section:
B
Page 1
SEE PAGE 8B
The NCAA reinstated the eligibility of two basketball recruits to play at Missouri.
SEE PAGE 3B
Baseball Playoffs
While the Rangers and Yankees took the day off in the AL, NL East champion Atlanta looked to even its series against Houston.
SEE PAGE 4B
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Kansas soccer players Melissa Downing, Mervi Kuititinen and Hilla Rantala exchange stares in the rivalry regarding who will win tonight's women's soccer game between the United States and
Country loyalty breeds soccer team feud
Finland. Kuittinen and Rantala are both from Finland, while Downing is friends with Shannon MacMillan of the U.S. World Cup championship team. Photo by Jay Sheperd/KANSAN
Some players won't cheer for U.S. World Cup team
By Chris Wristen
by Chris Wristen
sports@kansan.com
Kansas sportswriter
Post-World Cup fever has struck the Kansas women's soccer team, but tonight's game will be more personal for three Jayhawks.
When the U.S. women's World Cup championship team takes on Finland at 7 p.m. tonight at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., most of the cheers will be familiar. The chant of "U.S.A. U.S.A." is sure to be heard loud and clear — but not from junior forward Hilla Rantala or freshman midfielder Mervi Kuitinen.
Rantala comes from Vantaa, Finland, and Kuittinen to Jokikunta, Finland. Both will be decked in white and blue, Finland's colors. Both players also are friends with the team and are excited to see Finland play in the United States.
"I know everyone on the team really well," Rantala said. "It'll be awesome to see them play here, and just the fact that a small country is playing against the world champions is so awesome."
Coach Mark Francis said he was happy his Finnish players would have a chance to see their home country play.
"That's huge for them," Francis said. "They've got friends who play on the team. They're going to try to have time to see some of them while they're here. Hilla's been looking into it."
The chance to see their friends came Tuesday night when both players visited the team's hotel.
Although they will be rooting for their homeland, both think it is going to be tough for Finland to win.
"Well ... the U.S. is a pretty good team right now, but they'll have nothing to lose," Kuittinen said.
Both also expect a rivalry amongst their Kansas teammates to exist. The Kansas roster features three players
from Canada and one from Sweden. Rantala said she hoped some of them would be rooting for Finland as well.
"I don't know about these international students," Rantala said. "I don't know if they've chosen their side yet, but definitely some of the girls are going to be (on our side)."
On the other side of the ball is senior
midfielder Melissa Downing.
Through friends, Downing met U.S. player Sara Whalen and the two became friends, opening up the opportunity for her to tag along with the U.S. team during
See MIDFIELDER on page 2B
Players, fans eager for win against K-State
sports@kansan.com
By Mike Miller sports@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
By Mike Miller
The Wildcats have outscored the Jayhawks 212-63 during that span, including a 54-6 thrashing last year. Things have gotten so bad that some wonder if the series counts as a rivalry any more.
Kansas State's football dominance against Kansas the past six years has taken its toll on a once fierce in-state rivalry.
Kansas defensive back Kareem High knocks down a pass from a Southern Methodist receiver. The Joyhays defeated Southern Methodist 27-9 on Saturday. Photo by Eric Schirmm/Kansas
"We're a little embarrassed by the situation," wide receiver Harrison Hill said. "It's hard when the last three years you get your butts kicked by an in-state rival. When you think about it, it's not that much of a rivalry."
The games that haven't been competitive the past few years, but a rivalry can withstand a few lopsided scores.
Kansas leads the all-time series 61-30-5, including a 10-game win streak in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During those days, the game against Missouri was the one that mattered. The Wildcats were pushovers.
Things have changed since then.
And they've dominated the Jayhawks in the process. The team that used to be a guaranteed win is now a game that Jayhawk fans probably want to win more than any other game. Kansas coach Terry
K-State coach Bill Snyder has turned a floundering Wildcat program into a national power. The Wildcats have finished among the top 20 the last six years and have gone to six bowl games.
"I think that if you took a straw poll of which game you would most like to win I think it would be the K-State game," he said.
Allen thinks that fans want the 'Hawks to beat the Wildcats even more than Missouri.
Heather Scott, Manhattan freshman, said that even though she grew up rooting for K-State that she would cheer for the Jayhawks on Saturday — even if Kansas was a long shot.
"Some of my friends give me a hard time, but this is my school now," she said. "It's big because the fans kind of hate KU, but I've gotten the feeling being at KU that winning's not as important."
the dominance of Kansas basketball — the last time K-State beat Kansas was 1983 — seems to ease the agony of defeat for Kansas fans, but not for the football players.
"I think our fans are like 'Well, at least we have basketball,' " wide receiver Michael Chandler said.
But that irks Chandler because he's a football player at a basketball school. He's been at Kansas since 1995 and has experienced four Jayhawk losses by K-State. Like the 41 other Kansas natives on the football team, Chandler gets a little more excited to play the Wildcats because he thinks this could be the year Kansas wins.
That way he can stop getting ripped by his friends.
"I'd like to say it's the reason that I don't go home," Chandler said. "My high school had a lot of people that went to K-State — maybe it's because our school colors were purple — but I'd like to have bragging rights for one year."
Jayhawks stumble early, regroup to defeat Oklahoma
—Edited by Chris Hutchison
By Shawn Hutchinson
Kansan sportswriter
The Jayhawks, 12-4 overall and 3-2 in the Big 12, were coming off a confidence boosting 3-1 win against Texas Tech last Saturday. That was the first time the Jayhawks had ever beaten the Red Raiders, and Kansas was hoping to carry that momentum into yesterday's match
The Jayhawks snatched their secondstraight Big 12 Conference victory lastnight, defeating the Oklahoma Sooners 3-1 in Norman, Okla.
Consider the Kansas volleyball team on a roll.
against the Sooners.
"I can't explain the first game," Kansas coach Ray Bechard said. "I think we just came out a little sluggish. Once we netted."
The Sooners, though, had some momentum of their own to dish out. Oklahoma came out strong, battering the Jayhawks
for a 15-3 first-game victory.
game, we were steady the rest of the way"
Kansas was steady enough to take a 15-8 win in game two, a 15-9 win in game
three, and a match-clinching 15-2 win in game four.
The Jayhawks were led by senior middle blocker Amanda Reves, who belted 19 kills along with eight digs and four blocks in the match. Senior outside hitter Mary Beth Albrecht chipped in with 16 kills, while sophomore setter Molly LaMere paced the team with 51 assists. Junior outside hitter Sara Kidd led the team with a career-high 11 digs.
Kansas hit .377 for the match—a new school record for a four-game match. The previous four-game record was .336, set against Texas-Pan American on Sept. 20, 1996.
Kansas now has won three straight
against the Sooners, who dropped to 6-9 overall and 1-4 in the Big 12.
"Oklahoma was very physical," Bechard said. "But once we took them out of their game and rebounded from game one, we just turned it on from there."
The Jayhawks will return home to take on the Baylor Bears at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Horeisi Family Athletics Center. The Bears were 14-3 overall and 2-2 in the Big 12 heading into last night's home match against No. 14 Texas A&M.
The Jayhawks are 1-8 all time against the Bears and haven't beaten them since 1985.
Edited by Chris Hutchison
Volleyball team hard to topple in new arena
Hold on a second. Let's volley around a few thoughts.
You betcha.
Is this is a good thing?
Kansas' women's volleyball team was moved from Allen Fieldhouse, one of college's most prestigious arenas, and it's supposed to be happy? The Jayhawks lost 15,000 available seats, numerous bathrooms stalls and multiple nacho stands.
The new Horejsi Family Athletics Center was the best thing to happen to Kansas volleyball since it started enticing fans to games by offering more giveaways than Goodwill. Horejsi is Kansas' finest athletic building.
The fieldhouse has charm, "Phog" and 16,300 seats, but it is old and slowly decaying. Take away the new press box, which does not accommodate the majority of the fans, and Memorial Stadium has all the charm of wet toilet paper. Don't start talking about the weight room. Kansas' is so bad that every athlete
Jason Franchuk sports columnist sports@kansan.com
should consider a membership at Bally Total Fitness. The baseball stadium, Hoglund Ballpark, is nice after the renovations that have been made but still falls short of many other stadiums within the Big 12 Conference.
But Horejsi is different. It competes for admirers on a national level. A solid sound system, a beautiful volleyball-only court and close seats will allow Jayhawks coach Ray Bechard to compete for top recruits and build a nationally recognized program.
The fieldhouse is terrific — for basketball. When filled to capacity, the fieldhouse is a fascinating home-court advantage. Problem is, volleyball — let's be honest here — will hardly draw 16,000 fans. (Unless the game you went to took place prior to Late Night with Roy Williams.)
Now, the team has a cozy arena that can sit 1,300 fans closer to the action. All the noise is encapsulated so that when Mary Beth Albrecht hits a big kill, Horeksi still can get two-aspirinplease loud.
That could never happen with the small, distant crowds the volleyball team drew at the fieldhouse. When big plays were made the crowd still sounded from floor level as if it were being muffled with a gigantic pillow.
Bechard knows the psychological advantages of Horejsi with a rowdy crowd. Athletes jump higher. Hit harder. Feel more invincible.
Horeisi's first run at mystique came last Saturday when the Jayhawks beat Texas Tech in four games. It was the first time the program had defeated Texas Tech and the first time the Jayhawks had mustered even a game from the Red Raiders in three years. Want to know the first thing Texas Tech's coach said about the program's changes?
"I can't wait to go watch a basketball game again at Allen." Bechard said. "But we really like this place. This is our home."
"Their crowd seemed a lot louder tonight," he said.
This never would have been said at a volleyball game in the fieldhouse, where opposing coaches had to practice whispering in team huddles because the atmosphere could be as quiet as Watson Library.
Bob Dylan should have opened Horesei. Times they are a changin.'
The only amenity lacking at Horeksi is a big-screen video board.
No sweat. Now showing: Natural born killers - on their very own stage.
Franchuk is a Boulder, Colo., junior in journalism.