Farm Report

SPORTS: SPORTS NOTEBOOK   For Men's Basketball, a Frosh Start They made it to the Final Four two years ago and won the Pac-10 championship last year. But for Stanford's men, the 1998-99 basketball season ended in disappointment -- with a second-round loss in the NCAA tournament. Now the dreams begin again: Stanford will face national power Duke in the November 11 season opener at a tournament in New York's Madison Square Garden. Six freshmen and two redshirts will try to fill the shoes of the five stalwarts who graduated last year. (The only returning starter: senior Mark Madsen.) One new face to watch is freshman Casey Jacobsen, a forward, who was California's high school player of the year.   A Boathouse to Call Their Own After decades of making do with temporary quarters on leased land, Stanford's crew and sailing teams will finally have a permanent home. Builders are expected to break ground by the end of the year on a new $3 million boathouse on the Bay in Redwood City. Alumni donors have already contributed money to purchase the site; fund raising continues for the building. The 18,000-square-foot, two-story structure will include bays for boats, a weight room, lockers and a classroom. Coaches hope the new facility will help them recruit athletes who might otherwise choose East Coast schools with better facilities.   She's En Garde for a Championship You could call Lisa Milgram a trailblazer, but she might prefer her new title: coach. Milgram, who served for three years as the assistant fencing coach, has been named head coach of the men's and women's fencing teams. She is the first woman to coach a men's sport at Stanford and the only one in the country to head a men's fencing program. During her time on the Farm, Stanford has finished third at the NCAA championships and first at NCAA regionals; four athletes have won individual NCAA titles. Milgram was a nationally ranked fencer in both foil and épée.   'Flying to a New Record Jenny Thompson hasn't stopped shattering records. The former Stanford swimmer broke an 18-year-old world mark in the 100-meter butterfly in August at the Pan Pacific Games in Sydney, Australia. The new time, 57.88, beat Mary T. Meagher's 1981 mark by five-hundredths of a second. Thompson, '95, is a six-time world champion who has captured five Olympic gold medals -- all of them in relay events. Her latest accomplishment comes at the ripe old age of 26 -- 10 years older than Meagher was when she set the record. Thompson continues to train with Stanford coach Richard Quick and hopes to swim at the 2000 Olympics.