Farm Report

SPORTS: SPORTS NOTEBOOK In Michigan, Softball Strikes Out Forgive the Stanford softball team if it stays out of Michigan for a while. A pair of teams from the Great Lakes state rudely bounced the Cardinal from the NCAA Region 8 Championship in Ann Arbor, Mich., in May. Led by sophomore Jessica Mendoza, the Pac-10's softball player of the year, the team racked up a season record of 45-16 and finished fourth in the nation's toughest conference. Stanford entered the regional with a top seed and the goal of advancing to the Women's College World Series for the first time in school history. Sixth-seeded Central Michigan upset the Cardinal to open the tournament, though, and Michigan knocked Stanford out of the competition, ending the Cardinal season. Women's Water Polo Misses the Goal The women's water polo team raced to a 25-8 regular-season record, best in Stanford history, and hoped to capture its first-ever NCAA title in 2000. But a national semifinal loss to UCLA left the Cardinal in third place. Good thing the entire team gets another shot next season. All 13 women return to the pool in the fall, along with a pair of Olympians -- Brenda Villa, '02, and Ellen Estes, '00 -- who took the last two years off to compete on the Sydney-bound U.S. team. Another Year, Another Sears Cup If it weren't so remarkable, it might be almost monotonous: Stanford took home its sixth-straight Sears Directors Cup, which honors all-around athletic excellence, in June. The Cardinal entered the spring with a 194.5-point lead over second-place Michigan, then proceeded to pull away with a flurry of strong finishes. By June, Stanford owned a 273.5-point cushion. Cardinal teams enjoyed such a strong year -- 25 varsity squads played in the postseason -- that Stanford had the award sewn up long before the men's tennis team won the school's first national championship of 1999-2000 in May. For Women's Golf, a Best-Ever Finish A hole-in-one in the final round from All-American Stephanie Keever helped propel the women's golf team to second place in the NCAA. Stanford jumped from sixth to second on the last day of the tournament en route to its best-ever national finish. Keever, a junior who finished in fifth place individually, led the way, finding the cup on the par-3 13th hole at the Crosswater Club in Sunriver, Ore. Cardinal men's golf coach Wally Goodwin could have used a shot like that: his team missed the national tournament cut after losing a playoff hole to Cal in the West Regional held earlier in May.