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FOOTBALL

Meet the Coach

PROMISING "COLORFUL" and “imaginative” game plans to come, Eugene Francis “Buddy” Teevens III beamed at film crews and reporters in the auditorium of Stanford’s Arrillaga Family Sports Center January 9 as he held up a team jersey with the number 02 on it. Donning the shirt, Teevens became the Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football, i.e., Stanford’s 31st head football coach.

“Of all the coaches I’ve ever hired, I don’t know [when] I’ve seen a better fit,” said athletics director Ted Leland, PhD ’83.

Teevens was tapped nine days after Tyrone Willingham accepted an offer from the University of Notre Dame, becoming that school’s first black head coach. In seven years at Stanford, Willingham compiled a 44-36-1 record. He took the Cardinal to four bowl games, including the 2000 Rose Bowl, and he never lost a Big Game. Willingham’s record last season was 9-3, including a 24-14 loss to Georgia Tech at the inaugural Seattle Bowl in December.

“In many quarters, [Willingham] was thought of more as a professor of football than as a coach,” former University President Donald Kennedy wrote January 5 in the New York Times.

“Tyrone has done a wonderful job,” Teevens said. “We expect to carry on the tradition that he’s established.”

The 45-year-old Teevens comes to Stanford with 23 years of college coaching experience, including head coaching jobs at the University of Maine, Dartmouth College and Tulane University. Most recently he was assistant offensive coordinator at the University of Florida, where he accompanied the Gators to four bowl games.

Teevens, Leland joked, is an FOT (friend of Ted’s). Leland hired him at Dartmouth in 1987, and Teevens won two Ivy League titles in his five years there. At Tulane, Teevens had a less successful run and was dropped as a result of his 10-45 record.

“I would not recommend the firing process to anyone,” he quipped in response to a reporter’s question about his tenure in New Orleans. Relaxed and grinning broadly, Teevens clearly enjoyed his first day on the job and his introduction to Bay Area media. “This is an easy crowd,” he lobbed when the questions lagged, and he vowed that football on the Farm would be “lots of fun and enjoyable to watch.” He frequently gestured to his wife, Kirsten, and two teenage children, Lindsay and Eugene IV, and said he and his family were “ecstatic to be here.” Teevens has signed a five-year contract for an undisclosed salary.

The new coach suggested that he will develop a more aggressive defense and implement the wide-open passing attack that characterized the Gators’ game. That drew an enthusiastic “Perfect!” from quarterback Chris Lewis, ’03, who predicted, “We’re going to be throwing the ball a lot.”

Teevens has a bachelor’s degree in history from Dartmouth, where he lettered in football and ice hockey. He was named Ivy League Player of the Year when he quarterbacked the Big Green to the league title in 1978.

VOLLEYBALL

'It Had a Fairy-Tale Sense to It'

AFTER THE STANFORD women’s volleyball team lost to Long Beach State, 3-1, in late September, first-year head coach John Dunning spoke candidly with his players in the locker room. “They’re better than we are. They deserved to win,” he remembers saying. “If you want to change this result, you have a lot of work to do. But we have time. We have two months left.”

His players were listening. Two months later, the Cardinal squad stormed through the NCAA tournament, dropping only three games in five matches. One last hurdle stood between them and the national title: a rematch with top-ranked and still unbeaten Long Beach State.

On December 15, before a San Diego crowd of 10,067, national player of the year Logan Tom and fifth-year senior setter Robyn Lewis led the Cardinal past the 49ers to capture Stanford’s fifth national championship, an NCAA record. And they did it in improbable fashion—a three-game sweep. “It was remarkable,” says Dunning. “It had a fairy-tale sense to it.”

Tom, ’03, led the match with 25 kills and finished the season with 621—a single-season Stanford record. Lewis, the only remaining player from the 1997 championship team, logged 56 assists to finish fourth on Stanford’s career assist list.

With the win, Dunning became the only Division I volleyball coach to garner national titles at two different schools. In 1985 and 1986, Dunning’s University of Pacific team captured the championship during his first two seasons as head coach. But this year’s team, he says, was special.

“I may not have ever had a team that was as good at carrying out a game plan,” he says. “They were very smart and they were motivated to do what they had to do to be successful.”

Seniors Michelle Chambers and Sara Sandrik, whose playing time was more limited than in previous years, excelled as defensive specialists. Volleyball Magazine’s freshman of the year, Ogonna Nnamani, thrived as Tom’s complement at outside hitter. Senior middle blocker Tara Conrad’s consistent play provided stability and versatility. “It was like a puzzle where the pieces actually fit,” Dunning says.

Stanford must overcome the loss of five seniors if it is to challenge again for the title. Dunning thinks it can. “You can’t replace people. But the good thing about sports is you don’t have to—it’s just a different puzzle. And we still have some extraordinary pieces.”

Sports Notebook

Vaulting to Prominence
The women’s gymnastics team handled the early part of its grueling schedule—seven of its 12 opponents are ranked in the top 25—by winning four of its first six meets. “Defeating Arizona [State] at their home was a huge, huge feat,” first-year head coach Kristen Smyth told the Stanford Daily. “This is the first time Stanford has won there.” The all-around consistency of Caroline Fluhrer has set the tone for the Cardinal squad. The sophomore posted a team-high score of 39.225 in the season-opening loss to Minnesota and, against Denver on February 3, recorded scores of 9.9 or better in the vault, bars and floor events.

Season Begins Swimmingly
Stanford’s swimmers and divers were top-ranked and unbeaten as of early February. The men’s squad, which garnered its record 20th consecutive Pac-10 championship last year, defeated Arizona and Arizona State to remain on pace for its 21st. On February 2, the women’s team improved to 7-0 by defeating ninth-ranked USC, its 12th dual-meet victory in a row. The women’s NCAA championships begin March 21 in Austin, Texas, and the men’s championships start March 28 in Athens, Ga.

For Football, 16 Strong Recruits
Twenty-eight days after Buddy Teevens was named head football coach, Stanford signed 16 of the 18 recruits who visited campus and received offers of admission. Eight of them are prep All-Americans. Standout members of the Class of 2006: Los Gatos High School quarterback Trent Edwards, one of the best in the nation at his position, and Julian Jenkins, a Georgia native considered the top defensive end in the South. Jenkins, who chose the Cardinal over Notre Dame, Michigan and defending national champion Miami, told the San Jose Mercury News he was impressed with Stanford’s academics. “I [visited] Stanford, and it was a climactic experience,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is the environment I want to be in.’”

Tower of Power
After winning five of its first six matches under new head coach Don Shaw, the men’s volleyball team suffered a five-game losing streak in early February. But that didn’t stop outside hitter Curt Toppel from putting up some big numbers. The 6-foot-8 junior is averaging a team-high 5.6 kills per game and is one of two players nationwide to record 30 or more kills in a match this year. Toppel, a two-time All-American who led the U.S. team to its first gold medal at the World University Games in Beijing last summer, posted matches of 50, 48 (twice) and 42 kills in his first two seasons with the Cardinal.

ATHLETICS

One Sport Isn't Enough? How About Two?

THEY GOT THEIR START in first grade.

First grade?

Lindsey Yamasaki’s family has the video to prove it. “I was such a ball hog,” says the 6-foot-1 forward/guard. “I would pass the ball, run real fast, yell ‘Ball!’ and get it right back. Then dribble to the corner, throw it, run and get it again. It was ridiculous.”

Teyo Johnson’s first-grade basketball coach used to guard him in scrimmages. “Other kids didn’t want to play against me,” says the 6-foot-7 forward and wide receiver.

Both athletes tried every sport in sight as youngsters—including soccer and gymnastics for Yamasaki and baseball for Johnson, who threw a 90-mph fastball as a high school pitcher. But come college recruiting days, they had to narrow their passions to two.

At Stanford, Yamasaki and Johnson succeed past legends who have played multiple varsity sports—among them football and basketball player Ernie Nevers, ’26, football and baseball players John Elway, ’83, and Mark Marquess, ’69 (now Stanford’s baseball coach), and football player and decathlete Bob Mathias, ’53. More recently, such athletes as Kristin Folkl, ’98 (volleyball and basketball), and Chad Hutchinson, ’99 (football and baseball), also have taken the two-sport challenge.

“The notion that student-athletes can achieve at the highest level in the classroom and in one or two intercollegiate sports has been and will continue to be a philosophy of Stanford athletics,” says athletics director Ted Leland, PhD ’83. Time management is one factor in a successful equation, he adds, and then there’s the physical aspect: “When you have worked out in one sport for several months, it takes some time to get back into shape for the other sport.”

There wasn’t much time for Johnson to do that last December, when Stanford’s Seattle Bowl appearance extended the football season and he found himself hurtling between morning football meetings, lunch-hour basketball films, afternoon football practice and evening basketball games. Fortunately, the sophomore sometimes thinks hoops when he’s getting ready to catch a pass: “It’s a lot like watching as a shot goes up, reading how it’s going to go off the rim and making sure you position yourself.” And his coaches, he says, support his desire to play on both teams. “I think they have a blast,” he says. “Being able to watch one of their players on another team makes them feel more attached to that team. It’s a cool situation. No tension.”

Johnson averaged 51 yards a game and scored seven touchdowns last season, in part because he towered over most cornerbacks and could jump up to grab lob passes—a.k.a. “Teyo toss-ups”—from the quarterback. On the basketball court, his presence as an outside shooter and in the post position helped propel the Cardinal to a 15-6 record (8-4 Pac-10) as of mid-February.

A senior majoring in sociology, Yamasaki played both volleyball and basketball her sophomore year but has focused on basketball since then. As the No. 2-ranked Cardinal (24-1, 14-0 Pac-10) headed into the final stretch of conference play, she was averaging almost five rebounds a game and had earned fifth place in the school record book for 3-pointers. Add that to the gold medal she won at last summer’s World University Games in Beijing and the fact that she is starting full time this year, and Yamasaki appears to be having more fun than ever on the court.

Looking back at the year she played volleyball, Yamasaki says the questioning she got from her basketball teammates was pretty entertaining. “They were like, ‘Do you guys ever sweat?’ And, ‘Why do you wear bows and spandex, and cheer when you screw up?’”

It’s true, Yamasaki says, that there is more time to smile in volleyball. “You have those five seconds [after a point] to cheer about it and then refocus. Whereas in basketball, you have to play through your mistakes, and there’s no way that play is going to stop for you.”

There are, however, some skills she carried over from her volleyball days: “Yes, I did every single girl’s hair on the basketball team last season. And I make locker signs, too—just like I used to for my volleyball team members.” No sweat.

TRACK AND FIELD

Building a Distance-Running Dynasty

THE SUN IS SHINING at Angell Field and Vin Lananna is having a good day. He’s watching his pack of young distance runners have at each other in a 2,000-meter intrasquad time trial. Skinny and strong, with long, sinewy legs and intense stares, they look as if they could run forever. Lananna smiles as Jonathon Riley, the defending NCAA 5,000-meter champion, bursts away from the pack in the last hundred.

There’s a lot to smile about. Lananna has built a veritable dynasty since he arrived to coach track and cross country in 1992. During Lananna’s tenure, Stanford has won four national championships (three in cross country, one in track). For the past eight years, both the men’s and the women’s cross country teams have placed in the top five nationally. And expectations are high for this year’s track teams, which are led by distance runners Riley, ’01, Donald Sage, ’04, and Lauren Fleshman, ’03, as well as field specialists Milton Little, ’03 (long jump), Michael Ponikvar, ’02 (high jump), and Jillian Camarena, ’04 (shot put).

Lananna’s specialty, distance running, spans both sports. During the fall cross country season, athletes race over hill and dale for five to 10 kilometers. During spring and summer, the same athletes compete in the 10,000, the 5,000 and the middle-distance events: 3,000-meter steeplechase, 1,500 and 800. “It’s sort of crazy,” says Seth Hejny, ’03. “You have to be really focused and willing to dedicate your entire life to it.”

And Lananna has. A former cross country team captain at C.W. Post College in Long Island, N.Y., he coached at Post and Dartmouth before joining the Cardinal. “He came here 10 years ago and built this program,” says Frank Gagliano, a former head coach at Georgetown who now coaches the Nike Farm Team, a postcollegiate group of about 50 runners who train on and around the Stanford campus.

Lananna began by trying to convince top-tier high school runners that the unranked cross country team would soon become a national powerhouse. “A lot of hard work went into recruiting that first class,” he says. “Each one of those men and women had to have a really vivid imagination. But if you look at all the other sports, that’s the thing that told us we could do it. I mean, if you see that swimming and tennis and soccer and everyone else is doing well, you have to figure that it can be done.” Four years later, that recruiting class brought Stanford its first national championship in cross country.

Lananna’s athletes attribute his recruiting success to his low-pressure approach. “Lananna never seemed like he was trying to sell Stanford,” Riley says. “He just posed questions and let me answer them myself.” Riley was among a slew of standout American high school milers who attracted considerable media attention while trying to break the four-minute mark before entering college—a group that also included classmates Michael Stember and Gabe Jennings.

In 2000, those athletes contributed to the Cardinal’s first men’s track championship since 1934—and Jennings, Stember and Brad Hauser, ’99, went on to compete for the United States at the Sydney Olympics. Since distance runners generally don’t mature until their mid-20s, having three collegians on the U.S. team—from the same school, no less—was quite a coup.

But it’s all part of Lananna’s master plan: to make American distance runners more competitive in a sport long dominated by European and African athletes. He’s increasing the Stanford team’s exposure to the world’s best athletes by hosting elite competitions each spring, including the Cardinal Invitational, the U.S. Open and the U.S. championships. “The biggest driver for Coach Lananna is for athletes to be thinking beyond NCAAs,” says assistant coach Mike Reilly, ’92, who organizes the meets. “He wants to raise the level of American distance running. And by gosh, if no one else is going to do it, we’ll just go do it ourselves.”

—Mikel Jollett, ’96