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FOOTBALL

Fresh Faces on the Field

JULIAN JENKINS EXPLODES off the line of scrimmage. The lineman assigned to block him goes right; Jenkins breaks left and heads straight for the San Jose State quarterback. Then he hesitates—his target fakes a handoff. Suddenly, Jenkins accelerates again, reaching out for the quarterback’s chest. In a spinning flurry of red and white and green, Jenkins drags him to the ground.

This is familiar territory for the 6-foot-4-inch, 240-pound defensive end, a former prep All-American and Georgia Gatorade Player of the Year. “I knew the play. It was a speed option,” Jenkins says. “Just like high school football down in Georgia.”

That’s right, Jenkins is a freshman. Not a redshirt freshman. A true freshman.

In fact, the 2002 Cardinal’s fortunes rest largely on players who lack game-time experience. Head coach Buddy Teevens “never calls us freshmen out there,” Jenkins says. “He just calls us the ‘young guys.’ We love him for it.”

During training camp, Teevens told the young guys to compete hard for starting spots and not expect to redshirt, as frosh typically did when Tyrone Willingham was head coach. “The biggest thing is rapid maturity,” Teevens told the San Jose Mercury News before the season. “Guys who have not set foot on the field will have to play like they have.”

And nowhere is that more important than on the defensive line. With seven starters returning from last season’s Pac-10-best offense, coupled with offensive-minded, Florida-influenced Teevens at the helm, scoring points was not a preseason concern. The defense—which returned two starters from a unit that allowed more than 28 points per game—was.

At press time, the results were uneven. In the opening game against Boston College on September 7, the Cardinal defense surrendered a 10-point fourth-quarter lead to lose, 34-27. The next week, Stanford scored 63 points—the most in one game since 1981—and held San Jose State to 26 in what Bay Area media have begun calling the “Little Game.” Against Arizona State, the team wilted in the desert sun, losing 65-24—its worst conference loss in 15 years. On its trip to South Bend, Ind., to face Notre Dame, the Cardinal led Willingham’s new team until the third quarter, when the Fighting Irish scored four touchdowns in seven minutes and went on to win 31-7.

But Jenkins is holding his own. Second on the depth chart behind redshirt sophomore Amon Gordon, Jenkins has seen substantial minutes in every game. He registered his first sack in the Cardinal’s rout of San Jose State as well as two tackles against Arizona State and three against Notre Dame.

“I don’t think I’ve been around a more mature freshman in all my years of coaching,” says defensive ends coach Peter McCarty.

Jenkins already knows that he wants to major in psychology, and he is considering a career in politics. And he’s taking the transition to college in stride. Shortly after the San Jose State game, Jenkins met his freshman roommate. An only child, Jenkins had worried about learning to share space. His anxiety folded like a sacked quarterback.

“It’s not gonna be hard,” he says. “He likes gangster movies, like The Godfather, Goodfellas, Scarface. I can watch stuff like that. That’s good stuff.”

“Usually, freshmen at this time are drowning,” McCarty says. “Julian’s probably the most [advanced] freshman I’ve ever been around. He’ll be captain someday.”

BASKETBALL

Great Expectations

IT MIGHT BE A COACH'S MOST IMPORTANT preseason job: managing expectations.

And for Stanford’s basketball coaches, the responsibility is particularly daunting. Both the men’s and women’s teams are automatically expected to be national players—ideally winning the Pac-10 on the way to a strong showing in the NCAA tournament. “We’ve created a beautiful monster,” admits women’s coach Tara VanDerveer, lamenting that when her squad only wins the conference, it’s considered a down year.

But VanDerveer is cautiously optimistic this fall. Last year, the Cardinal romped to a 32-3 record, ending with a narrow loss to Colorado in the Sweet Sixteen. Although Lindsey Yamasaki and Cori Enghusen finished their collegiate careers, the team has gained four freshmen, including Clare Bodensteiner, a 5-foot-8 guard who led her Idaho high school to its first conference championship in 18 years.

Guard Susan King, ’04, out with an injury for much of the last two seasons, will return to help All-American Nicole Powell, ’04, lead the squad. “Fans should expect to see a young team that’s fast and moves up and down the floor well,” VanDerveer says.

Meanwhile, men’s coach Mike Montgomery is downplaying expectations. He’s confronting a new problem for Stanford: players leaving early for the NBA draft, as then-juniors Casey Jacobsen and Curtis Borchardt did in June. The youth of the remaining team members concerns Montgomery. “We have just one senior again—that’s the second year in a row that’s happened—and we’ve done best in the past when we had seniors to lead the team.”

This trend will likely continue, due to Stanford’s recent rise to basketball prominence and a change in the culture of the college game. “It’s almost a certainty if you recruit a player who has first-round potential, he will look at [entering the] draft young,” Montgomery says. “We’re not a basketball factory. It’s difficult to lose kids and not feel the impact of that.”

This season, Montgomery will lean on fourth-year juniors Joe Kirchofer and Justin Davis, as well as junior Matt Lottich. The action starts for both teams with exhibition games in Maples Pavilion the week of November 10.

Water Polo Dives In

The No. 1 Stanford men’s water polo team (12-2, 1-1 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) splashed into Avery Aquatic Center this season with two U.S. National Team members—senior Peter Hudnut and redshirt sophomore Tony Azevedo—as well as freshman Thomas Hopkins, who spent the summer with the U.S. Junior National Team. At press time, Azevedo led the team and conference in scoring with 3.43 goals per game, and three-time All-American goalkeeper Nick Ellis, ’02, was averaging an MPSF-best six saves per game.

Losing a Coach, Winning a Top Ranking

In late September, the Cardinal women’s soccer team achieved a No. 1 ranking for the first time in program history. Led by Marcia Wallis, ’03, Marcie Ward, ’04, Kelsey Carlson, ’03, and goalie Nicole Barnhart, ’04, the team recorded six shutouts in its first eight games. The squad is co-coached this year by former assistants Stephanie Erickson and Paul Sapsford, who took over after head coach Andy Nelson resigned September 3. Nelson allegedly shoved three players during an August 27 practice. The Santa Clara County district attorney’s office declined to charge him with a crime.

Men’s Soccer Hopes to Stay Strong

In his second year as head coach of men’s soccer, Bret Simon hopes to repeat last year’s success: a school-record 19 wins, the Pac-10 title and a Final Four finish. This year’s second-ranked team (9-1 as of early October) is grounded by five returning seniors, including All-American candidate and leading scorer Roger Levesque, and also will draw on four talented freshmen as well as players from Jamaica, New Zealand, South Africa and Switzerland. The Pac-10’s soccer coaches picked the Cardinal to repeat as conference champion.

On the Volleyball Court, Some Familiar Faces

After winning its fifth national championship last season, the No. 4-ranked women’s volleyball team (13-2, 4-1 Pac-10 at press time) is expected to retain the Pac-10 crown. Senior outside hitter and 2001 American Volleyball Coaches Association player of the year Logan Tom was averaging 4.57 kills per game as of early October, and Lindsey Yamasaki is back on the court after a three-year hiatus. A former Stanford basketball standout, Yamasaki, ’02, spent the summer with the WNBA’s Miami Sol, but returned to campus in the fall to finish her sociology degree and decided to don a Cardinal volleyball jersey one more time. What else to watch this season? The new “libero” ball-control position in the back row.

KAYAKING

Stanford's Newest Sport Makes a Splash

NIC KANAAN WAS POISED at the starting line of the national collegiate sprint-kayaking championships, ready to shoot down his assigned lane.

Only problem: the junior human biology major had been kayaking for just four weeks, learning how to paddle in four-person boats, or K-4s. He had almost no time to try the one-person K-1 boat he was about to compete in.

Coach Gina Sanchez held her breath, and—to their mutual astonishment—Kanaan powered his way to third place. Then, toward the end of a follow-up race, he found himself in the lead.

“I was out in front, right near the finish line, and I think I got really excited and was paddling stronger on one side,” he recalls. “That turned me right over, and I took the plunge. But it happens—about once every five races—and it was pretty funny.”

That’s how it flows when you’re the newest guy on the newest team in town: the Stanford flatwater kayak racing team. Sanchez, MA ’02, a portfolio manager with American Century Centurion, founded the team last fall, when she was still a graduate student in international policy studies. In February, the ranks grew to 10, and by the time the collegiate championships were held in May, Sanchez had assembled a team of 20 paddlers, found a retired Ukrainian canoe coach to help, and learned how to drive the crew team’s boat trailer.

It took her 12 hours with the loaner to reach the ARCO Olympic training venue in Southern California, where Stanford faced off in the nationals against an established Georgia Tech team and paddlers from six other colleges and universities. The Cardinal newbies took home 35 medals, including eight golds, and snagged an upset in the 1,000-meter men’s K-4 event.

“One coach said to me, ‘Gina, your men’s K-4 is not upright because they are each individually balanced, but because they are randomly unbalanced,’” Sanchez recalls. “And I said, ‘You know what—that was some of the most inefficient technique I’ve ever seen, but they did it out of pure heart and soul.’”

Balance, it happens, is a critical element in any kind of kayaking—flatwater, sea or whitewater—and the sleek little boats used in sprint racing are particularly unstable because they are narrowed to Olympic specifications. “They’re designed for one purpose—to go straight and fast,” Sanchez says. “You can be in really good shape, but still not able to perform in the boat until you learn how to balance.”

Sanchez has only been sprint racing for about four years herself. She recently qualified as an alternate to the 2002 Pan Am Sprint Team, and her goal is to make the 2008 U.S. Olympic team. Sanchez does her own training in the early afternoon, then meets the team at 4:30 p.m. in a quiet Redwood Shores lagoon. In the fall months, they build an aerobic base; and by spring quarter, they are working on starts and speed.

The team aims to become a club sport this year, and its name may also morph—from the “flatwater kayak” team to the “canoe and kayak” team—to include more athletes. As the numbers grow, Sanchez has been getting support from the Berkeley Rowing and Paddling Club, Portland Canoe and Kayak Club, Seattle Canoe and Kayak Club and Newport Aquatic Center, all of which have donated or loaned boats and equipment to the team. “Pretty much the [whole] West Coast club system has supported the development of the Stanford program,” she says.

And the team continues to attract students who have never before stepped into a kayak. “I read about the club and saw ‘no experience necessary’ and knew it was the right thing for me,” says sophomore Vanya Choumanova. Although she’d never participated in high school sports in her native Bulgaria, Choumanova has picked up a lot of confidence and technique from her teammates. Then there’s the beauty of the lagoon. “Being on the water when the sun sets, and seeing all the lights come on in houses, gives me such a peaceful feeling.” As long as she keeps her seat.