A Ticket to the Series

When Danny Putnam, ’05, hit a two-run single to put Stanford ahead of Long Beach State in the seventh inning of the second game of the Super Regional on June 8, he secured Stanford’s 15th—and fifth consecutive—trip to the College World Series. Freshman phenom Mark Romanczuk pitched 8 1/3 innings to bring his record to 12-0. “I was a little emotional the last couple of innings, knowing that we were just twelve and then nine outs away from Omaha,” Romanczuk said after the game. Results from the Series, held June 13-23, will appear in the next issue of STANFORD.

Women Win the Ultimate Championship

It hasn’t been a superlative year for Stanford’s varsity teams; at press time, only two had won national championships. Fortunately, the women’s ultimate Frisbee club team, Superfly, was there to pick up the slack. Superfly landed the program’s fourth national title with a 15-13 win over MIT at the University of Texas-Austin in late May, vindicating itself from losses in the past two national championship games. Co-captain Gwen Ambler, ’03, was named runner-up for the women’s Callahan Award, the sport’s national MVP honor.

For Rugby, a Shiny New Stadium

Speaking of club sports, the Stanford rugby program also had a big showing at this year’s national championships in early May. But it wasn’t the Cardinal ruggers who were shining on the field—it was the field itself. Stanford’s $2 million, 762-seat Steuber Rugby Stadium, which boasts the only field in the United States that conforms to international standards, opened in March to rave reviews from fans and players. It proved too small for the number of spectators who turned out for the college nationals, however. A standing-room-only crowd of more than 5,000 people watched Air Force sweep the men’s and women’s championships, which ended Cal’s 11-year hold on the men ’s title.

On the Farm: The World’s Seventh-Best Athlete

Sure, Tony Azevedo is the country’s best water polo player, but how does a guy who just finished his second season at Stanford stack up against the world’s top sports stars? Quite well, according to the June issue of Men’s Journal. The magazine ranked him seventh on its list of the world’s 20 best athletes, ahead of such icons as golfer Tiger Woods, ’98, cyclist Lance Armstrong and baseball player Alex Rodriguez. The magazine cited the 2000 Olympian’s “superhuman” upper-body strength and the endurance needed to swim about three miles during a 28-minute game. “I can’t believe that I was included on this list,” Azevedo said. “This is a great thing for water polo.”

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