HAPPY BIRTHDAY TYLER!

Happy Birthday to junior forward/center Tyler Hines! (Also our very awesome guest blogger)

Hope you're enjoying your summer... we look forward to your posts this upcoming season!

No Off-Season

In athletics, especially at the collegiate and professional levels, there really is no such thing as an off-season. School may be out and the student-athletes are not taking classes, but this is the time that they really win the games.

This is the time of year when there are extra workouts put in and the players need to work harder than their opponent. When I was growing up, I remember one of my coaches telling us, "The summer is when individual players are made... the rest of the year is when the team is made."

I think this is a great motto. In the summer, you have to work on your own personal game and strength and conditioning. Then, in the fall when practice starts back up, is when all of those individuals combine their summer efforts to make the team as a whole better.

Before the school year ended, the coaches handed out the perfect shirts. On the front they said OFF SEASON with a huge mark through it. Nope, there definitely is no off season.

Art Shell Golf Photos

Here are some photos from last week's Art Shell Celebrity Golf Open and Legends Reception. Again, sorry for the poor quality, they're from my phone.

Cool UMES crab mallets

Registration table

Event sponsors

Oceanside decorations

Art Shell hat that was given to all the celebrity golfers

Art Shell golf towel and hat

Autographed Art Shell golf bag on the auction table

UMES Athletics auction basket

NFL autographed golf bag (auction item)

Autographed Fernando Guerrero boxing gloves (auction item)

Reception tables

UMES Athletics gift shop (if you see anything you like here, give me a call at 410-651-8075 or email mlhayon@umes.edu... we have all of it for sale!)

Harry's friend Poe, from the Ravens, even came to help celebrate!

Welcome sign at the golf course

Golf Course

Art Shell Golf Outing

Earlier this week we held the Art Shell UMES Celebrity Golf Classic to benefit student scholarships for the university's PGA Golf Management Program.

This was a great event that included a junior tournament on Tuesday, which was followed by a Legends Reception pairing party. There were a bunch of NFL greats and UMES alumni on hand for a night full of Maryland-style cuisine (including hard crabs), live entertainment and a silent auction.

Wednesday was the Celebrity Golf Classic, which was held at Great Hope Golf Course in Westover, Md., followed by an awards dinner at the SSC.

NFL Hall of Famers that were in attendance include:

• Art Shell (Oakland Raiders 1968-81, Los Angeles Raiders 1982, UMES Class of 1968)
  
• Elvin Bethea (Houston Oilers 1968-83)
• Bobby Mitchell (Cleveland Browns 1958-61, Washington Redskins 1962-68)
  

College Hall of Famers that were in attendance include:

• Roger Brown (Detroit Lions 1960-66, Los Angeles Rams 1967-69, UMES Class of 1960)
• Emerson Boozer (New York Jets 1966-75, UMES Class of 1965)

"UMES, my alma mater, continues to reach students, many of whom are first generation college students and for whom college may have been out of reach due to limited resources," said Shell. "This is why, in times like these, it is important as ever to rally together to support students who desire more, and who can achieve more, if just given the opportunity."

You're probably wondering what this has to do with UMES basketball. Coach Allen attended the Legends Reception and was also joined by myself and Coach Blaine on Wed. for the golf outing. The men's team is great supporters of this event and really anything that helps promote UMES and bring scholarship money to students. Despite storms threatening on Wednesday, the golfers had perfect weather and never had to leave the course.

Game-worn jerseys for sale

A few weeks ago I spent at least two days sorting, organizing and inventorying game worn jerseys, shorts, warmups, etc. from the past decade. It was a tedious and tiring process, but now they are ready for sale! It's crazy how many different styles there were (there are men's and women's available). We'll have them online for sale hopefully by the beginning of the basketball season. We're also hoping to have them for sale at EVERY home game this season! Make sure to keep your eyes open for them because once they're gone... they're gone!

M&T Bank Stadium

A couple of weeks ago I attended a workshop that was held at the Ravens' Stadium - M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. Nick Robinson is a huge Ravens fan, so he was sort of mad at me when I told him where it was AFTER I was done with the workshop. :-) Oh well.

I've been behind-the-scenes in all sorts of stadiums before - collegiate, NBA, MLB, MiLB, etc., but oddly, I've never been in the depths of an NFL stadium. This was a cool experience. The actual workshop was held inside the Ravens locker room.

(Let it be known that I HATE fake turf.)

If you look closely you can see people cleaning/painting the turf. I was always puzzled how they can change the paint on turf and apparently you can just take a power washer to it! They are changing the field from lacrosse to soccer.

Ginormous scoreboard. Would love to see it in action!

Salisbury University played in the Lacrosse Championships the day before!

Inside the security control room, it's crazy. They have over 20 tv monitors where they can zoom in on single people and zoom out to see the entire stadium. There was also traffic controls in this room. It was really spectacular what they can all do.

This is the last place you want to be on gameday - jail holding cells!

Duck, Duck, GOOSE!

Coming into work this morning, imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner and saw this! There's gotta be 20+ geese in this photo. AND there were at least another 10-20 to the right that didn't make it in the photo!

Despite them looking like they're moving out of the way, they definitely weren't. I took this photo after I had been sitting there for a bit waiting. Most of them were on the median to the left and then decided that instead of staying there they were going to go right into my path. (Oh and the ones on the right... yeah, they definitely were going to the left. So yeah, they were in the way too.)

That's 3 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

SAAC Blog

Since we've had success and good feedback with this blog, we decided to start another one in athletics.

We figured that one for the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) would be a good fit, especially since a lot of students have jobs and internships this summer.

We're going to try to update it at least twice a week and have a lot of input from the student-athletes that participate in SAAC.

Check it out here: www.umessaac.blogspot.com.

No worries... I'm still here

I know I haven't posted in forever and don't worry, I haven't forgotten about all my Hawks fans and followers :-) Despite it being the "off-season," there really is no off-season in the sports world.

It doesn't matter whether you work in professional or collegiate athletics, there really is no down time. One of my new favorite phrases that I heard Stan say the other day was: "In June and July we catch up and in August we fall behind."

That phrase is so true that I've caught myself saying it to others. As far as men's basketball goes, April through October has down time. And really all I mean by that is that there are no games scheduled. Even though it is June 7, most of the guys are on campus taking summer classes and working out in the weight room and gym. One of these upcoming days I will post some pictures of the guys that I've snapped of them working out.

In our office, I am not just limited to men's basketball as I am also the contact for softball and track and field. The track and field season is still going on (they compete at the NCAA Championships Wednesday!!!) so my 2009-10 season doesn't "end" for another week or two. Even when their season is done, I need to go through each sport and recap what happened this past season and update everyone's profiles and bios. There's a lot of things to wrap up before we can move onto the next season.

And despite the 2009-10 year essentially still being in session, we have already geared our sights towards 2010-11 as we are starting to work on volleyball stuff. They begin practices in just two months! (And I know that time'll fly by!)

I've already started the production of the team posters and schedules cards and at this point that means getting the creative juices flowing and starting to design/layout the posters. I don't want to set any deadlines, but be on the lookout for posters starting in late August! (Don't hold me to that!)