Now comes the The 2009 Athlon Sports College Football Annual and UNH once again has lofty status among Football Championship Subdivision teams. The Wildcats are No. 9 in this pre-season poll, the fourth of seven Colonial Athletic Association teams in the Top 25. Richmond at No. 2, Villanova at No. 4 and James Madison at No. 5 are ahead of the Wildcats. . . . William & Mary at No. 11, Massachusetts at No. 15 and Maine at No. 17 are behind them. . . . UNH will play four of the ranked CAA teams this season and the matchups indicate a couple of nasty back-to-back weekends loom ahead: Villanova is at UNH for Homecoming on Oct. 10 and the Wildcats play at Massachusetts the next weekend; to close out the season, UNH is at William & Mary on Nov. 14 and then finishes with Maine at home on Nov. 21. . . . The other teams in front of UNH in the Athlon poll are No. 1 Appalachian State, No. 3 Northern Iowa, No. 6 Montana, No. 7 Weber State, and No. 8 Southern Illinois.
UNH hockey coach Dick Umile, who begins his 20th season as head coach in the fall, is one of seven individuals who will be inducted into the New Hampshire Legends of Hockey in 2009. . . . Wally Tafe Jr. of Manchester and the late Pop Whalen of Cornish are also being honored in the coaches’ category. Andre Prefontaine of Manchester, Jeff Serowik of Dover, Mass. and Jon Leonard of Sweden are being inducted as players and Bob Norton, a former UNH assistant hockey and football coach and longtime broadcaster, is entering in the media division. . . . Umile’s teams have won at least 20 games each of the last 13 seasons and in 17 of his 19 seasons overall. The Wildcats have also qualified for the NCAA tournament each of the last eight seasons. Michigan is the only team in the country that has a longer streak of appearances going. . . . A 1972 graduate of UNH, Umile has won 444 games at the school.
The UNH football team is ranked No. 8 in the Football Championship Subdivision Top 25 poll released by AnyGivenSaturday, an online forum dedicated to FCS. The Wildcats are one of four Colonial Athletic Association teams in the top eight and there are eight league teams in the Top 20. . . . Richmond of the CAA is the defending national champion and is the pre-season No. 1. Other league teams listed are No. 4 Villanova, No. 6 James Madison, No. 13 William & Mary, No. 15 Maine, No. 18 Massachusetts and No. 20 Delaware. . . . Appalachian State at No. 2 and Montana at No. 3 follow Richmond. Northern Iowa is at No. 5 and Southern Illinois at No. 7.
The number of UNH track athletes headed to the NCAA Regionals at North Carolina A&T on May 29-30 is up to seven. . . . Sophomore Sydney Fitzpatrick joined the group when he qualified in the steeplechase at the New England championships at the University of Massachusetts. The other Wildcats who have qualified are senior Reed Liset (hammer) of Dover, senior Jeff Kaste (hammer) of Atkinson and Timberlane Regional, junior Ashlee Lathrop (hammer), sophomore Brice Paey (shot put) of Milton and St. Thomas Aquinas, sophomore Michael Simon (javelin) and freshman Laura Stern (javelin). . . . The top five in each event qualify for the NCAA championships at the University of Arkansas on June 10. Anyone in the top 12 has the abiltiy to earn an at-large bid.
Inside College Hockey and College Hockey News have both come out with their early Top 10 rankings for the 2009-10 hockey season and the UNH men didn’t make the cut on either list. . . . Miami University is pegged No. 1 by INCH and Denver is designated the early target by College Hockey News. . . . Both organizations had two Hockey East teams in the Top 10. National champion Boston University was No. 3 and UMass-Lowell No. 9 in the INCH rankings. BU was No. 5 and Lowell No. 10 in the College Hockey News list. . . . UNH plays Miami at home on Oct. 16 and 17. . . . Cornell was No. 6 in the INCH poll, No. 4 in the CHN list. Cornell comes to Durham for a game on Sunday, Jan. 3.
Senior-to-be Sean Ware and junior Devon Jackson project as starting inside linebackers and that position should be a strength for UNH in the fall. Ware, who is one of the team’s captains, on the guy he lines up beside: “Devon grew up so fast, right in front of me. His first year was my first year playing linebacker and ever since then, he’s just drastically improved. Each year, he gets better and better. He gets our defense lined up and he takes charge and he knows what it takes out there. He does a lot.” . . . Jackson is listed at 6-foot-1 and 235 pounds. . . . He had 58 tackles last year, playing behind Ware and Matt Parent. . . . Ware had 88 tackles.
Another indication that the UNH men’s hockey team has a tough 2009-10 schedule ahead: Only one of the five non-conference teams the Wildcats have on their schedule had a losing record last season. That was Rensselaer. The Wildcats play two games against Miami (which was 23-13-5), two against Wisconsin (20-16-4), and one each against Cornell (22-10-4) and Dartmouth (14-14-3). . . . Cornell beat Northeastern, 3-2, in the first round of the NCAA tournament before losing to Bemidji State, 4-1, and Miami advanced to the championship game before losing to Boston University, 4-3 in overtime. . . . The Wildcats have three Sunday games on the schedule. They are at UMass-Lowell on Nov. 8, at Vermont on Dec. 6 and home against Cornell on Jan. 3. The Lowell game is listed with a 7 p.m. start. The Vermont and Cornell games have 4 p.m. starts, which is usually the slot for a game that wll be televised on ESPNU.
Two home games against national runnerup Miami University are among the highlights of the UNH men’s hockey schedule that was released this morning. UNH faces the RedHawks on Friday, Oct. 16 in its first regular season home game and the two teams meet again the next night. . . . Miami was up 3-1 on Boston University with a minute to play in regulation in the national championship game last month in Washington, D.C., and ended up losing 4-3 in overtime. The RedHawks return much of their team. . . . UNH plays Acadia in an exhibition game on Saturday, Oct. 3, in the Whittemore Center and then opens the regular season at Rensselaer on Oct. 10. . . . After the two-game set with Miami, UNH begins Hockey East play with home games against Northeastern on Oct. 23 and Maine on Oct. 24. The Wildcats play a pair at Wisconsin on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. . . . The Wildcats are scheduled to play a single game next season at the Verizon Wireless Arena. They meet Dartmouth there on Saturday, Jan. 16.
Hockey’s Kacey Bellamy of Westfield, Mass., and alpine skier Sean McNamara of Honeoye, N.Y., were named UNH’s Jim Urquhart student-athletes of the year during the school’s annual Senior Banquet on Tuesday night. Bellamy was a first-team All American this season and led her team to four straight Hockey East championships and NCAA appearances. McNamara finished fifth in the slalom at the NCAAs this winter. . . . The awards are presented to seniors and named for Urquhart, who coached wrestling and lacrosse and was later an athletics administrator at UNH. He died in 1998. . . Bellamy also received, along with punter/kicker Tom Bishop of the football team, the Tina True Memorial Award. The award began in 2007 and honors a commitment to strength and conditioning. True was a captain of the crew team and died in a car crash in her junior year in 2002.
Offensive lineman Tom Neill, who played a year of football at the Tilton School after high school in Syracuse, New York, has been elected one of three UNH captains for next fall. Linebacker Sean Ware and tight end Scott Sicko are the others. . . . “It’s an amazing honor for all three of us,” Neill said after the Wildcat spring game on Saturday. “It shows our teammates our behind us and want us to be up front and leading them. Like I told the offensive linemen, if there’s anything I can do to help the team and lead, tell me. It is a real honor.” . . . Neill said the offensive line, which will be full of young players in the fall, came on during the spring. “We’ve had some great improvement. Guys made mistakes, like they will. But then they’d go into the film room and see the mistake and come back out and fix it.”
