The men and women golf teams look to dupli­cate top-ten fin­ishes in the coun­try from last season

The men’s and women’s golf teams will try to dupli­cate top-ten national suc­cess from a sea­son ago.

The men’s team tied its best fin­ish in school his­tory as it placed eighth at the 2009 NCAA Division II Men’s Golf Championships. The women tied for sixth place at the 2009 NCAA Division II Women’s Golf Championships.

Both the men and women are coached by Mike Mignano. Mignano enters his third sea­son as the man in charge of tak­ing both the men and women to top-ten fin­ishes in their respec­tive national tour­na­ments last year.

The Bulldogs have two of the top scor­ers return­ing in seniors Eric Lilleboe and Kurt Valley. Lilleboe and Valley were both selected to the First Team All-GLIAC (Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) last sea­son. They also shared the team’s Most Valuable Player award in 2008–2009.

Returning play­ers also include senior Pat Steffes and junior Joe Brown. Mignano feels that the 2009 team is the best he has seen.

“This is the strongest team we’ve ever had, with­out a doubt,” said Mignano.

An expe­ri­enced group will lead the team this sea­son as eight of the 11 team mem­bers are upper­class­men. The team con­sists of three seniors, five juniors and two sopho­mores. Mignano has high hopes that this team will be very successful.

“Our goal is to basi­cally win the con­fer­ence, win region­als, and win nation­als,” said Mignano.

The key loss from the 2008–2009 sea­son was Kelbi Lee, a 2009 PING Division II Third Team All-American. Lee was tied for first place over­all after four rounds of play at the 2009 National Championships and was defeated in the first play­off hole.

The men’s GLIAC Championships will take place Oct. 3 — Oct. 5 in Marquette, Mich. and be hosted by Northern Michigan University.

The women’s team fin­ished the 2008–2009 sea­son in a tie for sixth place at the 2009 NCAA Division II Women’s Golf Championships. It marked the sixth con­sec­u­tive year in which the Ferris State women had made an appear­ance at the NCAA Championships.

Almost a com­plete oppo­site of the men’s team, the women return with only one upper class­men in junior Jacqueline Benscoter. Five sopho­mores and two fresh­men round out the ros­ter. Mignano is excited about the youth on the team.

“It will be a dif­fer­ent feel to the team but we’re look­ing for­ward to it,” said Mignano.

The top three scor­ers from the 2008–2009 sea­son, Alison Meyer, Raquel Hansen, and Meghan Hunter, all com­pleted their eli­gi­bil­ity. Meyer, Hansen and Hunter each earned All-GLIAC hon­ors a sea­son ago

Sophomores Bryce Hetchler and Erin Fuchik were both Second Team All-GLIAC selec­tions last sea­son and are the top return­ing scor­ers. Hetchler was also named to the Division II NGCA All-America Scholar Team. Sophomores Blaize Baumgartner and Breezy Bernth return after see­ing con­sid­er­able action last season.

Mignano stresses suc­cess not only on the golf course, but also in the class­room. He said the goal for the men and women is to have a team grade point aver­age of 3.5 or higher this season.

The women’s sea­son begins on Sept. 5 as the Bulldogs host the Ferris State Bulldog Invitational, while the men open their sea­son one week later at the Saginaw Valley State Invitational on Sept. 12.

Boasting a ros­ter of 27 play­ers, Ferris’ team hopes to expand on its record from last year.

With five of last year’s starters now grad­u­ated, two of them cap­tains, the women’s soc­cer team will be search­ing for lead­er­ship — both on the field and off as they set the tone for their sea­son and the 11 new­com­ers to the team. Composed pri­mar­ily of for­wards, the new team mem­bers will be rely­ing on the expe­ri­ence of the defen­sive end of the field made up of return­ing play­ers. Senior defender and mid­fielder Stevie Salow said the team is strong and has a chance to make his­tory this season.

“All of the seniors have been step­ping up and play­ing a lead­er­ship role,” said Salow.

Also new to Bulldog soc­cer as an assis­tant coach is for­mer Grand Valley State University goal­keeper now Ferris State grad­u­ate stu­dent, Kristen Nasturzio. Volunteering his ser­vices again as assis­tant coach is Steve Graetz of Big Rapids, Mich., a sev­enth grade teacher at the Crossroads Charter Academy and for­mer four-year starter for Spring Arbor University.

Head coach Neathen Gibson has brought in new faces in an effort to bol­ster the team’s season.

“Having this many girls makes it pos­si­ble for some­one to recover bet­ter if they pick up an injury,” said Gibson. Finishing last year with a record of 9−9−1 over­all and 7−6−1 and fourth place in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC), the Bulldogs were run­ning at about the mid­dle of the pack.

“We’re going to have to win the games we need to win,” said Gibson.

Their sched­ule kicks off on Aug. 28 against Minnesota State University in Mankato at 5 p.m. and at Winona State in Minnesota two days later. Minnesota State has a record of 16−4−2 over­all while Winona State fin­ished last sea­son with a record of 19−3−1.

The Torch endorses Pandora​.com; the new way to lis­ten to the music.

Pandora has one mis­sion and one mis­sion only: “To play only music you’ll love.”

Pandora​.com explains its name in sim­ple words, “The name Pandora means ‘all gifted’ in Greek. In ancient Greek mythol­ogy, Pandora received many gifts from the gods, includ­ing the gift of music, from Apollo. She was also, as we all know, very curi­ous. Unlike those gods of old, how­ever, we cel­e­brate that virtue and have made it our mis­sion to reward the musi­cally curi­ous among us with a never-ending expe­ri­ence of music discovery.”

Pandora is a work in progress and always will be. It is a part of the Music Genome Project.

The Music Genome Project has been going on since 2000. It is a project pro­fes­sional musician-analysts are still improv­ing and devel­op­ing. They lis­ten to song after song by thou­sands of artists, new and old, in order to cap­ture each and every attribute the song has (over 400 are found states Pandora​.com said).

Pandora​.com takes an artist you like and “quickly scan its entire world of ana­lyzed music, almost a cen­tury of pop­u­lar recordings—new and old, well known and com­pletely obscure—to find songs with inter­est­ing musi­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties to your choice,” accord­ing to Pandora​.com.

You can make a max­i­mum of 100 “sta­tions” of music you love, and if it isn’t what you were look­ing for, you can refine it and tell Pandora to change it.

Not only can you lis­ten to your sta­tions on your com­puter but it is now going mobile. Phones rang­ing from iPhones to Blackberries, as long as inter­net is avail­able, can have Pandora and have your music avail­able to you at any time.

The uni­verse of music is in your hands avail­able at no charge at Pandora​.com.

The Torch Embraced Change Over the Summer

Japanese Animation is forg­ing its way into American Popular culture

As I shuf­fled into the Walden Books store in the Kalamazoo Mall I tried to not make my aver­sion too entirely obvi­ous. I was expect­ing to find a pre­dictable vari­ety of best sell­ers and clas­sics that were out of my bud­get and that I could pick up almost any­where. When I turned a cor­ner and saw a size­able col­lec­tion of Japanese manga avail­able I was pleas­antly surprised.

Japanese Animation, or anime, is becom­ing increas­ingly more pop­u­lar in the United States and its influ­ences on pop­u­lar cul­ture more pronounced.

In Japan, audi­ences for ani­mated shows, books, and movies are not lim­ited to chil­dren. Many ani­mated books, called manga, cater to an adult audi­ence. They cover a vari­ety of sub­gen­res rang­ing from fan­tasy and drama to finance and busi­ness. Many ani­mated series are also intended for adults and in Japan “car­toons” are not only for kids.

In a recent inter­view with National Public Radio, Kevin Corcoran stated that the American Anime indus­try is esti­mated at nearly $4.3 bil­lion dol­lars. Corcoran is the pres­i­dent of a new cable tele­vi­sion net­work, Anime Network, that shows noth­ing but anime.

Though rarely included in reg­u­lar net­work pro­gram­ming, anime does take up a con­sid­er­able por­tion of the Cartoon Network’s late night pro­gram­ming, a block of shows referred to col­lec­tively as “Adult Swim.”

Anime is even begin­ning to show its influ­ence in the American film indus­try. Many pop­u­lar films, like “The Matrix “and “Kill Bill” have been styl­is­ti­cally influ­enced by Japanese ani­ma­tion. In 2003 the movie “Spirited Away” won the Academy Award for best ani­mated picture.

More recently, live action movies for sev­eral anime series have been released or are on the hori­zon. “Speedracer” was released in 2008 and is based off of a a clas­sic anime series of the same name. “Dragonball Evolution,” based loosely off of the widely known series “Dragonball,” was released ear­lier this year. “Akira”, con­sid­ered by many to be a sta­ple in the anime movie realm, will be made into a live action film by Warner Brothers and is set to release some­time next summer.

The inter­net of course is rid­dled with sources to legally watch anime for free. I rec­om­mend Hulu​.com for those who are curious.

Though it pains me to men­tion it, we can­not for­get the craze and com­plete mad­ness brought about by the Pokemon fran­chise and other anologues like Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon. The Pokemon fran­chise itself is mas­sive and along with the card game, has a huge pres­ence in pop­u­lar cul­ture via tele­vi­sion, fea­ture films and mer­chan­dis­ing. In 2007 the British news­pa­per The Independent listed the 20 most suc­cess­ful fame fran­chises and Pokemon fell at num­ber two right behind Nintendo’s Mario.

With Japanese anime begin­ning to make a strong impact on American pop cul­ture, fans are com­ing out by the thou­sand to cel­e­brate, dis­cuss, and pur­chase the lat­est Japanese imports and the beloved anime clas­sics at anime con­ven­tions held through­out the US. Here, many fans wear intri­cate home­made cos­tumes of their favorite char­ac­ters from count­less ani­mated series, video games and movies. The Anime Expo (AX) is an American anime con­ven­tion that usu­ally takes place in Anehiem CA. In the last ten years, the atten­dance has increased approx­i­mately nine-fold, from 4883 paid atten­dees in 1998, to an esti­mated 43,000 atten­dees in 2008.

With num­bers like this it is hard to deny that anime is here to stay and it will prob­a­bly only grow in pop­u­lar­ity. Personally, this nerd is thrilled about the recent insur­gence of anime and its increas­ing avail­abil­ity. Anime has its roots in tra­di­tional Japanese art and adds a col­or­ful, rich, and com­plex ele­ment to more tra­di­tional American ani­ma­tion, which usual caters to a very young audience.

Anime is not some dis­tant genre out­side of the scope of Ferris State either. Oni No Anime is a reg­is­tered stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion on cam­pus ded­i­cated to dis­cussing and watch­ing anime.

I would highly encour­age any­one who has never watched anime to do so. Full length fea­ture films like “Spirited Away” and “Howls Flying Castle” are a great way for the curi­ous out­sider to ease into anime and are avail­able to rent at most video stores.

A well-balanced team will try to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2006.

The Ferris State vol­ley­ball team will turn to its five return­ing starters to help improve on a 16–13 record from a sea­son ago.

Four seniors return to lead a well-balanced team into the 2009 cam­paign. The team is com­prised of four seniors, juniors, sopho­mores and fresh­men respec­tively, along with three red­shirt fresh­men. The Bulldogs return 12 of 15 letter-winners from the 2008 sea­son. Head coach Tia Brandel-Wilhelm said the seniors, as well as young play­ers, have shown great leadership.

The Bulldogs fin­ished the 2008 sea­son with an 8–8 record in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) and ranked fifth in the North Division. It marked the first time since 2000 that the team did not record at least 12 vic­to­ries in con­fer­ence play. However, Brandel-Wilhelm is opti­mistic for this season.

“The mem­bers of the team have been work­ing very hard since last December to make sure this is one of the best vol­ley­ball sea­sons our University has had,” said Brandel-Wilhelm.

Brandel-Wilhelm announced that senior Sarah Lark and junior Dana Ruttle are the co-captains for the 2009 season.

“Sarah and Dana were cho­sen as cap­tains for their abil­ity to har­ness our strong lead­er­ship on and off the court,” said Brandel-Wilhelm.

Among the return­ing starters are junior Arielle Goodson, who earned Second Team All-GLIAC hon­ors in 2008, and senior Kristy Gilchrist, who was an All-GLIAC hon­or­able men­tion in 2008. The other return­ing starters are seniors Katie Edwards and Sarah Lark, along with sopho­more Ashley Huntey. Edwards led the team in kills in 2008 with 274, while Goodson racked up a team high 92 blocks.

Senior Amanda Kettlewell and juniors Danielle Hamilton and Whitney Rupp are among the return­ing let­ter­win­ners, along with sopho­mores Lisa Tobiczyk and Karen Thompson.

The key losses from last year’s team include Andrea Rich, a First Team All-GLIAC out­side hit­ter and Candice Marut, the 2008 FSU Most Valuable Player.
Coach Brandel-Wilhelm has a 269–138 record in her 13 sea­sons at Ferris and has won an impres­sive 71 per­cent of her games in her 16-year career. With 387 career vic­to­ries, she ranks in the top 25 among active Division II vol­ley­ball coaches.

The Bulldogs begin their 2009 sea­son with a home con­test against St. Joseph’s (Ind.) on Aug. 27 at 7:00 p.m.

Plans are in motion for a Buffalo Wild Wings to be open­ing in town.

For the past few months the Big Rapids and FSU com­mu­ni­ties have been buzzing about the rumors that a Buffalo Wild Wings restau­rant will be com­ing in town.
Talk has been cir­cu­lat­ing about the where­abouts that this new restau­rant will located as well as when it will be open for business.

Jeff Carmody, the regional man­ager, con­firmed that he is expect­ing it to open up in mid November. The liquor license has already been approved and they are wait­ing on city approval for health codes and other formalities.

The pop­u­lar buf­falo wing restau­rant will be mov­ing into the strip mall between MC Sports and Kmart. Carmody also stated that they will be post­ing job open­ings in late September.

This chain has had suc­cess in many other areas and is a local favorite for many stu­dents whose cam­pus already has one. Check back for more infor­ma­tion and updates on when it will be opening.

In the old days, big block­buster movies would be turned into cheap col­lectible glasses that would come with your meal at McDonald’s. These glasses were fun to drink milk out of through Krazy Straws, but they even­tu­ally wound up being shat­tered in the dishwasher.

Then, as mankind evolved and we put a man on the moon and color on our tele­vi­sions, movies got turned into ter­ri­ble video games (see: every video game made before “Spider-Man 2”). Eventually, as time passed, movies got turned into some­what decent video games (see: “Spider-Man 2”).

Then, as more time passed, we entered a Second Dark Age, when movies got turned into bad video games again (see: “Superman Returns”). Then some­thing strange hap­pened; in a bizarre role-reversal, video games actu­ally began get­ting turned into ter­ri­ble movies (see: “Doom,” “Silent Hill,” “Resident Evil”).

Still more time passed. Things got really odd when rides at amuse­ment parks started get­ting turned into movies and then got turned into video games (see: “Pirates of the Caribbean”).

Now, almost a decade into the new mil­len­nium, it seems any­thing can become a movie or a video game or a TV show or a hit pop/rock song. Yes, it’s offi­cial: The world is com­pletely out of ideas. And when the world is out of ideas, theturns nos­tal­gic and begins to steal ideas from the past. That way, instead of invent­ing any­thing new (which is very, very, very hard), it can take some known prop­erty and pre­tend to give it some grav­i­tas.
I am a full-time gamer, but I am also a part-time activist. I want to pro­tect the past from being exploited. Thus, here’s a list of toys that I have declared totally off-limits, and shipped to an undis­closed loca­tion in New Jersey so that the world never has to endure their inevitable video game tie-ins.

7. Furby

Background: The fuzzy lit­tle faux-sentient gad­get looked and acted like an ine­bri­ated Gremlin with a frontal lobot­omy.
Famous for: Scaring own­ers by wak­ing them up in the pre-dawn dark as the cursed piece of crude elec­tron­ics began invol­un­tar­ily began speak­ing in “Furbish.”

Why it should never be a game: The CGI intro movie alone –of Furbies speak­ing Furbish to one another in their cute Furby vil­lage — makes me dou­ble over and hold my stom­ach and cry hot tears of misery.

6. Slinky

Background: The lit­tle bedspring-that-could was invented by a naval engi­neer in the ‘40s.

Famous for: Walking down­stairs, alone or in pairs; mak­ing a “slin­kety” sound; get­ting tan­gled up so severely that it had to even­tu­ally make its slin­kety sound in the near­est trash can.

Why it should never be a game: I can already imag­ine the pitch meet­ing: “Use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk attach­ment to ‘walk’ the Slinky through the game world.” I can also imag­ine, very clearly, the impend­ing apoc­a­lypse. BOOOOOOM.

5. Rubik’s Cube

Background: Erno Rubik cursed the world in the ‘70s with this six-faced, evil-cube puz­zle. Fun Fact That I Just Made Up: No mat­ter where you are, there are at least two Rubik’s Cubes within a six-foot radius of you at all times.

Famous for: Aiding young chil­dren in their abil­ity to invent new, cre­ative ways to use expletives.

Why it should never be a game: Adding arms and legs to Pac-Man for his ani­mated series and sub­se­quent video games = ter­ri­ble idea. Adding arms and legs to a Rubik’s Cube and giv­ing it a lousy English accent = another ter­ri­ble idea.

4. Lite-Brite

Background: Invented in the ‘60s, this toy was designed to help chil­dren who were just plain ter­ri­ble at mak­ing orig­i­nal arts and/or crafts.

Famous for: Tiny mul­ti­col­ored pegs that would mag­i­cally get lost until you only had about 100 greens left.

Why it should never be a game: No video game could ever match the aes­thetic sat­is­fac­tion of pop­ping a tiny plas­tic peg through a black sheet of paper while a radioac­tive bulb bathes your face in cancer-making rays.

3. Etch A Sketch

Background: Invented in the ‘50s by a French elec­tri­cian, the Etch A Sketch has been the toy of choice for any­one in the mood to draw a very square, very crude dog.

Famous for: With the dual knobs on the front of the unit, the Etch A Sketch bore a strong resem­blance to a tele­vi­sion set that only showed one pro­gram, called “Here Is Another Poorly Drawn Square Dog.”

Why it should never be a game: With IMs, texts, emoti­cons and $4.99 Hallmark cards being the pre­ferred way to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers nowa­days, the abil­ity to make ter­ri­ble draw­ings has lost all social relevance.

2. Spirograph

Background: Like the Lite-Brite, the Spirograph was also cre­ated to assist chil­dren who pre­ferred mak­ing cool, intri­cate designs instead of doing any­thing truly orig­i­nal or creative.

Famous for: Heavy mar­i­juana users are the world’s biggest con­sumers of Spirograph artwork.

Why it should never be a game: Developers could try to turn this toy into a bona-fide video game, but our guess is that the results would look almost exactly like one of those “self-drawing lines” screen savers from the ‘90s.

1. Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces

Background: This 1975 toy from Kenner fea­tured a bald pup­pet who had the beau­ti­ful, mis­un­der­stood, long­ing eyes of an actor work­ing in a Midwestern pro­duc­tion of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Famous for: His col­lec­tion of eye­wear (mon­o­cle included), and beards in var­i­ous states of bushi­ness. Everything was applied with a nox­ious, pearl-colored glue that bore a strik­ing resem­blance to Nutty Putty.

Why it should never be a game: Hugo is an enigma wrapped in a rid­dle housed in a cheap pup­pet. While it’s tempt­ing to give Hugo his own game, we still very much pre­fer the mystery.

Ferris Donates Abandoned Bicycles to Area Organizations

Collected through­out the sum­mer by the Ferris Physical Plant, the bikes were stored at the West Commons build­ing until July 23 when they were dis­trib­uted to area orga­ni­za­tions through the Dump and Run program.

“This is the sec­ond year we’ve done this with the bikes,” said pro­gram coor­di­na­tor Diane Griffin. Last year bicy­cles were auc­tioned off, but donat­ing them seemed to be the best choice this year. The Dump and Run pro­gram also col­lects food items for local orga­ni­za­tions when stu­dents leave cam­pus in the spring.

The Muskegon River Valley Big Brothers Big Sisters, which is head­quar­tered in Big Rapids, received 24 bikes from the pro­gram this year rang­ing from male and female adult size moun­tain bikes to BMX bikes that they will dis­trib­ute to par­tic­i­pants in the organization.

“This is like Christmas for these kids,” said Wicke of the excited teens in his fos­ter care he brought with him to help load the trailer. “They’re really look­ing for­ward to tak­ing these bikes apart and get­ting them ready to give out to peo­ple,” he added.

Jesse Spindlow, who is 17 years old and one of the kids under Wicke’s care quickly began to call “dibbs” on the bike he wanted for him­self while his twin broth­ers Amos and Aaron, both 16, fol­lowed suit along with 17 year old Kirk McClure who also lives with the Wickes. They were quickly reminded that they would all have to earn the right to a bike with good behavior.

The bicy­cles won’t be handed out to just kids. Wicke cited an adult who had to sell his vehi­cle because of the tough eco­nomic times and will need one of the bikes to get back and forth to work.

With love and a lit­tle elbow grease, the spokes on these bikes will start spin­ning again soon giv­ing new mean­ing to the word “re-cycle”.

Dr. Arthur Chickering

On Wednesday, August 26, Dr. Arthur Chickering, a General Education Task Force Speaker will be speak­ing at 9 a.m. in the Rankin Center Dome Room dis­cussing “Why Are We Here: To Serve the Market or to Strengthen Democracy?” Continental break­fast will be served at 8 a.m. along with lunch at 12:15 p.m. Contact Todd Stanislav for more infor­ma­tion at stainst@ferris.edu or 231−591−3541.

Organissimo

The Michigan based jazz group Organissimo will be per­form­ing their vari­ety of songs at the Big Rapids Band Shell Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Call 312−592−4036 for more information.

FSU Unplugged

On Wednesday, Aug. 26, Ferris’ Music Industry Management Association will be pre­sent­ing this year’s first install­ment of FSU Unplugged. It will be held at Biggby Coffee, located across from the Williams Auditorium and will fea­ture stu­dents Max Griffith, Chris Jane, and one other TBA. Contact Ginell Narvaiz at ginellnarvaiz@gmail.com for more information.

Meijer Madness

The yearly event held at the local Big Rapids Meijer will take place from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 27. For more infor­ma­tion con­tact Teresa Fogel at fogelt@ferris.edu

“UP”

The recent Disney and Pixar film UP will be shown on the cam­pus quad at 9 p.m. on August 28. Students are encour­aged to bring a blan­ket or lawn chair to sit on. Contact Teresa Fogel at fogelt@ferris.edu for more information.

Farmers Market

The weekly Farmer’s Market will be held on Friday, Aug. 28 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. located just south of city hall in down­town Big Rapids. The mar­ket offers fruit, veg­eta­bles, meats, flow­ers and plenty of other locally grown goods. Contact Mark Gifford at 231−592−4035 for more information.

Rockin in the Rec

On Saturday, August 29, the annual Welcome Week event will have inflat­a­bles and nov­el­ties. Contact Cindy Horn for more infor­ma­tion at hornc@ferris.edu.