The New York Football Giants summer training camp, July 18 through August 14, finished with splendid reviews. “This place is really a great facility,” said Head Coach Dan Reeves. “I think it will be a great home for us for years to come.”
About 80 players and 80 staff and support personnel from the Giants were on campus during camp. The team played an intra-squad scrimmage at University Field on Saturday, July 27, attended by more than 8,000 fans.
“The fans have been tremendous,” Reeves said. “There were many more fans here than we have experienced in the past.”
“The fans were great and they were very uplifting for us,” added offensive lineman Scott Gragg.
“It’s really been a great experience for us,” said starting quarterback Dave Brown. “I thought it would be before we started and now that it’s over I feel the same way. We could bond together more as a group here than in past years (at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey), because we weren’t so close to home. Guys didn’t just pick up and go home whenever they had some free time.”
The University at Albany and eleven other Division II schools from New England and New York have joined together to form the Eastern Football Conference.
The Eastern Football Conference, which debuts in 1997, will be split into two six-team divisions. Divisional winners will play for the championship on the Saturday before Thanksgiving each year.
Albany’s division includes C.W. Post, Stony Brook, Pace, Southern Connecticut State and Sacred Heart. Massachusetts schools make up the other division. The list includes American International, Assumption, Bentley, Stonehill, Massachusetts-Lowell and Merrimack.
“One of our major goals has been conference affiliation,” Director of Athletics Dr. Milton E. Richards said. “We have achieved that for many of our sports with membership in the New England Collegiate Conference. Football now has the same opportunity to develop rivalries and play in the post-season.”
Dennis King, an all-conference cross country and middle distance runner, and Debbie August, one of the nation’s scoring leaders in lacrosse, have been selected as the University’s 1995-96 Male and Female Athlete of the Year. The athletes were chosen in voting by the head coaches of Albany’s 19-sport intercollegiate athletics program.
King was the only Albany male athlete to qualify for the NCAA Division II track & field championships. He finished 10th in the 1,500-meter run, and reached nationals with a school-record 3:50.49 at the Baldwin-Wallace Invitational in Ohio. He was the Collegiate Track Conference 1,500 champion, and also captured titles at the ’96 Florida State Relays, Albany Invitational and Albany Spring Classic. A second team all-New England Collegiate Conference selection in cross country, King won the CTC indoor 1,000 meters, and finished second in the 1,000 and fourth in the one-mile run at the ECAC championships.
August ranked among the NCAA Women’s Collegiate Lacrosse scoring leaders throughout the season. She averaged 5.27 points and 4.09 goals per game to rank fifth among all Division I and II players. She broke her own single-season scoring record with 62 points (49 goals, 13 assists), and finished her career as the school’s all-time scoring leader with 132 goals and 32 assists, and led Albany to an 8-4 overall record and an ECAC Division II championship appearance.
The University at Albany’s Rich Tallarico, Gigi Legendre and Karen Gaudiello were awarded Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Merit Medals as the school’s top senior male and female scholar-athletes during the 1995-96 academic year.
Tallarico, a three-year starter on the Albany football team’s offensive line, had a 3.93 cumulative grade point average as a pre-med student in biology with an English minor. A Phi Beta Kappa student, Tallarico became just the third UA football player to be chosen to the GTE College Division Academic All-America first team. He will continue his education in medical school.
Legendre, an outside hitter in volleyball, and Gaudiello, who plays second base on the softball team, shared the female scholar-athlete award. Legendre posted a 3.41 GPA in psychology with a double minor in English and communication. Gaudiello majored in history with a Spanish minor, and had a 3.78 GPA.
Gaudiello, a two-year starter in the Albany infield, recently was accepted into the Peace Corps. Legendre, a two-time team MVP in volleyball, intends to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology, and has worked with disabled adults and children.
Mary Ingram and Tonya Dodge became just the third and fourth Albany women to earn All-America honors as outdoor track & field competitors at the 1996 NCAA Division II championships in Riverside, California on May 23-25.
Ingram placed third in the 400-meter hurdles with a school-record time of 1:00.54, while Dodge was sixth in the 3,000-meter run. The junior also set a UA record when she finished in 9:58.96. Their efforts helped the Great Danes tie for 25th place in the team standings.
Ingram, who qualified for the NCAA indoor 55-hurdles, also was a participant in the outdoor 100-hurdles. Dodge, an all-NECC cross country runner, previously set the 3,000 record at the Penn Relays.
Three high school players signed commitments during the spring to play basketball at Albany in 1996-97.
The list includes Todd Cetnar, 6’0”, 165-pound guard from Amsterdam H.S., Kris Zeisler, a 6’6”, 215-pound forward from Shawnee (N.J.) H.S., and Matthew Haggarty, a 6’2”, 180-pound guard from Catholic Memorial H.S. in Wayland, Mass.
Cetnar, a second-team all-state selection, averaged 27.1 points, 7.0 assists and 4.0 steals as a senior. He finished as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,621 points. Zeisler averaged 10.0 points and 12.0 rebounds, and was named third team all-South Jersey. His team won the Group IV state championship and was ranked 17th nationally by USA Today. A second-team Boston Globe all-scholastic choice, Haggarty averaged 19.8 points and shot 48 percent from three-point range.
The Albany women’s cage program signed five scholastic players for the 1996-97 season:
Mary Harrison, a 6-foot all-state forward from Cold Spring Harbor H.S. and Melissa Schoonover, a 6’1” forward-center from Corning-Painted Post West H.S., committed to the program during the early signing period in November.
Spring signees included Megan Buchanan, a 5’11” forward from Hornell H.S., Dawn DiMicco, a 5’5” guard from John Jay-Cross River H.S., and Marlana Wheelwright, a 5’10” forward from Roosevelt H.S. Buchanan, an all-Greater Rochester choice, averaged 19.0 points and 12.2 rebounds. DiMicco, a first-team all-state guard, led her team to the Class B state championship. Wheelwright averaged 15.2 points and 12.5 rebounds, and was a two-time all-conference player.
The University has created the Kimberly Toone Women’s Track & Field Memorial Scholarship Fund to honor the memory of the late All-America athlete.
Toone died at the age of 22 in an auto accident on March 6 while returning to campus from the New York City area for a practice. She was scheduled to compete two days later at the NCAA Div. II indoor track championships in Indianapolis, Ind., in both the long jump and 55-meter hurdles.
The Toone Fund will generate an annual award for a woman in track & field who embodies excellence in academic endeavor, personal ambition, and athletic competition. A donation should be sent to the Office of Constituent Development, Alumni House, University at Albany, Albany, NY 12222.