National Collegiate Athletic Association

The NCAA News - Briefly in the News

December 7, 1997

Tufts team lends a hand

Members of the Tufts University football team had the chance to be good Samaritans last month.

As the team members were riding home after their first win over Trinity College (Connecticut) since 1986, they had an eye-opening experience that reminded them all of the fragility of life.

"A car flew by us on the right, crossed all four lanes a couple of times and then smashed into the divider on the left," freshman punter Howie Rock told the Tufts Daily.

The crash occurred on the Massachusetts Turnpike. The team bus continued on to a nearby toll booth to summon assistance. Meanwhile, a Tufts van full of freshmen players pulled over to help.

"The car was up against the median and the driver's side door was pinned up against it," said assistant coach and graduate student Greg Altman, who had been driving the van.

Both the driver and his passenger, an elderly couple, seemed to be seriously injured.

Because the driver's side was against the divider, the team members concentrated first on getting the woman out. "Her face was all bloody from shattered glass, but she was OK, and we pulled her out of the car," Rock said.

The players treated her for shock and moved her out of harm's way. Another freshman team member, defensive lineman Nick Bolt, stayed with the woman while other team members attempted to help the man.

"I just kept asking her questions to try to keep her mind off of (her companion)," Bolt said. "She told me that he was complaining of stomach pain, but he said he'd keep driving. Then he just lost control of the car."

An emergency medical technician and a state trooper arrived and asked team members to help move the car about 10 feet to make the driver's side accessible.

Then the driver, who had shown some activity before, stopped moving. The EMT immediately asked freshman defensive lineman Shane Waldron to remove the driver from the car.

"I grabbed the guy by the shoulders and started to pull him out," Waldron said. "He was like a rock. He was totally limp. One second he was breathing, the next he's dying. The EMT put an oxygen mask on him, but he still wasn't breathing."

After the ambulance took the victims away, the team re-boarded its van and headed home -- a bit stunned and a bit sobered by the experience. While efforts to find out the identities and the fates of the accident victims were unsuccessful, the student-athletes have kept the two victims in their thoughts throughout the season.

Champs times four

Members of Gordon College's athletics department should have dressed like champions this Halloween -- four times over.

In a Commonwealth Coast Conference first, Gordon College played host to four championship games and captured each conference title this past October 31.

The fighting Scots took titles that day in women's soccer, field hockey and men's and women's cross country.

There weren't any tricks that day in Wenham, Massachusetts, just treats.

Coaches offer ID program

Last year the American Football Coaches Association initiated the largest child identification program ever conducted.

This year, the AFCA and athletics departments at NCAA member institutions in Divisions I-A, I-AA, II and III expanded the program to all 681 college stadiums.

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice indicate that 800,000 children are reported missing each year, yet less than two percent of parents have a copy of their child's fingerprints and other information when it's needed. Members of the AFCA hope to use this program to improve those odds, distributing more than seven million Child I.D. kits for free.

The kits include an inkless process for fingerprinting and an identification card for parents to complete. The card includes a space for a photo of the child, notes about the child's identifying marks, doctors' phone numbers and other information.

Parents keep the information on file at home and provide it to law enforcement authorities only in the case of an emergency. Participating institutions are designating one home football game at which the kits will be distributed.

Can you top this?

Senior David Good and his brother, sophomore Nick Good, led North Central College's men's soccer team in scoring with 22 and 20 goals each this year.

Michael Koon, the Cardinals' sports information director, is wondering if there have ever been brothers who have each scored 20 goals or more in a single season in NCAA soccer history. You can contact Koon at 630/637-5302 or e-mail him at mfk@noctrl.edu.

--Compiled by Kay Hawes

Looking back

5 years ago: The NCAA Council and the Division II Steering Committee appoint the Research Committee to address women's interest in sports as it relates to the three-part Title IX compliance test. The question involving interest has generated the need for discussion because interest is the only part of the Title IX compliance test that permits a school not to have an athletics male/female rate that mirrors overall enrollment of the student body
(or to be progressing toward that goal). Because it has the potential to maintain the status quo, at least at some campuses, those who seek aggressive Title IX enforcement regard an interest test as an obstruction. The Council is requesting that the Research Committee develop one or more instruments that member institutions can use to assess interest in intercollegiate athletics and that also can be used by the Association for the purpose of analysis. (The NCAA News, December 6, 1993)

10 years ago: Among legislative proposals to be considered at the 1989 Convention is a Big Ten Conference resolution calling for development of a national clearinghouse that would centralize the certification of entering freshmen student-athletes at Divisions I and II member institutions. Such a clearinghouse, which is estimated to cost more than $500,000 per year to maintain, would determine whether minimum standards of eligibility have been met in terms of core-course requirements, high-school and core-course grade-point average, standardized test scores, and certification of high-school graduation. The clearinghouse also would remove high schools and college admissions offices from the responsibility for such certification, which the resolution says has caused "serious adversarial relationships between college and high-school personnel" as well as inconsistencies in interpretation of high-school records. (The NCAA News, December 5, 1988)

15 years ago: The Division I Men's Basketball Committee recommends that the existing 53-team Division I Men's Basketball Championship field be expanded to 64 for the 1985 championship. The 64-team bracket would include eight first- and second-round sites, with 16 teams in each of the four regional tournaments. If approved by the Executive Committee, it would be the fourth consecutive year that the bracket has been expanded. A 64-team bracket also would represent a 100 percent increase since 1978, the last year of the 32-team field. (The NCAA News, December 5, 1983)