New Mexico State slugger is newest college homer king

Eight baseball student-athletes stepped up to the plate at the opening ceremonies of the Men's College World Series to compete in the third annual NCAA Home Run Challenge.

Ryan Kenning from New Mexico State University took home the title by defeating Nate Gold from Gonzaga University in the finals.

Those assisting with the festivities included Tommy Lasorda, Major League Baseball Hall of Fame member and manager of the 2000 Olympic Gold Medal baseball team; Hall of Famer Bob Gibson; and Ted Sizemore, Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year in 1969 and now a Rawlings Sporting Goods Co. executive. The event was presented by Rawlings.

The participants, all of whom were seniors with no eligibility remaining, were selected from all three NCAA divisions based on their total home runs for the season and also the number of home runs hit per game. Participants must have played in a minimum of 75 percent of their team's total games, and the qualifying figures did not include the championships or regional competitions of any of the divisions.

The other participants, in alphabetical order by institution, were: Todd Meyer, Alvernia College; Heath Mason, Carson-Newman College; Brad Eldred, Florida International University; Bubba Lavender, Morehead State University; Shaun Rice, Ohio Wesleyan University; and Junior Medina, Stonehill College.

Members of the eight teams that qualified for the Men's College World Series were not eligible to participate.

As winner of the contest, New Mexico State's Kenning took home two round-trip domestic airline tickets from Delta Airlines, hotel accommodations, a $500 gift certificate from Sears and a Sony Playstation with a game pack. Rawlings also will provide a two-year equipment and apparel contract to Kenning, and each participant's institution will receive a $1,000 donation from Rawlings to their general scholarship fund.

Race celebrates 150 years of rivalry

This year, Harvard University and Yale University celebrated what's believed to be the anniversary of intercollegiate athletics' oldest event with the 150th Harvard-Yale men's rowing race.

Harvard won this year's race, a four-mile contest, with a time of 19:02.5 (to Yale's 19:43.8).

The two institutions are said to have first met each other in athletics competition on August 3, 1852, on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee after a group of Yale rowers challenged Harvard rowers.

The competition became an annual contest in 1864 and permanently moved to the Thames River in New London, Connecticut, in 1878.

This year's meeting was the 137th in the series, which Harvard leads, 84-53.

In its heyday, the race attracted 100,000 spectators, including U.S. presidents and leaders of corporate America.

Hall of Champions opens traveling exhibit

The NCAA Hall of Champions, located next to the national office in Indianapolis, opened its first traveling exhibit June 10 with "Discover Greatness," presented by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

The exhibit, which runs through July 16, features a variety of materials to portray life in Negro Leagues Baseball, including photographs and memorabilia such as pennants, uniforms, lockers and game posters.

Cliff Robinson, a batboy for the NLB Indianapolis Clowns from 1946 to 1949, will make a special appearance at the exhibit July 6 to talk about his years with the team.

Many NLB players got their start in college. Some of those prominent players include Jackie Robinson, a multisport athlete at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Ken Free, Al Smith and Tom Alston of North Carolina A&T State University.

-- Compiled by Kay Hawes

Number crunching

Looking back

A look back at the June 30, 1982, issue of The NCAA News:

An Indiana court rules that an injured Indiana State University football player is eligible to receive workmen's compensation benefits. The court ruled that the player was an employee of the institution at the time of the injury due to his scholarship agreement. The university indicates that it will appeal the ruling. NCAA legal counsel voices its displeasure with the ruling, saying that "A student-athlete is no more an employee than a regular student who is not participating in athletics." (The university eventually wins its appeal.) In a related issue, the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports begins discussions with the NCAA Insurance Committee about pursuing catastrophic-injury insurance coverage for seriously injured student-athletes.

A federal judge sets an August trial date for an Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women lawsuit against the NCAA. The AIAW charged the NCAA with numerous violations of antitrust laws when the NCAA began sponsoring women's championships. Meanwhile, the NCAA Women's Soccer Committee completes plans for the inaugural National Collegiate Women's Soccer Championship to be conducted in November at the University of Central Florida.

The NCAA Public Relations Committee recommends that a survey be used to determine what image problems face the NCAA and college athletics. Committee members agreed that many of the image problems are the result of highly volatile fan reaction to infractions cases. On that, committee members recommended that an NCAA representative (either the chair of the Committee on Infractions or a senior member of the enforcement staff) co-host a press conference with institutional representatives when infractions cases are announced. Media experts who attended the meeting agreed that such a policy would be the "single best thing the NCAA could do to start changing its image."

Purdue University Athletics Director George S. King Jr. is named president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics at the NACDA convention in Hollywood, Florida. Also, Muskingum Athletics Director Edgar Sherman is awarded NACDA's James J. Corbett Award.