This isn’t a baseball post, but it’s a Stanford Athletics post – and a very important one, at that!

Stanford’s women’s sports teams recently won the Capital One Cup. Back in June, when the results were announced, a press release was sent out congratulating our women. It’s been a while since then, but now that the new school year’s started up, the trophy itself has finally made its way to campus.

The Cup trophy made its first appearance at a Stanford women’s soccer game, coincidentally played against Boston University, where my kid brother is currently a freshman engineering student. (Can you tell I’m proud of him?)

Tricia Gibbs, Capital One Senior Manager of Brand Sponsorships, presents the Capital One Cup Trophy (and a check) to Earl Koberlein, Stanford Senior Associate Athletic Director. (Photo courtesy of Capital One Cup.)

The trophy and check for $200,000 also made it to a Stanford football game the next day:

L-R: Tara Van Derveer (Head Coach, Women’s Basketball), Tara Danielson (Head Coach, Field Hockey), Paul Ratcliffe (Head Coach, Women’s Soccer), Rachel Quon (Women’s Soccer student-athlete), Becky Dru (Field Hockey student-athlete), Tricia Gibbs (Capital One), Alina Garcia Mendez (Women’s Soccer student-athlete), Mariah Nogueira (Women’s Soccer student-athlete), Emily Henriksson (Field Hockey student-athlete) and John Tanner (Head Coach, Women’s Water Polo). (Photo courtesy of Capital One Cup.)

Congratulations to all our women student-athletes – and all their coaches for bringing out the best in them!

According to the press release back in June, “Capital One congratulates Stanford University for winning the women’s Capital One Cup for the second consecutive season, with a record 152.5 points.” Not only are our ladies dominant, but they’re record-setters and role models! The award-winners were even honored at the ESPYs this year, so it’s good to see college athletics, especially women’s college athletics, receiving this sort of attention. Programs like the Cup will hopefully encourage other schools to strengthen their athletic programs – but not in a way that compromises their academic programs, because we’d like to remind you here that Stanford has now won twice in a row. Academics are important, people.

I’ll close this out with one more shot of the Cup from the soccer game so you can see how shiny our new trophy is.

Tricia Gibbs and Earl Koberlein with the trophy. (Photo courtesy of Capital One Cup.)

Friday was the first game of the Tallahassee Super Regional and the Stanford Cardinal faced the Florida State Seminoles.

And this happened.

This is ugly.Very ugly.

Don’t let it happen again, Cardinal, seeing as if you lose Game 2, you’re eliminated.

And we here at Nine Shot First don’t really want that to happen.

The Fresno State Bulldogs played the Pepperdine Waves in the first game of the day.

For eight innings, the Bulldogs were in control, leading 5-2 and doing everything right.

Until the top of the 9th. In an unpredictable manner, the Waves rallied back — and rallied hard. On five hits, Fresno State’s hopes of advancing were dashed when Pepperdine scored six runs — four on a grand slam by Matt Forgatch.

Pepperdine won 8-5, eliminating Fresno State from the regional.

The Waves advanced to play the Stanford Cardinal later in the evening. » Continue reading “Palo Alto Regional: And The Cardinal Emerge Victorious”

Well, things are going quite nicely on our end.

We’ll get to that in a minute, though. First, let’s talk about the game that happened before ours: Michigan State and Fresno State.

Both teams swapped runs early in the game – by the end of the first inning, it was 2-2, and the score stayed that way through five until Fresno State’s Trent Garrison broke through and drove in a run in the sixth on a two-out double. Fresno State tacked on another run in the seventh (the fourth run they scored with two outs in this game), then survived a scare in the bottom of the inning when the Spartans had two men on but failed to score.

Oh, and then there was a triple play. Strange things were happening tonight at Sunken – there was an oddity in the Stanford game, too. But we’ll get to that later. Fresno State scored a run before that triple play, then added three more in the top of the ninth to make the score 8-2. That was the final. Michigan State is done for the year with a 37-24 record.

And then…it was our turn.

» Continue reading “Palo Alto Regional: Day Two”

In the first game of the regionals, the Michigan State Spartans played the Pepperdine Waves.

Pepperdine struck first, scoring two runs in the 3rd. Michigan State got on the board in the 5th thanks to a Jordan Keur base hit, and they cut the lead in half.

However, the lead would become too insurmountable for them when Pepperdine opened the gates of runs. In the bottom of the 6th, the Waves batted around and scored four runs to make it 6-1.

Michigan State would score one more run in the 7th, but that was all. Pepperdine’s Jon Moscot threw a complete game, allowing 10 hits, 2 runs, 2 walks, and struck out 4 for the win.

The Fresno State Bulldogs played the Stanford Cardinal in the second game of the night. » Continue reading “Palo Alto Regional: Day One”

It was announced on Sunday that Klein Field at Sunken Diamond would be one of the 16 host sites for the NCAA baseball regionals.

Today, NCAA announced the bracket for the regionals. Stanford, Pepperdine, Michigan State, and Fresno State will play in the Palo Alto Regional, with the first games on Friday night. The regional will be using a double elimination format, as seen below.

All games will be broadcasted on ESPN 3. Tickets go onsale at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. According to the Stanford Cardinal website, “Patrons can call 1-800-STANFORD or visit gostanford.com to purchase tickets.”

Guys, you have to listen to this. I mean, you have to. It’s Nine doing an awesome interview with the lovely people at College Baseball 360.

It’s really interesting to hear him talk about adding scholarships to baseball, actually. He points out that baseball gets less scholarships than basketball and football, but he also explains that this actually allows other schools to be more competitive because less scholarship spaces mean that more prospects go to more schools.

Eleven days until we start playing baseball. You know you’re excited. We’re excited.

Today is the first anniversary of Aerys Sports! Since I still don’t have a laptop – it’s on its way and will arrive later this afternoon – I hijacked my dad’s iPad one last time and made you all this video, then posted it here using my mom’s laptop (which I also hijacked).

Keep on keeping on, my fellow nerds.

So my co-conspirator Mac and I were on Twitter the other night during the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. As we were chatting and watching the game, I was reading the second book in the X-Wing Rogue Squadron series. Now, if you’re enough of a nerd (and if you’re a Stanford fan, there’s a good chance you are), you probably realized that the title of this website comes from a very famous Star Wars trope. Basically, we like Star Wars here.

Now, as I was reading my book, certain things happened in the Fiesta Bowl as I read chapters centering on certain characters. I thought it was a weird trend, but I jumped on it because I found it hilarious. So now, without further ado, here are the fruits of that odd trend.

When Stanford Is Winning: Rally Tycho Celchu

This is Tycho. He likes hot chocolate, girls named Winter, and his BFF Wedge. Also, whenever I was reading chapters centered around him, Stanford was winning. I therefore began to credit Tycho, a native of no-longer-existent planet Alderaan, with any and all success Stanford was having. If you’re wondering, I’m quite sleep-deprived as of late.

When Stanford Is Losing: Self-Hating Corran Horn

Corran has a tendency to blame himself for everything, even when things aren’t his fault. He is very good at this self-blaming thing. Therefore, I’m sure he won’t mind taking the blame for Stanford when they’re losing, because every time I read a Corran-focused chapter OSU had success. Too much success for my liking, to be honest.

When All Hope Is Lost: Emo Murderer-Jedi Kyp Durron

Kyp is…well, lemme just link you to his Wookieepedia page. Basically, Kyp goes back and forth between murdering millions of people and becoming a Jedi under Luke Skywalker. He’s an odd one, which is why Mac nominated him for the post of ‘Stanford is losing and it’s really miserable.’  Originally, we were going to use Corran for football and Kyp for baseball, but Kyp can probably stand for pretty much any loss that makes no sense whatsoever because he makes no sense whatsoever.

This is probably the nerdiest sports post you will ever read in your life. Deal with it.

From the official article from Stanford itself:

Spencer earned first team All-America and All-Pac-10 honors in 1990 after posting a 14-1 record and a 2.73 ERA. He also struck out 145 batters in 141.2 innings or work. His 14 wins are tied for second on Stanford’s all-time single-season victory list while his 145 strikeouts rank as the fourth highest single-season total in school history. As a freshman, Spencer posted a 7-2 record and a 3.19 ERA to help the Cardinal to its second straight College World Series title and was the winning pitcher in the championship game against Arizona State.

Stan is one of nine athletes being inducted on November 11th.

All of the inductees will be honored at a private reception and dinner at McCaw Hall in the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center on Friday, Nov. 11 beginning at 6:00 p.m. The class will also be introduced at halftime of Stanford’s game against Oregon on Nov. 12.

Congratulations to Stan and the other eight Stanford athletes! You’re all amazing!