Stanford Today
Edition: July/August, 1996
Section: Sports News
WWW: Sports News

Tennis Team Takes National Crown
Stanford's tennis dynasty continued this spring as the men won the 1996 NCAA championship and the women finished second in May. Since 1977, when NCAA team championship play began, no other university has won more championships -- the men claiming 12 and the women nine. The men's finals victory over UCLA was sweet revenge for the Cardinal, which was beaten three times by the Bruins during the season. Coach Dick Gould's team, which also won the NCAAs in 1995, beat Texas, USC and Georgia to advance to the finals against UCLA. Cardinal winners in the championship match were Ricky Becker, Grant Elliott, Jim Thomas and Ryan Wolters.

Tiger Tames Competition
Sophomore Tiger Woods won the NCAA golf championship -- the first Stanford player to do so since Sandy Tatum Jr. in 1942 -- and the team finished fourth in the national competition, which ended June 1. Woods, a two-time U.S. Amateur champion, and Jack Nicklaus are the only golfers in history to win both the NCAA and amateur titles.

Women's Water Polo Makes Big Splash
Stanford's newest varsity competitor, the women's water polo team, finished in fifth place at the national championships -- and did so with five frosh starters. Two of Coach Ben Quittner's frosh, Heather Crary and Lindsay Welch, made the junior national team. Quittner also is assistant men's coach. Women's water polo, which was a club sport before this year, competes in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, which includes almost all the major Western universities.

Rugby Team Finishes Third
The rugby team, heirs to a tradition that dates back to the earliest days of the university, made it to the national finals for the first time in the team's history. In the national semifinal in early May, the Cardinal lost to Penn State, then beat Navy to conclude its season as the third best team in the country. Coupled with its first Big Game victory in 16 years, the third place finish made 1996 a watershed year for Coach Franck Boivert's team. The team travels to Australia this summer for a series of matches Down Under.

Tree Gets Trimmed
Stanford's "Tree" has been barred for five years from an annual competition in which sports fans cast votes in cyberspace for their favorite college sports team mascot. The ESPNET SportsZone, a Web site operated by the ESPN cable television sports channel, said that in a tight vote of 3,200 fans, 51.8 percent voted to uproot the Tree. ESPNET's First Annual Battle of the Mascots let fans pick their favorite from among 16 mascots. Two Stanford students using campus computer accounts developed a computer script to automatically send an endless stream of Tree votes to the Web site and thousands of votes were registered. But the prank blocked other users from accessing the SportsZone for several hours and ESPNET system administrators traced the problem back to the Farm. Stanford computer gurus quickly identified the computer accounts and closed them. The two students' computer privileges were revoked.

Stanford Nine Fades at Regionals
The Cardinal baseball team reached the regional playoffs for the 14th time in the past 16 seasons, but was eliminated after two one-run losses. Coming into the regionals in late May, the team was ranked sixth nationally and had won 16 in a row -- a school record. Coach Mark Marquess, now in his 20th year, has led the Cardinal team to six of the last 13 conference championships. Catcher A.J. Hinch, who will be the U.S. Olympic team catcher, led the team with a .397 average and 11 home runs. He was named Pac-10 Player of the Year. At the end of the season, Marquess was elected to the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. The Cardinal won the national championship in 1987 and 1988.ST