UVA

I think the last moment that would have prevented this catastrophe would have been at the very beginning. Rolling Stone, more or less, based the entire story off of the account of one woman, the victim.

I understand rape is not something to be taken lightly but the fact that she claimed to be disoriented but remembered things to vividly should have raised a red flag in the beginning.

Also, the fact that friends were named but never spoken to is poor journalism. Elderly put so much confidence in “Jackie” that she basically overlooked every other principle if investigative journalism. She took everything Jackie said at face value.

Even when things seemed a bit off, the not responding for weeks in October, she still took Jackie’s word. Also, Jackie did not give specifics willingly. If someone is willing to speak about something of this caliber, they should realize that the journalist is going to want everything down to the last detail. It shouldn’t have been as painful as it was.

Furthermore, another catastrophe point was when the fact checker was asking about quotes from the friends, and they were unconfirmed by the friend. Elderly, again, needed only Jackie’s word for confirmation.

If you notice something is wrong the minute you start it, step back and reevaluate. Elderly did not do this. She went along with more or less a single source. That was what caused the catastrophe. Not the event, but the lack of solid reporting and multiple sources.

Personal Story Interviews

Interviews I have

  • Club Lacrosse players
    • Men’s
      • Jake Sciotto
    • Women’s
      • Gabby Leonard
      • Emily Tower

Interviews to get

  • Tim Godby – Milton HS girl’s coach
  • Kirk Rogers – Young Harris men’s coach
  • Danielle Horoschak – Young Harris women’s coach
  • Current NCAA Lacrosse players
    • potentially Young Harris players
    • Mackie Marcellino and Peter Gerhard — playing at DI and DII schools up North

I would like to get the perspective of current players in the NCAA. I would also be interested to see how coaches in the south recruit in regard to demographics. Do they seek out players in the South? Or do they focus a majority of their interests in the North?

Records in need

Team:

  • How many players transferred over X amount of years
  • If any players transferred in or out of one school more so than another
  • If there was an influx of players into a particular school after a coaching change
  • Which schools have won the most championships in X amount of years and if they have had a significant number of transfers

We could probably acquire these records from GHSA. I’m sure that there must be a record kept of every transfer because you need to fill out forms to do so

Individual:

  • The number of men and women playing lacrosse in college
  • How many students playing college lacrosse are from Georgia
  • The percentage of lacrosse teams that are and that are not made up of in-state students

I’m not exactly sure how to come across this information. I don’t know if the NCAA keeps records of where players or from and I highly doubt many schools would, especially the smaller ones.

Jenkins case

The case goes over history of NCAA violations with antitrust laws, what schools can and cannot offer to students and recruits, specifics about awards/losing amateur status, it goes over over bowl games, and NFL/NBA eligibility to name a few.

It then goes into how these athletes could never truly be compensated monetarily for what their schools and the NCAA have benefitted from using their talents.

Jenkins is arguing that athletes should receive compensation for the work they put in and that the current athletic scholarship model hinders that.

As far as potential stories go, the fact that only a handful of schools from the power five conferences win national championships is a big one. Another avenue to explore is recruiting and how much of it is done under the table and how the NCAA could be better at policing it.

Another story, obviously, is the compensation of athletes, which I whole heartedly disagree with. While I see the point the case makes that some of these athletes will never have a professional career post-college, I still believe that in order to have an amateur status, college athletes should not be paid. If they were, anarchy would ensue.

It’s not fair if you pay a basketball player more than a runner. And then contracts would be negotiated, agents would get involved, and athletes would go from high school to the “corporate world” right away and more often than not, not know how to handle it. College prepares athletes for the pro-world.

Open Records Law

The way I interpret the new “open records” law is that now, in order to obtain a public record in the state of Georgia, after sending in a request, you have to wait three months for them to approve and send you a copy of the record. Three months is a very long time.

I don’t think this law is necessarily fair to anyone. Especially because the new timeline is ridiculous compared to what it was.

To go from three days wait period to three months is a huge jump. I don’t understand how law makers came to that number. I could see maybe a month or six weeks but not three months.

This makes reporting, solving crime cases, and just obtaining general information much harder. It also comes off as trying to hide something or to put it off as long as possible.

One way to solve this problem could be varying wait times for how sensitive the information is.

For example, things that are considered general information but are not readily available, their wait time would be shorter than something to the effect of tax returns or someone’s contract demands.

While I think all laws are there for a reason, there is a level of sensibility that must be maintained. Three months goes beyond the level of being sensible.

So I think that the structure of the open records law needs to be revisited and revised that way people can obtain information in a more sensible amount of time.

Tableau

I used Tableau to show why Kentucky men’s basketball finished 27-9 last year.

Out of the 18 games they played, they outscored their opponents in two-pointers, two-pointers attempted, three-pointers, and three-pointers attempted to give them an overall higher amount of points scored throughout the season.

The one area where Kentucky and their opponents were almost even was in three-pointers but Kentucky beats them out by 32 making their three-point average 39.2% to their opponents 33.8%.

Even though Kentucky’s three-point average was close, the fact that their two-pointer percentage beat their opponents out by nearly 10%.

Not considering free-throws, because their percentage was only one percent above their opponents, I believe that Kentucky’s success with their two-pointers is what put them ahead last season.

sheet-1

Source: http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/kentucky/2016.html

Updated Memo

I’m in the process of accumulating data about the NCAA lacrosse programs.

Between 2009 and 2019, 283 schools have added or plan to add lacrosse. FIfty more are set to start between 2017-19. 175 have been men’s and 208 have been women’s.

There have been 134 schools in DI, 69 schools in DII, and 45 schools in DIII

I am planning to talk to the girls head coach at Milton HS. Milton has won 10 state championships over the past 11 years. Many of their players have gone on to play in college as well.

I also plan to speak to members of the men’s and women’s UGA club lacrosse teams to see why they decided not to play lacrosse in college. Furthermore, I have a potential contact at Stetson University who played on the women’s lacrosse team on the year of its inception.

I am currently working on how men’s and women’s NCAA programs are spread out across the country. Thus far, even without the 50 planned, there are more women’s programs overall than men’s.

What I want to focus on is the growth of lacrosse across the country, men’s vs women’s, and the perspective of players who do and do not choose to play in college.

Team Budget

Ashleigh just recently finished going through the GHSA eligibility rules from 1979-2015.

Now that that is done, she and I are going to go through them to see if we notice any patterns.

More specifically, we will be looking for which rules change the most, which rules become more specific overtime, and if rules are added or deleted. Once we have noted the most prevalent of the previously mentioned, we can cross reference it with any athletic “scandals,” for lack of a better term, from the preceding year. That way, we will be able to see if any eligibility scandals directly influence by-law changes.

Furthermore, we can also make some graphs for those rule instances we feel are the most important and or have changed the most over time.

Lastly, we are going to do some research to see which counties/regions get the most transfers, what the transfer’s cited reason is and how strictly GHSA rules are enforced.

Memo

Key questions

  • How many college lacrosse programs there are in the country – NCAA
    • which ones take a lot from out of state vs which ones that don’t — Stats
  • Which MS and HS have lacrosse programs in Georgia — GHSA
  • Which programs in georgia have had the most success — Records
  • How many lacrosse players stay in GA to play in college vs how many leave the state — Stats
  • How many decide not to play in college after having success in HS
    • Interviews with lacrosse club team members
    • Talk to members of the UGA club lacrosse teams – mens and womens
      • Where they are from
      • When they started playing lacrosse
      • If they wanted to play collegiately

Graphics

  • Graphic of Georgia showing where programs are
  • Graph those staying vs leaving
  • Graph showing who continue to play vs who stopped

Sidebars

  • Important quotes from players

Overall story idea:

I want to get a gist of how lacrosse grows past the high school level specifically focusing on students at UGA. I think getting the perspective of those on the club team would add an interesting insight.