12.28.2009 | by Cherry Crayton | Filed under Sports | Comments: One response |
The NC State Alumni Association offices are closed this week, but the Wolfpack women’s basketball team has two games and will spend New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles, Calif. So we’ll post updates on the games from the week in this blog entry as part of our ongoing series, “A Coach’s First Season,” and later we’ll have a first-person account of the trip to L.A. from our guest-blogger: Patrick Kinas of the Wolfpack radio network.
A behind-the-scenes account of the team’s trip to L.A., from Patrick Kinas of the Wolfpack radio network
Patrick Kinas, left, interviews Coach Kellie Harper after the first game of the season on Nov. 13 as senior forward Lucy Ellison looks on. (Photo by Peyton Williams)
Sunday morning update: For a week where people around the globe count down the final hours of the final days of the year, the NC State women’s basketball team found out just how long a short day could be, and how short a long day was. Make sense? Of course not. Try hopping on a plane and covering three time zones on a day, and doing the same three days later going the opposite direction. Mix in a practice, a shootaround, a four-hour tour bus tour of Southern California, grabbing a few coupons from souvenir hawkers in Beverly Hills and a chance to celebrate three separate New Year’s Eve’s before returning home. It’s no wonder that a day after getting back to Raleigh, that my brain feels like it’s 4 in the afternoon, while the clock on my wall reads 12:30am. I’m wide awake, and I have no idea why. (more…)
12.24.2009 | by Cherry Crayton | Filed under Sports | Comments: No responses |
Editor’s note: Patrick Kinas, the voice of the Wolfpack women’s basketball team, provides his third entry as our guest blogger for our ongoing series, “A Coach’s First Season.” In this entry, which comes just a couple of days after the team fell to Georgetown 67-66 Tuesday night in D.C., Patrick provides a behind-the-scenes account of their travel miscues and pains to Washington, D.C., which culminated in a 67-66 loss to Georgetown Tuesday night — a loss that first-year NC State head coach Kellie Harper described as “a hard one to swallow.”
Patrick Kinas, left, interviews Coach Kellie Harper after the first game of the season on Nov. 13 as senior forward Lucy Ellison looks on. (Photo by Peyton Williams)
Traveling during the holiday season is never an easy process. Millions of Americans going every which way — by car, by bus, by train, by plane. So while it’s certainly nice to travel to places like historic Washington, D.C., sometimes you wonder if it’s worth the hassle. (more…)
12.22.2009 | by Cherry Crayton | Filed under Sports | Comments: No responses |
The NC State women’s basketball team made 11 3-pointers and led by as many as 13 points, but the Pack also had 30 turnovers and sent Georgetown to the free-throw line 37 times. The result? A game-winning offensive rebound and putback from the Hoyas’ Monica McNutt with about 13 seconds left to give Georgetown a 67-66 win Tuesday night in McDonough Gymnasium in Washington, D.C. (Box score at GoPack.)
“Oh boy, this is going to hurt. It’s going to hurt,” first-year Wolfpack head coach Kellie Harper told Patrick Kinas with Wolfpack Sports Radio after the game.
The Pack’s Emili Tasler, a redshirt sophomore guard, scored all 10 of her points in the final 8 minutes, including a layup with 1:51 left to put NC State up 66-61.
But McNutt had two key offensive rebounds for Georgetown (10-2). She was fouled when grabbing an offensive rebound with 1:27 and made her two ensuing free throws.
NC State magazine’s winter cover story features the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) and looks at how veterinary medicine is changing to meet the needs of its patients and their owners. We’ve collected some videos here that really show the breadth of work done at CVM (and that show the Dog Olympics!). And make sure you check out our 2005 article on the Randall B. Terry Jr. Companion Animal Veterinary Medical Center, which is scheduled to be completed in late 2010.
And don’t forget to check out our multimedia presentation on the 1983 national championship run, where you can see photographs from the ACC and NCAA tournaments, read quotes from Coach Jim Valvano and listen to Wally Ausley call the last minute of the game against Houston.
The contestants and their photographs are featured in the above Flickr slideshow. Karen Laut, a religious studies major from Fayetteville, won with her photo (No. 2 in the slideshow) of the State College smokestack. Here’s what she told us about her shot:
I took my photo because I wanted to capture a visually interesting view of NC State’s campus. I was attracted to the place because this area is easily overlooked even though it contains some important elements that define the university.
12.18.2009 | by Cherry Crayton | Filed under Sports | Comments: No responses |
Emili Tasler (Photo by Tim O'Brien/NC State Student Media)
As part of our ongoing series in which we’re following Kellie Harper in her first season as the head coach of the Wolfpack women’s basketball team, NC State magazine sat down with redshirt sophomore Emili Tasler for an interview Thursday. An Iowa native who moved to Apex during high school, Emili missed the past two seasons because of knee injuries. The reserve point guard scored a career-high 11 points in the Pack’s 74-71 loss to South Carolina on Sunday. “I didn’t care at all that I had 11 points,” she says. “I was more worried about our defense and upset about the loss and the things we could have done to prevent that because there were so many things we could have done.”
After the jump, Emili talks about how her team is dealing with going 1-3 in its last four games and handling the South Carolina loss, in which the Wolfpack had 22 turnovers and were out-rebounded 45-39. She also talks about the coaching staff, her injuries and her background.
NC State’s next game is on Saturday, Dec. 19, at 5 p.m., when the Pack host Winthrop in Reynolds. Bring a new, unwrapped toy for free admission; children can also get their photos taken with the team after the game. If you can’t make the game, follow it on GoPack.com or listen to it on WKNC 88.1 FM.
Interview with Guard Emili Tasler
On the losses
The team has gone 1-3 in the past four games, with losses to Vanderbilt, Wisconsin and South Carolina. What’s the mindset of the team right now?
We know what we’re doing wrong. It’s the same thing in all the games. It’s the little things like boxing out. And as Coach Kellie says, “It’s the little things that matter, and it’s things that we can fix easily.” We just have to go in and do it, and I think we’re really motivated to do things the right way. We’re going to try really hard to do that. Watching films helps a lot. . . We’re learning the system and we’re getting the system down, but it’s consistently doing the things right. Consistently boxing out every time. Consistently sprinting up and down the court. Consistently doing the plays and knowing what’s going on. I think once we get that down, good things will come. Great things.
The National Corvette Museum has named Fred Gallasch ’67 MECON, ’73 PHD one of its 2010 Hall of Fame inductees. Gallasch, who worked for GM for 31 years until retiring in 2004, spent nearly a decade as the “voice of the Corvette customer” and helped the automaker develop the fifth generation of the popular sports car. In our Winter 2004 article on Gallasch, we talked with him about being an advocate for Corvette aficionados:
No congressman ever represented his constituency better. When GM engineers once considered changing the Corvette’s distinctive taillights, for example, Gallasch told them no way.
“That’s been a tradition since 1961,” he says. “When the thing blows by you, you want people to be able to say, ‘That’s a Corvette.’ ”
Gallasch will be inducted Sept. 3. Congratulations!
Got a doubting six-year-old? Or a little one who really wants to know how Santa Claus makes it to everyone’s house in a single night? Larry Silverberg, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, can help you explain it all, from the bag that serves as an on-site toy factory to the state-of-the-art sleigh:
“The truss of the sleigh, including the runners, are made of a honeycombed titanium alloy that is very lightweight and 10 to 20 times stronger than anything we can make today,” Silverberg says. The truss can also morph, Silverberg adds, altering its shape slightly to improve its aerodynamics and “allowing it to cut through the air more efficiently. The runners on the sleigh, for example, have some flexure. This allows them to tuck in to be more aerodynamic during flight, and then spread out to provide stability for landing on various surfaces – such as steeply pitched roofs.”
And make sure you check out Young Silverbell, Silverberg’s Young Frankenstein spoof explaining the science of Santa (featuring a cameo by Tom O’Brien).
Josh Davis '06 stands in front of the Dueling Dragons attraction at Universal Studios Singapore, which opens this spring. (Photo by Darren Soh/Redux)
At 16, Josh Davis ’06 decided he wanted to design roller coasters. Since then, the Lynchburg, Va., native has pursued that goal, earning a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from NC State and a master’s in the same field from Cal Poly in 2008. Where is he today? Since October, he’s been in Singapore as a project coordinator and junior engineer for California-based Attractions Services Company Inc. working specifically on one of the attractions planned for the Universal Studios Singapore opening in spring 2010. Davis is helping implement the designs of the show action equipment—objects that move using mechanical components and pneumatics—and flame effects for the Lights! Camera! Action! attraction, which will give visitors the opportunity to see how special effects work and how movies are made. A Caldwell Fellow alumnus, he spoke to us about his career and roller coasters.
How did you become interested in roller coasters?
When I was 16, the summer that preceded my senior year in high school, I was volunteering at the Jubilee Family Development Center in my hometown of Lynchburg, Va., and I began to really think about the job I would like to have. You have to love what you do knowing ahead of time that you’re probably going to be working 25 to 30 years. I thought of things that could hold my attention for that long and that would provide a lot of variety. I think the entertainment industry provides that, particularly at amusement parks. But I also wanted to be on the side where you build something, do calculations, troubleshooting and figure out to how to make things work. So I majored in mechanical engineering from NC State and followed [Mohammad Noori] to Cal Poly. He was a professor at NC State when I was an undergraduate student, and he’s now dean of Cal Poly’s College of Engineering. While there, I wrote all these proposals and contacted every major theme park in the U.S. asking if they would be willing to sponsor a project for me. They gave me noise and vibration, so my graduate thesis was on noise and vibration in roller coasters. That’s how I broke into the industry. I finished up last June with my master’s degree [in mechanical engineering], and I had soon signed my contract for theme park that was to built in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. When I signed the contract, it was the greatest feeling I’ve ever had, and I was so pumped up. Last summer was the greatest summer I ever lived, and everything seemed to be in sync. But, the economy fell and the project got put on hold.
What did you learn from being laid off?
You go to school and they never talk about the economy turning sour and what happens if your project is put on hold and you experience a layoff. It happened so quickly. I had a job, but then, just six months of being out of school, I was already out of a job. I was confused, I really was. I’ve probably grown just this year alone by two or three years. It was a great lesson learning in that every single day that you go to work you should work like it’s like your last day. I also better understand how the [entertainment] industry works. It is a cut-throat industry, and to maintain a career, it’s important to be dedicated to what you’re doing. So I’m trying to build a portfolio where people know the type of work I do and what I bring to the table as a team player, and I try to keep a positive attitude. And hopefully people respect that and I’ll be able to have a long career in this industry.
How did you get to Singapore?
Shortly [after being laid off], I signed on with Attraction Services. I begged and pleaded with them to let me come to [Singapore] as they installed the [Lights! Camera! Action! attraction]. I think one of the most important things in engineering is that in order to be good at design, not only does it take repetition, but it’s important to actually see the stuff that you’re working on being installed. Normally it requires some manipulation or modification of the equipment to get it to work in the actual venue where it’s being installed. Everything is ideal in the shop and the lab because you control a lot of things, but when it leaves your shop, you can’t control things anymore. So designs require modification once they begin the installation, and that’s a different way of thinking. If you never get from out behind the desk, you never see this part. It really only makes you a better engineer.
What makes a roller coaster special to you?
The newer roller coasters are sexier because it’s about pushing the limits—bigger drops, faster speeds. But I love the classics because they carry so much history and represent the skill of some great designers [like John Allen who designed the Racer at Kings Island], who weren’t privy to using technology that we have available today. It’s pretty cool to ride coasters that have been standing for 60, 70 years.
Where does your drive come from?
I was fortunate to have a wonderful family, teachers, friends and mentors as I grew up. To have that constant support makes a difference because everyone is always pushing you to be better. I didn’t have any excuse to not be where I am. But, the game of basketball was where I learned about my drive. It was the first thing I ever completely concentrated on, and I failed at it. But you never get anywhere without failing somewhere along the way. Those mistakes and lessons from basketball have fueled my drive to design roller coasters.
What did you learn from your Caldwell experience?
When I was first began the Caldwell Fellows program, I was a lot more closed-minded. The opportunities I had because of the stipend and the way to use the stipend to educate yourself to be more socially involved and socially aware—a lot of people don’t get he opportunity to do that. A lot of times, it’s easy to restrict yourself because you don’t think you can. Sometimes you just have to ask and people will allow you to come behind the scenes. Now, I always ask if I’m even interested in anything. Some people don’t mind if you tag along to show you how things work. That’s what Caldwell did for me—to allow me to be more open-minded about how I think and how me understand how you can grow from any experience.
How did you use your Caldwell stipends?
[I took an Alternative Spring Break trip] to San Francisco, Calif., where we served the homeless. The way they structured the trip was for us to actually experience what it was like to live as a homeless [person]. You didn’t necessarily see people in rags coming in. We saw people who looked exactly like us. It was an eye-opening experience to recognize how fortunate I am but also how much work we need to do to make life better for everyone else, not just ourselves. That’s one of the cool things about [the entertainment] industry: We reach people in a different way. Every day, when I go into work, I try to remember what we’re doing. We’re entertaining, and I get a feeling of satisfaction from hearing a kid say, “Mom and dad, that was really cool. I wonder how they did that.”
The second stipend was to put on charity events at the Jubilee Family Development Center, [which serves underprivileged youth in Lynchburg, Va.,], where my dream to design roller coasters was founded. A lot of times charities approach fundraising with adults selling how great the kids are. But I wanted to put on the luncheon where the kids did everything. They were trained how to serve food like a professional from a certified chef in Lynchburg, and they ran everything. They fixed the lunch; they served the lunch; they did the emceeing. It went over quite well. We did two of these back to back years in 2006 and 2007; both years they raised somewhere between $35K to $40K. It’s amazing to watch these kids and give them their own platform because the only way to sell is for them to show the community that they have what it takes to take the community to the next level. At some point, they are going to be the leaders and decision-makers. The community needs to buy into these kids so the kids can develop the confidence in themselves that they can do it.
How did you build your confidence?
The year 2004 was a big year. At the time, I was 19 and got an internship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Every year they select about 50 [college students] from around the country to work with special agents and other professional staff at the bureau. It was a huge confidence booster to go from just applying and doing the drug and polygraph testing to making it all the way to end. It was a reminder that nothing happens over night and that things take time. Also, don’t just focus on the end result but give yourself a chance and be fully committed. It’s difficult to get where you want to be when you waver. When you first get started, you have no experience. There are a small group of people like Michelangelo who were probably born with something. Most aren’t, so we have to work at it and then you have to work to maintain it. It requires repetition while finding ways to get better. And that’s what it’s about for me—to find ways to get better, to be open-minded, and to listen to people who have already been there before. Everything is really about progression, and I believe progression breeds success.
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