Closing In On It

The locker rooms, coach's office and trainer room are nearly complete. Work is still being done in the gym, so no full court yet. Maybe by Wednesday 12/9. Estimated completion date is just before Christmas.

The Gym & Hoops & Soccer

Our locker rooms are nearly done. We should be able to start using them in early December. And we can start playing full court, which is good news for our hoops coaches, maybe not no much for the players, however.

Les Lunsford, former Kixx and Stockton star, is the new Head Soccer Coach. An official bio and timeline of Les' awesome soccer career will appear on the official ACCC website shortly.

ACCC Men and Women opened the 09-10 hoops season at Middlesex CC Saturday. Both teams went down to excellent Blue Colts' (that's Middlesex's nickname) squads. Fitness seemed to be the difference, and both ACCC head coaches are looking forward to practicing in the WHOLE gym.

ACCC Hoops Starts on Saturday

The Atlantic Cape Buccaneers kick-off the basketball season with a doubleheader at Middlesex County College on Saturday November 21st. Both the Men’s and Women’s teams play on the road until January 9th; while the gym undergoes a $1.2 million renovation.

More details http://www.atlantic.edu/studentServ/mens-basketball.html and

http://www.atlantic.edu/studentServ/womens-basketball.html and also check out our official NJCAA page at http://www.njcaa.org/colleges_college_home.cfm?collegeId=1490

Guest Blogger-Brian Jacobs writes on ACCC athletics and Senior Athletics Manager, Mike Rennick

ACCC Student Brian Jacobs is this week's guest blogger. Brian interviewed several members of the Buccaneer athletic community for this story....

Collegiate athletics may be recognized as a gateway to professional sports. One single athlete can put a college on the map. Atlantic Cape Community College is not known as a national powerhouse, nor does it produce many ESPN highlight reels, but no college in the nation has a man like Michael Rennick.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Rennick was exposed to sports just about everywhere he lived. He had the opportunity to grow up in states such as New York, Connecticut, Indiana, Florida, Virginia and Illinois. Each of these states have a reputation as top-notch sporting areas.

“I was exposed to several different sports that were popular in each region. For example, soccer was very popular in the northeast and not popular at all in the Midwest when I was growing up,” said Rennick. It is no mystery that hockey in Connecticut is just as big as football is in Florida. The reputation of sports just depends on the interest of the local population.

No matter where you are in the United States, you will always be introduced with new surroundings and different personalities. Things may seem different from place to place, but one thing remains the same. There will always be sports, and there will always be fans of sports. Michael Rennick is one of them.

Growing up, Rennick played baseball and basketball in high school. He then brought his teenage experiences with him to college, where he ran the collegiate intramural program for two years.

With the intentions of bringing the alumni onto campus to watch ACCC athletics, the school will introduce softball in the spring of 2010, as well as baseball and volleyball. “I want to create interest on campus for all the sports so that we have good crowds at all of our home events,” said Rennick.

With a strong interest in sports management and education, Rennick has set some goals for himself. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in education and athletic administration. “I love sports, and I enjoy creating an athletic environment which will offer a chance to compete at the intercollegiate level for as many student-athletes as possible.”

The school’s archery team is one of the top groups in the nation, and Rennick is working hard to spread that talent throughout ACCC’s athletics. It may take time to reach the archery team’s prestige, but Rennick has shown the heart and determination to do so. “I know that he is a great guy and has been very helpful. From what I hear he is a good coach,” Said ACCC’s archery coach Mick Ebert.

Working along with Rennick as ACCC’s soccer coach, Lisa Givens has gotten to know him fairly well. “Mike was always driven and very committed to not only the success of the soccer club, but ACCC athletics as a whole,” said Givens. “Mike Rennick is a very focused individual and has the leadership qualities to take the athletics department to the next level.”

Inspections

The renovations are in an "inspection phase" which is construction talk for having to wait until inspections are complete before continuing work. Not much remains to be completed in the locker room areas, except for installation of the ceiling tiles. Pictures will be posted next week once the tiles are installed.

Gym Update 10/22/09

Lots of work in the gym, tile and carpet are being installed, new doors are in. The skylights are installed in the fitness center, as well as the new windows.

Men's Soccer Update

Men's Soccer continues to battle against Region 19 opponents. However, the Bucs have yet to win this season, losing to Gloucester 7-3 to drop their overall record to 0-9. Ben Gery and Mike Hickman both continue to score, with Hickman in the team lead with 6 goals. The Bucs play two tough teams this week when the travel to #5 Brookdale on Tuesday and host Ocean CC on Saturday. The rankings are at http://www.njcaa.org/sports_news.cfm?sid=18&divid=3&gender=w&slid=9

Archery Holds Team Meeting

The ACCC Archery Team held their initial meeting for the upcoming season last week. Coach Mick Ebert and Coach Matt Campagna met with nearly 20 student-athletes.

Women's Hoops Begins

The Buc's Women's team has begun tryouts. Coach Harris' outstanding recruiting efforts have paid off, as more than twenty hopeful players signed up! The final roster will be announced shortly.

Gym Update-October 11th, 2009

Some serious progress is now being made. The walls in the locker room area are framed, and showers installed. The tile guys are in and have tiled sections of the women's locker room shower area, as well as the visitor's locker room.

Two new scoreboards have been installed in the gym. Also, we have shot clocks on the backboards, which will now light up when the clock expires. See the pictures.....

ACCC Soccer In The News

John O'Kane from The Press has a great article in today's paper about the restoration of intercollegiate soccer at ACCC.

http://pressofatlanticcity.com/sports/article_60a03fc2-988e-58d9-89af-194daea857df.html

Coach Mike Will Return

Coach Mike will return on September 28th. It will not be as dramatic as McAthur's return to Leyte Gulf, or as important. But I will be bringing donuts, which is something that McArthur never did.

Appendectomy

I'm out of action until at least the end of next week due to my emergency appendectomy on Tuesday morning. (Is there such a thing as a routine appendectomy.) And as a result, the first two games of the 2009 Men's Soccer season are postponed. Makeup dates will be announced shortly.

The Big Dig

While it does not approach many of the great archeological expeditions in size or scope, the excavation of the ACCC Gym locker rooms is still a significant endeavor. Experts from TN Ward have uncovered many artifacts in their search for "The Drain". These artifacts include old pipes, electrical wires, and what appears to be an old (and boring) Health Education textbook, although Carbon-14 testing will need to verify that.

Renovations continue in other parts of the gym. Walls are going up in some cases, and down in other cases.

Gym Renovations Update 8/13

The contractor has begun framing sections of the locker room, office, and trainer areas in the gym.

Holes

Renovations continue in the gym. Contractors have dug several large holes in a frustrating but eventually successful search for the drain lines. All this digging has put the project behind schedule, with the estimated "substantial" completion date now in mid-December.

Meet the new coaches

ACCC Hires Two New Coaches

Evelyn Morozzi (muh-RAH-zee) is the new Softball Coach at ACCC. Evelyn is a former assistant softball coach at Rutgers-Newark and has extensive experience in developing softball players through her coaching clinics.
Evelyn was a star player and pitcher at Montclair State University, where she is second all-time in most games started, and was in the top 10 in Division 3 in saves in 2001.
Evelyn is a graduate of the school of Education and Human Services at Montclair State University.

Harold Warner is the new Men’s Basketball at ACCC. Harold has more than 20 years coaching experience at the high school and amateur level. Most recently, Harold was the Head Coach at Pleasantville High School, where 13 of his players went on to Division I and II programs. At Pleasantville, Harold’s teams won 5 NJ State Championships.
As a player, Harold was a1st team All-American at Gannon University in 1984 and 1985, and is the college’s all-time leading scorer.
Harold graduated with a BS degree in Health and Human Services from Gannon University in Erie, PA.

More Pictures July 19, 2009

The new fitness center will be here.

Gym Renovation Update July 19, 2009

Demolition in the gym continues. Photos from the locker room areas show the workers digging a lot of holes, making a tremendous amount of noise, yet properly wearing their hard hats.

ACCC Archer Steve Gatto Wins Gold in Serbia

ACCC archer Steve Gatto won two gold medals and one silver medal at the World University Games in Serbia. Gatto was part of the US men's compound team that won the gold medal and the mixed team compound that won the silver. He also won a gold medal in the men's individual compound. More pictures are at the US CAP site.

New Facebook groups

Two of our teams have their own group page on Facebook. Archery's page is here and soccer's page is here.

Men's Soccer Schedule Fall 2009

Mens Soccer Fall 2009 Full Schedule

More pictures from July 8th

Gym Renovation Update July 8th, 2009

The General Contractor ('GC') for the gym project is TN Ward. The company has a lot of experience in the region with educational projects, some of which can be viewed at
http://www.tnward.com/portfolio_type.php?cid=2. Locally, they built the Atlantic City Public Safety Building and renovated the Cape may County Court House. They are also the GC for the new soccer stadium currently under construction in Chester, PA.

The GC is currently working in the area of the locker rooms. Once completed, there will be Women's and Men's Locker Rooms, plus a visiting team locker room. I will post the architectural drawing for the project soon. The pictures of the renovations were taken July 8th.

Eteamz Website Is kaput

If you've gone to the soccer website www. eteamz.com/acccsoccer, you'll notice that eteamz has taken us off-line for exceeding their very generous allowance of 5MB in storage. We won't be updating this site or using eteamz in the future. Instead, we will be putting the rosters, schedules, photos and other information on the athletics pages at www.atlantic.edu. But not yet. Most likely by mid-August.

Archery Video

Here's video of our archers at the US Intercollegiate Archery Championship. ACCC won the Men's Compound Division at Long Beach State in June, 2009.

Gym Renovations

The college is renovating Jonathan Pitney Hall, or as some people call it, the gym. It should be completed by November and will have new locker rooms, new scoreboard, air conditioning, and a fitness center.

This is part of ACCC's new commitment to expand the athletic program. Men's Soccer starts this fall as an intercollegiate sport. We had two great years as a club soccer team, highlighted by the ESSL (Eastern States Soccer League) championship in 2007 and a tie versus then #3-ranked Brookdale last September. (Brookdale would eventually rise to #1 before losing in the regional playoffs.)

Softball starts in the Spring of 2010, joining Region 19 and the Garden State Athletic Conference (GSAC).

Welcome to the Blog

I have been given a the power of the blog by the ACCC web guy.