I don't mind the mask mandate. I have decent, breathable masks. The irony of COVID-19 is that it was indirectly responsible for me not getting sick in 2020. Not even a cold. Even though in the long term it isn't good to never get sick I am not mad at that. Things will have to improve a lot before I'll consider another indoor sporting event.

The trick for you will be using up your funds in time given it sounds like you're using funds from different trips, which means you'll have funds with different expiration dates. Southwest has this limitation built in the system where you can only use two sets of travel funds per trip, in addition to your card, so if you have funds from 3 or more trips you have to outsmart them. You can usually do that by buying both parts of your trip separately instead of as a round trip

Let's see how well they actually police the mask mandate. If it's anything like the baseball experience I'm predicting lots of unmasked faces and no one doing anything about it. UCD students and alumni are smart, but its fans aren't necessarily so simply by association.

If you used credit from a previous flight, Southwest lets you use the credit for a different flight as long as it's before the expiration date, which is 1 year from when you originally made the purchase that created travel funds you're using now. As someone who's made many booking changes during COVID-19 I am an expert on Southwest lol. On its website SWA will tell you when the funds expire. There's no limit to how many times you can cancel and re-book, just note that if you paid extra for early boarding that part is non-refundable.

Now of course this is true of the Wanna Get Away Flights, but if you booked Business Select you may be able to get a cash refund.

A single tune-up contest as the first game on the schedule each year would be fine. The problem is they often have a D-I school as their first opponent, so that really defeats the purpose of the warm-up. What good does it do to play a William Jessup or Academy of Art after the first game ? If after game 1 they have trouble filling a date they might as well just not play at all. Let's not underestimate the value of some rest.

The argument for this type of game is that it gives them the opportunity to go deeper into their bench and get less-used players some experience. I think that's nonsense really. A college basketball roster is too small to be hiding players on the bench, especially with the number of injuries that happen. If they're on the roster the coach should not hesitate to bring them into any game. It's on the student-athletes to prepare and rise to the occasion. It's this insistence on saving players until they're "ready" that helps lead to attrition. Someone's not happy with their lack of playing time so they leave for Cal State Bakersfield. Attrition weakens the program.

I don't think the previous loss to the Urban Knights counted. Urban Knights, what a silly name for a team. Are those knights with more fashionable armor ? Or maybe they fight using glocks and ride e-scooters instead of horses ?

Disappointed the UCM game will not be in Merced. You could probably fit the entire crowd for that game into the golden bobcats' tiny gym.
I saw the UCM campus recently. While it looks nice it seems to be very cramped, and as others have said, it's way the heck out there. It's pretty much a given no one can walk there.

I had actually heard those rumors about UCLA. Perhaps the Reddit poster is someone from a different region of the country unfamiliar with the UC system ?

I seriously doubt any student-athletes were discouraged from pursuing rigorous courses of study. I had a couple of friends who were on the team near the end of Phil Swimley's coaching career. One of them told me he was having some troubles in one or more of his classes and the coaches gave him a couple of days of practice off per week so he could concentrate on his studies and get his grades up. He did not see a reduction in playing time. That isn't the mark of a coaching staff that doesn't care about the well-being of its student-athletes. How is that relevant today ? Matt Vaughn and assistant coach Lloyd Acosta were, if I'm not mistaken, both assistants under Swimley (Acosta maybe only 1 season) and UCD graduates. If anyone would be sympathetic to the challenges of being a UCD student-athlete they would be. And it's not as if Rex Peters would have been less so. If you're paying the big dough to attend a private school like Chapman you're going for the academics, not the baseball. Chapman is either Division III or NAIA. Either way you're not going there to get drafted, and you're not there on an athletic scholarship.

I can't discount the possibility of toxicity in the UCD clubhouse though. Peters alluded to it after the 2009 season (or perhaps during it-don't recall the exact timing of the CA Aggie article). A lot of me-first attitudes were cited-more freshmen than usual- who were used to being the BMOC. There was some effort the next season to promote more of a team attitude and they did significantly better in 2010 (still a losing record), but the me-first seemed to re-surface in 2013 (Vaughn head coach then) when Steven Patterson seemed to be the only infielder who showed up to both hit at a high level and play solid defense. This year you had just Jalen Smith and Spencer Gedestad do that in the infield

Hitting and defense are supposed to be both individual and team-level pursuits. If the players were truly treating them as such the team wouldn't strand so many runners or make so many fielding errors. Vaughn's area of expertise is pitching, and that's suffering too because of the weak defense and hitting. Jalen Smith was this year's version of Steven Patterson, although it's not the best comparison because Smith is more versatile defensively. I don't mean to discount the contributions of Cooper Morrison and Spencer Gedestad, but honestly I believe the true measure of a program's strength is how the underclassmen perform. Excelling at hitting as a fifth-year senior is kind of like being the tallest kid in your class because you were held back a year. And double that for all these sixth year stars this year like Sac State's Matt Smith and the guy at Santa Clara who set the school homerun record.

At the very least I believe the UCD team is dysfunctional. And it's only natural some toxicity would accompany the constant losing.

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No extra legroom that I know of. It is a nice ballpark. Needs more handrails though.

It is pretty bad that a school attached to a big medical school is not putting physical wellness first.

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Sure, why not ? I don't give a good golly gosh darn about the Olympics. For me cheerleading is a less-skilled version of gymnastics with slightly better-fed and better-looking women. :smile:

Maybe the baseball team is the scapegoat ? This can't be the first time someone has claimed to have knowledge of hazing involving any of UCD's sports and yet they act like they are shocked. However, maybe they've been looking for a reason to get rid of an underperforming team that's not very popular and field hockey is a women's sport so....

And what really annoys me is that the other UCD programs, and those of all other universities,are going to sit back and act shocked, when you know they all have some sort of hazing rituals. Maybe they hold team education sessions to pay lip service. They just didn't get blamed this time. I don't believe for a minute that the women's teams are all innocent. They may well project an image of inclusion and sisterhood, but none of us can know exactly what truly demented garbage they might pull privately. They're not above it just because they're women. They're just better at covering it up. I had two cats, one of each. The male tended not to cover up his litter box deposits while the female covered hers up well. Guess who stunk up the house while no humans were home ?

I'd like to share another one of my crazy ideas, partially based on fugawe's post.

Suppose the baseball team is sort of a fraternit and has its own initiation rituals for the new "pledges" and the "pledgemasters" are seniors who are taking their turn at passing on some torture they had to experience themselves.

Now one or more freshman players fail miserably at their pledge tasks, and end up injured, humiliated, or both. But they don't rat out their pledgemasters because snitches get stitches.

Now the season progresses and the pledges endure a miserable year of losing. Despite the constant losing Vaughn continues playing the upperclassmen.

At the end of the year one or more decide they're fed up with their lack of playing time in light of the poor season and the hazing they've endured and decide to lob the revenge grenade. They wait until the seniors who humiliated them have graduated and started the next chapter of their lives so as to minimize the chances of retaliation. They anonymously notify the university about non-specific hazing so that they can pretend they don't know anything about it, just like the rest of the team. Their aim-get back at the team for a bad year.

Now the university doesn't quite know what to do just yet with the vague accusations, so they declare there will be a long period of investigation while they look into it. They suspend the coaches and remaining players to try to avoid any financial commitments to games or scholarships they would have to walk back if a harsh penalty needed to be imposed on the team.

And they leave the details vague so several people on a message board can discuss it.

The more I think about it the less it seems like the hazing will resemble what happened with the band.

Probably the biggest difference is that the Band-uh was co-ed, which indirectly led to opportunities for sexual misconduct between some of the participants. Knowing that the band members had to spend so much time together preparing some of them didn't have a lot of time for social lives, and it was inevitable some would hook up with each other. However, instead of just quiet rendezvous (sp ?) behind closed doors others allegedly chose to relieve their sexual frustrations through different ways (like the raunchy songs, hot tub parties, etc) that affected others who wanted nothing to do with it. Randy bandies. Not that members of the baseball team couldn't have hooked up with each other (and that would be perfectly ok as long as all parties consented), it's just less likely the misconduct for baseball took the same form.

I agree with you that it well could have been a third party who observed something out of context and reported it. Younger baseball players tend to emulate the behavior of major leaguers, so they absorb a lot of their behaviors, including hazing. One very publicized MLB practice is making rookies dress up as women for road trips. And it is very possible an RA could have seen a resident wearing a dress and asked him about it, in the way of educating themselves about what pronouns to use. If they learned that the resident was wearing women's clothes as part of a prank, one that could be seen as mockery of transgender people, the RA (especially if they're not familiar with baseball traditions) could have reported it.

They brought the Portland Mavericks back this year, as part of the new Maverick independent league. The 4 teams (also the Senators, Volcanoes, and Campesinos) in the league play all their games at the home of the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes (Keizer, OR) a former Giants affiliate.

The hazing allegations would have to be serious enough to warrant the suspension of the entire team.

One thing to keep in mind is that some things we would not consider a big deal may be offensive to a current player. I'm sure one of our former student-athletes on this message board, like DrMike, could tell stories (but not on here please-don't want to retroactively vacate any titles) about the things their team got away with. The university has to investigate based on the perceptions of the people making the complaints whether we think it's a big deal or not.

I have seen at games a couple of things that might be considered playful hazing,depending on the actual facts behind them. For example you almost always see a freshman (usually one who is redshirting) doing the menial annoying tasks when it comes to preparing the field, fetching bats and bringing baseballs to the umpire. Then again, that could just be the coaches saying, "Go make yourself useful. No slacking allowed".

I also think the older players to some degree have been picking the walk-up music (the song clip played when a player comes to bat or begins their pitching warm-up on the mound) for the freshmen so as to amuse the audience and humiliate them a little bit. A few years ago I remember someone coming to bat to the tune of "What's That Smell ?" and another walking up to "Mama Mia !". Again maybe the players chose the songs themselves to be funny. Who knows ? Perhaps no hazing there, just my perception. The idea of the walk-up music is to pick something that really gets your adrenaline going. Apparently "Baby Shark" does that for major leaguer Gerardo Parra. But the downbeat rap music choices now-it's like, "Does this seriously psyche you up ?"

The complaint is definitely based on something fans don't see.

Oh,who called that one ???!!! *MC HAMMER DANCE*