Sarah T and Maureen D Bring it All for 500 Meters!

Hey, everyone!

I hope you had a good week off from the 2010 RI VeloSprints Winter Series!

We’re back tomorrow (Monday) at McFadden’s!

Music starts at 6:00 and open-class sprints begin at 6:30. Intra-category match-ups start at 7:30-ish and Grudge Races will begin when those are done.

The next issue of our e-newsletter has been sent this morning. You can access it here. In this new issue, we’re announcing our Grand Prizes for the mens’ categories and they are pretty fantastic.

So, see you Monday night. Come ready to race, come thirsty and bring a friend!

Cheers!

Dick

Winter blues got you snowed under?  Just think — this is only the beginning. We have a cure for those winter blues.  Announcing, the RI VeloSprints Winter Series! RI VeloSprints is Rhode Island’s winter series for cyclists, spinners, commuters and hipsters frustrated by Mother Nature’s cold shoulder!

RI VeloSprints is 500 meters of full out sprinting on rollers. We fix the forks to help keep you vertical as you challenge friends, enemies, other co-workers or folks you may have just met! There are multiple categories to address the needs of all of your mid-winter personas and the bravest are forming teams to share the series’ therapeutic benefits. Speaking of prizes, there will be nightly winners and series champions crowned in March.

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Tonight at 8, CoxSports is premiering Xposé, an eight-part documentary series focusing on a variety of people that could probably all beat me up should they ever feel like it.  Each episode focuses on a different local group: the Providence Roller Derby, the Newport Gulls baseball team, mixed martial artists, URI football coach Darren Rizzi, Parkour enthusiasts, the National Guard, custom car manufacturers, and, um, people turning twenty-five.

Because I live in the distant past I don’t actually know what Cox Sports is, but I’m sure that those of you with your fancy cable televisions will know how to act accordingly.

With about 7 mins left.

Tina Fey on ‘30 Rock’ will do just fine. Television dollars are slowly destroying professional baseball, why should football be any different?  First of all, these night games run too late for working stiffs and kids to watch anyway, and now this NFL Network once again fails to see that the Patriots’ market is/was more than just the Boston area.  You will not be able to watch tonights’ game without signing up for that extra NFL channel unless you live near enough to Boston to get Channel 5. And speaking of children watching football, last Sunday’s game was carried on CBS at 1PM in the afternoon and included promos for the network’s crime shows — one featured a close examination and discussion of a severed hand and another showed someone plucking out the eye of a girls’ frozen corpse. Pass the nachos.

By Adam Siegel

Shhh….don’t tell Gov. Carcieri but: La copa de futbol de Ingles en Accion es este sabado, 10 de mayo.

The all-day festival starts at 9am, and features 10 soccer teams playing for the cup, food and art from more than 10 different countries, the What Cheer? Brigade and other musical acts, kids’ activities, and even a mini-health fair!

As they say, come for the soccer– stay for the mini-health fair.

The EFA Cup will be at Donigian Park on Valley Street in Olneyville. All are welcome to play or watch…if you can pull yourself away from the mini-health fair!

TONIGHT – William C. Rhoden, of the New York Times and that ESPN snoozefest Sports Reporters fame, is appearing tonight at Brown for a discussion regarding race and sport in America. He will appear alongside former Bears and current Oregon State University (way to mess that one up, PC) men’s basketball coach and certifiable “next-big-thing” Craig Robinson, as well as Brown junior student-athlete Nicole Burns.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Brown prof Jim Campbell and begins at 7 p.m. in the Andrews Dining Hall. The talk is free and open to the Brown community, as well as communities of other colors (that is, the general public).

If you have at least a passing interest in both sports and race relations, you should probably go… who knows, there may even be snacks.

They won today, but need to beat Charlotte next weekend just to get back to .500 in the A-10, even after starting 19-3. And it seems like they need to make it to the conf championship game to have a real shot at the tourney.

Cornell clinched the Ivies, and PC is at 4-11 in the Big East. So it looks like there won’t be much post-season for RI schools this year.

Lost to Temple last night. Lost to Mass, and barely beat Fordham. And only 6-4 in the Atlantic 10. They’re still 20-5 over-all, but uh-ohs…

PC is miserable. But Brown’s second in the Ivies, and within striking distance. Are they the dark-horse RI candidate to make the tourney?

Also, what’s with Cornell leading at 6-0, with Penn and Princeton in the middle of the pack? The last time neither Penn nor Princeton won the conference was 1988. And the last time before that was 1961.

Looks like they’re inching back towards a top-25 spot:

The Rams improved to 18-3 (4-2 A-10), equaling their best start since the 1987-88 season when they went 18-3 through their first 21 games.

ESPN is hosting an online chat with URI’s guard Parfait Bitee today at 1pm.

  We should all take a field trip to South Kingstown for a game one of these days.

Jimmy Baron finished with 17 points and Parfait Bitee added 14 points and seven assists to lead Rhode Island past George Washington 81-70 on Wednesday night.

The Wild Colonial
South Water Street

Doors open early today — 2:30 PM — for the Patriots/Chargers game, followed immediately by the Giants/Packers contest. Watch the games on a color television set!

Just moved up in the rankings and beat Farleigh Dickinson. And this one’s from the AP:

No. 23 Rhode Island (14-1) is off to the program’s best start since 1946-47 heading into conference play at 20th-ranked Dayton on Wednesday. The Rams cracked the national rankings for the first time since November 1998, and could climb in the polls following a 94-63 demolition of Fairleigh Dickinson on Wednesday that extended their winning streak to nine games and kept them undefeated at home this season.

Rhode Island and Dayton (12-1) have raised the profile of the Atlantic 10 conference, which last season sent just two schools to the NCAA tournament. The early success could bode well for the Rams to get their first NCAA bid in nine years.

Besting Georgia Southern tonight, 85-80.

I did it! Patriots/Giants Game on Channel 10!

The NFL Network has seen the writing on the wall. An agreement has been reached, and the final game of the regular season will be carried over-the-air on NBC Channel 10. Once they saw that the Dose was on their case they totally caved. (There will be no living with me now.)

Blindly following the crowd, I’ve decided that I’m foremost an Atlantic 10 fan this year, for the first time since the 7-foot-1 Yinka Dare — who sadly died of a heart attack a few years ago — wowed the crowds at George Washington’s Smith Center in the early 1990s. (I think Dare’s what first turned me into a college bball fan.)

Jim Baron and the URI Rams make the Washington Post today, in an article mostly about the surprising strength of the A-10:

“I think the league is as strong as it has ever been,” Rhode Island Coach Jim Baron said. “What it has done during the nonconference season really speaks for itself. We have definitely earned what we have done. Everyone is really taking a strong stance on strengthening their schedules.”