Your Chance To Be Part of Action

First things first, I've made "Inside the Athletic Department" much more accessible so our fan base can have an easier time locating all of the blogs coming out of our offices. This is in response to a fan that e-mailed in told me that they always had a tough time finding our blogs.

You can now find our blog section on the drop-down under the athletics tab on our web site at the very bottom of the drop-down. We've got a few more blogs as of late as Wags and Rob have chipped in.

Hopefully, as the year goes on, we can get more bloggers including Kevin, Adam, Kearney and whomever else down the hall or over in the Arena, wants to chime in! The feedback from our fans have been strong and we'll continue to churn them out!

We're always open to feedback on our web site or web streaming, so please feel free to shoot me an e-mail at jplotkin@uno.edu and I will make sure to respond. If I do not have an answer, I will pass it along to someone that can provide one.
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Most of the athletic department attended the UNO at 50 kickoff celebration last Friday afternoon at the Lakefront Arena. For a few of us relative newcomers to the staff, myself included, it was our first event at the facility, outside of the Select-A-Seat event held early in the summer. The event was just another event on the long list of special festivities happening during the next year. You can view a full list here and hopefully, we'll be seeing you at as many events on that list as possible and we'll do our best here in athletics to remind you of what's forthcoming, especially when it pertains to athletics.

Speaking of the special events, there are quite a few things planned around the opening weekend of hoops at the Lakefront Arena. The women's basketball game on Nov. 14 against McNeese State with a opening tip time of 7 p.m will be followed by a bonfire and fireworks. The men's game the following day against North Carolina State will be preceded by a tailgate starting at 5 p.m with a post-game homecoming party to follow in the auxiliary gym.

Our facility is back in basketball mode as our women conducted the very first practice on the main floor on Tuesday and then men followed suit today.

If you have not heard already, our Privateer fan base has been invited to an open scrimmage by the men next Tuesday at the Lakefront Arena, beginning at 7 p.m.

To that end, Wags and I are looking to involve our fans in the first event. We'll be set up somewhere accessible at the facility as the gates open to shoot some video interviews with fans regarding their excitement about the return to the Lakefront Arena. This video will be put up on our web site as we gear to ramp up the emotions and enthusiasm regarding what many of you have been waiting some time for. Wags and I will break this down early enough so I can get courtside along with Rob to do statistics for the contest.

We'll have schedule cards and schedule posters available in addition to media guides for sale. A friendly reminder from our last blog  - always check the web site regarding times as they have changed since those cards and posters went off to the printer! Again, thanks to Leffler Agency for their great work on the art. They've been working with me for the last few weeks on the basketball programs, which will make their debut for the women's game against McNeese State on Nov. 14 as this year, we've combined the two programs into one.
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Exciting news as far as the UNOPrivateers.com web site is concerned. Since we began doing online video and audio, one thing that has been requested by our fan base on numerous occasions is the ability to view archived events. Well, we finally have got it situated. If you have read the most recent release, we started the archive process with our UNO volleyball match against UALR.

We should be able to put these up for broadcast within a few days of the completion of the event. It does take awhile to upload these videos to the server, so we may be a bit slower in pulling off the task when basketball and baseball roll around due to the short time between contests and the travel involved by our staff. Wags mentioned a bit about our basketball plans on his blog.

Please note -- you must be a member of the premium service to have access to these archives. Outside of the live events and archives, the remainder of what we provide on UNO Vision will be free for our users, such as interviews with student-athletes and coaches.

Wags, Rob and myself are working on some other things for our web site. I do not want to become a politician and make a promise I can not keep, so we will wait to reveal those once everything works and we are able to roll those new things out.
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Rob and I field all sorts of requests and inquiries. Sometimes, these come from fans or former student-athletes, both near and far. This morning, Rob passed along an e-mail to me from very far away as the Beijing Mirror Evening News (yes -- in China) wanted to interview our assistant coach Tieming Li. Li, a former men's national player for China was also a member of the coaching staff for the US women's national team at the Summer Olympics this past August in Beijing.

The UNO name is carrying into the Far East and if you read a recent article in the Times Picayune, international recruiting of students is helping improve our enrollment. We've discussed before how much an international flavor our athletic department has served witness toand who knows? Perhaps this publicity in China will lead to future students and maybe even a few student-athletes from China. If the article becomes available via the Internet, I'll make sure to pass it on.
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Later this afternoon, I'll be making the short trip down Leon C. Simon to the University Tennis Center. My goal in this trip is to take pictures of our men's and women's tennis team. Those of you who may not be looking for information on the team may not have noticed that they rarely get top billing amongst the pictures that make the loop on the main page. The reasoning for this is we don't like to use the 'generic' UNOPrivateers.com image so articles about them find their way in the headlines section. Unfortunately, the only tennis pictures that I have had to date have been ones submitted to me by the players prior to the arrival at UNO.

With these photos, we'll finally be able to get pictures of the men's and women's tennis squads and allow the tennis stories to make their way into the loop along with all the other great things happening in our athletic department. The men's and women's teams by the way are playing in the Fall Fling this weekend hosted by the University of West Florida in Pensacola, Fla., one of the top Division II teams in America. Two players - Gui Rebolo and Kir Kemp - will make their collegiate debuts in the tournament. Stay tuned to the web site for more on the tennis team and hopefully, some strong results from this tournament as they continue to gear up for the all important spring season.

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One more quick note before I forget - UNO will be unleashing a new web site design at http://www.uno.edu. Make sure to look for it on Oct. 27. It goes without saying that this is needed.

We'll see you at the scrimmage on Tuesday and please, get there a bit early and we may be able to put you on camera and allow you to share your memories from Lakefront Arena for all of our fans to see on UNOPrivateers.com.

Inside the Athletic Department Index