WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[RogK]

the new Carthage roster is revealed in an otherwise quiet week in Kenosha :
https://athletics.carthage.edu/sports/womens-basketball/roster
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[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

the new Carthage roster is revealed in an otherwise quiet week in Kenosha :
https://athletics.carthage.edu/sports/womens-basketball/roster
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Quiet ... week ... Kenosha ... not words I would have used in a sentence together.

[Jester1390]

students are back at rose hulman this weekend

[iwu70]

RogK, thanks for asking after me.  I'm AOK and back to IWU and BloNo now.

I slipped out of HK on 7/22, as things were getting a bit uncomfortable for me there, after the advent of the new national security law in Hong Kong.  I did finish by Spring term teaching, helped a number of my students who were under arrest, waiting trail, and a few who slipped out of HK to Taiwan, others fleeing to the UK, US and Europe.  A grim and dark time in Hong Kong.   The era of prosecutions and persecutions continuing unabated. The Hong Kong that I have known and loved over the past 40 or so years, well, it is no more, dead, gone.  "One country, two systems," is now "one country, one system" -- at least as far as police powers and political control are concerned.   The HKSAR government now clearly a puppet regime of the PRC and the CCP authorities.   Hong Kong will no longer be able to be fully "Asia's Global City." as claimed.  I expect over the next few years, an outflow of HK residents and expats of over 500,000 people, fleeing the restrictions and repression.  Hong Kong people often have options, many passports, and relatives in the HK diaspora all over the world. 

I had a plan to return to the US over a month or so -- having to quarantine for 15-days in MSP, to assure and protect my family and friends there.  Then, a 10 day visit with family and friends, esp. IWU friends in the MN. area, and now to IWU and Bloomington/Normal.  I'm in a period of reflection, de-stressing, and re-assessment on the next phase of my life, the new chapters coming in full retirement, post-Hong Kong, after my 40+ years in Asia, most of it at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, in teaching, research and university administration.  It's going to be a slow and somewhat difficult adjustment.  IWU is very quiet, sparse and not its normal self -- given the pandemic and other difficult changes and cutbacks at the University here.  B/N is also in a difficult patch with a spike in cases -- quite a few at IWU and ISU, with the county-level positivity rate going up for the last two weeks, now at 10.7%, with a rate of over 20% at ISU.  Not good.  I expect more public health restrictions and protocols to be announced in coming days . . surely. 

I hope you and your family are safe and well.  And, I hope all the CCIW chatsters are taking all precautions, keeping safe, healthy and vertical.  This are tough days . . .in the US and in HKG  (see my post on the men's side about the pandemic control in HKG).  I expect 300,000 deaths in the US by the end of the year.  Truly devastating.

Take good care.

I hope we have some kind of basketball season this year, but I'm not very optimistic about it.  IWU has a great returning group -- both women and men -- and I'd love to see them play.  I'll cross my fingers.

Be well,
IWU'70

[RogK]

Welcome back, iwu70, to these pages and to the peculiar state of Illinois.
I figured you'd have an interesting story to tell us; thanks for sharing it.
Keep breathing and keep posting!

[Gregory Sager]

  B/N is also in a difficult patch with a spike in cases -- quite a few at IWU and ISU, with the county-level positivity rate going up for the last two weeks, now at 10.7%, with a rate of over 20% at ISU.  Not good.

Not good, but, honestly, pretty much what I expected. The two universities in the state of Illinois that have the biggest and most long-standing reputations as party schools are Illinois State and SIU-Carbondale, and, whether admissions people want to admit it or not, this does play a role in the decisions that some high-school seniors make regarding a college choice (especially when, as is the case for ISU and SIU, they're relatively cheap public universities with high acceptance rates). Nobody wants to be cheated out of what they've been led by our culture to expect are the four best years of their lives, whether they're athletes or partiers. Young people being what they are, I knew that there would be any number of them who enrolled at ISU and SIU-Carbondale with the full expectation of majoring in beer-bongology with a minor in body shots, rules be damned -- and in 2020, a large-scale college party is a major COVID-19 outbreak waiting to happen.

[iwu70]

Thanks, RogK, good to be back in many ways, though of course I miss CUHK, my friends and colleagues, my dedicated students in HK. 

Greg, I share your views about the behaviors of the age cohort, esp. at ISU.  It could get much much worse.  Now today over 1100 cases total at ISU.

I'm hoping some kind of basketball season will be possible -- perhaps a kind of CCIW bubble? 

Would surely love for the IWU women to have another crack at Hope late this coming season.  I'm still smarting from that loss.

Be well, all.  Take all precautions.

'70

[Mr. Ypsi]

Thanks, RogK, good to be back in many ways, though of course I miss CUHK, my friends and colleagues, my dedicated students in HK. 

Greg, I share your views about the behaviors of the age cohort, esp. at ISU.  It could get much much worse.  Now today over 1100 cases total at ISU.

I'm hoping some kind of basketball season will be possible -- perhaps a kind of CCIW bubble? 

Would surely love for the IWU women to have another crack at Hope late this coming season.  I'm still smarting from that loss.

Be well, all.  Take all precautions.

'70

I hear ya!  I'm still peeved that Christina Solari never got a crack at Hope's Carrie Snikkers!  That might have shaken up the d3hoops.com all-decade teams!

Great to see you finally back.  With your posting absence for so long I thought maybe the red guards had come back and you were in a 're-education' camp!

Enjoy retirement - I sure am!  My younger son is teaching biology at Washtenaw CC, including lab sessions.  He acknowledges that online labs are utterly pointless, and lectures are only a bit better.  I relied heavily on face-to-face feedback in lectures to know if I was just blowin' smoke.  I'm VERY glad that I retired before the pandemic required this nonsense.

[iwu70]

Ypsi, good to hear from you. 

Yes, ZOOM just doesn't do it for me either.  Perhaps we're just old-fashioned faculty who know personal contact, up-close mentoring, and knowing your students well, is best.  This new era, though necessary, is going to have all kinds of unintended, and I fear negative, consequences. 

Sad to hear our dear classmate, Karen Zander, has died.  She was facing many serious health challenges for over a decade, then severe dementia.  Such a wonderful, talented and extremely dedicated person, in the nursing profession, case management specialty, highly regarded nationally in her field.  I shall miss her greatly.  Gone too soon at 72. 

Sure will be missing our 50th reunion this October.  Let's hope it can happen in person, on campus in 2021.  Guess we just have to live longer.



Take care, keep in touch.

IWU'70 / Mark 

[Gregory Sager]

Better dead than Lady Reds, I guess.

[RogK]

Carthage Vikings

[lmitzel]

I'm on Ryan Scott's bandwagon for this, honestly.

This is obvious, right?  Carthage Jumbos with an elephant mascot named Hannibal.  Done and done.

[Gregory Sager]

I'm on Ryan Scott's bandwagon for this, honestly.

This is obvious, right?  Carthage Jumbos with an elephant mascot named Hannibal.  Done and done.

I gotta agree. And it creates a natural pachyderm rivalry within the CCIW, since Wheaton's mascot is a mastodon named Stentorious Thunder.

(Seriously. Nobody ever sees it or knows about it, because a couple of students wore the Stentorious costume once, when it was first unveiled -- it's like a pantomime horse in terms of being a two-person costume, one in front and one in back -- and apparently died of shame while wearing it, and no Wheaton students since have volunteered to wear it. Honestly, Stentorious makes the Torchy costume look cool by comparison.)

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

The mascot would also take exclusivity away from Tufts.

[iwu70]

I have to admit that our current Tommy Titan mascot looks pretty goofy.  In a earlier era we had a handsome, fully-muscled student dressed up with helmet, sword and outfit to play the part, and somehow it all came off rather more authentically.   

Greg, I'd love to see that Wheaton mastodon.

'70