Posts tagged pressing
CU Soccer Matches Record-Setting Start
Aug 31st
BOULDER – The University of Colorado is in familiar territory. Three games into the 2013 season, the Buffaloes have tied last year’s program record of three straight shutouts to begin the season, and Annie Stuller has notched the fifth multiple goal game of her career.
The Buffs took down the Air Force Falcons 2-0 for the second straight year. Colorado has matched its record-setting start to the season to earn a 3-0 record. The Falcons fall to 0-2-1 after facing Big 12 and Pac-12 Conference opponents in back-to-back games.
Defense was the name of the game for 72 minutes, until the Buffs went on an offensive frenzy. At the 72:47 mark, Olivia Pappalardo edged the net, slamming the left post. Just seconds later, Anne Stuller was ready on the attack for her first goal of the season. Less than five minutes later, Stuller was at it again, scoring off an assist from Alex Huynh.
“I think the first half she was pressing a little bit, trying a little bit too much,” CU head coach Danny Sanchez said. “The first goal is the kind of goal we want her scoring. Where she’s inside the box and can shoot from there, instead of having to do stuff from midfield. The second goal was just a great ball from Alex to release her and a quality finish. It’s good for her to open her 2013 account, but obviously we’re just counting on her to score some goals this year … I don’t think it’s any big secret that she’s dangerous. We need to get her on the end of stuff. When she does that, she’s obviously good around the box.”
Stuller is just the fourth Buff to record at least four multiple goal games in her Colorado career. She joins Fran Munnelly (four) and Nikki Marshall and Katie Griffin, who each had seven. In each of the last three seasons, Stuller has had at least one multiple goal game.
“It’s totally a confidence boaster,” Stuller said. “It helps me just feel like, ‘OK, I can play with these girls. I can do this.’ It feels good, but more than anything it feels good to win. I’m just more happy about that than anything else.”
The Buffs shined in the second half, outshooting the Falcons 11-6 during the game, taking nine shots in the second half alone and limiting Air Force to just one second half shot. CU also had three opportunities off corner kicks, while Air Force had none. Both Annie Brunner and Kelly Stambaugh both grabbed three saves in their respective nets.
“I think Air Force has much improved,” Sanchez said of the team the Buffs also defeated 2-0 last season. “You know they’re always going to work hard and be organized. I think they have some quality on the field. I was pleased with how we turned it on at the end, but obviously the first half we didn’t play our best soccer. The second half, especially those last 20 minutes, I felt like we really started connecting and had a little bit more run of the play. A lot of credit to Air Force, they played very well today.”
Colorado’s first shot came in the first 41 seconds off the boot of leading scorer Brie Hooks. The Buffs wouldn’t get another shot off until the 39th minute, when Darcy Jerman got blocked.
Brunner picked up her first save in the seventh minute. Just over two minutes later, Air Force sent off another shot, this time sending the ball wide.
The Buffs got a lot of touches in the first half, but couldn’t seem to keep total control of the ball, with neither team successfully dominating the offense.
With 10 minutes remaining before the half, the Falcons gained momentum, but Ashley Greco’s shot made for an easy save. The Buffs backline held off any more attacks, with Lizzy Heral stopping a ball by the left post to prevent a close call at a shot attempt.
“Hats off to our defense,” Stuller said. “Everyone’s been so solid. Brunner’s controlling the back line so well, Lizzy’s just a great senior leader and she makes it look easy. She’s a good defender. She makes some hard stops that she makes look pretty easy.”
Colorado picked up its intensity on both sides of the ball in the second half, attacking early. Huynh took a long free kick in the 49th minute to set the ball up for several Buffs at the net. Herzl got the first touch, hitting it just wide. Later, Hayley Hughes made contact, but once again the shot was wide.
The Falcons continued to press the Buffs’ net, but the CU defense refused to allow any shots to get past them. Air Force’s only shot of the half came at the 68:08 mark, but Brunner was ready for another save.
With 20 minutes remaining, Stuller was on the offensive, rushing from the backfield to the net, but she couldn’t control the ball. The Buffs quickly reassembled, with Bianca Jones sending one to the keeper from deep right. One minute later, Stuller, at the left corner of the field, found Emily Paxton at the net, who hit the ball high.
The Buffs’ drive couldn’t be stopped, keeping possession to set up their first goal. After an Air Force foul, the Buffs took charge. In the 73rd minute, Pappalardo hit a close one to the left post. Stuller was ready for the rebound, scoring just six seconds later.
“They felt really good to get,” Stuller said of her two goals. “As a forward, you want to score. There were two easy goals thanks to my teammates. Brie took the ball down on the first one, beat a girl, it was a good beat, and drove it across. It was a jumbled mess in there and I think Olivia got on it and got a touch and it came right to me. I just had to hit it far post, pretty easy goal because of my teammates.”
In the 78th minute, Stuller was ready again, taking an open shot from Huynh behind the right side of the box to give the Buffs a 2-0 lead that would hold for the remainder of the game.
Come cheer on your CU Buffs soccer team as they take on the St. Mary’s Gaels on Sunday, Sept. 1 at 1 p.m. Remember to support the Buffaloes from the Buff Brigade cheering section located on the north end of Prentup Field.
“They’re a very good team, very athletic,” Sanchez said of the Gales. “West Coast Conference is a very good conference. They’re very tough. They play top end teams week in and week out. I expect a very end-to-end game. Their team likes to attack like we do, so I expect a very entertaining game on Sunday.”
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CU-Boulder study: Spiral galaxies like Milky Way bigger than thought
Jun 27th
CU-Boulder Professor John Stocke, study leader, said new observations with Hubble’s $70 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, or COS, designed by CU-Boulder show that normal spiral galaxies are surrounded by halos of gas that can extend to over 1 million light-years in diameter. The current estimated diameter of the Milky Way, for example, is about 100,000 light-years. One light-year is roughly 6 trillion miles.
The material for galaxy halos detected by the CU-Boulder team originally was ejected from galaxies by exploding stars known as supernovae, a product of the star formation process, said Stocke of CU-Boulder’s astrophysical and planetary sciences department. “This gas is stored and then recycled through an extended galaxy halo, falling back onto the galaxies to reinvigorate a new generation of star formation,” he said. “In many ways this is the ‘missing link’ in galaxy evolution that we need to understand in detail in order to have a complete picture of the process.”
Stocke gave a presentation on the research June 27 at the University of Edinburgh’s Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics in Scotland at a conference titled “Intergalactic Interactions.” The CU-Boulder research team also included professors Michael Shull and James Green and research associates Brian Keeney, Charles Danforth, David Syphers and Cynthia Froning, as well as University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Blair Savage.
Building on earlier studies identifying oxygen-rich gas clouds around spiral galaxies by scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College and the University of California, Santa Cruz, Stocke and his colleagues determined that such clouds contain almost as much mass as all the stars in their respective galaxies. “This was a big surprise,” said Stocke. “The new findings have significant consequences for how spiral galaxies change over time.”
In addition, the CU-Boulder team discovered giant reservoirs of gas estimated to be millions of degrees Fahrenheit that were enshrouding the spiral galaxies and halos under study. The halos of the spiral galaxies were relatively cool by comparison — just tens of thousands of degrees — said Stocke, also a member of CU-Boulder’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, or CASA.
Shull, a professor in CU-Boulder’s astrophysical and planetary sciences department and a member of CASA, emphasized that the study of such “circumgalactic” gas is in its infancy. “But given the expected lifetime of COS on Hubble, perhaps another five years, it should be possible to confirm these early detections, elaborate on the results and scan other spiral galaxies in the universe,” he said.
Prior to the installation of COS on Hubble during NASA’s final servicing mission in May 2009, theoretical studies showed that spiral galaxies should possess about five times more gas than was being detected by astronomers. The new observations with the extremely sensitive COS are now much more in line with the theories, said Stocke.
The CU-Boulder team used distant quasars — the swirling centers of supermassive black holes — as “flashlights” to track ultraviolet light as it passed through the extended gas haloes of foreground galaxies, said Stocke. The light absorbed by the gas was broken down by the spectrograph, much like a prism does, into characteristic color “fingerprints” that revealed temperatures, densities, velocities, distances and chemical compositions of the gas clouds.
“This gas is way too diffuse to allow its detection by direct imaging, so spectroscopy is the way to go,” said Stocke. CU-Boulder’s Green led the design team for COS, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder for NASA.
While astronomers hope the Hubble Space Telescope keeps on chugging for years to come, there will be no more servicing missions. And the James Webb Space Telescope, touted to be Hubble’s successor beginning in late 2018, has no UV light-gathering capabilities, which will prevent astronomers from undertaking studies like those done with COS, said Green.
“Once Hubble ceases to function, we will lose the capability to study galaxy halos for perhaps a full generation of astronomers,” said Stocke. “But for now, we are fortunate to have both Hubble and its Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to help us answer some of the most pressing issues in cosmology.”
The study was supported by a NASA/Hubble Space Telescope contract to the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph science team, general NASA/Hubble Space Telescope observing grants to Stocke and a National Science Foundation grant to Keeney.
-CU-
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Earth Day San Francisco Earth Day Festival 2011 plans ahead of Boulder
Mar 4th
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, March 3, 2011, –/WORLD-WIRE/– New on the Earth Day scene this year is Earth Day SF, a free public event focused on helping our community take action steps toward creating eco-sustainable solutions to our local and global ecological challenges.
This new educational festival and multi-cultural entertainment event will keynote pressing environmental issues & promote solution oriented community action. Top Notch Music, performance, well-known speakers & activists will grace our three stages: Earth Day Main Stage, Speaker’s Stage and Gaia Stage. Exhibitions, hands on workshops and solution-based talks on eco-green topics are major components of the event in our Permaculture Zone, Clean Energy Zone, Holistic Wellness Zone and Youth in Action Zone.
Join leading members of the business and indigenous communities,educators, artists and artisans, craftspeople, civic community leaders, local “eco-green” politicians, ceremonialists, workshop leaders, eco-green & youth activists and social justice non-profit organizations in a powerful full on day.
Meet in person, Native American Chaske Spencer, Star in the film The Twilight Saga bringing his own cause to Earth Day San Francisco.