Offseason Training Pays Off for Red's Holveck

By wpengine | March 12, 2003

Speed is an important part of lacrosse and is one of the many weapons that senior co-captain Erica Holveck features. As a defensive midfielder, she is a key part of the Red’s transition game, and often leaves other players in the dust as she streaks down the field. Holveck’s aggressive play helped anchor a defense last season that was ranked in the top four nationally.

“Erica has been a very dynamic individual on the team. She brings incredible talent, speed, and leadership, but she also has grown in her four years with the program. We’ve all seen her develop, and I think that, that development has been terrific,” said head coach Jenny Graap ’86.

Recognition

Holveck’s talent has not gone unnoticed, as she was recently named a preseason All-American after being named to the All-American second-team last season. Now as a co-captain this season, Holveck will look to lead the team deep into the postseason.

“I’ve been starting for three years and I know a lot more about the game and what needs to be done, so I’m going to use my experience and be a role model for the younger players as to what to do and not to do,” says Holveck. “I’m proud to be captain, and I’m proud that people elected me to lead them. I think our team dynamic has always been the seniors stepping up, and it’s not an easy job, but there’s a lot of us there to be leaders and role models.”

Progress

Arriving on the East Hill her freshman year, Holveck was called on to be a starter almost immediately and she did not disappoint. She netted 20 goals to go along with eight assists and 31 ground balls and was named to the All-Ivy second-team.

Holveck posted similar numbers her sophomore year with 12 goals and seven assists, including two three-goal efforts against Penn and Brown. As a junior, Holveck shifted her focus to the backfield, where she has really shown her ability.

“[As] we’ve recruited and worked very hard to get more skilled line attackers in the mix, we’ve also noticed that Erica’s ability to contribute and her fort

March Madness

By wpengine March 13, 2003

Best Picture of the Year Gonna Win: The Academy will be reluctant to bestow the award upon J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic tale, just as they were hesitant last year, when they preferred the more profound A Beautiful Mind. The Hours, though graceful with high caliber acting, may be too one-dimensional. Meanwhile, Gangs of New York will suffer from the widespread publicity of its flaws, and The Pianist will suffer from a lack of marketing. The winner this year will be the energetic Chicago, which cleverly tells the story of two nightclub dreamers while intertwining the plot with enlivening musical performances. Should Win: The Pianist adds something to the mix we haven’t seen since Life is Beautiful. Understanding the motivation of director Roman Polanski makes the film special, as we see through the eyes of Wladyslaw Szpilman, who was gracefully playing Chopin on a Warsaw radio station when the first German bombs fell. We listen from his ears, we at least begin to understand his sorrow and the hardship he faced, and the true story element may still make this film a winner yet. Szpilman’s survival of the Holocaust is touching, and just as his anguished memories never went away, neither should the memory of this film. Best Actor Gonna Win: Adrien Brody (The Pianist) and Michael Caine (The Quiet American) give powerful performances in their respective films, but their subtle dispositions will not stand out as the best acting of the year. Nicholas Cage’s customary eccentric spirit, though impressive as he plays two roles in the film (conflict-ridden twin screenwriters), is not quite as powerful as Daniel Day Lewis (Gangs) or Jack Nicholson (Schmidt). Both of these actors undoubtedly carry their works, but Academy-favorite Nicholson is an almost sure lock on the award, and will win it. He plays a 66-year old man coming to terms with the reality of his own aging and of his own family problems, all the while trying to figure out the meaning of his life. The commanding performance is at times moving, at times amusing, but is at all times masterful. Should Win: Nicholson is not going to win just because he is truly loved by the Academy voters; he will win because he puts every aspect of himself into the role, much like in One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good As it Gets, for which he also won. Best Actress Gonna Win: Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman find themselves competing for the second consecutive year, but neither name will be announced on Oscar night They each happened to be part of impressive ensemble casts, making it difficult for them to stand out. Meanwhile, the real race will be between Diane Lane (Unfaithful) and Julianne Moore (Far From Heaven), with Moore barely winning it. She plays a housewife in the 1950s whose seemingly perfect life spins wildly out of control, portraying the character with precision and the appropriate amount of passion for each situation. Should win: Julianne Moore stands out. Best Director Gonna Win: Martin Scorcese, making it the first time in four nominations. Peter Jackson and Rob Marshall directed films whose grandeur was displayed with special effects and stunning choreography. The precise and obsessive nature of Scorcese, combined with an acute sense of style and foresight, makes the war-ridden Gangs of New York refined. Should Win: Roman Polanski should win for the way he blends his direction with his main character’s point of view, and for the manner in which he allows us to begin to understand the terrors of the Holocaust, much like Benigni and Spielberg did in their famous films on the same topic. Best Supporting People Gonna Win: For the men, Chris Cooper will win the honor, as he is outstanding and charismatic playing fanatic John Laroche in the unconventional yet compelling Adaptation. For the women, the real race is between Meryl Streep and Kathy Bates. Though Streep has always been an Academy favorite, Kathy Bates’ role in About Schmidt was beyond impressive. Should Win: Christopher Walken as the poignant and conflicted father of conman Frank Abignale, Jr. in Catch Me If You Can and Kathy Bates for About Schmidt. — AK Best Picture Gonna Win- Chicago. It used to be that the light entertainment always lost out to the ‘serious message movie.’ For the past five years however, the opposite has been the case and no other movie has built up the buzz and the unanimous raves of the Kander & Ebb creation. The Hours had all the markings of Oscar bait, but tepid reviews have sucked all the momentum out of it. Gangs of New York is too bloody, too long and has been garnering mixed reviews (you either loved it or wanted the three hours of your life back). The Pianist is directed by Roman Polanksi. The Academy will never give an award to Polanski. Should Win: How, exactly, do you discuss the unspeakable? The Holocaust film has become a minor genre over the last 10 years. There’s almost a liturgy to the proceedings now: invasion, restrictions, the star, the ghetto, the atrocities, the train, the camp, the liberation. And that’s a lie. What Polanski knows is that every tale of survival is essentially a falsehood because for most people there was no salvation. So he made The Pianist, where there’s a scene when the main character is asked what he will do after the war. “Play the piano for polish radio,” he says. It’s black humor, to be sure, but no less absurd an answer than saying, ‘get married, go to America, believe in humanity, live with myself’ would have been. What, exactly could he have said that would not have been ridiculous? Polanski knows there’s no answer, which is why this is the best film of the year. Best Director Gonna Win: Martin Scorcese. This man should probably own about 4 of the little gold guys. He doesn’t have any. He’s getting old. Gangs had its problems to be sure, but it was the gutsy, great filmmaking of which Scorcese is the patron saint. Both he, and his closest competitor, Rob Marshall, are the kind of directors who legitimate auteur theory. They had the vision –literally. They saw how the idea could look, could work, on screen and made it happen. Almovar was included as a nod to his talent, overlooked by his own country, Polanski will never win, and Daldry doesn’t deserve to. Should Win: Actually, I can’t call this one. I think Scorcese was brilliant in everything he shot, I just wish he’d shot a bit less of it. Marshall was given the Herculean task of translating a musical to the screen and made a smoky, cheerfully cynical sing a long which pretty much rocked. Polanski was Polanski. Any of these guys get it, and justice is done. Best Actor Gonna Win: Jack Nicholson. Day-Lewis may yet pull off a groundswell, or he and Jack will split the vote enough for Adrien Brody to slip through. But Nicholson gave the kind of vulnerable performance people like to award. Also, if he wins, we get to see him raise those eyebrows. Should Win: Daniel Day-Lewis managed, with loud checkered pants, ur- NewYorkese and a killer’s slink, to single handedly keep an immense epic afloat. His Bill was mesmerizing. You couldn’t look away, not even when you wanted to, which, after all, was the point. Best Actress Gonna Win: This is the most fractured race, but Nicole Kidman dyed her hair, put on a fake nose, kissed a girl and offed herself. She was also pretty great while doing all of the above. That should be enough. Not enough people have seen Moore’s remarkable turn, Zellweger was the weakest link in her film, and Hayek and Lane haven’t even been mentioned in the same breath with the first three . Should Win: Jul
ianne Moore. Far From Heaven. Moore gave a performance at once bravura and naturalistic, taking her character and ripping off the lacquered finish to reveal a real person. Best Supporting People Gonna Win: Julianne Moore and Chris Cooper. Moore gets the consolation prize. Playing the embodiment of a life affirming force to a buttoned up member of the opposite sex is always good for a nomination. Do it as well as Cooper, and it’s good for a win. Chicago’s supporting cast (the best part of the movie) has been overshadowed by the push for Zellweger, and Bates’s skin has been mentioned more often than her performance. Meryl Streep is now in the unenviable position of being so good as to be taken for granted. Newman’s turn was riveting, it wasn’t the type of self-reflexive one the Academy awards older performers for. Ed Harris overacted his scenes and Reily didn’t have enough of his own. Then again, this category saw last year’s biggest upset. Should Win: Catherine Zeta Jones was the embodiment of the spirit of Chicago — sass and talent and viciousness all wrapped up in the kelig light allure of showbiz. Christopher Walken’s two-bit hustler of a father was alternately pathetic and charming. Just like a good con should be. — ES Archived article by Erica Stein
From the Horse's Mouth

By wpengine March 13, 2003

My Right to Incoherence Musicians today have carved themselves the unique privilege of being allowed to be purposely obscure and to freely stray from the coherence popular culture requires. We have come to expect a level of obscurity that is, by convention, assumed to be meaningfully connected to the musician’s persona. I don’t pretend to understand what most songs by my personal favorites are about. I usually have no clue. I attach the music to the words and enjoy the emotional picture my imagination can forge with the two. Usually there are no conflicts, except for some occasional there misfires. I always assumed Radiohead’s “National Anthem” was a an emotional, serious piece of music, only to recently discover that it was intended to be funny. Go figure. The truth is most songs tend to be simply meditations on an aesthetic, the jumbling of elements to make them sound good. The murkiness created is exciting when an exciting mind creates it. What instrument can be coupled with a sparse piano chord? What word should rhyme with ‘wolf’? The answers spawn from random mental associations but that individual randomness makes them fascinating. Logical coherence is usually the first things to go and it’s a good thing too. In art, clean-cut coherence isn’t a virtue; it’s a defect. Nothing is worse than art that gives its audience nothing to do since the meaning is spelled out. Lately, I’ve been unable to listen to political music precisely because once I know the message and my need to go on listening disappears. I can appreciate how a song gets its message across, but if the cleverness is merely the means to a concrete higher ideal, once that message has been recognized the whole is somehow cheapened. Maybe it’s old age but I am feeling less and less connected to art that serves anything but the utterly individual desire to create. The picture of people sitting down to write a piece of music about the death penalty; corrupt governments; the status of women; the war in Iraq; Sep. 11th etc feels wrong. This doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t respond to these events but music should mediate and alter the individual response and not merely play the role of a blameless vapid messenger. Nothing excites me more than music that confronts me with my own ignorance and leaves me awed and asking a simple question, namely, “How did they do that?” After all if you’re sitting down with a guitar and in some time end up in a familiar place with a familiar progression, you know that somewhere you’ve missed a wrong turn you should’ve taken. Peace, “the dark horse”Archived article by The Dark Horse