Touching all the Bases

Terrific tens

Posted by: Jeff Huth

Monday, August 25, 2008 11:58 AM

It's become an annual rite of late August for The News-Gazette. As the school year begins, I select what we call our "Ten Illini You Need to Know". Working from the premise that Illini football and basketball receive blanket coverage in our pages (and now our free Web site) - but other sports not as much - we alert you to 10 of the best and brightest athletes on campus who don't bounce a basketball or block and tackle.
Selections are based primarily on performance during the previous school year. Typically, the athletes chosen had breakthrough seasons and drew major attention to themselves for the first time in their Illini careers. In a good year, which is virtually every year, this list of 10 is loaded with All-Americans or Big Ten Freshmen of the Year or All-Big Ten first-teamers or even NCAA champions.
One restriction: No athlete can be selected more than once (otherwise soccer senior Emily Zurrer would in her third year on this list).
The individual photos that accompany each of the 10 are taken "sports card" style. Think Albert Pujols posing for a baseball card with his bat menacingly cocked and you get the idea. With the help of the UI sports information department, we have each of the athletes pose in uniform with a "prop" from their sport. For some sports, like baseball, softball, tennis or golf, coming up with a prop is easy. Not so easy in others. Sometimes we have to do without.
In any case, we've always found the UI athletes to be cooperative, and we appreciate their taking time for photo day. This year, it took place on Sunday - as usual outside the Bielfeldt Athletic Administration Building - with N-G photographer Robert K. O'Daniell snapping away.
Can't yet tell you when the 2008 "Ten Illini You Need to Know" will appear in the N-G (that football game in Missouri on Saturday might be taking up quite a bit of space in the sports section next Sunday), but look for it on a Sunday in the next few weeks. (Sorry, but can't tell you who this year's 10 are; I'm sworn to secrecy).
Sunday's photo shoot got me to thinking about some of the great athletes who are alums of this particular list. The 2008 Olympics are a great example. Of the seven current or former Illini who competed in Beijing, five are former Illini You Need to Know: Justin Spring (gymnastics), Kevin Anderson (tennis), Gakologelwang Masheto (track and field), Chris Robinson (baseball) and Zurrer.
Quite a roll call, I think you'd agree.

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