AD's Winter Letter To The Campus

Dear Bates Community & Friends,

This is a departure from my standard format where song lyrics or a poem usually precede the salutation, but it seems that bobcat tracks in the snow (yes, that is what those black marks above are – truly!) have a poetic quality of their own that really resonates with me as another Maine winter approaches. The tracks that lead from autumn into the colder months bring about a turnover in athletic seasons as well.

With the Hathorn Hall bells celebrating the Football team’s resounding 28-18 victory over Hamilton, the fall sports season officially ended. It was a season that featured a number of highlights including:

- Field Hockey and Men’s and Women’s Soccer all qualifying for their NESCAC Championships
- Women’s Soccer defeating #1 seeded Tufts in the 1st Round of the NESCAC Championships
- Men’s Soccer upsetting No. 5 nationally ranked Middlebury on the road
- Men’s Cross Country nationally ranked & qualifying a runner for the NCAA Championships
- Women’s Cross Country team improving on last year’s NESCAC finish
- Field Hockey upping their NESCAC and non-conference win totals over 2009
- Volleyball strengthening their schedule and their team experience with a West Coast trip
- Football defeating Tufts for the first time in over 2 decades
- Men’s &Women’s Golf continuing to play more competitively against their NESCAC foes
- Men’s & Women’s Tennis laying a solid foundation for the Spring with successful Fall events
- Men’s & Women’s Rowing outstanding performances at the Head of the Charles Regatta

The conclusion of the fall sports season also signals the commencement of our winter contests
when the nearly 300 young women and men who comprise the following teams will strive to excel in their sport while continuing to seek to distinguish themselves academically as well.

Men’s & Women’s Basketball * Men’s & Women’s Nordic Skiing * Men’s & Women’s Indoor Track Men’s & Women’s Alpine Skiing * Men’s & Women’s Squash * Men’s & Women’s Swimming/Diving

Given this lineup of sports, the Bobcats feature one of the broadest arrays of winter offerings with action that will heat things up throughout the chilly months! You can view the composite winter schedule at http://www.bates.edu/sports-schedule.xml . Additionally, many of the winter contests will be webcast and you can find a schedule of these at: http://firstteambroadcasting.com/organizations/bates-college/.
As I have noted previously, the knowledge that the campus community recognizes and values the efforts of Bates’ student-athletes in both the classroom and their sport program is reinforced by your attendance at their events. I know that they will be most appreciative of any contests that you can make. For the events that you can’t attend, please check the updates on the web site: http://www.bates.edu/sports.xml.

Thank you and best wishes as you put down your own tracks through this upcoming winter!


Kevin McHugh
Director of Athletics and Chair of Physical Education

Fall AD Letter to Campus Community

Let’s take a moment to reflect,
On the past few years of my life,
I haven't worked myself away,
To stay inside.
This is the time to let us...
Break out, break out……………

Break Out! Break Out! Song Lyrics by All Time Low


Dear Bates Community & Friends,

The lyrics above are somewhat autobiographical as I have been telling our senior student-athletes that since I arrived at Bates a few years ago when they did, this is my senior year too. I also have been reminding all of our athletes and our staff of the many positive developments that have taken place these past few years. Not the least of these is the Bates Celebrates Athletics event held this past June in Boston that reaffirmed the College’s commitment not just to supporting Athletics, but to excelling in Athletics, as the institution strives to do in all of its endeavors. So that is why it feels to me like now is the time for Bates Athletics to Break Out, to turn those positive developments into more tangible success for all of our teams.

Lest you fear, as some did with my letter last fall, I am not advocating that winning is the only thing or that we must win at all costs. However, given the above-noted commitment to excelling, we should and can be more successful. In competitive sports where a score is kept, that equates to more wins.

We also continue to define success by how well we uphold our mission of providing opportunities that enhance the liberal arts experience at Bates; of serving as professional educators committed to the intellectual, physical and personal development of our students; and of building community among students, faculty, staff, and alumni as well as in the Lewiston-Auburn area. That mission statement can be found on the Athletics website at: http://www.bates.edu/x208375.xml.

Additionally, we succeed when we meet and surpass the high expectations that we have in Athletics for who we are, for how we conduct our programs and how we conduct ourselves. These expectations are contained in the Student-Athlete Code of Ethics, the Hazing/Initiation policy, the Athletic Department Alcohol policy, and the Spectator Code of Conduct that I discuss annually with every varsity athlete at the start of her/his season and that each agrees in writing to uphold. These too can be found on the Athletics website at: http://www.bates.edu/x208331.xml.

Your support for our student-athletes, particularly with your attendance at their events, recognizes their passion, validates their efforts and affirms that the campus community appreciates the dedication that it takes to participate in a varsity sport on top of working to excel in the classroom. The sport schedules can be found at: http://www.bates.edu/sports-schedule.xml and for the contests that you can’t make, many of the fall games will be webcast and that schedule is at: http://www.firstteambroadcasting.com/organizations/bates-college/. Also you can always check updates and details on the Athletics website: Bates Athletics. So join us as we Break Out! Break Out!

Thank you and best wishes for the semester

Article from the Addison County Independent by Karl Lindholm about his father Milt Lindholm, beloved Bates College Emeritus Dean of Admissions who passed away recently:


Father/son: 'How 'bout those Sox?'

It wasn’t until last year, when he was 97, that I told my dad to his face that I loved him.

It was an awkward declaration, and I don’t remember his response. He might have said he loved me, too. It really didn’t matter what he said: I knew he loved me. And I have no doubt he knew that I loved him, too.

Instead of saying “I love you,” we would say to each other, “How ‘bout those Red Sox?” For my dad and me, sports were the medium of our sharing.

I think I learned everything I feel and believe about sports from my dad. Not by his instruction, but by his example. He never coached my teams — he couldn’t take the time from work, and even if he could, I’m not sure he would have. Not his role. He was my dad, not my coach. He let my coaches coach me.

He didn’t cajole or berate me, though he knew I could be a better athlete if I worked harder at it. He didn’t shoot hoops with me in the driveway. He was my dad, not my pal. This was the 1950s. He came to all my games in high school and as many as possible when I was in college here at Middlebury, five hours away from our home in Maine.

What we did was go to games together. My dad loved sports, thought they were unmediated good, and he transmitted that love to me. He thought athletes should be proud and hold themselves to a high standard, on and off the field.

One of my earliest sports memories was my dad taking me to Pettingill Park in Auburn, Maine, to watch Chick Leahey play for the Auburn Asas under the lights against the Augusta Millionaires — semi-pro baseball. Chick had played in the Yankee system and was the Bates College baseball coach, and he became one of my heroes and mentors.

When Bates had a pair of national-level track athletes, my dad and I went to the big indoor meets in Boston to watch them compete in the Boston Garden. We stayed at the old Madison Hotel next to the Garden and I collected autographs of Olympic stars in the lobby and on the elevator. I knew them all.

On Saturdays in the winter as a kid, I watched the indoor track meets in the Bates “Cage” from the balcony over the circular track, ten laps to a mile. All that activity — the dashes and the relays and the 35-pound hammer throw and the pole vault, all indoors in this contained space: the gun going off signaling the start of a race, guys running like crazy. Pandemonium. Total fun.

My dad was down in the “infield” as an official. Even in his retirement, he declined to go to Florida in order to be in Lewiston to officiate at track meets. He said, “who would pick second place in the 60-yard dash,” the hardest job in this era before electronic timing and photo finishes.

We went to innumerable Bates athletic events, hundreds, every sport. Sometimes we went together, sometimes separately. Either way, the fortunes of these Bobcat teams and their players were invariably the subjects of our conversations later on at home.

He was a very good football player. He’s in the Waltham High School’s Sports Hall of Fame. The child of immigrants, speaking Swedish in the home, he learned early that sports were a path to acceptance. As a student at Bates, he was on the team that tied Yale, 0-0, in 1932, and was football captain in his senior year. He loved the rough and tumble play of the game.

I played football in high school the same position as my dad, center. When he played, he had to snap the ball to backs in movement in that era before motion penalties, and long snap to the punter. Try as he might, he could never teach me the long snap, and I moved to guard on fourth downs, to his chagrin.

My dad wrote his senior thesis at Bates on “Character and Athletic Competition.” I wrote my dissertation in grad school on “the Sporting Hero in American Literature,” and described an archetype riven by fears of his mortality.

Later on, with me here at Middlebury and my dad retired from Bates, we met in Boston for a Sox game every summer for about ten summers. My dad had a well-connected Bates friend who annually gave him ten tickets to his company’s skybox at Fenway.

My dad and Lewiston friends, Bob and Chick certainly, and Leigh, drove down from Maine. I gathered my Middlebury buddies, Russ and Steve and Gary, and we rode down from Vermont, and we all watched a Sox game like rich folks in the luxury box. Wonderful nights at Fenway.

In our mutual adulthood, he and I settled into a relaxed fandom, watching games together when we could on the TV in the den of the house in Lewiston where I grew up and he lived for 65 years.

My dad, my sports source, died on Feb. 27. He lived 98 years and a few months. The 98 years were good ones; the “few months” were hard.

It’s spring — the days are longer, the sap’s running. Baseball is in the air.

Hey, Dad, how ’bout those Sox?

Karl Lindholm is the Dean of Cook Commons and an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Middlebury College. His father, Milton Lindholm was Dean of Admissions at Bates for 32 years.

Check out the video that highlights a fund-raising project underway to secure donations that will allow Bates to install an artificial surface, lights, new grandstands, a new press box, etc. at Garcelon Field, the College's football facility:

http://vimeo.com/8532774

Winter Letter

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown

And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hazy Shade of Winter - Simon And Garfunkel

Dear Students, Faculty, Staff & Friends,

Happy New Year! Winter is most certainly upon us with more than a hazy shade and any brown leaves that might have been left are now well-covered with snow. What’s more, if you add the music to these Simon and Garfunkel lyrics and listen beyond the first verse to the entire song, you will get an even more foreboding sense of the gloominess of winter. Additionally, the song uses the passing of the seasons to evoke equally unsettling notions of fleeting time, of lost opportunities and of dreams unfulfilled.

So why present this somewhat sober outlook at the commencement of the New Year and the next semester? Because the Bates sports scene, as timeless as a winning shot at the buzzer and with an abundance of opportunities and dreams yet to fulfill, provides the perfect antidote to these harsh realities of the Maine winter! Women’s and Men’s Basketball playing high-energy hoops in the toasty confines of Alumni Gymnasium; Men’s and Women’s Swimming & Diving creating waves in the equally temperate setting of Tarbell Pool; Women’s and Men’s Track blazing around the recently refurbished Walter Slovenski Indoor oval; Men’s and Women’s Squash’s frenetic play raising the temperature in the Squash Building; even the outdoor sports of Women’s and Men’s Nordic and Alpine Skiing generating fieriness with the speed and power of their performances! Such are the many opportunities available to offset the chills and blahs of the next few months while also contributing to the collegiality that is generated from the shared experience of supporting our Bates student-athletes.

The spirit and drive of the approximately 270 young women and men who comprise the aforementioned winter sport teams certainly merit that support. These students are most serious about their academic pursuits and strive to excel in the classroom. However, they are also extraordinarily passionate about their chosen sport and seek to distinguish themselves athletically while propelling their teams to success. They do not receive any material reward for the efforts that they put forth in pursuit of this athletic distinction. Rather, they realize their dividends in the self-confidence and sense of achievement attained from the overall participatory experience; in the lifelong friendships formed with teammates; and in the character transformation forged by the application to their endeavors of courage, sacrifice, endurance, self-discipline and mental toughness. That transformation, overlain on their academic odyssey, provides the ultimate return for these students as they become fully prepared for life after Bates.

The knowledge that the campus community recognizes and values the efforts of Bates’ student-athletes in both the classroom and their sport program is reinforced by your attendance at their events. Attached is a schedule of the winter sport contests and I know that they will be most appreciative of any events that you can make. For the contests that you can’t attend, please check the updates and details on the web site: http://www.bates.edu/sports.xml.

Thank you and best wishes for the New Year,

Kevin