Word: northwesterner
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...event before the new year, the Harvard wrestling team pitted its talent against some of the country’s best wrestlers, ending up with a 17th-place finish at the Midlands Wrestling Tournament. The Crimson sent six wrestlers to compete at Welsh-Ryan Arena on the campus of Northwestern University this Saturday, with two advancing to the second day of competition. Freshman Corey Jantzen, returning from an ankle injury that sidelined him for almost a month, put up the most impressive performance for Harvard. Wrestling as the eighth seed at 141 lb., Jantzen blazed through the first two rounds...
...About time, too. Since 2001, Northwestern's results in Florida's standardized test, the FCAT, have helped earn the school either a D or an F from state education authorities. Last year's troubles, ironically, may have accelerated efforts to reform the school, which a generation ago enjoyed a proud reputation as an educational bulwark for its mostly African-American students. "Absolutely it's had a silver lining," says Cleveland Morley, class of 1968, a Miami businessman and vice chairman of Northwestern's alumni board. "The school and community feel the system cares enough about them again...
...Northwestern has unusually devoted alumni. But many, especially the zealous football boosters, came under heavy criticism last year for having bred a mentality that said because the school's academic traditions had withered, "sports was the only place kids in Liberty City could demonstrate excellence," says Robert Andrew Powell, a Miami-based writer and author of We Own This Game: A Season In the Adult World of Youth Football. "Northwestern has one of the most amazingly talented high school football teams I've ever seen, but its case also points out how this country has to start addressing the professionalization...
...that reason, Powell - who like many critics remains skeptical about Northwestern football reform - disagreed with allowing the Bulls to travel to Texas in September to play the nation's No. 2-ranked team, Southlake Carroll High School, in a game televised nationally on ESPN. (Northwestern won, 29-21.) Hankerson insists it was proper to let his kids enjoy a national spotlight, "as long as they prove they're student-athletes with good character. They know now they have to earn the opportunity, and this year's team has. They're good young...
...Still, Hankerson acknowledges that the U.S. has "lost perspective about what sports should be at this age." Northwestern is hardly the only prep football powerhouse to face embarrassment of late. Nor are such problems confined to poor minority schools. An investigation recently found that staff at Hoover High School in affluent, mostly white Hoover, Ala., had changed grades for football players. So, while the Northwestern Bulls handily won their second consecutive state championship in last Saturday's final, to Hankerson, "our true state championship comes in March, when our students take the FCAT." His goal: to raise Northwestern's grade...