Villanova Field Hockey

Villanova University's field hockey page is your source for all things Villanova Field Hockey.

On this page, you can learn about Head Coach, Joanie Milhous, and how she has led her Wildcats to prominence in the Big East conference with a record of 161-134 through 16 seasons. She will be embarking on her 17th season come the fall of 2011.

If you look further, you'll come across the biographies and stats of the VUFH players, like former Wyoming Seminary standout, Abby Sordoni. Sordoni was one of the leading scorers for VUFH during the 2010 Season and was named to the Big East Second Team.

Ease and usability is the main component of this website. At the click of a button, you can access the Villanova Fan Gear Store as well as articles highlighting previous games. Interested in finding out if a team member earned Big East Honors for their performance in certain games? Simply click the headlines that appear when you first get on the webpage.

"This is a great website for me to follow the VUFH team. It has everything," said Wyoming Seminary Senior and future VUFH team member Jess Swoboda.

You can also access video interviews with Coach Milhous that took place after certain games, like the 6-0 victory over Georgetown. Although these videos take long to load, the wait is worth it because Milhous analytically describes the game and its highlights.

Kristian Stefanides, junior at SEM said, "This website is great for all things VUFH. There's not a bad thing about it."

Skudalski Commits to Columbia University

Lauren Skudalski, a senior standout field hockey player at Wyoming Seminary, discusses her decision to attend Columbia University and her plans to balance a demanding academic and athletic career.

Klassner Leads Sem to 4th State Championship

Coach Klassner watches her team as they battle the Lehighton Indians in the PIAA AA State Championship Field Hockey game. The Blue Knights beat the Indians 5-0.

Specificity is Brevity and Clarity

Advanced Google Search enables people to search for specific information that pertains to a topic of study, interest, etc., while filtering information that they find irrelevant to their topic.

All of this is accomplished through accessing the Google home page, and clicking the "Advanced Search" button to the side of the main search bar. After this is done, you proceed to fill out the form. On this form, there are many areas you can fill out. The more specific and filtered you want your search, the greater amount you fill in.

The following actions can be taken to narrow your search:

Phrase Search: By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change.

Search within a specific website: Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, if you want to find information solely from The New York Times about Iraq, you would type in iraq site: nytimes.com.

Terms you want to exclude: Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results.

Fill in the blanks: If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches.

Search exactly as is: By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word with a synonym exactly as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.

The OR operator: If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS).

Connor Scalleat, Site Engineer of T3CH Help, said about Advanced Google Searching, "I think it is very helpful for finding very specific things. It is really helpful to find something that you know is out there but just isn't being pulled up in the regular search." He sees A.G.A as a very specific engine that allows people to save time researching. However, others, like Ben Hornung, Class of 2014 at Wyoming Seminary, believe that "Google (not the advaced search option) just always finds what [he's] looking for without [him] having to get too specific." He rarely uses the advanced option and often forgets it's available.

The Advanced search option allows individuals to narrow down options and find sources that are reliable and factual in a timely manner. Yet, the promotion of this tool is nearly nonexistent, which causes a lack of use by individuals who might find this convenience most useful . Scalleat stated, "It is great if you know how to use it." Indeed it is great in that manner because it truly emphasizes that specificity is brevity and clarity.

The Simpler the Better

KINGSTON, Penn. - People everywhere want to be able to access stories from their favorite websites at the click of a button. RSS Feeds (Rich Site Summary), a format for delivering regularly changing web content, allows people to stay easily informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites of interest. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually.

RSS Feeds were developed in March 1999 by Netscape. Their purpose is to summarize news from websites that are regularly updated. Often, web logs, news-related sites, and other online publishers have their content as an RSS Feed for people who are interested in accessing news from that site at any time. According to Connor Scalleat, Editor and Site Engineer of T3CH H3LP, he believes that "RSS posts really revolutionize the way we can connect and obtain our media. With RSS readers serving our content in extremely dynamic and interactive ways, it changes the way we think of internet media. They allow me to instead of visiting 7 sites to find articles I want, I just need to open one reader to get article summaries, comments, sharing options, and much much more."

Netscape, the founder of the RSS feeds, developed the system because they "wanted to use an XML Extensible Markup Language [XML] format to distribute news, stories and information." The first successful version of RSS feeds was developed on March 15, 1999, and then the second worthy update was published on Aug. 14, 2000.

RSS Feeds are most commonly used by numerous types of news organizations, such as The New York Times and CNN. Mrs. Courtney Lewis, head librarian at Wyoming Seminary Upper School, uses RSS feeds to subscribe to over 300 blogs in different categories such as specific authors, major organizations in her profession, blogs of fellow faculty members, technology, and other blogs that are relevant to her hobbies. She states that using RSS feeds allows her to access things that are of interest more openly and easily, and is able to better organize and manage information that is important to her.

RSS feeds are used with readers, such as Google Reader. The program will grab articles from websites of your interest that are relevant to your passions. The simpler really is the better.

Too Much Information

Facebook gives people of all ages an avenue to publicize one's private life for the entire Social Networking community to see. Through statuses, relationship changes, and wall posts, others are able to access information about people that would otherwise be left unknown.

Created and launched in February 2004 by Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, the site began as a network strictly for Harvard University. Two months later, the site expanded to include other Ivy League schools. After that, the college network slowly grew and by the end of 2004, Facebook had registered more than one million users. Today, there are more than 500 million users who combine to spend a total of 700 billion minutes per month on the social networking sight.

What really is the purpose of Facebook? It seems as if it's for a person's privacy, well, to not be so private. According to one of the creators, Mark Zuckerberg, in a press conference at TechCrunch, "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." To him, sharing information is the popular trend.

For others, yes it's popular, but it is viewed as giving an excess amount of information. According to Mary Thede, 17, and a member of the Wyoming Seminary Class of 2011, stated, "People's statuses and wall posts on Facebook have reached a point where you're knowing a person's day to day routine from morning to night. You know what's going on in someone's relationship as well as in school. It's TMI (too much information), and personally, I don't care. People need to learn what is appropriate for the public eye."

Facebook is a great invention that allows people to communicate with others from all over the world. But the next time you feel the urge to tell everyone the details of your love life, please ask yourself, "Do I really want all 800 of my friends to know this?"

True Voice Trumps All

Blogging is a form of expression that gives people the opportunity to express oneself freely and openly. We currently live in a world where most opinions are not valued, and as a result, people are tentative to truly voice their views on specific issues or ideas, especially on television, in the newspapers, and on the radio. People venture to blogging as a outlet to release their beliefs without using a filter or worrying about how others might judge. It is with blogging where a person's true voice is identified and where one is able to be true to his/herself. This ability of blogging to emphasize true ideas and true opinions is what makes it so popular, beneficial, and essential to everyday life.

Remember the movie, Julie & Julia? Check out the real life Julie Powell's blog to get a first hand look of how true blogging really is. Click here to view the Julie/Julia Project blog.