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Blog and Media Roundup - Saturday, February 10, 2018; News Roundup
Topic Started: Feb 10 2018, 05:29 AM (110 Views)
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https://www.newsday.com/sports/college/lacrosse/duke-s-justin-guterding-seeks-elusive-lacrosse-title-1.16665750

Duke’s Justin Guterding seeks elusive lacrosse title

By Bob Herzog
bob.herzog@newsday.com @zogsport7
February 9, 2018 3:54 PM

Justin Guterding has stood and cheered with Duke’s Cameron Crazies. “I’m a huge basketball fan and that’s quite an experience,” he said with a laugh. But that’s not why the former Garden City lacrosse star chose to attend the elite university located in Durham, North Carolina.

“I came here to win a national championship” Guterding said. “That’s the only thing I really care about.”

That’s no bull. Venerable coach John Danowski calls it “the white elephant in the room.” Guterding’s senior class is the first at Duke since 2004 not to have reached the sport’s Final Four on Memorial Day weekend at least once.

“I thought I might win a few national championships, but obviously now I only have a chance to win one,” Guterding said. “I’ll be quite upset if I don’t win any.”

The sharp-shooting senior attack, a second-team preseason All-American, is one of the primary reasons the Blue Devils were ranked No. 1 in the country in most preseason polls. He and his teammates and are off to a blazing start. They defeated Air Force Feb. 3, 18-4, with Guterding scoring three goals plus seven assists. Five days later Guterding scored five goals with three assists in an 18-6 trouncing of High Point.

Guterding, a scoring sensation since his freshman season, was fourth in the country last year with 97 points (51 goals, 46 assists) in 18 games. He totaled 71 points (with 43 goals) as a sophomore and made a stunning first impression with 52 goals (and 70 points) as a freshman.

“Consistent from day one,” is how Danowski described his team captain, who led Garden City to back-to-back state Class B boys lacrosse championships in 2012 and 2013. “He’s got a tremendous release. He moves the ball around and doesn’t shoot from the same spot twice. He’s very determined around the cage and is a fierce competitor.”

Guterding has also been flexible, adapting and deferring to the styles of star midfielders like Myles Jones (Whitman), Deemer Class and Jack Bruckner (Ward Melville) during his career, but now is clearly the team’s offensive star.
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“There’s definitely been a big change in my game,” Guterding said. “I took a back seat to Myles and Deemer my freshman and sophomore years, but they allowed me to make plays because everyone focused on them. Last year, I had Jack, who was a great finisher and I could throw him the ball pretty much anywhere and he would put it in the back of the net. So I got a bunch of assists. Basically, it’s how can I make the team better? If I have to score goals, pass the ball or do both, that’s what I’ll do. I’m excited about the playmakers we have this year.”

Guterding said he’s always possessed the skill set of a successful attack — dodger, finisher, feeder — since his days playing with the Trojans when he teamed with line mates Devin Dwyer and Liam Kennedy on a team that earned not only a state title but also a No. 1 national ranking. “My approach hasn’t changed much,” he said. “I just have to play to the personnel around me.”

With 256 points, he ranks No. 4 on the all-time Duke scoring list and with a season similar to last year’s, could wind up No. 2 behind the coach’s son, Matt Danowski, who finished with 353 points. Guterding was the fastest Blue Devil ever to score 100 career points, doing it in his 25th game.

His most memorable moment at Duke was a somber one. “My first overtime game-winner was the first game I played after the funeral of my good friend from Garden City, Ed Blatz.” he said of his goal that beat Notre Dame on April 29, 2016.

Blatz, a Trojans teammate in football and lacrosse, was a starting defenseman at Georgetown who died on April 26, 2016. “I’ll never forget that goal or that game in my lifetime. It was special for me and special for the Garden City community,” Guterding said.

He said he has cherished is time at Duke, calling it “an absolutely incredible experience. Coach Danowski always preaches to us about being a Duke Man and pushes us to do the right thing and enjoy everything that goes on at Duke. It’s a really special place.”

Guterding is a sociology major who has earned a markets-and-management certificate and will graduate in May – hoping to leave with a degree, a national championship and a clear career path that will allow him to walk softly and carry a big lacrosse stick.

“I definitely want to play pro lacrosse in the outdoor league, and I might try the indoor league. That suits my game, too,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll do some stuff in the business world with lacrosse. It’s been a part of my life forever. I can’t just drop it.”

That would be crazy.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/politics/betsy-devos.html

In Her Words: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Assesses a Year on the Job

By ERICA L. GREENFEB. 9, 2018

For a year now, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been trying to give away her $199,700 salary.

With every government-issued paycheck, which she pledged she would not take, the billionaire cabinet secretary grew more frustrated by ethics rules that restricted her ability to donate to charities in her official capacity.

But this week, after finally getting the go-ahead to donate in her personal capacity, she was able to call four organizations of her choosing to inform them they would evenly split the money: Kids Hope USA, a faith-based organization that connects mentors with schools that Ms. DeVos was long affiliated with, including as a mentor; the Special Olympics, the global sports organization for people with intellectual disabilities; Vision to Learn, a program that provides free eye exams and eyeglasses to students in low-income communities; and Dreams Soar, which supports girls in aviation and science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

For Ms. DeVos, the protracted effort to give her money away is illustrative of her first year in government: She struggles with bureaucracy. She has met opposition at every turn, but in a wide-ranging interview this week to mark the end of her first year as secretary, she said her agenda had not been derailed.

Ms. DeVos, a philanthropist and longtime supporter of private, parochial and public charter schools, remains unapologetic about the things that have made her a target of criticism. She still believes in parents’ right to choose alternatives to neighborhood public schools, with publicly funded tuition vouchers if need be. She still believes the federal government should have a limited role in telling any school how to educate its students.

And she believes that what many thought disqualified her for the job — her lack of experience with public neighborhood schools, which educate the majority of the nation’s students — has been an asset.

“I don’t know what can’t be done,” Ms. DeVos said. “And I come in with fresh eyes around all of these issues, and I think that questioning the way things have been done, and being able to look at things from a different perspective, is a good thing.”

Here are five takeaways from a question-and-answer session Ms. DeVos conducted with a group of reporters about her first year in office.

1. She has not given up on expanding school choice.

Ms. DeVos has reeled in her rhetoric around a national voucher and charter-school initiative, and in recent speeches she has emphasized “rethinking” the way schools educate students across the board.

“I would say it’s a broadening of the message,” Ms. DeVos said. “When we talk about the need for innovation in education, it has to happen in every traditional school, it has to happen in every private school, it has to happen in every charter school.”

Ms. DeVos called the expansion of 529 plans in the December tax law to cover K-12 expenses a “big win” for private and parochial school choice but agreed with analysts who said that the legislation was limited in its impact, especially for low-income students from families with limited means to save.

She signaled that she had settled for using her platform to champion the cause.

“There hasn’t been a secretary that has talked about empowering parents and giving them choices before,” Ms. DeVos said. “And I think that’s a huge benefit, and frankly a privilege to do — to try to be a voice for many parents who don’t have voices.”

2. She is proud and pained by regulatory rollbacks.

Ms. DeVos said she believed that reducing the department’s footprint had been “some of the most important work we’ve done in this first year.” But she said that the most significant rollback thus far — Title IX guidance issued under President Barack Obama for investigating sexual assaults on campus — had been “probably one of the most heartbreaking parts of this job.”

“As a mom and a grandma, I think about my children, and we need to get this right. We need to get it right for all students, and it clearly hasn’t worked in far too many cases,” she said.

Victims and advocates have said that Ms. DeVos’s rescission of the campus sexual assault guidance, which she replaced with interim guidance that changed the standard of proof for investigations, has had a chilling effect on victims who are reluctant to report assaults.

“That would certainly be the last thing I would desire or want,” she said. “I don’t think that the interim guidance that we provided ultimately does that in any way.”

Ms. DeVos said the department was still examining the Obama-era guidance that addressed the disproportionate impact of discipline policies and special education placements on minority students. Civil rights organizations have pointed to Ms. DeVos’s re-examination of these policies as evidence of her lack of empathy for vulnerable populations.

“It’s hurtful to me when I’m criticized for not upholding the rights of students,” she said. “For not caring about students with special needs. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Ms. DeVos remains hard pressed to find an area where she thinks regulation is appropriate, but she identified enforcing civil rights laws and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act as a critical role for the department.

3. She believes she is implementing the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, with fidelity.

Ms. DeVos has faced criticism over her department’s approval of state plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act. Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington who was a chief architect of the law, said that Ms. DeVos had approved plans that do not account for the achievement of low-performing students, as the law requires.

“I’m only approving plans that comport with the law,” Ms. DeVos said. “And I’m encouraging anyone who has been critical of me and/or the department on approval of plans.”

Ms. DeVos declined to comment on the quality of specific state plans.

“I think, very honestly, there’s lots of areas for continued improvement and a plan is nothing but a bunch of words on paper,” she said.

4. She feels hamstrung by Congress.

Ms. DeVos’s frustrations these days are directed at the body that confirmed her only with a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence.

She said a major source of frustration had been the unfilled positions in her department. Five nominees await Senate confirmation, including her would-be deputy and the nominee to head the department’s office for civil rights.

“We have many qualified, capable individuals waiting to come and contribute here and they’re just messing around up on that building on the hill,” Ms. DeVos said.

Ms. DeVos also expressed frustration with how much Congress controls the budget, which she said was an example of “how Washington doesn’t work.” It is also in the Constitution.

“If we were given a top-line number and were able to designate by our own priorities around line items, it would probably look somewhat different than what the budget looks like,” Ms. DeVos said.

5. She plans to push experiential and personalized learning in K-12 and higher education this year.

Ms. DeVos has already begun stumping for initiatives that would give students different pathways to the work force, a mission President Trump has thrown his weight behind in calling for more “vocational schools.”

Ms. DeVos said too many students were being steered toward a traditional college degree.

"I think personalized learning, competency, mastery, that’s a big shift from where education has been,” she said. “But it’s absolutely where most of education has to go.”
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