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March 14, 2006
On the Wildcat beat
We’re about to enter a terrific stretch of the sports year. March Madness starts Thursday. The Monitor has Ray Duckler down in Florida pounding out columns about the Red Sox while Preston Gannaway shoots pictures to go with them. If you want a sense of Boston baseball tradition, check out Gannaway’s poignant picture of Johnny Pesky signing autographs on today’s sports page. Can Opening Day be far behind? And then, early next month, the Masters.
But I want to focus today on Dave D’Onofrio, one of our sports writers, and on another classic sports event that we hope will unfold during the next couple of weeks. That would be the UNH hockey team’s post-season run. Dave covers the Wildcats.
Dave grew up in Wakefield, Mass., with the normal loyalties: Celtics, Bruins, Patriots, Sox. During college, he interned at both the Lynn Item and the Boston Globe.
He came to the Monitor in 2003 after graduating from BU, where he had been the editor of the college paper and covered the hockey team. Since UNH will be playing BU Friday night, Dave will enter the Fleet Center with divided loyalties. But I defy anyone to detect bias in his game coverage. He’s not afraid to interpret and make judgments, which any sports writer must do, but his story will be arrow-straight.
Dave is one of the Monitor’s six full-time sports people. This is a talented, hardworking bunch. There are ever more sports in our culture, and when we survey readers about what they want us to cover more, the answer is always: “Everything!” Everyone on our sports staff wears several hats.
When Dave arrived, he was not an auto racing fan. Naturally, we made him our auto racing writer. On Thursday, the day before the UNH-BU game, he will pull together his informative, often opinionated auto-racing column for the Sunday Monitor. And this summer he’ll enter his fourth year as our lead writer at the New Hampshire International Speedway, where he’ll churn out stories, sidebars, profiles and columns without missing a beat – or a deadline.
He was a novice in 2003, but now he knows auto racing and respects Nextel Cup drivers. To those who contend that the cars do all the work and the drivers aren’t really athletes, Dave has this to say: “The more I learn, the more I appreciate how difficult it is to do what they do.” Their work – total concentration from start to finish, sometimes in 110-degree heat – may be harder than that of any other athlete. Teamwork is important, but in Dave’s view, it is the driver that makes the difference between winning and losing.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here . . .
How about Hockey East this weekend, Dave? Who’s going to win? And what are UNH’s chances of making it to the NCAAs?
Dave says that after a sluggish early season, the Wildcats have come alive. The key moment occurred when seven players turned themselves in for a rules violation and Coach Dick Umile benched them for a big game in Maine. What was left of the Wildcat roster didn’t win that night, but the team gave the Black Bears a fight. The Wildcats have played with toughness and resolve ever since.
Most UNH players think the team has to beat BU Friday night to make the NCAA tournament. Dave isn’t sure. He thinks the Wildcats might get in anyway. But winning would erase any doubt, and Dave says the ’Cats have a good shot.
Win or lose, you can count on Dave D’Onofrio to see that the game gets its due in the Saturday Monitor.
Posted by Mike Pride at March 14, 2006 07:19 PM
Comments
hmmm ... Dave sounds like quite an asset ... kinda reminds me of a hungry, talented (and handsome) kid from Massachusetts who worked in the Monitor sports department in the early 1980s ... what was his name?
Posted by: Jim Farrell at March 21, 2006 05:01 PM