Around the NCAC

** Why do sports matter? Allegheny Athletic Director Betsy Mitchell has some interesting insights for an answer in her first From the Athletic Director's Desk column.

** Meet Martin Krislov, Oberlin's 14th president.

** Wooster men's basketball standout Tim Vandervaart is writing a new chapter in his Fighting Scot history - on an entirely different field. The three-time All-NCAC forward decided to come back this fall to complete his communications degree and is now a starting defender, and co-captain, of the Scots men's soccer team. The soccer pitch is not unfamiliar territory for 6-foot, 6-inch Vandervaart, as he played in high school as reported by the Wooster Daily Record.

Soccer was actually Vandervaart's first love, and his best sport at Hoover High School at one point, and he decided to return to Wooster for one more semester to finish the degree and play soccer for the Scots.

"A senior from Hoover on last year's soccer team, Tim Presto, had been trying to get me to do it," Vandervaart said. "Soccer had been my best sport in high school until I had a head injury my junior year that changed my fortune.

"But I've always liked soccer and thought, 'Why not take the opportunity to play it again?' It's worked out pretty good."

As a high school junior, Vandervaart said he collided full speed and banged heads with an opponent in soccer and suffered a fractured skull and subdural hematoma. He did not return to sports for a full year, when he prepped for his senior season of basketball.

Vandervaart has recorded one assist through the first 10 games of the season. He and his teammates are off to a 5-4-1 start overall and are 1-1-1 in NCAC play.