Louisville Newspapers Sports

Heffley Named First Team Louisville Slugger All-American

Cullowhee, N.C. - Western Carolina junior infielder Ross Heffley was today named to the first team Louisville Slugger NCAA Division I All-American baseball teams selected and announced by Collegiate Baseball newspaper.

Heffley was one of just six members of the 17-man first team that did not garner player or pitcher of the year honors in his respective conference. He also becomes just the 11th different Catamount to garner All-America honors and the first since outfielder Donovan Minero in 2001. Heffley is just the third WCU player to pick up first team accolades all-time joining Jerry Gaines (1975) and Grant Brittain (1990).

In addition to Heffley, three other players from the Southern Conference were honored on Thursday as Georgia Southern's Victor Roache also earned first team plaudits. College of Charleston outfielder Daniel Aldrich was named to the second team while senior third baseman Matt Leeds garnered third team honors.

"I could not be more proud of Ross Heffley and his accomplishments," said WCU head coach Bobby Moranda . "Ross is a young man who was unheralded out of high school, receiving just one NCAA Division I scholarship offer. He continuously works at his craft and makes strides to improve. He is very deserving of all of the awards he has earned thus far in his Catamount career from SoCon Freshman of the Year, to first team all-conference and now All-American honors."

A two-time SoCon Player of the Week who bookended the 2011 regular season with honors, Heffley led the SoCon with both a .419 batting average and a .483 on-base percentage. His seasonal batting average did not dip below .384 and stayed above the .400 mark over the final 26 games. He became just the 14th different player since 1961 to earn the team's Triple Crown - and the first since Kenny Smith in 2007 - after pacing the Catamounts in batting average, home runs (11) and RBI (65). A native of Snellville, Ga., Heffley earned first team All-SoCon honors from both the league's head coaches and the voting members of the SoCon Sports Media Association (SCSMA) after setting career single-season highs in batting average and base hits, tallying the ninth-most in school history with 96 on the year. His 96 hits ranked second among the 10 first-team All-American members. Combined, he reached base safely (H, BB, HBP) in 51 of the 53 games in which he played including a stretch of 38-straight games to conclude the season.

Theatre Louisville: REVIEW: The Complete Works of Shakespeare ...

I have a feeling I might have enjoyed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) twelve years ago, when I knew precious little about Shakespeare. That was the year I saw and favorably reviewed (for my high school newspaper) Actors Theatre Louisville’s production of The Complete History of America (Abridged) , the second entry in the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s repertoire of Cliff’s Notes comedies in which they essentially start with a giant subject (they’ve also covered the Bible, Hollywood, and the Wide World of Sports), pare it down to its highlights and especially lowlights, and filter it through their own sophomoric brand of parody-humor. Shakespeare (Abridged) was the company’s first full-length play, and it shows. The title says it all: one set, three unapologetically geeky actors playing themselves, hamming (or in this case Hamlet -ing) it up, and trying to lampoon all of Shakespeare’s comedies, histories, tragedies, problem plays, and sonnets, not to mention his bio, in 90 minutes. By my clock it actually took two hours and felt like an eternity. This may have been funny when the original RSC did it, but at Friday night’s performance at Kentucky Shakespeare (nee Festival), it was Much Ado About Less Than Nothing ; flat, unfunny, and with far too many awkward silences. And oh, yes, forced audience participation, a sure sign of the Measure for Measure of a show’s desperation. In fact, some of the sarcastic comments made by last night’s half-empty audience were more entertaining in the mind of this critic than anything the three actors did, and the last time that happened was at a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Vogue! If this is entertainment As You Like It , fine. But when I go to see a show, especially one featuring professionals, I expect them to do their jobs and leave me to do mine, and there is a word for actors who have to rely on a frankly reluctant audience to do all the work: lazy. Then, as if it isn’t desperate enough to pull the audience into the action because the script is not funny on its own and the actors are losing the audience’s interest, they commit the cardinal sin of insulting the audience.

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