There is a new coach, a new staff, new players, and a new conference for the NIU men’s basketball team and winning is the goal.  That was the message from new head coach Matt Majkrzak during his appearance this week at Rotary.  Majkrzak has an impressive winning mark where he came from compiling a 136-73 record while at Northern Michigan University that included four consecutive NCAA Division II Tournaments.  Besides winning on the court, Majkrzak says he wants to build a culture where his players recognize high achievement in the classroom is equally important.  He believes this blend of athletics and scholarship will keep a core of players at NIU instead of chasing bonus dollars through the transfer portal.  Majkrzak hopes that it also translates into player identification with a fan base for a resurgence in game attendance.

 

Majkrzak says he will be recruiting his team “the old school way.”   He defined this as players who want to come to NIU as a learning institution and with a mindset that is “irrationally confident in winning” basketball games.  He also alluded to the desire of players to be in the game rather than sit on the sideline.  He noted that bigger schools offering more money through the transfer portal may raise an athlete’s interest, but many times the player ends up warming the bench for lack of regular playing time.  You just might see a recruit who is six-foot-10 inches tall and 250 pounds playing for NIU for that very reason.

April 27, 1822 – Civil War general and 18^th President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant is born in Point Pleasant, Ohio.

 

April 28, 1758 – Fifth U. S. President and architect of the Doctrine that bears his name, James Monroe, is born in Monroe Hall, Virginia.

 

April 28, 1950 – Comedian, talk-show host, and car enthusiast Jay Leno is born in New Rochelle, New York.

 

April 29, 1863 – Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst is born in San Francisco.

April 26, 1954 – The Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia.  Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated.  One year later, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations.

 

April 28, 1789 – Three weeks into a journey from Tahiti to the West Indies, the HMS Bounty is seized in a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian.  Captain William Bligh and 18 loyal supporters were set adrift in a small boat.  Christian and other mutineers eventually establish a settlement on Pitcairn Island.  Bligh survived and resumed his shipping trade.

 

April 29, 2004 – President George W. Bush dedicates the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.D.  It consists of 56 pillars, representing U. S. states and territories, and a pair of small triumphal arches for the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of the war and sits on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument.

 

May 1, 1960 – American U-2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over central Russia.