S level, lost potential star
(STATS) -- Coastal Carolina has gotten creative to fill a shortage at quarterback on the depth chart. Brent Urban Jersey .Graduate student Tyler Chadwick, a starter on the Chanticleers national championship baseball team this year, has joined the roster and will begin practicing with the football team, coach Joe Moglia said Wednesday. In addition, two true freshmen who were high school quarterbacks, Jordan McRae and Ryan Lee, have moved over to the position from linebacker and wide receiver, respectively.Coastal (2-1), an FCS independent program this season while it transitions to the FBS level, lost potential starter Chance Thrasher to a shoulder injury before the season and then No. 1 Josh Stilley to a likely season-ending knee injury last week.Junior Tyler Keane is expected to start over redshirt freshman Austin Bradley in Saturdays home game against Furman. The Chanticleers, 17th in the STATS FCS Top 25, also will be without freshman Avery McCall because of a hand injury.Chadwick, the former second baseman on the baseball team who graduated this past August, is well-versed in the Coastal offense. The 5-foot-9, 195-pounder from Waxhaw, North Carolina, hopes to become a football coach in the future and spent last season working as a volunteer with the coaching staff before he was elevated to offensive intern this season, working with the quarterbacks.In high school, Chadwick played quarterback for his father, Scott, at Marvin Ridge from 2009-11. He threw for 5,648 career yards and 54 career touchdowns. Thomas Sanders Jersey . The 28-year-old from Calgary matched his career best after missing just one shot in his two rounds of shooting in the mens 10-kilometre sprint competition. Smith finished in 23 minutes 15. Richard Dent Jersey . -- Aldon Smith believes he is on the path to being sober for good. http://www.custombearsjersey.com/custom-jimmy-conzelman-jersey-large-1226t.html . -- Brandon Jennings made the most of his first game with the Detroit Pistons on Sunday night. WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- When rugby sevens was added to the rollcall of sports for the 2016 Summer Olympics, New Zealanders rubbed their hands in gleeful anticipation.Rugby, as a 15-a-side sport, had last been part of the Olympics program in 1924 when the United States defeated France in the gold-medal match. If any nation seemed well placed to benefit from rugbys return to the games after 92 years, even in its compact form, it was New Zealand -- home of the famed All Blacks.By 2009, when the IOC voted to include rugby sevens for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, New Zealand mens teams had won the world series in eight of its 11 seasons since its creation in 1999. It has won it four more times since, hardening the belief that the gold medal in the mens competition was New Zealands to lose.And there was the exciting prospect also of a gold medal in womens sevens. To some degree these were uncharted waters for New Zealand and most other nations: womens rugby sevens barely existed in an internationally competitive form before it became an Olympic event.New Zealand had a well-established and successful womens rugby team -- the Black Ferns -- who had been almost as dominant in the womens international game as the All Blacks in the mens. But womens sevens was new and while it was expected players from the 15-a-side game would easily translate, it was also recognized new talent was needed.So New Zealand, and many other rugby nations which sensed an Olympic opportunity, sent out a rallying call to its best female athletes. New Zealand Rugby advertised open tryouts and invited the best from other womens sports.The result was a team drawn not just from rugby but from basketball, netball, touch -- rugbys non-contact form -- track and field, softball. It seemed a recipe for Olympic success.But all has not gone quite to plan for the New Zealand women. In the 2014-2015 season, they were clearly the best team in the world but in the season just ended Australia took over as No. 1 by reaching three of the five finals on the world series.New Zealands Sevens Sisters made only two of the five finals and failed to win a title at any tour stop, placing second overall, and dulling the bright confidence that the gold medal was within reach.Countries which had never previously adopted rugby with enthusiasm flocked to the game and sped their development. Nations that had played the game with limited success became more focused and competitive.At the end of the world series, Canada was ranked third in the womens game, Russsia seventh and Spain ninth. Brad Maynard Jersey. The field lay more open than most could have expected.New Zealand captain Sarah Goss remains optimistic and says the team is approaching its potential as senior players return from injury and newcomers settle in.Were going to show were a pretty powerful side come Rio, Goss said. Weve done a lot of work and ... by August well come in fighting.Indicative of the women drawn to sevens by its Olympic inclusion is Niall Williams, sister of the All Blacks and sevens star Sonny Bill Williams. Niall Williams, a mother of two, was a touch rugby player before switching to sevens.A lot of skills transfer over from touch but the contact area was the hardest thing to pick up, Williams said. But I do have two big brothers to help out with that.The outlook for the New Zealand mens team is far less favorable than it appeared seven years ago. New Zealands grip on the world series title has slipped.Fiji has won the last two world championship titles and likely will start as favorite in Rio. In all, there were six winners in 10 world series tournaments including New Zealand (with three), South Africa, Samoa, Kenya and Scotland.England, Australia, the United States and Argentina the teams which could finish on the Olympic podium without causing any surprise.The 2016 season has been a tough one for veteran coach Gordon Tietjens, a famously hard taskmaster whose fitness sessions can reduce even the hardest player to jelly. But his program has been hampered by a heavy injury toll and the intermittent availability of Super Rugby players. When he put a call out to All Blacks players to join the team fpr Rio only Sonny Bill Williams and Liam Messam signed up. Williams made the final cut, Messam did not.Sevens has rejuvenated me, Williams said. My sister is in the New Zealand Sevens squad, too, so its massive for our family.Tietjens says sevens is much more globally competitive now, and while it has outstanding athletes such as Williams New Zealands pre-eminence cant be taken for granted.Contrary to perception, theres not massive sevens depth in New Zealand. Weve got a lot of rugby players but not a lot of sevens players, Tietjens said. When you get injuries like we had this year, its horrific.The New Zealand men have been drawn with Britain, Kenya and Japan in Pool C of the Olympics tournament; the New Zealand women in Pool B with France, Spain and Kenya. ' ' '