MORGANTOWN —
Is Oliver Luck already paying dividends as athletic director at West Virginia?
It would seem he is from the latest men’s soccer recruit to join coach Marlon LeBlanc’s team. He is Amaugo “Yannick” Iwunze, a native of Paris, France, who spent the last five years in Houston, where he was a high school star and an outstanding player on the Houston Dynamo Academy Team.
Luck, named athletic director at the school just this week, was president of the Houston Dynamo professional soccer team.
In 2009, Iwunze competed at the Development Academy Winter Showcase and later helped the Dynamo capture the MLS U-17 SUM Cup. A year before that he was tabbed the best player at the club’s elite camp.
Iwunze joins a recruiting class that consists of Zachary Claudio (Charleston), Brooks Nucilli (Fairmont), Travis Ives (Bridgewater, N.J.), Jay Williams (Raleigh, N.C.), Allan Flott (Arlington, Va.), junior college transfers, brothers Franck Tayou (Douala, Cameroon) and Uzi Tayou (Bandjoun, Cameroon), and Julio Arjona (Germantown, Md.), who enrolled at WVU in January.
In Houston Iwunze was a three-year starter for Hightower High coach Doug Purcell. Named a captain as a junior and a senior, he helped lead his high school to the playoffs each of the two seasons. He registered 18 goals in his final year, good enough for the school’s single-season record. Iwunze garnered all-Greater Houston Soccer Superlatives accolades, while being named to the all-district team.
o o o o o o
Former West Virginia University pitcher Andy Altemus has signed a free-agent deal with the San Francisco Giants.
Altemus, who established the WVU single-season record for appearances with 29 in 2010, will soon learn where he is scheduled to begin his professional baseball career. The Morgantown native will likely start at the rookie level with the Arizona League Giants, or at the short-season A level with the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes.
Known as an effective reliever who works quickly and possesses a “rubber arm,” Altemus led the Mountaineers with a 5.02 ERA and tied with Chris Enourato for the team lead with six victories last season. He transferred from nearby Potomac State in 2008, and made 18 appearances in his junior season in 2009.
Altemus is now the third WVU player to sign with a professional team during the offseason. Second-round selection Jedd Gyorko signed with the San Diego Padres on Wednesday, and Enourato inked a free-agent deal with the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday.
WVU Sports
Mountaineers add men’s soccer recruit
- WVU Sports
-
-
Orlando, Pastilong highlight ’12 WVU Hall of Famers
Retired athletic director Ed Pastilong and safety Bo Orlando of the 1988 football team that played Notre Dame for the national championship lead a class of seven into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
Lee Patrone says he remembers it vividly, even though more than 50 years have passed, and while it was the greatest accomplishment in his life it has nothing to do with the West Virginia University basketball career that has lifted him into the Class of 2012 that will be inducted into the Mountaineer Sports Hall of Fame in September.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: No doubt WVU made out well
There was a cold, ill wind blowing in from the north on Friday.
It was the kind of wind that blows whenever a Pitt man opens his mouth, as the Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson did. -
Tears and memories: VIDEO
It was mid-Thursday afternoon at the Morgantown Event Center and the crowd stood mostly silently in line that wound out of the Events Hall and into the hallway toward the staircase.
A young lady was there holding a singular golden rose
“I wish,” Rebecca Durst said, “it could be gold and blue.” -
HERTZEL COLUMN: Stew fondly remembered by players
The tributes have poured in all week for Bill Stewart, the former West Virginia University football coach whose sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack at age 59 on Monday stunned the state, but it wasn’t the administrators or executives or politicians who really knew him.
-
Friends, fans mourn loss of Stewart
Condolences streamed in from as far as Texas and Massachusetts as fans and friends gathered Thursday in Morgantown to pay tribute to former West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart.
Stewart died Monday of an apparent heart attack at age 59 while on a golf outing with former athletic director Ed Pastilong. -
HERTZEL COLUMN: White right there with Hall of Famers
Back on New Year’s Eve, 2008, shortly after West Virginia University had edged North Carolina, 31-30, to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl, an attempt was made to put Mountaineer quarterback Patrick White into his proper historical perspective.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Pat Beilein follows in father’s path
In a day filled with the sorrow of former West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart’s sudden and unexpected death, there was a ray of sunshine that managed to slip through, a happening that shows us all that even in death there is life and as one son grieves, as does Stewart’s son, Blaine, somewhere else a father basks in pride over his son.
-
Bill Stewart services scheduled
Visitation and funeral arrangements for former West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart have been announced.
There will be public viewing from 2-9 p.m. Thursday, at the Morgantown Event Center, 2 Waterfront Place. -
HERTZEL COLUMN - Stewart’s gift was giving
It was the kind of cosmic happening that defies description. We all come across them from time to time, leaving us in a state of disbelief.
- More WVU Sports Headlines
-
Orlando, Pastilong highlight ’12 WVU Hall of Famers
