Five of six members are studying construction management. Photo courtesy of Hannah Salling Top row from left: Caitlin Hickey, Dana Boesel, Hannah Salling Bottom row from left: Chris Dehaan, Garrett Harte, Josh Hoffman

Cal Poly’s National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) team should have bet the farm when they went to Las Vegas last week. The team won sixth place out of 39 schools at an annual construction management competition in Sin City but it wasn’t beginner’s luck.

The team, which competed for the ninth year, was given a theoretical plot of land to build a housing complex proposal. The proposal had to include a budget, construction plan, and marketing and risk analysis, showing an emphasis on sustainable practices.

The site students had to build on was a 26-acre parcel of land, equal to almost 20 full football fields, in Texas called Magnolia Village. Participants were given background on the land and told that zoning and preliminary plans were approved by the city.

The team had to demonstrate sustainable practices that coincide with Green Building Initiatives, a set of guidelines that the judges critiqued based on factors such as low water usage and implementing recyclable materials. Teams are awarded bronze, silver or gold certifications if sustainable needs are met. Cal Poly’s student chapter’s work merited a silver certification.

After completing all of the tasks according to the prompt, students went to the competition last week and presented their package of plans to a panel of judges from the industry.

Some of the comments from the judges said the financials were very detailed and also that the team’s proposal was innovative and had creative floor plans. One judge commented that the team lacked profiteering, or describing how the profits would be shared with investors.

“The written proposal with its designs, management plans and financial analysis accounts for 80 percent of the judges’ points, and the formal presentation accounts for 20 percent,” construction management department chair Al Hauck said.

This year, they not only built an award-winning presentation, they built a team. Not a team who merely met to work, but a team who spent time getting to know each other.

President of Cal Poly’s NAHB student chapter, Hannah Salling, a construction management senior, said this was one of the team’s focuses while working on the project this year.

“One thing we tried to focus on this year was going out and doing things together rather than just working on our packet all the time,” Salling said.

Having four returning members helped the team’s chemistry. They spent a few hours working together during weekly meetings and tackled the rest on their own. The effort did not end with the quarter for the students or faculty.

“This was a tremendous effort on their part completed during fall quarter and over the break before Christmas,” construction management department chair Al Hauck said.

In order to complete all of the project’s components, the team had to stay the week after finals, working for about 12 hours a day in a computer lab on campus.

A continuously running coffee pot and cookies provided the fuel the team needed to work long days during winter break to complete all of the planning components for their site.

“We did a good job. We are all really proud of our package,” Salling said.

Four advertisement designs for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey are on display at the exhibit. Other designs include Levi Jeans and the Berlin Wall. Photo by Rhiannon Montgomery

The Type Directors Club 55th International Traveling Show of typography competition winners is on display for the first time in the University Art Gallery now through Feb. 20.

The exhibit features 215 pieces designed by top typographers from 21 countries including the United States, Australia, Spain and Taiwan. Bond Walker, graphic communication senior, said the show is about the different use of type in a wide variety of projects and is an art form.

“It’s not the first thought that comes to mind when you think of typography, but it really is art,”  Walker said. She said one of her favorites was a hippopotamus made out of the letter “H.” Walker said it takes a lot of time and dedication to create typeface and the lettering itself is a work of art.

Typography is everywhere from magazines and book covers, to business cards and advertisements. It’s the words that jump out from the television screen and the credits rolling at the end of a show. Art studio senior Lana Dow said the show is geared toward graphic design and communication majors.

“I get nerdy about type,” Walker said. For her, it’s a way to see how things are put together. She said typography is more than just publication. Jeff Van Kleeck, gallery coordinator, said the show isn’t just for what he called “type-geeks” and is a way for all students to see typeface beyond what’s loaded on their computers. The Directors Club makes that happen with their annual show of top designs.

The club was founded in New York in 1946 by some of the leading designers of the time. They hold two annual competitions with open-enrollment. One focuses on the use of typeface and the other in the creation of it.

This year, there were 1,733 entries in the competition from 33 countries in the design category and 163 typefaces from 26 countries. Of the nearly 2,000 entries, only 215 are chosen as winners. One is chosen to run on the cover of the club’s annual journal “Typography 30,” and three student entries are chosen to receive prize money. The combined winning entries make up the international tour.

Carol Wahler, executive director of the Directors Club, said there are seven traveling shows. Identical exhibits have been in Moscow, Spain and England, and the one at the art gallery just came from Mexico where it took two months to get out of the country, Wahler said.

Next year they plan to include Vietnam and Indonesia on the tour. Dow and Walker encouraged all students to visit the exhibit. Walker said it’s a show that needs to be seen at least twice.

“There’s a lot of interesting things to see and it’s free entertainment,” Walker said.

The next exhibit at the gallery will be a show of work from Cal Poly art students including photography, graphic design and sculpture pieces.

The university gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Dexter Building, Room 171.

By Katie Koschalk, Will Taylor, Elizabeth Poeschl, Leticia Rodriguez, Jessa Squellati, Nikol Schiller and Katie McIntyre

NOTE: This is part two in a two-part series. For part one, click here.

It was Friday night, a week before dead week. The flashing cursor on Kate Mesman’s blank Word document mocked her inability to begin her 10 to 15 page research paper. A friend with an Adderall prescription offered her a pill, and Mesman decided to try the ADD/ADHD drug for the first time in hopes of enhancing her productivity during the chaotic week.

Mesman felt effects similar to what her friend had described: high levels of concentration and the ability to stay awake easily, which she did, all night long.

“I would say my cutoff time is going to be 2 (a.m.), and then I said 3:30 (a.m.), but then all of a sudden it was 7 (a.m.) and the sun was coming up,” said Mesman, a journalism sophomore. “Time went by so fast.”

Mesman’s Adderall use is indicative of a trend not only at Cal Poly but on campuses across the United States. Non-prescription use of prescription amphetamines is rising dramatically. Studies show that between 4 and 35 percent of college students have used illegal stimulants as study aids, and the highest rates of use are at the most academically rigorous schools with highly competitive admissions.

Pressure to perform

With a freshmen acceptance rate of 36 percent in Fall 2009, getting admitted to Cal Poly takes hard work, determination and a competitive edge. Naturally, the workload at this school is not a walk in the park. An array of challenges, deadlines and scantrons to bubble in loom around every corner, pressuring students to enhance their study skills by any means.

If a recent online survey conducted by the Mustang Daily is any indication, Cal Poly ranks near the top of the national range for stimulant abuse. More than one in three respondents said they have used Adderall, Ritalin or Concerta illegally.

Daniel DiZoglio, a electrical engineer junior and physics minor, said he feels the stress and competition to do as well as he can, and consequently the pressure to take study-enhancing drugs, though he hasn’t yet.

“I know a lot of people who cheat on labs, homework, quizzes and tests and they throw off the curve,” he said. “They get perfect scores and I’m over here trying to do it on my own and getting Cs. It hurts my GPA and my chances of getting a job. I figure it’s just time to even the playing field.”

The Rx factor

Another element influencing the trend may be the increased diagnoses of ADD and ADHD in the 1990s, which directly correlates with the recent spike in off-prescription Adderall use, according to Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Food and Drug Administration only allows a drug to be marketed for its intended purpose. Once the FDA approves a drug, however, doctors can prescribe it for whatever purpose they deem appropriate. This, along with patients who are legitimately prescribed Adderall and simply have extra, may be fueling the rise in stimulants on college campuses.

“It’s potentially a huge market if people without diseases start taking these medications,” Chatterjee said. “There’s a clear incentive for them to have people take it.”

Prescription protocol

Despite their increased availability through doctors, getting legal access to these drugs isn’t necessarily easy.

“Students at Cal Poly cannot just walk into the Health Center, give the symptoms for Adderall and get a prescription,” head of Cal Poly Health Center Medical Services Dr. David Harris said. “That’s just a fairytale.”

“We take strict measures with Adderall and other amphetamines because it’s our license that’s on the line,” Harris said.

In order to be prescribed Adderall or any other medication for ADHD or ADD from Cal Poly’s Health Center, students must go through a series of nationally established criteria. In-depth medical and psychological evaluations must be conducted by the Health Center to ensure that students are correctly diagnosed.

Although doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants at the Health Center can write prescriptions, students cannot fill them on campus since the Health Center’s pharmacy does not carry Adderall. After a prescription for Adderall is written, students must then get the drug filled at an outside pharmacy. Once an Adderall dosage is appropriately prescribed, the Health Center or a local psychiatrist must conduct mandatory evaluations every three years.

Cal Poly’s Health Center offers no automatic refills for Adderall prescriptions. Thus, students who receive a prescription from Cal Poly must pick up a new prescription from the Health Center every month and then have a nearby pharmacy fill it.

In fact, the Cal Poly Health Center pharmacy has never offered Adderall. Harris explained that the Health Center’s pharmacy has a very low number of controlled substances they are even allowed to carry.

Even though the use of Adderall for those with a diagnosed concentration problem can be beneficial, the recreational use of Adderall can have negative side effects, Harris said.

“Adderall is a classic two-edge sword drug,” Harris said. “It has wonderful benefits but misused, it can be lethal.”

Adderall, like all other ADHD and ADD prescription drugs, is a central nervous system stimulant. It allows users’ brains to concentrate more efficiently because it increases the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine.

“There is a place in the brain, the nucleus accumbens, that generates reward through a neurotransmitter, dopamine. The more dopamine you have, the better you feel. The baseline level is about 300 units, but when a person takes an amphetamine, the level goes to 1,200 units,” said Dr. Dane Howalt, an addiction specialist at the San Luis Obispo Addiction Recovery Center (SLOARC).

Although methamphetamines, commonly referred to as meth, glass and ice, are stronger than their parent drug, amphetamines, including Adderall. Many people underestimate the potential for Adderall addiction. When properly prescribed by a doctor and used at the recommended dosage, addiction to the drug isn’t generally an issue since patients use the drug in regulated quantities. However, when an individual begins to abuse Adderall, addiction can occur fairly quickly.

“The issue at hand is that people are not taking it as prescribed. If they took one pill in the morning and one at night like they should, we wouldn’t have a problem. But they are crushing it up and snorting it and selling it on the streets and that is a problem,” said Janie Stuart, a licensed family therapist at the SLO County Drugs and Alcohol Services.

Addiction

Use, abuse and addiction are three different things, according to Howalt. Not every college student who crushes and snorts Adderall to enhance study skills is an addict. The differentiation between a user, abuser and addict comes down to whether a given person does or does not have an addictive personality, or a predisposition to become addicted.

“There is a severe physic conflict over using a drug, like having two separate people inside of you. It’s as if (addicts) are possessed or inhabited by another person who doesn’t care about anything, their job, their family, their health, anything,” Howalt said.

Genetics also play a significant role in addiction, making it about 25 percent more likely for a user to become addicted to a substance if one of their parents is an addict. In addition, being previously addicted to a drug greatly increases the likelihood of becoming addicted to another drug.

Whereas a non-addict who experiments with Adderall will be able to stop at any given time through self-control, an addict who experiments with Adderall will develop an undying need to take the drug frequently in large quantities

“An addict has a compulsion to use, a loss of control and continues to use the drug despite adverse consequences. Addicts who use amphetamines have their reward system hijacked so that they are incapable of pushing the addict out of the way,” Howalt said.

Amphetamines are a very dangerous category of drug because of the high potential for addiction. According to Howalt, if somebody was on the “maybe path” of becoming a full-blown addict, using an amphetamine, which increases dopamine levels in the brain by about 300 percent, would be the drug that tips them over the edge.

The environment also has a large impact on whether a person uses, abuses or becomes addicted to a drug. According to Stuart, the use of Adderall in the San Luis Obispo community is a big problem, especially among college students.

“Students are juggling so many pressures every day — school, work, so many responsibilities and pressures. The people you hang around with on campus, your use of alcohol and other stimulants, definitely plays into your potential for addiction,” Stuart said.

Help for addicts

However, many college students who become addicted to Adderall will not receive help. Based on his experiences with treating drug-addicted patients, Howalt claims that addicts who take Adderall see their behavior as less evident of being addicted. Especially in the college environment, the use of Adderall is seen as socially acceptable, similar to binge drinking on the weekends. In Howalt’s opinion, snorting Adderall is about as accepted as smoking marijuana in a college environment.

“I think that we don’t see many college students in recovery because there are not as many legal consequences as there may be with other drugs. We usually see students coming in here to get help for drugs that got them in legal trouble,” Stuart said.

Cal Poly counseling services does not have students coming in to address Adderall abuse, said Mary Peracca, Cal Poly’s Drug and Alcohol specialist and counselor, adding that students may not report the amphetamine as a drug when counselors meet with them.

Although there may be a limited number of people who volunteer themselves for recovery, those who do are in for a difficult and often lengthy process. According to Howalt, there is no known treatment that has been successful in treating amphetamine addiction. While there have been records of several different medications that appear to help, nobody has scientifically been able to demonstrate this.

The most important first step in recovery from amphetamines is treating a person for their physical symptoms. Typically that involves tranquilizers, which makes it easier for the patients to sleep. Unlike the potentially life-threatening withdrawal symptoms associated with alcohol and opiates, Adderall withdrawal is not physically dangerous, mostly just unpleasant.

“To be using a substance such as Adderall, which brings your dopamine levels to 1,200 units, and then crashing down to 300, doesn’t feel good. I don’t tell people that things will be as good or better than when they were using the drugs because they won’t,” Howalt said.

According to SLOARC, the best chance for long-term recovery from substance abuse involves individual counseling and active participation in 12-Step Programs. The changes that have occurred in an addict’s brain are far to complex to overcome alone.

The SLO County Drug and Alcohol Services uses a process called MATRIX, which involves relapse prevention groups, education groups, individual counseling and random drug testing. The individual counseling is used for the first four months only, but the entire program lasts a year.

Cal Poly offers two forms of therapy for drug abuse problems: Peer counseling and professional counseling. The student peer counseling team, Thoughtful Lifestyle Choices, helps students apply healthy decisions to their lives. The professional counseling team assists students in eliminating drug use and tolerating high stress levels.

Leaving it behind

Many students who use illegal stimulants to study say they plan to quit before they enter the professional world. Among them is a graduating senior who asked to be referred to as “K.”

K started taking Adderall last spring to help him study for finals. From there his use progressed to when he needed to stay focused for long, tedious homework assignments and sometimes before tests.

“I had a really hard time sitting down when I had a six-hour project to get done. Thirty minutes in I’d start playing with my pencil,” he said. “(Adderall) helped me zone other things out. I don’t consider myself smarter from when I had it, but now I can go more in-depth on problems.”

K said he hasn’t used it since finals last quarter and “for the most part” he’s done taking Adderall. He said he doesn’t want to use Adderall in the professional field because he wants to be able to do his own work without an illegal advantage.

After taking it approximately 20 to 30 times over the course of a year, K said he no longer really feels the need for it to focus. “I didn’t really want to become dependent on it to do work. Now I can sit down and do work without being on it,” he said.

“A part of it is the placebo effect: I thought I needed it to do well so I did. It’s the mindset,” he said. “If you think taking a pill will make you sit down and study longer, you do. What the mind wants, it does.”

— Brittany McKinney contributed to this report.

I think the article about the legislation that would force the Cal Poly Corporation to open its records is great news and I sure hope that this bill passes.

On many occasions I have been disgruntled with the cost of goods and services on campus and the significant price mark-up of certain items over off-campus alternatives. For example, bananas at The Avenue are sold at over four times the price of the same banana at Trader Joe’s. A pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwich from The Avenue costs over $5, more than a freshly-made footlong sub at Subway. Sure, The Avenue offers convenient on-campus eating, but to me it’s more of a monopoly over location than the actual cost of convenience.

These facts are frustrating, but even worse is the fact that these on-campus organizations are blanketed under a “non-profit” label, yet their finances are not publicly accessible. I find it laughable that they say the bill would “put the corporation at a disadvantage in competing with off-campus, for-profit businesses.” As it stands, few things on campus are price comparable with off-campus, let alone competitive. And is it any surprise when you think about the services? How many off-campus for-profit businesses do you know of that have large flat-panel televisions to display mostly stagnant menus? On campus, Backstage Pizza has two and 19 Metro Station has four. That system alone must have cost thousands of dollars to put in place. Personally, I would rather have more affordable food than the pleasure of reading a menu off of a flat-panel television.

And what about in regards to the bookstore — what of their earnings? I once took a course with a professor who had recently published a textbook to compliment the course. He said he had no control over the price of the textbook, but did mention his profit and the publisher’s price for a new book. Based on this, and what the bookstore on campus was selling the book for, the bookstore would have been making three times what the author was making for each new book sold.

This doesn’t even take into account the profit margin the bookstore will also make buying and re-selling used copies, all done without any additional compensation to the author. Yes, there are off-campus alternatives, but they tend to price based upon the campus bookstore, in order to maintain an only slightly competitive edge.

Those of us who really want to save money on buying textbooks are forced to shop for books online. However, it can be difficult to purchase just the book you need with enough time for shipping. The campus bookstore releases course material information only weeks in advance of the quarter and they never give the ISBN, only the author and book title. They don’t even give the edition of text that is needed; the only way to be sure is to peruse the shelves of the bookstore and write down the ISBNs of the textbooks you need.

Perhaps if this bill passes, public scrutiny may force the on-campus businesses to be more competitive. I understand that any profit (technically referred to as “surplus” for non-profits) is turned around and used to grow the business, but it seems like private companies tend to make changes more quickly and economically than is done on campus. It seems like in the private sector, things are done efficiently in order to save money for both the business and the consumer, whereas for a non-profit company on campus, any surplus earned is often quickly spent on trivial things, or even wasted on things we may not know about as long as their financial records are kept private.

Jeff Lewis is a mechanical engineering sophomore and a Mustang Daily guest columnist.

Business as Usual by Marlize van Romburgh

America has always been a country of entrepreneurs, at least in theory. It is, after all, here that the Henry Fords, John D. Rockefellers, Sam Waltons, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of the world built their empires. Rockefeller transformed the petroleum industry, Ford revolutionized manufacturing, Walton’s stores sell consumer products at prices few can beat and Gates and Jobs forever changed the world of personal computing. Each created something where there was nothing before, and made millions in turn, profiting from the innovations which changed our very way of life.

It’s this personification of the American Dream that fascinated me even as a young girl, long before I moved to the States with my family at age 11. Ten years later, I’m still enchanted by the entrepreneurial spirit that, although by no means unique to the United States, truly is the hallmark of what was (perhaps until recently) the most free market country in the world.

I was reminded again of this the other day as I met up for coffee with one of the brightest young entrepreneurs I know. Brian Riley, a Cal Poly business administration senior, is one of those rare people that you talk to for an hour one day and feel better about the future of the world for the rest of the week.

At just 21 years old, Brian recently co-founded Conceptualized Engineering, Ltd. along with Andrew Ouellet, a mechanical engineering junior. When he partnered with Brian, Andrew’s invention — an anti-lock system for bike brakes — took first place in Cal Poly’s Ray Scherr Business Plan competition this year. Brian is taking this quarter off of school so he can nurture the fledgling company and the two are working on licensing and taking their product to market. If their venture succeeds, the two young entrepreneurs not only stand to make a lot of money, but also to literally revolutionize the biking market; their invention could prevent thousands of the most common biking accidents that occur around the world every year.

The first time Brian and I met, at your run-of-the-mill college keg party — and while the rest of our fellow party goers idly talked about the usual things one talks about at a party — the two of us chatted about the economy. Despite the few beers in each of us, it was one of the most intellectual conversations I’d had in a while. I was impressed. As I got to know him better, I was even more impressed. The guy’s a wealth of knowledge on anything from short selling shares to behavioral economics. His bookshelf is overflowing with business and how-to books. He dines out with some of California’s most successful businessmen and women and always seems to be taking off to some kind of business seminar or conference. In other words, he’s got entrepreneur written all over him.

Wanting to catch some words of wisdom from him before he jetted off for yet another business meeting, I turned my voice recorder on when I recently met up with him and asked him to share some advice for his fellow Cal Poly students.

He believes that entrepreneurship is an “engrained” personality trait, but that many people don’t choose to nurture it. “Even when I was a little kid, I was always fascinated when I heard people talk about business. I heard people talk about starting up new ventures, and I was there, I wanted to hear about it.”

When he was in junior high, he asked his mom if, instead of doing chores to earn his weekly allowance, he could figure out a way to make money on his own. In sixth grade, he took a Web design class at Sacramento State and created a basketball Web site that earned money from pay-per-click advertising. In high school, he taught himself video editing and made wedding and other movies for money.

“By the time I got to college, I kind of knew that I had something in me that wanted to be entrepreneurial — I knew I wanted to do my own thing,” he said.

At Cal Poly, Brian joined Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), a nonprofit organization that connects students and business leaders to educate others on economics and business through outreach projects.

“That gave me the infrastructure; it made me realize that I could work with other people around me and build teams,” he said.

“It also gave me the confidence that I could do this in school. A lot of people think that they can be entrepreneurs but that they have to get a job first and go work somewhere for a while and then do it later. But I wanted to do it while I was young,” he added.

“If you go for it while you’re young, you really have nothing to lose. If you go bankrupt, you’re going to lose your iPod and your mountain bike and your pair of speakers. You’re not going to lose your job and your wife and your house.”

I’ve met other people like Brian before, but they’re few and far between. Not very many people have the smarts and the courage it takes to go their own way, to break out of the security of a stable career path and to venture out into the rocky, winding road of entrepreneurship, where both risks and rewards lie waiting around every bend. As Brian joked, “If anybody could be an entrepreneur, who would work for people like me?”

But as I’ve learned from Brian and the rare others like him that I’ve had the opportunity to befriend, there are entrepreneurial characteristics in all of us. The difference is that people like him choose to nurture those traits. He understands, too, that the education he needs for his future, won’t come pre-written for him in a textbook; uncharted territory by definition has no map.

“You can teach yourself anything,” he said. “Read as much as you can. Be interested in a lot of things. Soak it all in.”

“A lot of people know they have it in them, and it just takes a couple of steps and a couple of events to make it happen,” he continued. “Some of the best advice someone gave me once is ‘just show up.’ If you hear about something that you think may present an opportunity, show up and check it out.”

Entrepreneurs look for opportunities in life. They see a problem and they think of a way to solve it. If they’re successful, they stand to make soaring profits. If they fail, they lose everything they’ve invested in their project. It’s persistence and resilience that makes them bounce back after a failure and try again.

British entrepreneur Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin empire (which encompasses everything from Virgin Records to Virgin Airlines to Virgin Cola), has always been one of my entrepreneur-heroes. He takes risks like it’s nobody’s business, jumping from one industry to the next; a record label one minute, space travel the next. I’m sure Branson would agree with Brian when he says, “My opportunity radar is always on.”

Take the time to network with your peers in college. Seek out the best of them — the future Martha Stewarts or Warren Buffets — and take him or her out to coffee. Even if you learn nothing, their unbridled optimism may just spark your own entrepreneurial spirits.

Marlize van Romburgh is a journalism senior and economics minor and the Mustang Daily editor in chief.

The Cal Poly softball team, shown above, has a roster half the size of most national powerhouses. Photo by Kristen Hays/ Mustang Daily

Cal Poly softball has put up some impressive numbers this season: No. 21 in the nation, 18-1 at home, first in the Big West Conference, not to mention a Big West-leading .303 team batting average, .415 team slugging percentage and 1.72 team ERA. Here’s another number to ponder — 14.

The Mustangs have achieved all this while boasting a mere 14-player roster. Yet, head coach Jenny Condon sees it as a blessing in disguise.

“It benefits the players; there is a lot more one-on-one and individual (coaching) with each player; in the long run they will see these benefits,” she said.

There is no doubt that the players have seen those benefits on and off the field. The tight-knit squad uses its team chemistry to outlast its opponents.

“There aren’t a lot of us compared to most other schools,” Cal Poly first baseman Krysten Cary said during last Monday’s press conference, who leads the league in home runs (14) and slugging percentage (.664). “We have faith in each other; if one player gets hurt we know as a team we can succeed. That’s what we did all fall was build each other’s trust.”

It’s the upperclassmen that set the tone for the Mustangs. Sophomore left-hander Anna Cahn initially had trouble adjusting to the responsibility of being one of the two pitchers and throwing every other game, but has since learned to trust her teammates and herself, she said.

“It was a little worrisome, but once I let it go and realized that everyone had my back (I was fine),” said Cahn, who became Cal Poly’s single-season victories leader (25) and total innings leader (219.2). “I feel that everybody has really focused on ourselves a lot better and have not been focusing on the other dugout.”

Condon takes advantage of her team’s versatility by switching up the lineup and moving players around the field. This may translate into taking some extra fly balls or grounders, but it seems to be working.

“It has been nice to be able to not rely on one or two people and have really all 14 come up with the big play,” Condon said in the press conference.

But with a small team there is the potential to ruin team chemistry when there is dissension in the ranks, Condon said. But that hasn’t been the case.

“We all know each other’s strengths and weaknesses; we know each other enough on a personal basis that we can pick each other up,” Cahn said.

Yet, with the top spot in the conference and top 25 in the nation, the Mustangs have a target on their backs, Condon said.

“It’s a great honor to get national recognition and finally be a top team,” she said in the press conference. Yet, it was a little easier to be the underdog because now they have a little more pressure on them, she added.

The Mustangs control their own destiny and can win the Big West Conference championship with a sweep at UC Riverside this weekend.

“We have the potential to go to Oklahoma City … This is the most special team I have ever coached,” Condon said.