Conway signs with Worcester Tornadoes of Can-Am League

Members of the Methuen High School class of 2004 might be surprised to learn their former classmate Nick Conway (above) became the first baseball player from the University of Massachusetts at Boston to sign a professional contract in nearly two decades.

In fact, Conway was pretty surprised himself when he learned that fact last week after inking a contract with the Worcester Tornadoes of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball. "I was definitely amazed by that," the 22-year-old said.

The 6-foot-2-inch, 205-pound pitcher said his physical and academic growth spurts didn't come until after high school, when he became UMass-Boston's all-time leader in innings pitched (245), strikeouts (234), and earned run average (3.49) before graduating in December with a degree in criminal justice and sociology.

The Tornadoes, who won the Can-Am league championship in their inaugural season in 2005, became the first Worcester-based professional baseball team in 71 years. Coached by former Boston Red Sox catcher Rich Gedman, Worcester plays its home games at Hanover Insurance Park at Fitton Field, on the Holy Cross campus.

The team will play a 94-game schedule against teams including the Brockton Rox and others in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ontario, and Quebec.

At UMass, Conway was named the Little East Conference Pitcher of the Year in both 2006 and 2008.

But the right-hander, who throws a fastball, changeup, and curveball with velocity in the upper 80s, said he still has room for improvement. He said he needs to get stronger, have better endurance, and do a better job of holding runners on base.

In 2006, Conway also led the Beacons to their first-ever ECAC New England playoff berth, a feat they duplicated the three remaining years of his tenure.

Conway was also the school's first player in nearly 20 years to compete in the Cape Cod Baseball League.

Despite all those accolades, playing pro ball will be the pinnacle of a career Conway will try to extend as long as possible.

"Basically it was just all my hard work throughout my career paying off," Conway said of signing with Worcester. "In the end, everything I wanted to make of my baseball career worked out thus far."

Even though he's not a native New Englander, Glenn Hofmann sees his new job as athletics director at Merrimack College as a homecoming.

"I'm really excited to be able to come back where my wife's family and my family are located and to lead a school that shares same values I share," said the Baltimore native, whose parents and in-laws live in Maine and Vermont, respectively, while his siblings and wife's siblings live in the Boston area. "We are definitely New Englanders, so it's kind of a dream come true to be an athletics director at a school in New England."

The 41-year-old will begin his new post on March 30, after leaving as the associate athletics director at Niagara University, a position he has held since 2005.

Hofmann's responsibilities will include 16 intercollegiate varsity sports. Fifteen of the sports compete at the NCAA Division II level, while men's hockey competes in the NCAA Division I conference, the Hockey East Association.

Hofmann also worked in Lehigh University's athletics department from 1998 to 2005. He holds a master of arts in sports management from East Stroudsburg University and a bachelor of arts in mass communications from St. Bonaventure University.

Three youth teams from AC Arlington Soccer Club qualified for the 2009 Northeast /Mid-Atlantic Futsal Regional Championships Feb. 14-16 at City College of New York. The teams, which play in the U-10, U-11, and U-12 divisions, qualified by finishing first or second in last month's 2009 Massachusetts Futsal State Cup Championship in Mansfield.

Futsal is an increasingly popular brand of five-a-side indoor soccer that derived its name from the Spanish or Portuguese word for "soccer" (futbol or futebol) and the French or Spanish word for "indoor" (salon or sala).

The winners in New York will advance to the US Futsal National Championship, which, according to AC Arlington coach Qiumars Hedayatian, will be held in Baltimore July 16-19.

"Our odds are a 99.9 percent t win the whole thing," Hedayatian said.

"This U-10 team, I think, is one of the best in the country."