Scouting and recruiting for a college soccer team depends on skills, relationships and a little bit of luck, according to Cal State Northridge's men's and women's soccer coaches. Midway through both soccer seasons, the new players from each team have shown promising results, but don't think that the coaches are going to put it on cruise control just yet.

As one of the thousands of freshmen who came to CSUN last fall, Nhan Mai, an aspiring broadcast journalist, reflected on her student orientation experience and thought that there must be a better way to get incoming students ready for college life. "The new students that are coming in should have been prepared and should have known already that college is different," Mai said.

Jerrel Mathern could see and touch the trophy a few feet away from him. He also could hear victory calling, even though he is deaf. Mathern, senior recreational management major, sat unfazed as the trash-talking going on around his poker tables chipped away at the remaining survivors at the Spring 2006 Poker Championship May 10 at the Pub Sports Grill.

Behind all CSUN major departments that try to find solutions to further student graduation and retention rates is Bettina Huber, who bears the duty of providing statistics to administrators, faculty and students. Huber took over as the director of Institutional Research in Fall 2005.

Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001?" asked Kenneth Lee at the panel on "Interreligious Dialogue and the Challenge of Peace in (a) Post 9/11 Era." Lee, who will be teaching at CSUN this coming fall, said he was driving to school in Florida to teach his class on Buddhism on Sept.

After another journey through the many battles of a tennis season, senior YuYu Myinttun and sophomore Kanykey Koichumanova reflected back on their own journeys, coming from far-away nations to life in the United States. Myinttun, from Rangoon, Myanmar, and Koichumanova, from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, were just two out of seven tennis players born in distant countries and making significant contributions to their team.

The image of a little girl on the documentary front cover of "Stolen Childhoods" could save 287 million children laborers by educating the public, said three expert panelists at a conference April 22 in the University Student Union Northridge Center. About eight years ago, Len Morris, producer of "Stolen Childhoods," said he did not know anything about child labor until Robin Romano, the film's director of photography, sent him stills of a 9-year-old bonded slave child laborer who had excess clay on her hands from a day's work.

In the middle of the ninth poker tournament held this semester, Walter Chen started to play a football arcade game close to the five filled poker tables to his right side and pointed to the Texas Hold 'em standings on the wall of the Games Room in the University Student Union as "pokerpalooza" was in full shuffle.

When David Vasquez was asked to imagine finding out a close female friend or relative was raped, he remained silent for a few seconds and pictured himself in the possibility of such a scenario. "I'd be angry," Vasquez, a non-CSUN student who is involved with different anti-rape groups on campus, said.

The Cal State Northridge softball team won only one out of four games at the Judi Garman Classic in Fullerton March 15-18. A fifth game against Florida State was canceled in the bottom of the fifth inning due to rain and lightning when the Matadors held a 3-2 advantage March 18.

Freshman Eric Vance had a match-high 14 kills as the fifth-ranked Cal State Northridge men's volleyball team swept Stanford in three games March 11 at Burnham Pavilion. The Matadors won with scores of 30-21, 30-22 and 30-18. It improved to 12-8 overall and 7-7 in MPSF.

Senior catcher Jan Moshier connected on a three-run homer in the bottom of the third inning to right-center, bringing the Cal State Northridge softball team within three runs, but the 23rd ranked Oregon Ducks pulled away 15-8 from the Matadors in San Diego at the Aztec Classic March 4.