WeBlog!

VIEW FROM THE HILLTOP: A Hoya Sports WeBlog

Aug. 31, 2005

In the hyper-speed world of the internet, blogging has been around for quite a while now. So it's about time for GUHoyas.com to break new ground with its own blog. With these initial postings, I hope to make this corner of the official athletic website fun and interesting, and perhaps in the process, build a community of greater interest. Hoya Saxa!

VFTH is a distinct corner of our website, GUHOYAS.com. It is a blog; a link-filter; a sports column; part commentary, part journal, part photo album; a portal to GUHoyas.com; it is colloquial analysis; it is home-grown and has an experimental feel to it. Several times per week, it will offer such features as athletic news, historical anecdotes, individual profiles, and observations. We hope eventually to add a mailbag and guest bloggers.

There are two photos that rotate in the banner heading of VFTH. They are taken from the identical vantage point on the west side of campus 140 years apart: the first in 1865 and the second in 2005. You can shift between the photos by clicking on the photo itself or by hitting the refresh button.

The hilltop featured in the photo banner is the hilltop on which Georgetown's first edifice, the South Building, was constructed. Should not this weBlog be entitled "View of the Hilltop?" Au contraire, the vantage point of these photos is from the higher elevation of Fowlers' Hill, the current site of the Observatory and Kehoe Field and Yates Field House. So the View is from the Hilltop and at the same time, the View is of the Hilltop. While concrete, brick and asphalt have long since blurred the topography of the campus, the hills of the campus have always offered such spectacular views. I hope to do the same with VFTH.

In the earlier photo, the Georgetown yard is evident in between the South Building and the North Building in what is now the Quadrangle. Today, its direct descendant, the new Georgetown Yard, is the artificial turf field in front of the Southwest Quad dormitories.

The editor of VIEW FROM THE HILLTOP is me, Patrick J. McArdle. I live in Washington, DC where I have worked for Georgetown University since 1981. I currently serve as Special Assistant to the Director of Athletics. I have been and continue to be an ardent student of athletic history at Georgetown. And no, I am not related to former GU star football player Luke McArdle . . . more

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