The Illineks lost to Urbana 5-0 on Saturday, ending the team's most difficult stretch of games this season. Uni played two Class AA teams (Urbana and Champaign Central) and a Class A team (Warrensburg-Latham) that went to the state tournament last season and entered this year's match against the Illineks sporting a 29-game regular-season undefeated streak. And although Uni went 0-3 against those opponents, coach Philip Anders thinks the tough competition will pay dividends come playoff time.

Senior Frankie McFarland is one of just 1,600 students to be named a semifinalist in the National Achievement Scholarship Program, an academic competition run by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. McFarland now has the opportunity to become one of 1,300 finalists.

The Uni girls swim team finished second at a tri-meet held Saturday at Danville High School. Uni defeated Schlarman but fell to the host Lady Vikings. Senior Katie Ryan and sophomore Sian Best each earned second-place finishes in two individual events, and senior Aliisa Rantanen added a second place in another event. The team's next competition will be the Champaign Central Invitational, scheduled to begin 10 a.m. Saturday at the Unit 4 Pool in Champaign.

Playing less than 24 hours after defeating Atwood-Hammond in three games, the Illineks had little trouble taking care of visiting Buckley Christ Lutheran in a conference match Friday night. The second game was especially impressive as Uni emerged from a 7-7 deadlock to outscore the visitors 18-2 the rest of the way. With sophomore Michelle Wong serving, the Illineks scored 16 straight points to build a 23-7 lead. Next up: Decatur Christian visits Kenney Gym on Tuesday.

Erin Hayes has witnessed some impressive concerts in her day, but for her, nothing can compare to Andrew Bird’s Pygmalion Music Festival appearance last Friday. Read on as she explains how the multi-instrumentalist blew her mind: "Andrew Bird put on a show unlike anything I had ever seen before. It seemed that his reason for being on stage was not to perform for an audience, but rather to create art for his own fulfillment, which the audience was lucky to see."

English teacher Adele Suslick, who won the 2007 Colin E. Thorn Award for her many voluntary activities on behalf of Uni High, will be out for five to six weeks as she recovers from a burst appendix. While she is gone, former Uni English teacher Rosemary Laughlin will come out of retirement for a second time and teach Suslick's class on Asian-American literature. Jeremiah Roberts-Stanley, who teaches part time at Champaign Central, will take over for Suslick's freshman English classes.

This year, after some lighter fare in 2006-07, Uni High's theater program will try its hand at a more serious play when students perform "The Diary of Anne Frank." The play is directed by Barbara Ridenour and will run Nov. 1, 2, and 3 in the North Attic Playhouse. Rehearsals are in full swing, and Sarah Pfander brings us up to date with what's going on behind the scenes.

In one of Uni's most exciting matches of the year, the Illineks pulled off a comeback win during the third game to edge visiting Atwood-Hammond in nonconference action Thursday night. Senior Karen Woodley scored the deciding point of the game and match on a controversial ace. The girls are now 10-9 overall. They will host conference opponent Buckley Christ Lutheran tonight at 6 in Kenney Gym.

Sophomores Erika Belmont and Sian Best each finished second in one of their individual events at Tuesday's meet against Danville and host Centennial. The Uni 200-yard medley relay team also earned a second-place finish. The girls will travel to Danville High School on Saturday for their next meet. The contest is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m.

After running into a powerhouse Decatur Lutheran team on Friday, the Uni girls came back Tuesday to defeat crosstown rival Judah Christian in two games. The conference victory featured some of the team's best play of the season and raised Uni's record to 9-9 overall, 4-2 in the East Central Illinois Conference. The girls will play two home matches later this week: Atwood-Hammond on Thursday and Buckley Christ Lutheran on Friday.

The Cardinals of Warrensburg-Latham came into Monday afternoon's game with the Illineks riding a 29-game regular-season undefeated streak. They raised that to 30 with a 2-0 victory over Uni at the DCR Soccer Complex. The schedule doesn't get any easier for the Illineks as they travel to Urbana Saturday for a 10 a.m. match.

What do you know? A lot of the movies we previewed last week still haven't been released. Oh well. Kumars Salehi previews them again, including "The Kingdom," a timely film dealing with an elite FBI unit investigating a terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia. Also this week: new music from Iron and Wine, Che'Nelle, and José González. Plus, "Knocked Up" comes out on DVD, and plenty of local concerts keep the C-U music scene alive and kicking.

Led by Sian Best's first-place performance in the 200-yard individual medley, the Uni girls finished second in Saturday's triangular meet held in Charleston. Uni swimmers won second place in seven events as the girls finished ahead of host Charleston and behind meet winner O'Fallon.

The Uni boys finished 11th out of 26 scoring teams Saturday at the Spartan Classic. On the day, they scored 252 points. Last year at this meet the Illineks placed 19th out of 26 teams and scored 441 points. In one year the boys cut 189 points from their score and jumped eight spots in the standings. With even more improvement as their goal, the Illineks will be off for the next two weeks to "pack on the miles," as senior Austin Rundus put it. They won't run in another meet until the Mahomet-Seymour Invitational on Oct. 6.

The girls narrowly missed winning the St. Joseph-Ogden Spartan Classic on Saturday. Senior Michelle Mehnert placed fifth out of 156 runners as the Illineks, ranked No. 4 in Class 1A, finished second behind No. 3-ranked Eureka. Running without senior Shivani Khanna, Uni fell short of the title by only 6 points. Twenty-two scoring teams competed.