“It makes people smile,” says Tim Ohashi ’11, summing up the swell day that he spent with the famed Stanley Cup.

Getting to spend a whole day with the Stanley Cup — it’s actually closer to 16 hours — is a grand hockey tradition accorded each member of a championship NHL team.

���󲹲���,��the video analyst for the champion Washington Capitals, got his chance on Monday, July 2.

Some of the smiling people on Ohashi’s day with the Cup were good friends from �ֲ���ý, including his girlfriend, Nicole Kahn ’10, Elena Mandzhukova ’15, Jared Quenzel ‘13, Brian St. Thomas ’11, Lila Totino ’10, and Luke Wamboldt ‘11.

Many, many others came away with a Cup-created grin on Monday, such as the stream of folks (Ohashi estimates about 300) who came by his table at a local restaurant at lunch to see and be photographed with the Cup.

“Everyone was smiling,” says Ohashi, who joined the Capitals coaching staff in 2014 as a part-time intern and quickly earned a full-time job. “He’s the smartest processor of information I know,” video coach Brett Leonhardt told The Washington Post  in 2016.

Tim Ohashi ’11 of the Washington Capitals had a crew of �ֲ���ý friends helping to celebrate his day with the Stanley Cup on July 2, 2018. Posing at his home are (kneeling, from left) Elena Mandzhukova ’15, Lila Totino ’10, and Nicole Kahn ’10. Standing are Jared Quenzel ‘13, Luke Wamboldt ‘11, Tim, and Brian St. Thomas ’11. (Photograph courtesy of Tim Ohashi ’11)

Scientists will tell you: Smiling is good for you. “I know it’s a cliche,” he says. “But we live in a imperfect world, and there are so many issues. If you can feel something good, and be part of something that brings some joy and happiness, it’s really a great thing.”

A native of Bethesda, Ohashi  to thank them for helping to make the city a great and safe place to grow up. “The hard work that the local police officers do is a big reason why.”

Ohashi knew that he’d be playing second fiddle to the siren song of the Stanley Cup most of Monday. So he started the day quietly, at his favorite place in D.C., the Lincoln Memorial, for a private moment with the Cup in one of the most public settings in the city.

Tim Ohashi ’11 chose to begin his day with the Stanley Cup at the Lincoln Memorial, one of his favorite places in the city. (Photograph by Walt Neubrand / Hockey Hall of Fame)

“It’s so iconic and striking, and if you get there early enough in the morning, or late at night, it’s peaceful and serene.”

At the memorial, Ohashi hoisted the 35-pound Cup way up high. As many have said before him, “When you lift it the first time, when your team has just won, with all that adrenalin and excitement, you feel you could lift it 1,000 times. It’s weightless.”

The next day, he admitted that “my arms are sore; I should get to the gym.” Indeed, 35 pounds is not an insignificant weight. Northerners might compare it to a bag of wood heating pellets, which runs 40 pounds.

“And like a pellet bag, it’s a bit unwieldy,” Ohashi says. ”Even our players, in peak physical condition, say it’s heavier than they thought.”

Ohashi’s day with the Cup began at about 7:50 a.m. at the memorial. At 11:55 p.m., a few minutes before the official midnight conclusion, he walked the Cup out to a waiting vehicle belonging to Walt Neubrand, the appointed Keeper of the Cup that day, and placed it into its special case.

Under the brief Ohashi regime, the Cup was drunk from (beer and champagne at the Cup-night party of about 15 family and friends at the Ohashi home). It was dined from, too. Ohashi ate his store-brand frosted flakes from it in the morning. Later, per a request from his girlfriend, Kahn, it served an ice cream sundae.

Ohashi is quick to point out that he’s not the first �ֲ���ý alum who’s earned the right to spend a day with the Cup. Jeremy Rogalski ’09, now director of hockey analytics for the Boston Bruins, was that team’s video analyst when the Bruins won the Cup in 2011.

“He’s one of the big reasons I’m doing what I’m doing,” Ohashi says. “He invited me to his day with the Cup in 2011. And he offered me a ton of encouragement and advice.”

At the time, Ohashi wasn’t working in professional sports, nor intending to. But after a day with Jeremy, “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say it changed my life: I realized that sports are what I’m truly passionate about.”

An analytics whiz kid who grew up idolizing the Capitals is now helping coach them — The Washington Post

 
Tim Ohashi’s amazing journey, writes , took him from “obsessing over sports as a kid in Bethesda to studying psychology and mathematics at �ֲ���ý to landing an internship and then a full-time job” with his favorite hockey team, the Washington Capitals.

Tim Ohashi ’11 is the hockey operations analyst for the Washington Capitals of the NHL. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/NHLI via Getty Images)

Ohashi is the hockey operations analyst, a multitasking job comparable to “an NFL quality-control coach,” Steinberg writes.

“I could have told you probably 20 years ago that this was exactly where I’d like to be,” Ohashi says. “I never in a million years would have guessed I’d be here.”

He got his gig the old-fashioned way, blanketing the team with resumes after getting a master’s in sports industry management at Georgetown.

And though he scored just one career hockey goal, in an 18-2 win for the �ֲ���ý club team, Ohashi has proven to be “a genius” in his work, says Jay Beagle, a Capitals center. “Statistically, he’s the best.”

Signs with a message of love to combat hate, and maybe start a conversation — The Philadelphia Inquirer

 
After the presidential election, Kate Haesche Thomson ’00 and Mark Thomson ’03 “had been alarmed by the stories” of harassment and intimidation, of the The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Some incidents were close to their home a few miles north of Philadelphia in Glenside, Pa.: “swastikas scrawled in bathrooms at Council Rock High School North and racist text messages sent to University of Pennsylvania students.”

Since then, the Thomsons have become a distribution hub for a phenomenon: the “Hate Has No Home Here” yard sign that had appeared in 29 states as of late December.

Kate Haesche Thomson ’00 poses with some of the signs that read “Hate Has No Home Here” in several languages. (Photograph by David Maialetti/Philadelphia Inquirer)

It started when Kate posted a Facebook note asking if anyone wanted one.

A “Hate Has No Home Here” sign, printed in several languages, stands in the Thomson home.

A few signs became a lot more, and at the time of the Inquirer‘s story, they’d handled local requests for more than 1,800 signs that now “dot the roads in clusters” in their community.

“It just blew up so fast,” Kate says. And as of Jan. 13, their number is more than 5,000 signs.

Putting a sign out or wearing a pin won’t stop hate, Kate says, but as a marketing consultant she knows that “exposing people to a simple, memorable message can help it stick in their minds,” writes Whelan.

Kate hopes the signs can help facilitate conversations. “Having conversations about what constitutes hate is progress. Feeling empowered to do more is progress.”

Practical and life lessons from a textile mill — South Coast Today

 
In an , anthropologist Caitrin Lynch ’89 described how she “shelved” her college-professor routine and “went to work in a textile mill” in 2016 to do research for her new book.

Caitrin Lynch is a professor of anthropology at Olin College in Needham, Mass.

As an anthropologist, Lynch’s “bread and butter” skill is “understanding how people make sense of the world they inhabit.”

Even so, Lynch’s mill year drove home “the value of immersing ourselves in new perspectives.” Regardless of “our formal education” or “our political orientation or family backgrounds, each of us would benefit from seeing the world through the eyes of people unlike ourselves,” she wrote.

Lynch learned practical skills and got the big picture, too, from “how to operate machines that move in mysterious ways” to “what it means for a business owner to keep a business alive when odds are against its survival.”

Radio Garden lets you tune into a world of global broadcasts — NPR

 
It was a throwaway mention, but kinda cool, when freelance journalist and radio producer Deepak Singh mentioned the �ֲ���ý radio station, WRBC-FM, in

Illustration by Marty Braun.

Behaving something like Google Earth, Radio Garden lets you spin the globe to tune into radio stations worldwide.

Singh writes: “I zoomed into the northeast part of the United States. And then a radio station started playing. On the bottom left side of the screen it said, ‘Lewiston, United States.’ This is about 30 miles from Brunswick, Maine, where I now live. On the bottom right side, it said WRBC. The �ֲ���ý College radio station was playing.”

(Note to readers: We loved the site but couldn’t get WRBC to play!)