March 28, 2024

I’m BAAAACK

The Pressbox

That’s right, it’s been awhile since I wrote a column. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say, but didn’t have the time to put the words down on paper. Oh, wait a minute, that was an old-school remark wasn’t it? Who uses pen and paper anymore?

With the departure of a sportswriter from the Daily News staff in March, I’ve had to “fend” for myself as spring sports got cranked up here for our six area high schools. I just figured our readers would rather read more about the exploits of their student-athletes than my opinion on anything.

It’s still me pretty much on my own with sports. We do have the new News Editor of the Jasper County Tribune and Prairie City News — Mike Mendenhall — learning on the fly how to write sports. He’s doing alright helping with stories on Colfax-Mingo and Prairie City-Monroe. And, we do have a new sportswriter on the way!

But it is spring sports season for the area and that means a flood of activities to deal with almost every day. One thing I learned in my 35-plus years as a sports journalist, there is a different nature to the beast we call spring sports season.

Coaches and sportswriters are at the mercy of technology. Gone are the old-school ways of writing down marks at track meets and other competitions. We rely on computers and other electronic devices — I use my cell phone to take photos of the basketball scorebooks after a game to get the scoring stats.

Competitions such as track meets run long, technical difficulties happen, and in turn, coaches don’t always have results to send to the newspaper that night or early in the morning. Deadline for the Daily News sports pages to be complete is usually 9:30 each morning.

So, bear with us at the Daily News this spring. We will do our best to get everything reported to you as quickly as we can. Time and space restraints sometimes push us to a “catch-up” day or two.

OK, what has happened since last I wrote a Pressbox.

Well, college basketball crowned the 2014 NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball champions. The Huskies of UConn are top dogs of college basketball — women and men. It’s the second time UConn has won both men’s and women’s NCAA Division I tournament titles — the first was 10 years ago in 2004.

I also talked about the Kansas City Royals and spring training. Well, the Major League Baseball 2014 season is under way.

The Royals are (ho-hum) 9-9 right at .500, but only one game out of first place in the American League Central Division. They are tied with the Minnesota Twins while Detroit sits atop the division with Chicago’s White Sox in second.

This week marks my first experience at the Drake Relays. I’ve always heard of the Drake Relays, but coming from Kansas — that’s right the Kansas Relays dominate. I’m excited to cover the area high school athletes qualified for the Drake Relays, plus maybe I’ll have a little time to watch some of the elite and college events.

AT THE END of the week, I'll head to Kansas. We will celebrate my dad's 87th birthday, which is Sunday. The man is unbelievable, but I'm biased. He is still in good health and active.

Dad just wrapped up his 49th year of coaching youth wrestling in Kansas. Dad was a wrestler at Kansas State in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He is in the Kansas Wrestling Hall of Fame, and continues to coach.

Dad’s in my hall of fame because he and my mother cared not just for their five children and what was best for them but for all the boys and girls in the area. He and Mom never knew a “bad” kid.