Well, to answer thenarrator questions, in the two classes I followed, 4A (big school) and 1A (little school) the winners were Bloomington Kennedy, lead by the magnificent Jenna Smith a junior who hasn’t yet commited to a college and Elgin-Millville lead by Katie Ohm who broke the state career scoring record this year and is going to be a Gopher next year. She may be from Elgin-Millville but she’s been invaded by the spirit of Elgin Baylor. At six feet she’s their first option in the low post and if they don’t get her the ball there, she goes out to the wing and scores facing the basket. She took a leaping, leaning jump shot off the dribble from behind the arc and almost hit it, it was down and rimmed out softly. Someone said that Jenna was the best player in the state, but they must not have been watching the same tourney I was.

The boys tournament is this week and features tiny Braham, which has one of the best High School boys teams in the nation. They’ve beaten Compton HS from LA this year as well as several of the perrenial big school powers in the state. Their big star is going to be a Gopher as well…there are three future D1 players on that team. My wife’s hometown of Luverne is also there this year. They were famous in the sixties for being a small school that one the single class tournament. They had red shoe laces.

I don’t have a clue who’ll win the NCAA women’s tourney, there’s so much parity (I almost typed ‘Parody’) among the top 3 seeds. I just hope it’s someone from the Big10. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Michigan State go all the way.

Tomorrow I’m going to take some time during the day to watch the Gopher men. They’re playing Iowa State, my daughter’s school so I’m hoping to watch with her and stir some good old family rivalry.

Over and out!

busy busy busy

L is home from college, so my desk has been rearranged, along with the rest of the house. She’s the one with OCD. It’s nice to see my daughters have matured to the point where they actually get along with each other.

State Tournament Impressions

Thursday night the whole fam was downtown. Q went to an all ages show at First Avenue, Beck went to The Dakota to see Pat Donahue play with an accordianist and I went to Target Center to watch the Class A finals and then buzz over to Lee’s Liquor Lounge to catch The Dieselfitters, fronted by one of the guys who reports to me.

The parking ramps for the Target Center are designed for easy access from 394. I came in on Glenwood and got hopelessly confused and ended up parking about as far away as possible.

When I was in high school there was only one class and the games were played at Williams. The arena would be packed. Now there are four classes and Target Center wasn’t even a third full. But there still was a buzz.

Janet Karvonnen and Leah B. Olson were commentators for TV, not doing the game but interviews and half time analysis. I have to say that they represent a pretty much unbeatable combination of basketball talent and beauty. Janet is a former holder of the state scoring record and a high school legend. She had a jump shot before girls really had jump shots and was maybe the best shooter ever to hit the hardwood in this state. Leah B. played for the Gophers before they got big and I don’t remember anything about her career, but she does a lot of broadcast work in town and she’s just eye popping.

I came to get a look at Ashley Ellis-Milan, the Metro Player of the Year who’s a future Gopher. She will fit right in to powerful Minnesota front court. Although she looked a little slow of foot to play at that level. I also saw 6’3″ junior Jenna Smith, who plays for Bloomington Kennedy and is uncommitted. Stanford, Tennessee, UConn…get away, this girl needs to be a Gopher. She’s the real deal. Tremendous skills and extremely atheletic.

Hopkins was playing in the late game. My nieghbor is a former D3 point guard and coaches tennis at Hopkins. She’s a Minnesota archtype. Short, Blonde to Strawberry hair, round face, button nose and freckles, in a word Scandanavian. I looked for her in the crowd but there must have been fifty women that looked just like her. They even all wear their hair the same.

The Hopkins point guard (who has the look) was pulled from the game at one point. As she came off the floor, the camera was right in tight on her face and the image was displayed on the huge screen on the scoreboard. She high fived the coach and gave him an eye roll and as she headed for the bench it wasn’t difficult to read her lips. “Fuck that shit.” Apparently she didn’t want to come out.

Ellis-Milan had gotten into foul trouble early and they couldn’t play with Hopkins without her, although she brought them back in the second half without picking up her fourth foul. But the game was over with about three minutes left.

Now Lee’s is about three blocks north of the Target Center, on the opposite side of downtown and they have a big parking lot. But I was alone and that three blocks is an urban wasteland. All industrial or warehouse. No people. I opted for the safety of the ramp. I used to pride myself on my lack of “city fear” but I guess there’s that discression and valor thing to fall back on.

Pulling out of the ramp I managed to find an exit that fed only to 394, the freeway that heads west out of downtown. You can’t get off until Penn Avenue, maybe two miles out. I cursed, exited Penn and found that the logical way to go didn’t work. Then I made a mistake about which way to go to correct my first mistake and ended up on Wirth Parkway and then Cedar Lake Parkway. Still thinking I could correct myself I continued around the lake until I saw the skyline, where I wanted to be. I realized I’d have to go almost to Lake Street to get back. Lake is 30th South, I wanted to get to single digits North. So I did a Uie and picked my way back to Glenwood and back to the bar. I turned a three block drive into about ten miles.

The Dieselfitters were great as always. I felt sorry for them though. It’s a pretty big bar and the crowd consisted of my buddy’s wife another woman (another band member’s wife?) About six people from the previous band, a couple of fans and maybe four people at the bar. By the time I left the crowd was down to single digits. The boys played their hearts out. My pal is a great rockabilly guitar player, I mean he really smokes. Too bad for all you chumps watching Pat Donahue.

At noon is the 1A championship and Katie Ohm who now holds the state scoring record is playing in that one. She’s a future Gopher. I’m going down I think.

thenarrator asked:

I’ve got a question: In most states you’re limited to four years of high school “participation.” Small schools are allowed to play 8th graders, but if they do, they need to miss one year of high school (in Michigan they’d need to miss one full year-every sport, but in other states just in that sport). I assume Minnesota allows a high school athlete to play as many years as she/he wants?

Here’s the rule as stated in the MSHSL Eligibility

16. *SEASONS OF PARTICIPATION — No student may
participate in more than four (4) seasons in any sport while enrolled
in grades 9-12, semesters 1-8 inclusive.
17. *SEMESTERS IN HIGH SCHOOL — A student shall not
participate in an interscholastic contest after the student’s eighth
semester in grades 9-12 inclusive. All eight semesters shall be
consecutive, beginning in the 9th grade. The attendance of 15 days
or more in one semester will count as a semester in administering
this standard.
18. JUNIOR HIGH PARTICIPATION — Participation in high
school interscholastic programs is limited to students in grades 7-12
inclusive. Students in grade 7, 8 and 9 may participate if enrolled
in the regular continuation school for the educational unit and if all
other eligibility requirements of the League have been met.
Elementary students in grades 1-6 are not eligible for participation
in any MSHSL-sponsored activity; B-squad, junior varsity or
varsity level.

I was wondering the same thing and I looked it up on the MN State High School League site. Yes I think one can play as early as seventh grade (my bosses daughter was the #1 runner for a big school in CC this year as a seventh grader, many of the top girl CC runners are very young). I know April Calhoun played at our HS from 8th grade on. Didn’t seem to hurt her much, she’s an Academic All American with a 4.0 average at the Carlson School of Business.

I think there may be a problem with the system that produces these young phenoms, but like I said, it wouldn’t be much fun for anyone to make a player like Tayler play with kids her own age, so I think you really have to advance them. Seems like our culture is producing world class athletes that are younger and younger, tennis, swimming, golf, gymnastics and now hoops. One of the problems is specialization too early. That wasn’t April’s problem, she lettered in four sports, was all conference in three. I’m not saying I like it or that it’s right, but it is a fact.

You should see the hockey in this state, many kids leave home to play Junior A because they don’t feel that high school is played at a high enough level of competition. Wow, have you seen MN high school hockey?!? I think that parents are a big part of the problem, too impatient for their kids to develope into top athletes. There is a proposal in the state legislature to remove sports from schools and have them be community based. I don’t like that either.

It might be wise to limit the out of season club participation that forces kids to make a choice of which sport to specialize in at too early an age. Some of the parents I know joke about how it’s too late to get into hockey when you’re five. I think others aren’t joking. Elite teams are also a problem. The three sophmores on the Gopher Women’s BBall team all played together on the same AAU team the won the national under 17 title. Kelly Roysland is from Fosston, which is about as far away from the cities as you can get in Minnesota, while most of the other players were from the city. I will say this for club soccer, our local organization has supported 3 teams at Quinn’s age level all the way through U17, which gives 50 girls the chance to play a team sport. On the other hand they have a girl that was on the State ODP (Olympic Developemnet Program if you can believe that) was playing up a year on a Premier team and just quit soccer completely because it was consuming too much of her life.

And yet, the whole thing is kind of like nuclear proliferation. No one wants to blink first. Fifteen or twenty years ago the Gopher hockey program which was famous for winning national championships with home grown talent suddenly went on a draught. “What’s happening to Minnesota hockey?” was the cry. They’re producing more and better players in Michigan and Massachusetts, we have to keep up. So now hockey is a year ’round sport and you pretty much have to play it exclusively. Guess what, we’re back to winning championships. It all goes back to when the Russians started whipping us in so many sports, it became a national priority to keep up. So, yes, I think the problems largely come from too early and too much emphasis on winning. When I coached, we’d always give the parents the spiel about not being too competitive and emphasizing fun over winning, but as soon as you lost some games, you’d start getting the remarks and suggestions and the questions about what’s wrong. I’m conflicted about youth sports, I love them…I hate them.

I’ll stop rambling now. Tayler’s team lost today. She scored 19. I’ll keep you posted on her career.

Tayler Hill is an eighth grader. She’s 5’9″ and plays for the Minneapolis South Tigers. She was selected as a first team all-metro player. She lead the City Conference, averaging 21 ppg. She’s also cute as a button. She’d look great in Maroon and Gold!

She’s in the State Tournament as are the two Gopher recruits for next year, Katie Ohm, from Elgin-Millville who broke the all time Minnesota career scoring record this year and Ashley Ellis-Milan a 6’2″ power player last year got 24 rebounds in a game against a very tough Minneapolis North team.

I love March!

After watching the Gopher Women beat Ohio State in the Big 10 tourney, I needed to get out on this beautiful day, so I drove over to the campus to shoot some shots of the river.
Some views of the UofM from the West Bank and a railroad bridge turned foot bridge across the Mississippi. The shiny building is the Weisman Museum of Art.

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After a couple of weeks the hillbilly got off and was replaced by a younger, much taller mate, who probably had been to college and not prison. I’m sure he considered himself pilot material and was just biding his time. He was much more relaxed about the working conditions, but I managed to have my run-ins with him as well.

On my off-watch, when I wasn’t sleeping, I spent time drawing the mechanical parts of the boat, mostly down in the engine room. When the captain and the mate found out that I could draw they started asking me to do some drawings from the numerous softcore porn mags in the crew lounge. I think I did one and they came back with another assignment for me. At that time drawing from photos was beneath me (now I think drawing from photos is better than not drawing at all) I considered the whole thing ridiculous and had not yet perverted my art to do anything so crass as an assignment. I refused to do anymore, telling them that it wasn’t really the kind of art that I was interested in. The mate towered over me and was probably in his late twenties and fit. He got angry. He insisted. I continued to refuse. He told me that he could put me out at the head of the tow (it was late November) and make stand out there as a “lookout” for the rest of my trip. I looked him in the eye and said, “Are you threatening me? ‘Cause if your threatening me, go ahead, put me out there, I don’t give a shit because I’m not going to draw your fucking nudie pics for you.”

I think I must have said the magic word, because he immediately replied, “I wasn’t threatening you!” And he repeated that declaration about five times in five minutes, making sure everyone heard him. Now I must say that in spite of what I think about unions now, the International Maritime Union probably saved my ass that day. Or at least my artistic integrety. I think that unions are most important in dangerous jobs like that.

Those of you who know me in the analogue world probably are chuckling over my claim to even having artistic integrity. Today the first words out of my mouth would be, “What’s in it for me.”

Check out this series of photos. That’s about the size of the boat I was on. But we never did anything like that! Although we did get a call one night that a couple of barges had gotten loose on the river and we needed to go corral them. We had to pull one off a bridge abuttment that it was stuck against sideways to the current. One of my big adventures.

Click here for: The Wonder of Me

When I worked on the river, well it really wasn’t the river, it was the Chicago Area Sanitation Canal, fondly referred to as the Shit Ditch, I worked on a team that consisted of the pilot, the mate and two deckhands. We worked six hours on and six hours off. I was a deckhand, both of us were on our first trip. Our mate was this little hillbilly who had spent time in prison. Lot’s of river rats had, the union hall is in Joliet after all. Stories had it that he had once stormed the bridge an beat up the pilot. Many pilots packed heat in those days.

Other than cleaning the kitchen, we only worked when we were going through a lock or making or breaking tow. That is picking up or dropping off barges. Our job was to rig them, wrapping line and wire (rope and cables) around bulkheads and tightening them with giant come-alongs, using a pipe for increased leverage. The mate took pride in working fast and that meant getting to work quickly after the boat got into position. Getting into position meant sliding a tow of several gigantic barges into a tight area. That meant crashing into the bank (often a cement wall) or other barges. The impacts were heavy and put incredible stress on the rigging. The mate always wanted us to jump out and be ready to start working as soon as we came to. If a wire or a line snaps under that sudden incrediible tension, it could decapitate you so fast that it would make your head swim.

So picture two twenty two year old kids cowering behind the cover of the barges superstructure, being cursed by a red faced forty year old with the reputation of a violent lunatic. Each of us was about twice his size, but we were terrified of him. We were actually doing what we were trained to do, and we stood our ground. But I like to think we cranked like hell when things settled down enough to get to work.

I’ve given up. A couple of years ago I quit playing hoops. Not only because I’d lost so many steps that I couldn’t even keep up with the other old guys that I was playing with, but also because an hour of ball would result in four days of pain. I thought I could continue playing tennis, but recently it’s become apparent to me that that’s not true either. My knees are just too shot. I don’t have a slow first step. I don’t have any first step. I think I wouldn’t be walking in a couple of years if I continued. So, I’m done. At least until I get the knee replacement surgery.

I really wanted to play tennis with my daughters, but when they got good, they didn’t want to play with me anymore. And now it’s over. And I walk like Gabby Hayse.

I didn’t see much of the Oscars last night, but I did see Hilary Swank get her award. Did you get the impression that if they would have tried to get her off the stage before she was done with her speech she would’ve taken someone’s head off. I was also surprised to see that those are her real teeth. And did you notice the tall blonde that was the stage escort. She had to be six-five! Was it Lauren Jackson?

This morning when I got up I noticed that my printer was jammed, which could only mean one thing. Q had been up late working on a paper and the printer had jammed and she didn’t have what she needed for an assignment today. I felt pretty confident that she wasn’t getting anything done a day early. Usually clearing a jam is pretty easy on my little HP Deskjet, but this one was stubborn. I could see the paper from the front, but I couldn’t get a grip on it to pull it out. I found a door in the back, opened it and pulled the paper out from that side. That’s when I saw that there was also a CD jammed in the printer. The night before I’d taken a CD out of the computer and set it on the paper in the feeder on the printer, so when Q printed something from her basement lair, the CD went along for a ride. This put me behind schedule getting to work, so I was trying to zip through traffic when, just as I exited from the short freeway leg of my route, my oil light started flashing. Two quarts down. Now I’m really running late. Not a big problem, but I wanted to get some work done in the morning because I knew I had to leave early for a dentist appointment. I was verifying my payroll and found two people had screwed theirs up…pain in the ass for all involved. And then I went to the dentist and found out that my little accident with the wasabe pea a couple months ago wasn’t just a filling giving way, it was a chipped tooth. I need a crown. An eight hundered fucking dollar crown. I wonder if they do twofers? A crown and a knee replacement. That’s it! Maybe I can find a coupon!