March 07, 2002

Surfin' USA: Stories you might have missed from around the USA

Surfin' USA ... One of the great sports resources on the web is www.sportspages.com, which compiles all the sports sections of newspapers from around the U.S. and rest of the world, as well as a few other sports-related sites. I went surfing the pages and found these good stories (since I couldn't come up with one of my own today): Dave Solomon has a good story in the New Haven register about how 'Championship Week' for the small conferences is more important, more exciting, than actually playing in the NCAA tournament. I can see his point; Central Connecticut is likely to be a 16-seed playing against a top-5 national powerhouse somewhere far from home. Winning a conference championship game that means going to the dance in front of a small and rabid fanbase is a moment the kids will never forget. Dan Barreiro of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is following legislation in Minnesota that would allow girls to participate in high school wrestling with boys. The best line of the story: The suit is supported by those who "believe that girls are born with the inalienable right to acquire cauliflower ears". Besides that, though, are the obvious questions about "touching in some intimate areas". I don't know what to make of this. Girls should have the right and access to participate in all the sports boys do in high school and college, but I don't think I'd want my daughter wrestling with a boy. I found the kind of story I was looking for when I came upon this touching and sad story about an individual who gave his time to local sports. The story is written by Mitch Vingle in the Charlestown (WV) Gazette. Every town needs a person like Kenny Shock. And I want to include something from Tom Stienstra, who covers the outdoors for the San Francisco Chronicle. I don't know how he covers it like he does, since he seems to have a story every day or two from all corners of Northern California, on all subjects, whether it's fishing with Giants manager Dusty Baker, birding in the Sierra, hiking the coast, etc. So the story I chose is from two weeks ago, and is not his best writing, but it sums up 50 good reasons to appreciate the natural beauty of Northern California in the coming months.

posted by msacheson to commentary at 01:44 PM - 0 comments