Serious news consumers have tended to gravitate to newspapers. Our revered newspapers which we count on for reliable and probing reports on matters of public interest. Times surely are changing. Radio stations can harness the Internet as well as anyone. There is no reason, then, that radio can't creep onto newspapers' turf and even begin out-performing them. They will have to feel some economic incentive of course. Maybe it's a "top of mind" thing, so if people get in the habit of relying on radio-based reporting, it will elevate the profile of the radio stations. The dividends are there.
This morning as I write this, I have not one but two current examples to share of what I'm talking about. The local citizens have been made aware of troubling stuff going on in Kimball MN football. For people outside the immediate orbit of our local high school sports, we're groping for the facts. The "insiders" appear to know more, because as Chris Matthews of MSNBC once said during the Jerry Sandusky mess, "coaches are gossips, they have to know everything."
Matthews' comment is true in spades. My own background in local journalism makes me sure of that. Well, for the benefit of the common citizenry - a category that includes me now - we are getting more details on the Kimball mess. Our MACA Tigers played Kimball in football twice this past fall. We're sort of dragged into it. To the rescue comes KNSI Radio, which I discovered this morning has served up a pretty detailed account of just what the heck is going on with Kimball.
A huge benefit of this is that the more the media can authoritatively report, the less of a void there is for rumors. I have become aware of the rumors even though I didn't necessarily seek them out. An email came from a friend who heard stuff from a guy who knew one of the coaches - well, you sure get the drift here. I remember a country music song of about 20 years ago with the lyrics: "How can there be so many ripples in a little puddle?" It was about rumors in a small town. The video showed guys sitting side by side on restaurant stools.
Let's applaud Jennifer Lawerenz of KNSI Radio from who knows where - I can't readily determine the location from the web page - on her reporting. It looked like a "scoop" as of Wednesday morning. A WCCO TV report at about the same time was very sketchy, of the type to just feed more rumors.
Lawerenz is the news director for KNSI.
No criminal charges have been filed in the Kimball matter, her report says. At issue here is the conduct of the football coach/special education teacher at Kimball High School. He's on paid leave. Government employees sure have advantages when they get into trouble. Consider the driver of the school van in the horrendous accident that happened 1 1/2 years ago.
Kimball police were called to St. Cloud Hospital on October 10 about a possible sexual assault. A student complaint prompted the action. Lawerenz refers to court documents filed in Stearns County. Let's let her reporting/writing take over:
In the document, the student said about 6:00 p.m. after practice on October 9th, he complained to the coach of pain in his back and hip, and the coach said he would rub Biofreeze on the area. The student said the coach was rubbing some sort of cream on his skin using an ungloved hand, and he said he doesn't think it was Biofreeze because he had used that on an arm injury in the past and the cream the coach applied felt different. He said he was unable to look because he was lying face down on a table.
The student says at one point; he felt the coach's hand going "too far" on the inside of his leg near his buttocks. He said something to the coach, and the student said at that point, the coach left the room.
The student says he isn't exactly sure if he fell asleep or what exactly happened, but he opened his eyes, and the coach was still massaging the injury. He says he got off the table and went to the locker room and noticed it was after 9 p.m. He said he was not aware that three hours had passed, and believed it was only 30 minutes after he laid down.
At the hospital, investigators say the student was lethargic and had dilated pupils. Initial drug screens came back negative. The student told police he had not been given anything to eat or drink other than what was provided to the players.
On October 15th, five days after the complaint was filed, a group text message was sent from another member of the football team to 46 of the Kimball football players, telling them not to go to football this week and that the victim should feel shame for lying out of spite.
The player who sent the text message is the coach's brother. Other members of the football team said even though the message came from the brother, they are confident the coach had written it because of the verbiage.
Further investigation revealed that the coach would regularly have contact with players on weekends via text message outside of school hours.
Documents also show the coach previously worked at ROCORI High School.
Police met with officials there and learned he was a special education teacher who worked with kids in grades six through eight. The principal said he was aware of the coach communicating with students outside of school hours via Snapchat. Workers at ROCORI said they were told by students they had contact with the coach outside of school hours playing baseball or basketball at a park. One student at ROCORI also said he had texted with the coach and was aware of the Snapchat account.
A search warrant filed in Stearns County District Court shows the coach cares for his grandmother, Mary Gagliardi ever since his grandfather, former St. John's Head Coach John Gagliardi, (died).
At their property in Collegeville, police seized two cell phones and two i-Pads.
Police also searched a locker on Kimball High School property belonging to the coach looking for "any and all liquids, lotions, creams, foam, pills or any other substance that can be surreptitiously mixed into or added into legitimate medications, but nothing was found.
So, it's off-the-field?
The report is on a different level from comments I had heard out and around locally: the usual roughhouse banter one might expect to a certain degree from cretin-type football coaches. Regardless of how the law enforcement investigation turns out, let's consider how often sports is the platform for needlessly unpleasant things happening. Why so often in sports?
Why so often in football, a sport which in tradition is a test for "toughness" and masculinity in young men? Can easily be dismissed as a dated notion, perhaps a notion that grew out of a culture so involved in overseas wars. Be tough, follow orders and defeat the opposition. I'm not sure young people are so interested in accepting this template for our culture, this way of grooming our young men. And why treat men/boys different from females anyway?
For a long time, it almost seemed a courtesy to suggest there was a Homecoming week volleyball match that might be considered equal to the football game. We knew they weren't really equal, except that now I believe they really are on par together. Genuinely. Forget the courtesy or (to be blunt) condescension. Heck, there is no condescension, and we might actually respect volleyball more because it is a more civilized, more healthy sport, and easily just as fun to watch.
Would an event as shattering as the UMM goalpost incident happen in connection to any school activity outside of football? Of course not. Football leads the way but is not alone in presenting scandalous things. There was the Hancock girls basketball coach who ended up in prison.
I want to wince as I reflect on times when I was at the Morris newspaper and was induced to pay more attention to sports rivalries than my better judgment would have suggested. It's water under the bridge now. I personally got derailed by the UMM goalpost incident. I wasn't even there when it happened - frankly I'm glad for that.
How preferable to attend the UMM Homecoming music concert. Amen and hallelujah.
Yes, kudos to KMRS-KKOK and not just on what we hear from the radio speakers. The station's website did well reporting the basic stats from the MACA-Kimball football playoff game. The reporting was posted on the very next day. It has more value now because the newspaper website is basically dead due to circumstances that I guess are out of the new owners' control. It will probably be remedied with time. In the meantime let's appreciate the game details as reported online by KMRS-KKOK.
Let's add that game details did not appear as they normally should in the Willmar paper and its website. The Tigers beat Kimball 47-12 at Big Cat Stadium.
Durgin Decker injected momentum with a 78-yard touchdown run. We had Kimball buried 34-0 at halftime. Our total offense stat was 412 yards. The Cubs of Kimball were held to 167. Decker finished the night with 131 rushing yards and had two TDs. Tristan Raths reached the end zone twice. Passing the football, the reliable Zach Bruns had nine completions in 16 attempts for 159 yards. He hooked up with Jackson Loge for a TD aerial. Loge and Kenny Soderberg each covered 75 yards as receivers.
Defensive highlights included interceptions by Decker, Soderberg and Jack Riley. In all our opportunistic team forced five turnovers.
We own a 6-3 record as we prepare for the next playoff round which will be on Saturday. We'll tangle with Eden Valley-Watkins at 2 p.m. at New London-Spicer.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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