Tigers hold off late Redwood Valley rally, win by 5

Tigers 61, Redwood Valley 56

Well, the hits keep coming for the MACA boys basketball team. Now the Tigers are on top of Section 3AA-North. The orange and black took the North crown on Tuesday night. 

Success was here at Tiger Center, where it looked as though social distancing was not being practiced. Hopefully there are no negative consequences of this. 

Again there was a top-notch YouTube-based telecast. Congrats to MACA on the success of this. 

Congrats to the student-athletes on the 18-2 record they have fashioned now. At this stage of the post-season, there surely is no dead wood left. Pipestone lies ahead as the next opponent. At stake is the overall section championship. Action will be at 7 p.m. Friday in Montevideo. 

Balanced scoring promoted our Tuesday success. Four players scored in double figures in our 61-56 triumph. We led 32-24 halfway through. We led by as many as 15 during the second half. The Redwood Valley Cardinals fought back to keep the game interesting. Eventually the clock ran out on the Cardinals. 

We won with 18 of 44 field goal shooting numbers, 41 percent. Jackson Loge scored 21 points on five of 16 shot stats. Thomas Tiernan scored 16 on six of ten. Then we see Brandon Jergenson: 13 points, three of six. Toby Gonnerman scored eleven points on four of seven. No other Tigers scored. 

Jergenson was on with his long-range eye as he made three 3's in six attempts. Tiernan was two of four and Loge one of four. Our team numbers: six of 17, 35 percent. 

Our freethrow performance was 19-for-25, 76 percent. Loge was busy at the line and he was sharp with six of eleven. Jergenson was four of six, Gonnerman three of five and Tiernan two of three. Loge attacked the boards to get ten rebounds, one offensive. Gonnerman went up to get four rebounds, one offensive. The Tigers got 21 rebounds of which three were offensive. Loge led the assist charge with five. 

In steals we see two Tigers with three each: Jergenson and Tiernan. Loge blocked three shots and Tiernan blocked one. 

 

Erratum

Our radio station website does a fine job but it had the score 61-57 in the opening paragraph of its report. I don't mean to be harsh but I initially jotted that down and if it got into my final post, certain people in this community would want to burn me in effigy on main street, howling mobs bearing torches. 

Redwood Valley had the No. 2 seed. Carson Woodford led the Cardinals with 18 points and ten rebounds. Charles LaChapelle sprang off the bench to score 14. Connor Stephenson put in ten. The curtain came down on the Cards' season with their record 14-7. 

Image a violation of taste?

We're now focused on Pipestone. This squad has the nickname "Arrows" and the logo reflects the Native American image of such a thing: questionable in light of today's sense of propriety. I don't use the term "political correctness" because so many people automatically put that down. I don't want to come off like a talk radio host. I think Pipestone could find a substitute logo/nickname. 

Pipestone advanced Tuesday with a 49-45 win over Windom. The top seed in their sub-section was Luverne who fell to Windom 63-56 in the semis.

 

When Tigers were "Morris High School"

Here's a historical treasure: home movie footage of the Morris High School basketball team in March of 1971. It's on YouTube now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd-7WCG8A4U 

 

It was a very good year, the year of the Morris Centennial. I was a sophomore in high school. You didn't have to specify boys basketball then because we only had boys! It was "Morris High School" and we sang the school song with the initials "MHS." It would be great to see that come back IMHO. Everyone knows we take in C-A along with other others in the area. Aren't all our home games in Morris? OK so let's sing or chant "M-H-S." 

Home movie or video was rare in the early '70s so the newly unearthed video, courtesy of media enthusiast Del Sarlette, is incredible to watch. Nothing short of transfixing. He was ahead of his time. So fascinating to see all the old familiar faces from when they were in their glorious youth. 

Just as fascinating: observing the cheerleaders. We surely had the traditional cheerleaders then. Some nostalgia is felt but also maybe some misgivings about our culture: girls were meant to be cheerleaders. And, you are in denial if you think the cheerleaders were not chosen according to criteria that had to do with our understanding of "good looking." The criteria was suggested by male culture. 

Eventually our feminine gender broke through to be real basketball players, worthy of just as much attention as the boys. Girls sports started out as a novelty and I'm sure many people thought it would stay basically that way. No! Wrong-O! It is 100 percent legitimate. But let's remember where we came from. 

In November of 2018 I wrote a blog on "I Love Morris" reflecting on the traditional cheerleaders, what it meant in our culture at the time. I selected some paragraphs to re-publish here:

 

Cheerleaders in age of #MeToo
We have the changed complexion of society today due to #MeToo. And in principle it's wonderful. But again we must reflect on changed or evolved attitudes over a not very long period of time. I went to high school when we had cheerleaders. Let's be frank as we assess this: Cheerleaders were once "eye candy" meant to complement the real, serious competition of male sports.
We all knew that a certain type of girl would be chosen as cheerleader. Certainly not on the heavy side. If you were to ask a cheerleading advisor or school administrator on whether cheerleaders were chosen on some sort of "glamor" criterion, they would be embarrassed to say yes and would probably say "no." But the truth was 100 percent yes. The basketball cheerleaders had the highest status when I was in high school. There was another group of cheerleaders for football and wrestling but these seemed like the second string. Administrators would deny that but we could develop a pretty strong sense about this.
The basketball cheerleaders were the candidates for being asked to Prom by the sports superstars - we all knew that. We reflect on this the way we reflect on a lot of outdated concepts. It is wonderful to see we have evolved. We must be gentle though with the people my age who might have stumbled a bit getting to where we are today.

 

The photo at right shows our MHS cheerleaders from the time when Del's video was made. I easily remember the names so let's go left to right, just first names: Kathy, Connie, Jane, Robin and Jackie. Jane and Jackie were sophomores at the time, would graduate with my MHS Class of 1973. The Class of '71 which includes Del has its 50-year reunion milestone this year. Not sure yet how the pandemic will affect that. The fans currently attending Tiger games sure don't seem worried. Is that good? Knock on wood. Let us again remember the Elvis Presley song "Funny How Time Slips Away."

 

Del supplied the photo with the remark that it is his "most requested," and even this remark might be considered non-P.C. Is it possible that girls for time immemorial have not appreciated such comments, though they might pretend to?

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com