The night belonged to Durgin Decker in some respects. He began the night's scoring with a 27-yard scoring run in the second quarter. Jackson Loge then went to work with a lengthy fumble recovery return: 49 yards. Wow! Decker hauled in a pass from 21 yards for six. Frosting on the cake came with two short TD runs by him.
In all, Decker was handed the football 21 times and rumbled 185 yards. His three catches netted 31 yards. Our defense was up to the task too as we forced two turnovers. The out-manned Thunder Hawks managed just 113 offensive yards. The success upped our W/L to 6-3, with the possibility for win No. 7 to be presented Saturday. Game-time is 7 p.m. at Pierz. The radio station site says 2 p.m. but two other sources, including the school site, say 7.
Monte had a down season and finishes 1-8.
What's with Kristi Fehr being "interim" coach for Tiger volleyball? I just got word of that. The team plays tonight (Friday) in sub-section.
Tennis: setback in state
Well, what a season it has been for Tiger tennis, which has hands joined with West Central Area. Quite the comfortable and winning partnership. Coach Britney House led her tennis athletes to a coveted state tournament berth.
I spent years covering Tiger tennis for the newspaper and summarized too many matches that ended 0-7 or 1-6. I well remember. So this past fall was quite the exhilarating experience.
Things may not have gone well in state. That's the way it goes. We were upended by Fairmont 0-7 and then by Rochester Lourdes 1-6 in the consolation semi-finals. Lourdes? I guess it's tough to beat those Catholics. Anyway, the 2021 fall season is one to be filed away with special memories for followers of the Tiger team. It's a team that is no longer just going through the motions, that's for sure.
Kudos to coach House, a neighbor of mine on Northridge Drive. I have to be careful not to refer to her as "Greenwaldt." Remember, I'm getting up in years.
Local sports journalism
Yours truly has been close to Tiger sports through nearly my whole adult life. In the recent past I have been able to get timely information from other media sources, so that I may continue writing about the Tigers. It has not been a perfect system. No system ever is. Despite the parents seeming to want to establish a standard of perfection!
I have been willing to accept some criticism but then I plunged forward. This I did for 27 years with the Morris newspaper and more recently as an unattached online writer. "Unattached" means I am not attached to any corporate interests. Stop and think: those corporate interests once had a monopoly for this sort of thing. Those "analog" times are long past. My generation when young could not have dreamt of YouTube with the opportunity to watch games like they were on "TV." Yes, it's the same as TV.
I must share with you: there is now a problem for yours truly with continued efforts to share about Tiger sports via journalism. A primary information source for me has been the West Central Tribune. It was reliable a good share of the time, with exceptions as when a coach would call in info that had errors for the opposing team. Sometimes you could spot obvious errors as with the complicated reviews of football games, where info just didn't add up. Sometimes I would even chide the West Central Tribune in my blog writing when I noticed this.
An absolutely pregnant example of this came with the thrilling comeback by Tiger football at Paynesville during the coaching regime of Jerry Witt. Paynesville interests had the obligation to call it in, and, to borrow a favorite description used by an old mass communications teacher of mine (J. Brent Norlem, St. Cloud State), it was an "abortion." Sorry if that's offensive. We had more loose standards of taste back then.
The game review in the Willmar paper was such an abortion, Lyle Rambow took it upon himself to contact me via email a few hours after I had posted, to alert me about it all. I corrected 2-3 of the worst errors and decided to leave it at that. Ideally I should have contacted coach Witt directly but I felt I was no longer in a position to do that. I was past my newspaper career. However, we had all gotten so far into the digital age, we all should have embraced a new perspective.
The newspaper need not be treated as anything special anymore. Sorry if that offends the newspaper interests, but that's the way it is. Adapt or die.
I would have loved writing a colorful and dramatic review of the comeback win over Paynesville. I no longer had the opportunity unless I wanted to attend the game and take notes myself.
The Willmar paper is owned by the same company that owned the Morris paper for a time. So Morris recycled sports stuff from Willmar a lot. And by golly, they re-ran the original West Central Tribune reporting complete with all the errors, on their website all the way through the next week. It defies understanding. I finally emailed Witt myself and asked: "Is it possible that not one person has contacted the (Morris) paper to point out the issues? I have a hard time believing no one did."
So I suspect the Morris paper under Sue Dieter had a policy, with any Willmar-generated material, of simply not correcting it. The coverage had the wrong name of the Tiger who caught the winning pass. I mean, can you imagine if I had been responsible for doing that? To this day, my blog post about the game with its limited corrections is the best review you can find of what was a really history-making game.
To the present: The West Central Tribune has cut Morris out of its sports coverage territory. So, that leaves me with what? I can get some basic information from the kmrs-kkok site. The radio station is to be complimented, even though its summaries can be brief. Also, I wish they would have more Morris-specific headlines - make it clear that MACA is the priority. Just my opinion.
Naturally, my blog posts are all in my own words. But I'm a little reluctant to rely on the kmrs-kkok website alone. I'd prefer getting a little deeper into game details. I may get a reprieve this winter because Mark Torgerson, assuming he hasn't retired yet, likes to put game stats on the Maxpreps site. It's possible I'm the one who alerted him to this option. I'll probably be able to write sufficiently well about MACA boys basketball. I'm concerned about the rest. We'll just have to see what happens.
I couldn't find details of the MACA vs. Sauk Centre football game anywhere. I assume a review eventually showed up in the Morris print newspaper, but you had to wait a week to see that - unacceptable. "Minnesota Scores" says we won 32-7.
We need to overcome old habits and old ways of thinking. We should no longer assume the newspaper holds such a special, privileged place.
Why does the coach supply information to the Morris newspaper? Well, isn't that obvious? I would say it is no longer so obvious. Maybe the school should insist that if the game info is supplied to the paper, the paper must agree to present a decent game review on its website within a day, maybe two, after the game. It should all be free access for the public, as my blogs are obviously. With my writing, you just click and read, no obstacles or distractions at all. I'm not trying to sell you anything or to help someone else sell you anything. Taxpayers are already paying to support the school.
I don't think my suggestions are radical at all.
Covid still hovers
A close relative of Julie Storck informs me that she died from covid. Julie was such a fixture at the Willie's bakery department. I will be visualizing her for years into the future there. She was a 1975 graduate of Morris High School, meaning she was a sophomore when I was a senior. The senior high building was for grades 10-12 then. I did not know her and that was unfortunate.
Can we be satisfied that our political leaders have led us through the best possible strategies vs. covid? There continues to be resistance from the extreme political right wing. I cannot fathom this, why such people are so determined to put up roadblocks to the best-intentioned public policies. Jeff Backer has said on our local radio that he hasn't gotten the vaccine. He said he thought he had maybe already had the virus, just based on having been "tired" for a short time, as I recall. Hardly a firm basis.
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| Rep. Jeff Backer |
In the past, anti-vaxxers were written off as a small minority of Alex Jones types. They have gone beyond the fringe now and present a real danger.
Has Rep. Backer gotten the vaccine yet? I wouldn't bet on it. As for me, I got my booster shot on Wednesday at Thrifty White Pharmacy in Morris. Also, my flu shot. Imagine if certain local victims of covid could have had their lives saved if we had all followed the best prudent advice of national leaders who are not blinded by right wing political allegiance. Allegiance to the Tucker Carlsons of the world et al.
The guy who was the big "Backer backer" reportedly died of pneumonia. Makes me wonder.
There appears no chance of Backer ever being voted out of office. That's just the way it is.
Didn't Gerald Ford, a Republican president, promote the swine flu vaccine, which actually had a very small but real risk? There was no Fox News then.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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