Charlie Hanson excels with golf clubs, trumpet!

Charlie Hanson makes quite an impression with his golf clubs. Golf may be a fairly low-profile sport in the springtime. No cheering crowds like for baseball and softball. Golf's "Happy Gilmore," the fictional comedic character, didn't understand why fans couldn't cheer robustly. Remember the scene in the movie where he tried whipping up fan support as he got set to tee off? 

Fans certainly would have wanted to cheer our Charlie Hanson on Tuesday. He performed right here at Pomme de Terre Golf Course. Brett Miller reports that "MACA sophomore Charlie Hanson defended his crown and became a three-time West Central Conference champion on Tuesday." 

This is a cumulative sort of title with several meets weighed. I'm not well-versed on the structure of prep golf. Miller's second paragraph reports how Hanson shot a 37 Tuesday, "tying for third with West Central Area's Mitch Dewey and three shots back of Minnewaska's Riley Larson and Zach Guggisberg." 

But the headlining aspect is that Hanson wears the crown again in conference. He is the three-time West Central Conference kingpin. So he's quite the master with his bag of clubs, has an exciting lifetime ahead of him in this lifetime sport. 

On Monday I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing Hanson as a master of something other than golf clubs. Monday was the night of the big spring band concert. This is the one that has the ice cream social preceding it. Honored soloists and ensembles entertained the public at the school cafeteria area. Ice cream was served with a free will offering suggested for scholarships. Always a very pleasant and exciting evening of music. 

Hanson was featured during the hour of the social, as he showed his talent on trumpet. I would not have recognized him were it not for his grandfather Chuck Spohr alerting me. I sat close to Chuck who is a long-time friend of mine. Quite the dedicated person for education too, was once on school board. I have enjoyed quoting something he said once - wisdom - and I believe this was spoken informally to someone: "If you give us the money, we'll just spend it." 

It is important to be a very vigilant steward with the public's money. Many people have fancy ideas on how to spend it. A private business is forced to be vigilant: private sector pressure (inherent). Government can get caught up in largesse sometimes, and Chuck might wave his finger at such things. Conservatives can get carried away too sometimes, but I think Chuck would have the ideal perspective: just make sure everything is in the kids' interests. Easier said than done sometimes. 

Hanson was a trumpet player with "Jazz I" which opened the Monday concert at the concert hall. Wow! The first number was "A Salute to Benny Goodman" and what a crowd-pleaser that was! The drummer was boffo but actually all the musicians were good. The audience responded in the manner that "Happy Gilmore" would appreciate. 

"Birdland" wrapped up Jazz I, then it was on to concert band and wind ensemble. Directing it all was the brilliant Wanda Dagen. "1812 Overture" was among the concert band's offerings. The wind ensemble gave us "Symphonic Dances from 'Fiddler on the Roof' " among other fine selections. It all ended with the crowd-pleasing "Viva Las Vegas." Remember Elvis Presley? I remember going to the Morris Theater to see Elvis Presley movies in the 1960s. 

The Tuesday home golf meet had the Minnewaska boys taking first as a team with a 151. MACA was third at 165. Hanson may have been shy of first on this day but his performance over a skein of conference meets made him champ along with conference MVP. Hanson's teammate Mason Erickson was all-conference too. MACA took third in conference for the season as a whole. Minnewaska and West Central Area were the top-performing teams. 

The MACA girls team  was No. 5 in the Tuesday meet, led by Alice Mahoney with a 55, good for 17th. Right behind her were fellow Tigers Yavonne VanHorn and Gabby Schneider. The medalist was BOLD's Kenna Henriksen - she shot a 36. Minnewaska had the top girls team with a score of 170. 

 

Track and field

We're heading into the home stretch for spring sports of 2023. So this week featured the West Central Conference championships in track and field. Event site was Montevideo where four of our orange and black earned all-conference. An additional five earned honorable mention. 

Let's single out the champions. Here we see Lydia Fynboh shining in the 100m with her No. 1 showing. Hailey Werk was No. 1 in both the 800m and 1600m. Maddie Fehr was second in discus, and Grayson Gibson earned runner-up in pole vault. 

Moving on to the honorable mentions (third place), we see Mitch Moser heaving the shot put. Also in third, the 4x100m girls relay unit: Fynboh, Mya Schmidgall, Isabelle Motz and Ruby Swenson. Congrats all.

 

Baseball

The MACA diamond nine of baseball manhandled the Knights of West Central Area here in Morris. I'm afraid there was no suspense with scores of 12-0 and 14-0. Nice position to be in. 

The 12-0 success had Drew Storck in prime pitching form over 4.2 innings. He set down ten batters on strikes. Kyle Fehr was a boxscore standout with his four RBIs. So was Riley Asmus whose boxscore line was three-for-three with a pair of ribbies. Riley crossed home plate four times. Andrew Marty rapped a couple hits, drove in two runs and scored two. We sprayed hits around with our total of 14. 

Both games of the doubleheader were limited to five innings. Our sweep of the Knights was completed with a 14-0 score. Johnny Kleindl wielded a potent stick with his three-run homer blast. He was a perfect two-for-two in the game and drove in four. Andrew Marty had a triple as part of his two-for-two. Andrew drove in two runs and scored two. Riley Asmus came across home plate three times. Ethan Koehler added two RBIs to the mix. Our hit total was 12 in the rout. The RBI column showed eight Tigers with contributions.

 

Softball: more dominance

Oh my, more one-sided success for our softball Tigers. I have cited this as an actual problem: not being challenged enough to really be tested. But in the short term, winning decisively is a nice little plum! As opposed to being on the other end! 

It was Montevideo that was on the other end vs. our Tigers. So the Tigers took care of business 12-0 and 14-1. Nice little consolation there for Montevideo: one run scored. 

Haley Kill showed her pitching chops in the first game: a five-inning no-hit job. She overpowered Monte to the tune of eight strikeouts. Backing her was Kenzie Anderson with a perfect three-for-three line, two RBIs. Also: Mackenzie Konz with a triple and three RBIs. Also: Ryla Koehler and Lauren Hottovy each with two hits, an RBI and a run scored. Let's not overlook Brianna Marty: two hits and two runs. 

Nora Boyle was handed the ball for the pitching work in Game 2. She was proficient with seven strikeouts and just two hits allowed over five innings. Game 2 offense: Brianna Marty socked two hits, drove in two and scored three. Lauren Hottovy's bat delivered two hits and she drove in a run while scoring three. Kortney Sanasack crossed home plate three times. Cate Kehoe's bat was good for two hits. 

MACA has the stellar won-lost mark of 13-2. A prelude to the state tournament? It's not so easy to get there, as fans have learned through the years.

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