Tigers sit at 6-10 after sweep over Benson

Volleyball is coming down the home stretch of the 2023 regular season. Not a noteworthy season for the MACA Tigers. Yes they won last night (Thursday) but this came against a struggling Benson team. I recently reported a 1-12 W/L for the Braves of Benson. Yes the long-time nickname for that school continues in use. For how much longer? 

The Tigers swept Benson 3-0 at Benson. So this was reason to smile for fans of the orange and black. The schedule on "Minnesota Scores" tells us that a big multi-team event is set for Saturday at Alexandria. We enter the event with the cool W/L of 6-10, 4-7 in conference. We are 3-3 in front of the home fans. I hope the coach is doing the best job possible. 

After today we really are on the home stretch. Just three more duals. We'll visit Montevideo on October 10. Monte was known as the "Mohawks" through most of my life, had a nice mural painting in the gym that had a silhouetted Indian. I haven't been there in a long time and I assume the painting is gone. It made an impression on me. 

Benson is being stubborn about the Native American imagery with their school. I have not heard that Benson has gotten a response to its plea to various Native American groups. I see no reason why those groups would say "yes." We'll just have to wait and see. 

 

Checking media

What kind of details might we be able to find about the MACA/Benson match this Friday morning? A cold and blustery Friday morning here on the prairie. I see a forecast low of 32 degrees in the upcoming seven days. Is the kmrs/kkok website starting to fall off a little? Lately it seems they are content simply reporting "scores." We see the word "scores" in the little heading. Which is fine? 

Kmrs has done fairly well over the recent past giving us sports reports with some degree of details. It was nice to see. Not sure if this commitment is going to continue into the future. Instead we might just see "scores," i.e.. the most superficial details. Whatever kmrs does, it can't be any worse than the Morris newspaper website which essentially gives us nothing except for UMM sports. Why can't we hear a little old-fashioned anger over this? Are we all asleep? 

And what's with the paper so often giving superior space and attention to Hancock? Look at this week's paper. MACA played its Homecoming game Friday, an occasion so special it called for fireworks. In my newspaper career I put together countless photo collages on the MAHS coronation and parade plus the football game of course. Oh and myriad other things. It was my lifestyle. I had to leave it much too early. Increasingly the people around Morris do not remember. The paper published twice a week then. We had so much more space available. 

Here's the current top heading on the kmrs sports site: "Area scores from Thursday night." So that's all we get. Plus a little announcement that Tiger football is traveling to East Grand Forks today (Friday). East Grand Forks? You've got to be kidding me! Can't a closer opponent be found? There is no excuse for this. Game-time is 6 p.m. so fans won't be driving into the middle of the night (on I-29) to get home. But this is ridiculous. 

How wonderful it would be to just have another home game. But no. 

We see that our Tiger volleyball team beat Benson 3-0. No surprise with that outcome. Now let's check the West Central Tribune site to see what's up. Nice to see some details of the match there. But with one pretty significant omission from the standpoint of MACA fans: "stats not available" for MACA. The WC Trib has the game scores: 25-10, 25-15 and 25-22. Look at it this way: if you do not report any details for MACA, you at least cannot be accused of any factual errors! 

And the WC Trib does not refer to us as "MACA." They always call us "Morris/CA," technically not accurate. They have done this for years. 

The WC Trib has details for the "Braves" of Benson. Three Braves each had a serving ace: Julia Claussen, Presley Nygaard and Sophie Krusemark. In set assists we see Claussen with seven and Mya McGeary with six. Kills! here it's Kaylin Grube with six to lead. Then we see Madison Osterbauer 4, Gwen Wilcox 3, Alexis Hoberg 2, Claussen 1 and Nygaard 1. Osterbauer and Grube each came at the Tigers with four ace blocks. Hoberg had two and Claussen 1. Here's the digs list: Nygaard 14, Krusemark 13, Claussen 10 and Hailee Ellingson 6.

I would love to be able to type some MACA names.

 

Getting weird out here

Maybe Michelle Fischbach is actually not conservative enough for this congressional district. It is incredible how we have changed our stripes. We had Democrat Collin Peterson in office for such a long time. But Collin was running scared at the end. He saw what was happening out here in the hinterlands: the "red wave." So red, that at present there is a challenge to Michelle Fischbach who may not be "MAGA enough" for some folks. 

Who will the churches get behind? Do not ever bet against MAGA in these parts. You can complain all you want, challenge those people on the facts all you want, it does no good. You can make any point to these people and it does not matter. If nothing else they'll just say "so what?" And I guess you can't argue with that. 

So Fischbach who voted against certifying the 2020 election results - something that even Tom Emmer did not do - is being challenged from the right. A dude from Kensington, right next door to our community. He's a total full-fledger, in other words irrational IMHO.

When all else fails, I just observe.

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