The winter season awaits. Of course that means winter itself awaits! Such a long, dragged-out season. Spring softball seems like it can get compressed into a mere month - that's with all the weather-necessitated postponements. Postponements or cancellations. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our Big Cat Stadium had an inflatable cover like they have at St. Cloud State? What a transformation that would be. Softball could start as soon as basketball is over. But no, we lack that asset now.
Winter sports are quite guaranteed to go on for the full scheduled term.
Our volleyball Tigers had a limited post-season experience. There was one very satisfying win: a sweep over Litchfield. The Tigers were seeded fourth and Litchfield fifth. The success put us up against the top seed in sub-section. That would be the Bulldogs of Paynesville. We managed to win one game against those Bulldogs but not the match. (The guys on radio use the term "set" instead of "game" and they may be right.)
So it was a 1-3 loss for the orange and black Tuesday night at the Bulldogs' gym. So Paynesville advances to the 3AA-North championship match which will be against New London-Spicer. Don't ever bet against the Wildcats in girls athletics.
Paynesville owns a 15-5 season record going into tonight's (Thursday) match vs. the Wildcats. Action will be at The Big Red gym at Willmar. Paynesville is on a roll at the sub-section level. They are striving for their third straight sub-section crown. NL-Spicer has the No. 2 seed. Let's look at the background with these two teams: Paynesville had a 3-1 win over NL-Spicer on September 25.
The Tigers close out the 2023 fall with a 9-16 record. We took the first game versus the Bulldogs 25-22. Certainly heartening considering we were up against the top seed. Alas, Paynesville performed up to their status the rest of the night. After our 25-22 win to start things off, we bowed 18-25, 17-25 and 21-25. Season done.
Spanier took charge in set assists with her 36. Roberg chipped in with four assists. Then we see Flanders with three followed by Roeske and Maddie Frieler with one each.
Hitting! Here the premier Bulldog was Flanders with 22 kills. Emma Kolstad pounded out ten kills. Roeske came through with six. The list continues with Spanier 3, Finley Anfinson and Roberg each with two, and Frieler and Martinson each with one. These three Bulldogs each had one ace block: Flanders, Roeske and Frieler.
Roberg was busy in digs with her 23. Flanders had 16, Spanier 14, Roeske and Kylie Pauls eight each, and Kolstad 7. Let us note that this match was played on Halloween night!
I am very disappointed that the kmrs-kkok website could not report some individual stat highlights for the Tigers. We have lost a lot with Brett Miller walking away from the station. He was setting some pretty good standards for coverage. This void leaves yours truly in a more challenged position as I try to keep prioritizing online coverage of the Tigers. Looks like the radio station will now fall into a routine of just providing the basic score/schedule information. They ought to try to give us more than that.
Our newspaper here only publishes one edition a week. When I was at the paper it was two. I got the Paynesville stats for this post from the West Central Tribune website. We used to count on the WC Trib for a fair amount of coverage of our Tiger teams. It's very rare now.
Yes the West Central Tribune has coverage of the MACA/Paynesville match, but only with details for the green-clad Bulldogs. I'm happy to use this as a resource. Obviously I would like to report on various members of the Tiger team and their stats. With Brett Miller's help I could have done that. Not now. Life goes on, I guess.
Erratum
Speaking of our Morris newspaper, it has the kind of glitch on its front page that would have caused the local folks, at least the pompous usual suspects, to raise heck at me if I had been responsible.
I took a look at the Morris paper yesterday at our public library. There's a big banner headline across the top of the front page. No, this was not really "news." It was just puffery for announcing the obvious: UMM has a new chancellor. Much of what the newspaper does is puffery.
 |
| Janet Schrunk Ericksen |
The middle portion of the chancellor's name is "Schrunk." The paper has it spelled "Shrunk." I shared a heads-up about this with a friend who responded as follows:
Yep, checked my paper when I got home and your observation was correct - they left out the “C” in Janet’s name, not only in the headline but also in the body of the article. If you had writ that, you woulda got fired.
Spot-on observation, yes. This is why my position at the Morris paper became untenable toward the end. I met the end of the line with the goalpost incident at UMM (2005). Did I make an "error?" No, not at all. People with dark minds began speculating, that's all. One was a now-deceased Morris physician. Such glass-half-empty people.
Is UMM in trouble now because of headwinds having to do with enrollment? Over the past several years I have had close association with UMM and First Lutheran Church, two institutions that now seem to be terribly stressed. Is this just bad luck for yours truly?
As for the family fund I established on behalf of UMM, I had it painstakingly explained to me that there are "contingencies" that will guarantee that the money does something good. This is in the event that all hell breaks loose with UMM and it sinks right into oblivion. This is looking ever more possible. The campus will have to be maintained (just like the City of Morris has to spend $ to maintain the Killoran stage at East Side Park).
If the family fund goes to benefit music at the Twin Cities U campus, that is all well and good - my late father got his undergraduate and Master's degrees there. He was really a "big city guy" through that young portion of his life. This was after growing up in Glenwood. His first visit to our campus in Morris was in 1928.
My church of First Lutheran appears to be stressed just like UMM. Attendance is low for an average Sunday. There's just not a lot of spark there. We belong to the ELCA which has been losing ground fast due to the perception that it is "liberal." It may be killing us in this age of Donald Trump. However, the ELCA-affiliated Faith Lutheran appears to be doing fine. Well, congrats to them.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment