The joy of prep sports through our winter

Nice to stay on top of MACA basketball news as we get into winter. High school sports is a fine antidote for the winter blahs. It's a condition we'll get toward the end of the season. 

Right now the weather is unseasonably pleasant. Maybe we shouldn't bathe in our positive thoughts about that, as it's almost certain that we'll get the standard winter weather soon. Christmas beckons. 

Is this the year I finally get a snow blower? If I do that, maybe it would guarantee a very mild winter! 

A walk outside is pleasant right now. The biking/walking trail remains wide open. Even with the weather so mild, you still get a sense that we really are in December. The solstice is not far off. In primitive times there were people who feared the world was coming to an end as the days got shorter. 

Today I only have that fear as I consider that Donald Trump could easily get back in our faces every day as the GOP nominee. And then to win the presidency again. We could be looking at the twilight of America. The America we once knew may be fading fast. 

The America we once knew had two political parties that could co-exist fairly magnanimously. Today we see the speaker of the U.S. House wanting to protect the Jan. 6 rioters/anarchists from identification. He feels their faces ought to be blurred in videos, lest they become targets for "retribution" from the U.S. justice department. The justice department should make an immediate public statement about how it does not engage in "retribution" against anyone. The justice department pursues justice. 

Rioting at the capitol and putting up "gallows" as a message - "hang Mike Pence" - should not pass muster with a civilized society. Unless maybe we in the U.S. are no longer a civilized society. 

And now Kevin Cramer of North Dakota comes out to endorse Trump for president. At the same time, the potent Koch Brothers money is getting behind Nikki Haley. Are Republicans just plain sick? Do they need some special help? Or is it America that is sick, gone off the deep end? 

 

So we follow sports

It will be a tough winter following MACA basketball. I was lucky in recently being able to write about the MACA vs. New London-Spicer boys basketball game. I was lucky because NL-Spicer is a high priority for the Willmar newspaper. I was lucky in that someone provided the MACA stats for the game.to the Willmar paper. 

All this was reported in a timely way on the West Central Tribune website. Looks like this will be a very rare exception. 

Through much of this past fall, I could often find reasonably good event details on the kmrs-kkok website. But now we have lost Brett Miller. So that's a huge blow. This morning I see a heading on that site: "Girls and boys basketball scores from Tuesday, Dec. 5." I am not just interested in "scores." I could get that from the "Minnesota Scores" website. "Scores" hardly scratches the surface. 

I click on the heading and I find some rough coverage that is barely more than scores. The writing is not sharp. Here's how it starts: "Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta 43-29 Melrose in a WCC game." So do I assume that MACA won the game? Seems like a fair assumption but it's just not precise, not precise in its wording the way Miller would have been. 

Now, the item does report two individuals: Kaylee Harstad and Brianna Marty. But beyond that? The next portion? It starts out "up next." I'm not ready to move on to "up next." This reminds me of so much of the basketball coverage from the Morris newspaper after I left the paper, on the website anyway. The score of the game and then "up next." Or how about this sentence: "See more details in Saturday's paper." Oh, very clever. Of course we would have to BUY the Saturday paper. Of course they want us to do that. 

I get the impression from Reed's writing in the fishwrap that he wants the government to subsidize newspapers. I suppose we can't blame him. We'll all take free money from the government. But the door should not be open wide for this. I can't imagine anything worse than a symbiotic relationship between the media and the government. We want media to be skeptical of government. 

 

Donnelly adventure

Donnelly interests have responded to the recent "flare-up" in the paper about its council's actions. I think the paper should just leave these local government entities alone. I trust the Donnelly council; it acts on behalf of a very small town where I don't think the elected people are going to pull any "funny stuff." Everyone knows everyone else. 

The paper claimed for a long time on its website that that its "reporter" had gotten "abusive treatment." Those are strong words, should be used carefully. The paper has great power to humiliate and embarrass people. "Abusive treatment?" You mean to be spoken to with a profanity or two? My God, what small potatoes, really. People in "the press" can get so sanctimonious sometimes. They need to show some restraint and "chill out." 

You know what I'd like to be writing about today? Instead of all this other stuff? I would like to be writing game reviews of MACA sports events. My strong preference. But alas I cannot. Once again, it will be a long winter. The newspaper has a website all set up to report sports and other news. But you know what their approach is: they insist that you BUY the print newspaper (once a week). This as inflation is starting to overwhelm more and more of us. 

If I cannot really follow the Tigers, maybe I'll just have to pay more attention to the Gophers. The UMM Cougars? Not if they keep playing opponents like "Oak Hills Christian." I gag. What would the late Perry Ford say?

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