Items of interest from a wintery week
Published 1:46 pm Tuesday, January 25, 2022
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I know some of you will disagree, but I’m ready for spring. The weekend snow and cold was enough to hold me until next year, or the year after.
I did have time to watch more pro football than I have in a long time and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
However, I am a little disappointed that a New York City area code hasn’t popped up on my phone since the Chiefs overtime win over Buffalo Sunday night.
I’ve gone on with my business this week, while keeping one eye out for a call from Roger Goodell.
I would have thought the Commissioner of the National Football League would have contacted me by now for my opinion on the overtime rule, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I grew up watching the horrible Chiefs of the mid 70’s until I left in the mid-80’s, so I was thrilled when Patrick Mahomes brought them back to respectability and really fired up when they won the Super Bowl two years ago.
However, the Bills deserved a chance to score in overtime. Same thing happened to the Chiefs against the Bucs a few years ago, but it’s still not right. A team should get the chance to have the ball in overtime and the defense should have to stop them in order to advance.
While I wait for the Commish to call so I can tell him that, here’s some other local details you might be interested in.
The state high school athletic association has decided to postpone the start of the wrestling dual team tournament for a week, so teams can make up more matches lost to the COVID pause and bad weather around the state.
Wrestling is different because there is a team competition for the state title and an individual one.
Makes sense, because wrestling is an individual sport within a team.
All three local schools will send wrestlers to post-season and a couple of Pam Pack grapplers are recovering from injuries, so the timing works out.
Hats off to Daniel Garcia at Northside and Stanley Dixon at Southside for building programs from the ground up. Chris Penhollow at Washington High School has put the Pack in annual contention. They are three dedicated coaches who have succeeded in giving their young athletes a place to compete besides the basketball court.
Speaking of local hoops, the Central Plains 1A Conference, which contains Northside and Southside, decided not to have the league tournament this year.
The coaches voted Monday to use the extra time to make up regular season games already lost to weather and quarantines so all teams could play a full regular season slate. It also leaves some flexibility if we get more bad weather that causes postponements.
It’s too bad because league tournaments bring all the teams together in one spot for three or four straight days and it gives potential playoff teams more on-court chances to prepare.
However, it’s a lot of work for the host school and traveling that many days in a row can become a challenge.
In other basketball news, the latest RPI rankings show five of the six boys and girls teams in strong contention for a state tournament bid.
Only the Southside boys, in 36th place, are on the outside looking in, but the Seahawks are talented and could make a run considering their remaining conference schedule.
Northside is 11th among the boys 1A East teams, while Washington is seventh in 2A.
The Northside girls are fifth, while Southside is eighth. The two rivals meet twice in the next seven days, so the picture will clear up shortly. The Washington girls are squarely on the bubble at 32, which is the number of teams that make the state tournament in the East bracket.
Here’s hoping we don’t have any more interruptions and the games can go on as scheduled.
I hear my phone ringing, so I must go. Maybe it’s the Commish.