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Luckily for Allison, Pan Am Junior Games still a go
A&A: De Soto, Sunrise to merge junior high programs
Doctors nearly slammed the window shut on Alyssa Allison's chance of a lifetime. Allison, the Festus cross country and track standout (and the Journal's Female Athlete of the Year), won a berth on the U.S. junior national team that's headed to Trinidad for the Pan American Junior Championships next week. The Pan Am Junior games, though, were up in the air until just recently because of concerns in Trinidad about swine flu. The southern-most island in the Caribbean, Trinidad already had stepped in to cancel the Caribbean Games, which had been scheduled for last week. Reports said officials gave the green light to the Pan Am Juniors while scratching the Caribbean Games because they feel things can be managed better at the Junior games where there will be 600 participants for three days competing at one venue. The Caribbean Games, on the other hand, were expected to have 1,500 athletes competing for eight days at five venues.
TEAMWORK: Good for De Soto and Sunrise. Those two junior highs have gotten the OK to combine their junior high teams in football in the fall and track and field in the spring. These cooperative programs have been possible for a couple years, but this is the first time two area schools have been able to move from talking to playing. These things seem to make sense, but the sticking point always has been how does an established program (obviously, that's usually the bigger school) justify telling a kid in its district that he will not be getting much playing time so a player from a smaller district can play. That's not a big issue in this case because so many students in the Sunrise District, which does not have a high school, wind up attending high school at De Soto.
DRAWING A CROWD - OR NOT: There were 80 district basketball tournament sites last winter. According to the June edition of the Missouri State High School Activities Association Journal, all but three of the 80 turned a profit. One that didn't was Northwest. Blame the hiccup on geography. The five-team district had a mix of local (Northwest and Seckman) and Southeast Missouri (Cape Girardeau Central, Jackson and Poplar Bluff) teams that assured that half the field would have have a 1½ -2 hour drive (coming and going) to cheer on their team. The finals, which matched Poplar Bluff and Cape Girardeau Central in both the boys and girls games, drew only 322 fans. MICDS sold only 301 tix for its Class 4 finals, and that was the only district with a smaller crowd for the finals than Northwest. ...
The biggest district hoops crowds by enrollment class: Hermitage in Class 1 pulled in 1,183 for the finals and 3,411 for the week; Clever in Class 2 sold 1,648 tickets for the finals and drew a stunning 4,920 fans for the week; Shuyler County in Class 3 sold 1,286 tickets for the finals and 3,421 for the week; Sikeston in Class 4 had 2.091 for its finals and 3.929 for the run of the tournament; and Ozark drew 2,517 for the district finals and sold an eye-popping 7,444 tickets during the week. ...
For the bottom-liners in the crowd: The net profit on district play statewide was $201,680 with the biggest money makers being the Ozark ($8,188), Clever ($5,412) and Kirkwood ($4,799) districts.
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MORE HOOPS: Long ago Hornet Lynn Long is keeping busy. Long, who won the first games of his high-school hoops career at Crystal City (he's now past the 500-win mark), is penciled in as the new boys coach at Stoutland in southwest Missouri. Long won a couple girls Class 2 state titles in the 1990s at Skyline and coached Fair Play to the boys Class 1 final four in 2008. While he'll be with the boys team at Stoutland, Long stepped across the aisle and coached one of the girls teams at the recent Gerald A. Pilz & Friends All-Star Game at College of the Ozarks.
HASKINS WINS: Sarah Haskins ran away with the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon last week at Minneapolis, Minn. Haskins, whose family lives in High Ridge, biked, swam and ran to a winning margin of more than 2 minutes, 20 seconds in the Olympic-distance triathlon. The race was the first of the five-event Toyota Cup Series; the next stop is New York City (July 26), followed by Chicago (Aug. 30), Los Angeles (Oct. 4) and Dallas (Oct. 11). The win at Minneapolis earned Haskins $20,000.
CHIPPING IN: Tip your golf cap to Bloomsdale Excavating. The company sponsored a golf event to benefit the restoration project at Pony Bird's Mapaville homes and raised more than $33,000. Pony Bird is a private, non-profit organization that provides services to non-ambulatory persons with severe physical and mental disabilities. The big winners at the charity tournament, played at Ste. Genevieve Golf Course, were: "A" flight champs Mike Larkin, Lanny Largent, Stan Blair and Bob Giovando of Austin Powder Co.; "B" flight winners Rick Tibbles, Chris Wolf, Ben Sanchez and Rick Grey of Millstone Bangert Inc.; "C" flight toppers Randy Jansen, Bob Jansen, Steve Ruff and Kevin Lamb of Schneider Electric; long drive winners John Matlock and Becky Henebry; and closest to the pin sharp shooter Dana Hockensmith.
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