Kicking it old school sometimes is the best way. You’ll get my drift as you read on.
Let’s start local.
High school girls’ basketball season tips off Friday. Newton High’s Cardinals are hosting a four-team tournament Friday and Saturday.
Though the area girls’ basketball season gets underway this weekend and Newton High’s boys open the swim season Tuesday, the Newton Daily News high school winter sports previews will appear in the Nov. 27 edition of the newspaper. It is a 10-page sports section with previews on Newton’s basketball teams, bowling teams, wrestling team, boys’ swim team and the basketball teams and wrestling teams for Lynnville-Sully, Colfax-Mingo, Collins-Maxwell/Baxter and Prairie City-Monroe.
That leads me to another local situation — QuikStats Iowa is a great tool for media, coaches, players and fans for volleyball, football, basketball and other sports. We live in a world of technology and for the most part that’s a good thing.
What happened two weeks ago proves why I’m still a bit of an old-school journalist. QuikStats Iowa, the website for high school statistics, crashed. So, for most of our fall sports honors stories, we’re a little short on statistics for the athletes.
Thanks to Tom Weeks of Newton High, I had final statistics for the Cardinal football players. I had to dig through all my articles on NHS volleyball, which had statistics from each match provided by the Cardinal coaches, to come up with unofficial statistics. Lynnville-Sully’s volleyball coach provided us statistics.
Technology is great until it isn’t. Two weeks before the crash of QuikStats Iowa, I pulled last year’s basketball statistics and standings for Newton and Lynnville-Sully, I like to have that hard copy of information. Old-school am I.
Both the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union and the Iowa High School Athletic Association keep assuring all the website will be back up “soon.” Neither have a definite date when the website will be back up, so bear with us on statistics early this season.
Now for not so local — I’m having a rough time with college football this season as my Kansas State Wildcats are struggling. Maybe at home Saturday, they’ll get their first Big 12 win of the season — sorry to all my friends who are Iowa State fans.
As for the NFL season, my outlook got a lot better last Sunday when the Kansas City Chiefs went to Denver and toppled the Broncos. What got me a bit hot under the collar is the excuse-making for the poor performance of Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning. If he was that injured, he shouldn’t have been playing. The Chiefs’ defense had his number for seven quarters of the eight the team have played this season — four came Sunday. Manning brought the Broncos back to tie the game in Kansas City earlier.
The talking heads, whether on television or radio, need to give players and teams their due. On that day, the Chiefs looked like the team, especially defensively, we fans thought they’d be all season.
I am no fan of Mixed Martial Arts, but I thought it was interesting last weekend when Holly Holm knocked out Ronda Rousey in the UFC 193 title fight. To me, MMA is just a way to get away with beating the heck out of another person without many rules of engagement.
Rousey was hailed as the greatest and couldn’t be beat — mainly by herself. She even said she would defeat boxer Floyd Mayweather in a no-rules fight. People say Rousey has a great personality, but every time I’ve seen her, she presents herself in a very unruly manner. Those who condemn Mayweather are touting Rousey.
Again, MMA is not something I care to watch. At least professional “wrestling” is funny and entertaining at times. I grew up watching it on Saturday’s and laughing at it. MMA is plain and simple — to me — sanctioned brutality.
I’m old school to a fault.
Contact Jocelyn Sheets at
641-792-3121 ext. 6535
or jsheets@newtondailynews.com