Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER in /home/stparch/public_html/headmid_temp_main.php on line 4394
Newspaper Archive of
The Lone Tree Reporter
Lone Tree, Iowa
March 31, 2005     The Lone Tree Reporter
PAGE 7     (7 of 12 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
 
PAGE 7     (7 of 12 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
March 31, 2005
 
Newspaper Archive of The Lone Tree Reporter produced by SmallTownPapers, Inc.
Website © 2024. All content copyrighted. Copyright Information
Terms Of Use | Privacy Policy | Request Content Removal | About / FAQ | Get Acrobat Reader




The Lone Tree Reporter, Thursday, March 31, 2005 SPORTS/LOCAL P.,007 Local gymnast improves routine in time for April meet Rebecca Moore competed in the Leapin' Leprechaun gym- nastics meet in Cedar Rapids on March 20. Moore place second on uneven parallel bars, third on vault and floor exercise, fifth on balance bean, and third all- around. Moore also debuted a new skill in her floor exercise rou- tine: a double back. To perform a double back, the gymnast does a round off, two back handsprings, and an aerial double flip. The next meet is the Iowa State Championships in Ames on April 2 and 3. Submitted Photo Little Lions wrestlers Jackie Moore, Austin Ronan and Ty Robertson hang out during the Liberty National Tournament held in Kansas City in February. Little Lions were on the road in February and March By Karen Robcrtson Contributing Writer The Little Lions Wrestling team attended the Liberty National Wrestling Tourna- ment in Kansas City, Missouri on February 26. Some 1600 wrestlers form 30 states competed. The Lone Tree Little Lions were well rep- resented. Ty Robertson won first place for his weight and age group. Then the Little Lions trav- eled all the way to Denver, Col- orado to compete at the Rocky Mountain National Wrestling Tournament held March 18 through 20. Approximately 6,000 wrestlers from 47 states attend- ed the tournament. This was your normal national tournament, if you loose two matches before you make it to the top six, you are out. Ty Robertson lost his first match and wrestled all the way back to second place. The Lone Tree Reporter is available at: • LT Grocery • Moco • Riverside Travelmart/A&W $ 35 a copy Splinters From the Bench Congratulations to Zach Ryerson, Kylie Ronan and Amy Smith on being named to the Press-Citizen's All-Area team. Maybe you're too young to know that old saying but, "The cream rises to the top." I sup- pose that is why they refer to top-notch athletes as 'the cream of the crop' because they have risen to the top and become the best. -OW- It was quite a weekend in Iowa City Spring football prac- tice opened on Wednesday On Saturday and Sunday the soft- ball team hosted the Hawkeye Classic. Besides Iowa, the partici- pants were Butler, North Dako- ta State and South Dakota State. The weather gods smiled upon Iowa on Saturday and Sunday for the tournament. There were four games each day and each team played four games. On Saturday night the Big Ten Women's Gymnastics Championships were held in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The prohibitive favorite to win was Michigan and the Wolverines squeezed out the victory by an eighth of a point over Penn State, 196.250 to 196.125. Iowa slid to sixth place of the seven teams competing. The Hawks were hampered by injuries to a couple of their top performers. They also are a young team, having lost some key performers from last year's NCAA National Finals qualify- ing team to graduation. As I have said before when I am talking about gymnastics, I don't know all of the finer points of what the judges look for, but there were a couple of performances Saturday night that made me wonder if they were watching the same thing I was. The scores on two perform- ances on the uneven parallel bars seemed to me to be proof that the ones with the reputa- tions get the better scores. Iowa's Annie Rue is a senior this year and has been an out- standing gymnast for the Hawkeyes throughout her career. She gave a performance on the bars that looked pretty routine to my untrained eye, yet she got a 9.825 score. Right behind her came another Hawkeye, sophomore Romina Mazzoni. She is still building her reputation as a gymnast. I thought she gave a knock- out performance, doing some flips and catching the bar again and she stuck the landing solid- ly But, without a reputation and only being a sophomore, she only got a 9.750 for her rou- tine. It's fine for judges to decide who wins in gymnastic events, or diving events, with their human frailties to pick a win- ner, but it is not good enough to just let the people in a couple of polls decide which team should be named National Champion in football. No, the Talking Head shills for the greedy networks keep- ing hammering 'playoff, play- off, playoff,' at us all the time. Along that same line of deciding on the field who the 'true' champion is, how about the NCAA basketball tourna- ment this year? There have been gobs of crazy finishes and upsets, overtime games won by only one or two points. Look at Bucknell knocking off Kansas. On the basis of one win Bucknell is a 'better' team than Kansas. I don't wish to belittle Bucknell or its accomplish- ment, but, in all reality, if the teams played 10 times I'd bet on Kansas every time and I'd also bet that I'd come out ahead. While we're talking about the tournament I'd like to point out that the only conference with two entries in the Final Four is the one that Dick Vitale and the rest of the Talking Heads have been bad-mouthing all winter. The Big Ten has two entries in the Final Four: Illinois and Michigan State. They both got in with overtime wins, but they got in. Also in the Final Four are Louisville from Conference USA and North Carolina from the ACC. The highly touted Big East, with the most entries of any conference, is missing from the Final Four. The ACC has also been getting constant promo- tion by the 'experts' and just barely managed to get one entry SO, Hail to the Big Ten and stick that in your ear, 'experts.' -OW- Very much has been made of the quality of the Iowa football recruiting class that will be coming into Iowa City this fall. It's said to be the best class ever at Iowa and is considered by those so-called 'experts' again as one of the best in the nation. I certainly hope that all the recruits who will appear on the campus this fall have highly successful careers and lead Iowa to great new heights. However, I ran across some- thing in my 'cleaning' the other day that might make us sit back and temper our enthusiasm a little bit. As the old saying goes, "There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." What got me to thinking about all this again was finding the list of recruits for the year 2000. Some of them have become very familiar names to us in the last five years. Some of them were never heard from. I'm sure we all remember Jonathan Babineaux, Warren Holloway, Nate Kaeding, George Lewis, Aaron Mickens, Derrick Pickens, Derreck Robinson, Fred Russell, Demond Sanders and Kevin Worthy They all played a lot and were huge factors in Iowa's success since 2000. But, how about some other names on the list? Michael Allen, Kelvin Bell, Charlie Bod- fiord, Aramis Haralson, Tony Jackson and Jhante Jones. Do you remember them? I do. Vaguely. There were also Benny Sapp, Andy Thorn and Scott Webb. Webb finally played a fair amount as a senior. Sapp, of course, was dismissed and wound up doing a good job at Northern Iowa. The others either just left on their own ByRon Rife The Lone T-ce Reporter accord or stayed and never made much of an impression. In total, there were 19 names on the list of recruits for 2000. If you go back and do the count- ing you will see that 10 made a great impact on the Iowa foot- ball team. Nine contributed very little in the way of playing time. Some of them may have contributed mightily in some other ways. Some of them might have been the Will Lack of that class. In case you haven't heard the Will Lack story, here it is. He was a walk-on at Iowa. He never did get high enough on the depth chart to earn a schol- arship and become famous like some of the Iowa walk-ons, like Dallas Clark for instance, but he stuck with it through all the years of his eligibility His playing time was limited to the ends of games in which the Hawks were either safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Through all those years he was doing more than playing football. Since he wasn't on scholarship he was able to hold down a part time job. He did all this while studying a pre-med- ical curriculum, because, even though he wasn't on scholar- ship, he did everything they did. He put in time doing all the conditioning and practicing besides working part time and going to class. Apparently, he did a very good job academical- ly because he is now attending Harvard Medical School. Coach Ferentz tells a story about one time when he asked Will how much sleep he got each night. His answer was, "On a good night, maybe four or five hours." So, I guess we need to keep level heads about these new recruits. They come very high- ly touted and, according to Coach Ferentz, there isn't an ego problem in the bunch. But, keep in mind that they have yet to take a snap in a big time college football game against a Michigan or Ohio State. As I said at the beginning of this, hopefully, they will all turn out to be huge successes. Just try to keep things in per- spective keep an objective view about them. E.maH is a great way to send your news, letters to the editor and comments to us! Itnews@iowatelecom.ne