Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
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It doesn’t always happen, but now and then there is a day that becomes more than just another day. That will be the case on Monday, January 20th. On that particular day we will be inaugurating the 47th President of the United States; remembering the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and then watching the NCAA Division 1 football championship game. For a lot of people they will take time out to recognize each event as each is historical. For some people, of course, each event h...
Things have been interesting down in Pullman in the last couple of weeks. A bunch of the football players put their names into the transfer portal and Coach Jake Dickert was announced as the new head football coach at Wake Forest. He now leads the Demon Deacons football team. Now I’ve heard rumors like most everyone has about Dickert’s move to the North Carolina school. WF plays in the ACC conference in a stadium smaller than Gesa Field in Pullman. And historically they hav...
My new year’s resolution is the same as every year I don’t make a new year’s resolution. I don’t think you should worry about improving yourself only to disappoint yourself by breaking the resolution. So I’m just going to do the best I can to do the best I can! Now there will be a bunch of people that will go to their nearest lake and do the Polar Plunge and that really looks cold. I’m not sure I see the importance of freezing on the first day of the new year. The closest I e...
When a person volunteers in a community you never know what issues might arise and take extra time out their life. There were some issues that came about at the Depot Museum and we needed to move items and clean things up. All is right again and the help received is very much appreciated. There were some items that were moved that brought back some very fond memories. One of those items was a NE District ‘B’ basketball Championship trophy from 1963. I remember being at the...
Here we are again with another football season finished and playoffs and bowl games on the agenda. Once again we see players opting out of playing in their team’s bowl game for fear of an injury. And now there is another issue for teams preparing for the post season and that is the Transfer Portal. For the Marshall University Thundering Herd they opted out of their bowl game due to lack of numbers. After a highly successful season their head coach took another head coaching po...
I think we all remember a few years ago when college football pundits talked about how weak the Pac 12 was and that no team from the conference deserved to be in the football playoff or at least the final four. Looking back on those statements it makes one wonder if that was the real reason that the conference broke up leaving only Oregon State and WSU to fend for themselves. Four teams ended up in the Big 10, four went to the Big 12 and two went to the ACC. Last year, there w...
The last weekend of the NCAA football regular season was really quite interesting to say the least. There were a ton of upsets that would have eliminated a few teams from the championship playoff had it only been four teams but now that it is 12 teams it will only affect where teams will be seeded. Sure there’s a team or two that may have played themselves out of it and into a lesser bowl game but they will get to play another game. It was rivalry Saturday for a lot of t...
Just to let you know that this column is being written a bit early to meet the Thanksgiving deadline that all papers need to meet. So I'm going to try to bring some words of wisdom or maybe just some words that will hopefully be fun to read but there are no guarantees. I attended the November 16th EWU football game in Cheney versus Idaho State. Last year the Bengals rallied from a couple of touchdown deficit late to beat the Eagles by one in Pocatello. This year Idaho State...
I watched a lot of football over the years and I can tell you that the kicking game has really changed with the soccer style kickers. Pete Gogolak became the first soccer style kicker in the NFL. A couple of years later his younger brother Charlie would be the second. Up until that time most kickers were linemen. The NFL kicking award is named after Cleveland Browns tackle Lou Groza. There were other kickers that played skill positions like Paul Hornung and George Blanda but...
The Los Angeles Dodgers are the new Major League baseball World Series Champions after rallying from a five run deficit to defeat the New York Yankees 7-6 and win the best of seven series four games to one. I did watch more of this series than I had in a while. This series was really important for the Dodgers because they have had some of the best talent in baseball but they had trouble in the playoffs. They did win the COVID shortened 2020 season but had to play games...
This is the time of the season when sports cross paths especially when it comes to the professional ranks. The Fall Classic (World Series for all of you baseball haters) may be over by the time you read this column. Or it might be getting really exciting for the fifth, sixth or seventh game. The Dodgers-Yankees matchup is one I grew up with in the 1950s and sixties. I guess the two richest franchises should be playing for the World Championship. I’m glad it isn’t every yea...
This has been an interesting season for college football and not necessarily good interesting. For someone that was a big fan of the Pac 8, 10 and 12 it has been a big adjustment to the Pac 2. But it looks like the Pac whatever number they end up with is on the rise. And for you purists that don’t think that Gonzaga is a good fit for the conference just check out how many full arenas there will be during basketball season when the Zags are on the road. They will also be a g...
So I’m sure that you heard about the passing of Pete Rose. Most people either hated him or loved him. There were very few sports fans that didn’t have an opinion. Rose was the all-time Major League hits leader with over 4000 hits. Rose played for the Cincinnati Reds or when he played they were known as the Big Red Machine. He played five different positions in the infield and outfield and earned two gold gloves. He was a part of three World Series championships, three bat...
Postseason baseball is here and again the door was shut on the Mariners once again. They were one game out and still had a chance on Saturday but that was not to be. Since the Mariners last won their division in 2001 with 116 victories they’ve only made it to the postseason as a Wild Card team a couple of years ago. Now the M’s won 90 games in 2002 and 2003 but there was only one Wild Card team at that time. Since then the amount of Wild Card teams in each league is now thr...
I was visiting with someone the other day when we got to talking about this column for the paper. They asked how long I had been doing this and it occurred to me that it had been 20 years. They were surprised and I guess I was too. It seems time really does fly by when you're having fun. Honestly, I didn't think it would become a weekly occurrence, maybe twice a month but when stuff happens I had to write about it. Sure I missed a week now and then because I was busy or I...
The 2024 football season is off to a rip roaring start. Last year’s national champion Michigan Wolverines were humbled by the Texas Longhorns in week one and the runner up Washington Huskies were defeated by the WSU Cougars last Saturday at Lumen Field in Seattle. It was a great win for the Cougars who played the Huskies tough at Husky Stadium last November nearly upsetting the Dawgs until a gutsy 4th down play brought them new life leading to a game winning field goal. The n...
Fairs and rodeos are, for the most part, over for the year. It seems that there is a real need for more people to step up to help at these venues. Why are local organizations finding it difficult to get volunteers to help at their booth, cooking, selling or running games such as Bingo? Well a couple of weeks ago in the large paper that is printed in the big city northeast of here there was a picture in the Northwest section of a woman that was having the time of her life...
I know, the title sounds a bit strange. I was going to say interesting but I won’t try to fool anyone. There was a bird fight last Thursday in Cheney as the hometown EWU Eagles battled the Hawks from Monmouth a private FCS football team from New Jersey Scheduled football games like this for Eastern aren’t normal. Typically they are on the road for their first couple of games and host a team when the students are back on campus in a couple of weeks. But this year the Eag...
Coaches and Managers at the professional level at least are basically hired on a temporary basis as firings are commonplace if things don’t go so well. Let’s face facts, it is much easier to fire a manager or coach than it is to fire the whole team. I know a few teams that a general manager put together and there was no way any head man could find success with the crew that went onto the field of play. Last Friday, Seattle Mariners’ General Manager Jerry Dipoto fired Manag...
The temperatures are beginning to be more reasonable which will be helpful for the start of high school football today (Wednesday). The weight rooms have been busy, hopefully, as athletes prepare for their fall camp practices. There is always a lot of anxiety and positivity especially if the returning team has a great deal of experience. There are always several schools that graduated much of their team and it is back to the drawing board about how to fill those key spots that...
A few days ago, I was thinking about a guy that had been hired at a place where I worked years ago. What is interesting about this guy is how he could involve himself in almost any conversation. It seems that this guy did it all. As we listened, it became quite clear that this guy had trouble keeping a job because he couldn’t tell the truth. This guy was in his early 30s, yet he had already driven over one million miles as a long-haul trucker. When someone asked what I did ove...
Growing up in the late '50s and '60s, we always had the radio on to listen to our favorite music on a Spokane Top 40 radio station. Whether it was after we got out of bed, getting ready for school, riding in the car or working in the shop, we were enjoying our favorite disc jockey's bantering, joking and introducing music the world was enjoying. Yes, we knew the names of the bands and songs, and we could sing along with the music and for the most part we were close to...
There are a lot of songs that were once quite popular but as time goes on the lyrics get lost on younger generations. In the song ‘Return to sender’ made popular by Elvis in the 50s there is a line that says, ‘no such number, no such zone.’ A zone was utilized in big cities which basically located the nearest postal facility. That was replaced by the Zip Code. Imagine the song rewritten: No such number, no such zip code. Harry Chapin had a hit song Taxi in 1972 that has a l...
Forgotten in the annals of time is the story about a farm kid from Ritzville that nearly made the Olympic track team. Walter “Spike” Arlt was an outstanding athlete at Ritzville High School and as a track hurdler he set a state record for the 120 yard high hurdles in 1956 his senior year. That mark still stands as an all-time Bronco track record since the 120 yard high hurdles is now the 110 Meter hurdles. Spike would go onto run track at WSU and in 1960 was selected as the...
I have met a lot of coaches and played for several. The ones I played for weren’t a lot older than me although I always treated them with respect even if I didn’t like them very much. Actually I only had one coach that I really didn’t like. There are a fair amount of coaches around my age like Pete Carroll, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick that are not coaching this year after highly successful careers. Has the game changed or the players? Money has certainly changed recru...