Varsity Kansas - The Blog

I’m a person who takes bad weather a little more seriously than most people, especially when it relates to driving conditions. Right now, I’m not looking forward to driving to Dodge City tomorrow on potentially slick roads. But I’m sure that once I get on the road everything will be just fine.

Speaking of Dodge City, and particularly the boys basketball tournament I’ll be covering there from Thurs.-Sat., I wrote a story on the Heights-South Gray matchup for Thursday’s Eagle. It’s one of those big school vs. small school matchups that make the Dodge City tournament so unique and, from what I hear, fun to cover. South Gray is the defending 1A champion and apparently has some good athletes. The Rebels beat Derby and Wichita South in the tournament last year, so they’re plenty dangerous.

In Valley Center tomorrow, Southeast coach Carl Taylor probably will break the City League record for coaching wins. He stands at 250 now, tied with longtime Heights coach Goose Doughty. As a brief side note, I find it amazing that Heights has only had four boys basketball coaches since 1969. Let’s cherry pick a random school to compare that with, say North. Since 1969, the Redskins have had seven boys basketball coaches. Still not many. The most in the City League since 1969 is Kapaun, which has had 13 boys basketball coaches. Amazing, don’t you think?

Anyway, you’ve got to be happy for Taylor, who built up the program at Southeast in the midst of some pretty lean years. There’ll be a ceremony tomorrow night after the game, if Southeast beats Valley Center, featuring Doughty and other former City League coaches with at least 100 wins. I know Taylor, and he’ll deflect attention from himself, but I’m sure seeing so many of his former colleagues and predecessors will make him happy. So good for him.

Planning to go see the 8th grade kid from Brooks, Perry Ellis, play later today at Heights. Ellis is a 6-foot-6 beast who will make an immediate impact in the City League next season, as he’s expected to play at Heights. I don’t know what kind of gauge I’ll get on his ability today, since he’ll be facing overmatched middle schoolers, but I’m sure I’ll get an idea of his potential. Looking forward to it, and I’ll blog about the kid in the near future.

Now for my non-sports recommendation of the day. Check out the band Angels & Airwaves if you haven’t already. The lead singer is Tom DeLonge, one of the former vocalists for blink 182. blink, by the way (and the lowercase ‘b’ is accurate), is my second-favorite band of all-time (behind the Eagles), and A&A sound a lot like them. I put a lot of their stuff on my iPod, and my favorite song by them is called “Everything’s Magic.” I’m always way behind on music since I mostly listen to talk radio, but I have broad tastes, and I think A&A is worth checking out. So there you go.

Have a good Wednesday. I’ll be back with more two-point conversions soon.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 1:58 p.m. and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.