by joanna

OK, I see you guys like the topics that keep coming — way to keep returning and commenting for the posts.

Today’s question is regarding baseball. I know there are plenty of baseball fans — you keep posting about why we don’t have enough stinking baseball. So here’s your forum.

Who’s the best baseball team?

Maize, Goddard, Northwest, those are some easy ones. I’ve heard about Independent, Andover, come on, fill me in on anyone else. North is obviously good, but what other teams have got it going on?

Our new reporter, Jonathan Long, will be covering his first City League baseball game Tuesday night. What games are coming up that we just have to check out? I’d rather hear your opinion before, rather than after.

by joanna

I see you all are voting — nearly 100 of you have voted in the mythical basketball tournament concerning Andover boys vs. Lawrence. No surprise, Andover’s got the majority of the votes. As an unbiased observer, I took Lawrence.

In the other matchup of the day, it’s McPherson vs. Wichita East, a game I’d love to see. East has an edge in this one.

I check out Brent Maycock’s blog at prepzone.com and he’s mentioned the site, so I hope we’ll get some interest out there, especially when those matchups come up on the polls.

I did e-mail Candace Buckner at the KC Star, trying to get the area to check it out. We’ll see. I’m all about overloading the polls with love from a certain area.

by joanna (an updated post)

I’ve got a post about our mythical champ of 16 teams, taken from the Wichita area and the Topeka-Kansas City area. The poll for the first game is on varsitykansas.com, so check the poll out there. As of 8:30 Sunday, we had nine votes. Go there for Andover vs. Lawrence and vote on who would win. We’ve got the McPherson vs. Wichita East game — No. 8 vs. No. 9.

Or click here for the polls.

Let’s chat about the first game, Andover vs. Lawrence. I have to go with Lawrence on this pick. I know Andover heads in undefeated, but Lawrence ended the regular season playing awfully well, winning 5 of 6 games. I also think Lawrence’s schedule is probably more difficult. I just felt like the AV-CTL division IV was down a bit this year.

As for McPherson vs. East. Mac gets the higher seed because of its record, but East gets the win for me because, well, I do believe East was Class 6A’s second-best team.

I know it’s been several weeks since basketball finished, but I came up with this idea over spring break, during a 9-hour trip to Minnesota. I think it would be fascinating to actually have something like this play out. Now, I’m not in favor of extending the season a week — ugh on a work level — but on a personal level, it would be great to see what teams would do in something like this.

The perfect example is on the girls side. Wouldn’t it be great to see Andover Central girls, who finished the season undefeated with a 4A title, play some of the bigger schools? What about a Heights-Central game? Would Heights still be down about not playing in the championship game and play as crappy as it did in the fourth-place game? Or would it be a close game? If the mental place was right for Heights, I say it’s a close game, probably with Central winning. (Central’s big win this season was over Bishop Carroll, which played for the 5A title). How about seeing Heights play McPherson or Central against McPherson? What about Carroll vs. Lawrence? It would be interesting.

But for now, we’ve just got the mythical end of season tournament. I want more than your votes (remember, go to varsitykansas.com home page for the polls), I want your thoughts.

Have your vote be counted!

by joanna

All right, I made mention of this last week, but I’ve got a poll in the works. I plan on it being up Sunday, and it will be a basketball bracket that you all vote on the results. I’ve asked Brent Maycock at the Cap Journal to mention it on his blog and I’m trying to get a hold of Candace Buckner at the Kansas City Star to get her to do the same.

Here’s how it will work. I’ve picked 16 basketball teams, eight from the Wichita area, eight from the Topeka and Kansas City area. They were seeded 1-16 based on their record heading into the state tournaments. This is strictly based on winning percentage, and then I flipped a coin for the teams with the same records.

Here’s the brackets:
Bracket 1
1 Andover (23-0) vs. 16 Lawrence (11-11)
8 McPherson (19-3) vs. Wichita East (18-4)
6 Manhattan (20-2) vs. Wichita Heights (16-6)
4 Hesston (21-2) vs. BV Northwest (14-8)Bracket 2
2 Topeka Hayden (22-1) vs. 15 Bishop Carroll (13-9)
7 Wichita Southeast (20-2) vs. 10 KC Sumner (18-4)
5 Wichita Trinity (21-2) vs. 12 St. Thomas Aquinas (14-8)
3 Topeka Highland Park (21-1) vs. 14 Olathe East (14-8)

by joanna

Disclaimer: This is not a political post. I am patriotic, I love our national anthem.

Now that that part is out of the way, several of you have posted that you get a wee bit irked by the length of the national anthem sung before basketball games. I’m with you, whether it’s high school sports or not. I personally enjoy the high school singers because they’re usually high school kids, which is fun to see.

But when I covered the Wranglers, I found myself checking my watch and timing the singers. There was a man who sang it like it’s supposed to be sung — with a good speed to it. It’s not necessary to draw it out, folks. No lie, one lady at the Wranglers game took a full 3 minutes. I do not lie, I do not exaggerate here. 3 minutes! Aaaah!

Just sing the song and get on with the game.

By the way, I’ve heard that you’re not supposed to clap after the national anthem. Heard it’s rude. Anyone hear the same?

Do you think the national anthem should be sung before the boys and girls basketball games? I used to say yes, now I say no. Sing the anthem before the girls game only. There’s no need to sing it before both. Just make it the first of the night, that’s it. Of course, there are still schools out there that only sing it before the boys game, which comes after the girls game. That’s weird.

Am dying to hear your thoughts.

by joanna

Please welcome, as of this Monday, our new high school writer Jonathan Long. I’m pretty excited about Jonathan because I definitely need help on this high school beat, but also because do you know that he showed up in the office on Wednesday (wow!) and was wearing a Paul Pierce jersey from his time at KU? And Jonathan’s not even a Kansas guy?

Pretty impressive, if I say so myself.

I’m going to leave the background info to Jonathan, but he comes to us from Tennessee, so on Monday, please make him welcome.

In the meantime, where are your topic ideas?

by joanna

I got this idea when my dear friend Dave Phillips passed along a link to me about which college program is No. 1. Now, he sent this to me because he’s a huge KU fan. I mean, huge. I went to Missouri. Whatever. I cheer for Kansas teams because I live here. I jump on Mizzou’s bandwagon, because I can.

Anyway, I want you to name your high school program for girls, and your high school program for boys. This doesn’t have to be only in the Wichita area. I would love to include the rest of the state. Feel free to chime in.

But as I always say — you have to back it up. Don’t just say Southeast. Tell me why, dang it!

I know this is a little premature, being we’re two-thirds of the way through the school year, but we’ll do this again after spring sports end.

As for my answer? I just don’t know yet. I’ll have to take a look at how teams finished up in sports beyond football and basketball. I know you have your favorites, though.

by joanna

You might think this is just like you naming your favorite spring sport. It’s not. I watn you to tell me which sports have the biggest followings.

In the fall, football is king and soccer is second. In the winter, it’s basketball with wrestling following. But what is it in the spring? What are people reading the paper for? Is it baseball? What about soccer? Softball? Maybe golf or swimming? Does track get the most fans?

There’s seven sports, which I think probably dilutes the fan base a bit. There definitely isn’t a sport like football or basketball, which draws several thousand people for most games. But one sport has to be king. Which is it?

I think the top spring sport is baseball with soccer and softball and track right behind.

by joanna

I don’t want to offend any of the faithful readers of this blog — I love you, I really do. I appreciate your comments, I appreciate your readership. But ya’ll, too many of us are too stinking old.

Want evidence? A whole bunch of you don’t like the intros at basketball games? Why? Because it takes a whole 3.5 minutes to get through? Let me reiterate that I don’t want to offend, I don’t want to turn you away. But Come On!

I usually ignore them, because I’m readying my stats page for the game and I see lots and lots of intros. But I like the creativity or the simplicity. They make me smile. The kids enjoy it. What harm is there? As one of you noted, someone could get hurt after a chest bump. Yep. Very true. If it happened, that would truly stink.

But how often do us “old” (mentality, not age) folks  — I’m throwing myself in there — ever just let these teens be teens? They aren’t throwing gang signs (not all the time anyway that I’ve noticed), they’re not flipping someone off, no one is yelling Airball to the other team or some other horrible thing that old folks hate, they’re not screaming profanities.

Let them be. Let them have fun.  There’s so much seriousness in sports, with every parent sure their kid is going to be a Division I scholarship recipient who they are pushing into every camp and keeping them playing 24/7, 365. So let’s let them, for a few seconds, show some exuberance and fun.

Remember when you were a teen and you walked through a store and people’s eyes followed you? I remember, and I was about as conservative and boring as a 16-year-old could be. It made me mad. Sure, some teens deserve a close eye, but not all of them.

So next season, avert your eyes when the intros start. Go to the bathroom. Or just smile and think, Hmmm, I bet that’s fun to sit in study hall and try to come up with a cool new routine.

I’m done preaching, but I’m hoping you all will share your thoughts. Agree? Disagree? Think I’ve offended my entire readership?

I’ll try to suck up tomorrow.

by joanna

So I was just surfing around some web sites, looking for anything interesting, when I stumbled on this story at the Minneapolis Star Tribune (I check the site out every so often because I’m a Minnesota native). Anyway, the story deals with an assistant wrestling coach who brought beer to the room of some of the team’s wrestlers.

As much as I’m blown away by the idiocy of this coach, I’m just as impressed by the kids who turned him in.

I’m not a fan of underage drinking anyway, which is one of the reason’s I’m a proponent of coaches having the athletes sign pledges that they won’t drink during the season. I know, someone is going to come on here and say they should never drink. Fine. You’re right, but at least the coaches are putting their foot down. Now, are the kids following it? Hey, that’s up to them. If they deliberately lie and prove they can’t be trusted — whether they are discovered by the coaches or not — it shows their personal lack of integrity.

Your thoughts?