Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

I went to the City League track meet (purely as a spectator), where did you go? I want updates, people. I’m not in the office, so I don’t know what happened at the AV-CTL Division I meet or any other track meets. I don’t know who won the Maize-Northwest baseball or softball game. Tell me!

I was at the CL track meet for about two hours, watching only the prelims. I was hanging with my three boys, getting some water at the concession stand when a woman said, “So you’re not being a sportswriter, but you’re watching kids?” I know she was just looking to start a conversation. Really, I do. But I do have another job — it’s actually my main job — as a mom. So I wasn’t watching kids, I was being a mom.

Anyway, I love to watch track meets. They’re so laid back, there’s always action and the athletes are in the stands. Where else does that happen? And the coaches are laid back, too. I always tease Southeast boys coach Carl Taylor about the fact that he doesn’t smile much during basketball season — I tease because I can and it’s fun and he gets annoyed with me (hee, hee) — anyway, at track, he’s just out there chillin’, eating his burger and talking.

Saw Steve Eck out at the track meet. He was there watching East’s Jawanza Poland in the hurdles. Poland is going to Cowley. Eck and I had a conversation - the longest we’ve ever had — and I find out he’s a reader of this blog. Of course the conversation turned to whether he recruited at South or not. Frankly, I’m bored with all this recruiting talk on this blog and around. Someone, anyone, prove it to me, talk to me on the record, don’t worry about burning bridges and talk to me about it. Give me a parent or a former athlete who will talk about it, then we can have a serious discussion about it. Anyway, it was nice seeing Eck there. I’m sure that I’ll see him a lot more during basketball season.

I watched the hurdles prelims and two girls took hard falls during their races, one from Heights, one from South. What impressed me so much was that not only did they get up and finish their races, they busted their tails and finished strong and were some of the top finishers. As I told my sons, those are tough kids whose whole goal is to succeed. Impressive.

Saw Southeast’s Keith Hayes run the hurdles for the first time. Wow, the guy is just so smooth and he looks like he’s jumping over those hurdles like I would jump over a piece of paper on the ground. He and Heights sprinter Audacia Moore just blew away their competition in the prelims. They’ve got skills. I know, I’m the first to see it.

As I was leaving, I talked to Carl Taylor, who just so happens to be one of my mom’s favorite coaches. My mom is hilarious because she could be watching a 9 year old team playing and not know a single kid on the team and still cheer and clap and get upset at a bad call. But she loves Taylor. I’m a big fan, too.

Here’s one reason why — he said he doesn’t read the blog (WHAT!) but had gone on to read what was on about “why athletes don’t qualify” or whatever I titled it. He said I shouldn’t have mentioned Adonis Gantt, because then it made it personal. On one level I disagree with him because I said with all the discussion of Gantt not qualifying, it was a good time to vett the issue. But I do agree with him that it put the spotlight on Gantt, in what I consider an innocent way because this is what we do in this business — we write about what is timely and show how it is timely. On the other hand, I think it’s a good conversation regardless of whether I mention a specific player — or timeliness.

On to where I wasn’t — I see that 6A tennis semis will be dominated by the KC area. Again. Goddard does have a doubles team in, though. 5A isn’t looking good for the area, either. Only a McPherson doubles team and Hutchinson doubles team are our closest area competitors still in it. 4A has Smoky Valley’s Chase Dippel, then there’s a Hesston, and Andover Central doubles teams.

3-2-1A is a different story. Ryan Norman, Independent will play Mitchell Kibbe, Conway  Springs and Collegiate and Conway Springs face each other in both doubles semifinals. Hello.

All right, enough about where I was and what I was interested in. Where were you? What did you do?

Were you cleaning for that graduation party or did you get out on this beautiful night and see some competition? Or are you sitting here right now like me and watching the NBA (I feel pitiful)

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 10:39 p.m. and is filed under Baseball, Basketball, Coaches, Softball, Tennis, Track. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.