Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

Yep, football starts Monday. It’s so weird, though, that few teams are doing the early morning two-a-days. Doesn’t that seem wrong? But with school having started most everywhere already, it’s understandable. I know a lot of City League schools are trying to do two-a-days after school. Ugh. Not a great situation. I believe one of you posted over the weekend that it might be a good idea to start practice a week earlier now because so many schools start so early. It’s not a bad idea.

Our photographer took football pictures on Saturday for a group of players to will run in our football previews — We’ll be running them starting Sunday, Aug. 24, and we’ll have about two each day up until Thursday, Sept. 4.

(more…)

by joanna

I love the Olympics. I’m working the next two nights on our copy desk, but I can tell you that the TV there will be on the Olympics (it better be anyway.) I’ll be watching the opening ceremonies tonight, I’ll have the TV on tomorrow morning to check out whatever sport is on NBC.

Will you be watching? What sport do you want to see? What’s your favorite Olympics memory?

One of my favorite memories is watching Muhammad Ali be the final torch carrier in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. That brought me to tears. I’m not afraid to admit it.

I can’t wait for track, volleyball, basketball and swimming. But I’ll watch anything.

Your thoughts?

by joanna

If you didn’t catch the story in today’s paper about the proposed changes to the Wichita public school district’s bond issue, it talks about how four schools would not get a pool (East and North would still get a pool under the new proposal). And none of the seven schools would get new tennis courts.

Now I’ve been out there to the pools and to the tennis courts and I know how bad they are. I’m sure some of you have seen them, too. I mean, the story I wrote in mid-May, Southeast AD Mark Lamb told me that every so often rebar has to be sawed off because it’s sticking up out of the tennis court’s surface.

So what are your thoughts? Is this a big deal? The proposed bond issue would still have plenty of athletic improvements if the school board accepts these cuts. Is it enough. Your thoughts, please.

by joanna

How could I not have written about this? The Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission had its award ceremony on Friday night and the winners were Andover Central’s Bailey Gee and Southeast’s Jordan Cyphers.

I appreciate that these awards are given. I’ve voted most every year. But I always waffle on who to vote for. Should it be the most outstanding athlete who excels at a high level in more than one sport? Or should it matter if the athlete is a one-sport athlete or not?

(Feel free to state your opinions on this.) I tend to think if I’m going to vote for the athlete of the year, they’ve got to be leaps and bounds better than everyone — and I like the multi-sports athletes. Which is why, as talented as Cyphers is, I didn’t vote for him. Yet I go against this when I voted for golf stud Katy Nugent and swimming sensation Jamie Bruce. As I’m trying to dissect my own reasons for this, what I come up with is that they were so far above their competitors.

OK, so Cyphers was clearly one of the state’s best basketball players in the state, much less the area — which is why he was All-State and All-Metro. So why not vote for him? The way I felt was that there were quite a few multi-sport athletes that excelled in a variety of sports — such as Andale’s Ethan Ungles (football, basketball, track) — who deserved that honor. But on the girls side, I don’t think there were as many standout athletes that fit like Ungles did.

So clearly I’ve set myself up for quite a few of you to ream me. Feel free. But it is a decision that you have to figure out when you’re looking at athlete of the year honors. So who would yours have been?

by joanna

Jamie Bruce, a senior at Wichita Trinity, just ended an era of swimming at Wichita Trinity. She is the last of four Bruces — Michael, Elizabeth and Caroline — an incredibly talented swimming family. All four received Division I scholarships — Michael, Caroline and Jamie to Stanford, Elizabeth to North Carolina. Caroline was in the 2004 Olympics.

Jamie went out in style, too, winning her 7th and 8th individual golds and completing a sweep of the 100 breaststroke for the Bruce family. Elizabeth won it four times, Caroline twice, Jamie four times.

What a way to finish. Good luck to Jamie at Stanford, where, for the first time, she’ll be able to swim with Caroline, who red-shirted because of an injury and will be swimming for another season.