A column about sports, from NDSU to national.

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For years upon years football has been king at NDSU. Fans show up in droves to witness the gridiron gang take to the field and go toe-to-toe with other giants on the field. The football team has not averaged fewer than 10,000 fans in home games since the 1990 season.

The menﾒs basketball team has been revitalized over the last two years. With faces like Ben Woodside, Andre Smith, Mike Nelson and company leading the way, the team has taken shots at teams like Marquette and Kansas State with a lot of success. The Bison drew 6,110 fans to the Kansas State game as the Bison came up just two points short.

The student sections of these two sports always seem to be filled with hard-hat wearing Bison fanatics cheering on those teams.

While the full stands are great to see for those two sports, what about the rest?

Womenﾒs basketball has taken a dive over the past couple of years despite fielding teams that finished above .500 two of the past three seasons. The team averaged less than 1,400 fans at home last season. I was at nearly all of those home games and the product on the floor deserves a better turnout than that.

How about the volleyball team? First year head coach Erich Hinterstocker led the team to a 17-13 record including two wins over South Dakota State, something the team had not done since the move to Division I. They averaged a grand total of 735 people at home, despite some legitimately exciting moments.

Both the softball and soccer teams have played exceptionally well in the past couple of years. Despite that, the attendance figure can generally be counted with an abacus.

The baseball team has struggled the past couple of years, but still plays in a beautiful stadium in Newman Outdoor Field. A baseball game is a great place to sit in the sun, get a tan (or in my case a burn) and take in Americaﾒs pastime.

All of the so-called ﾓlesserﾔ sports at NDSU have multiple reasons to draw fans. Many people around campus do not even know when these sports play, which is a shame.

Take a look at the schedules for more sports than just the big two. Come watch one of the legends of coaching in Amy Ruley work her magic on the womenﾒs hoops team. Take in some sunshine and a soccer, softball or baseball game. Visit a volleyball match and hear how hard Kelly Lopez can hit a volleyball.

Football and menﾒs basketball are great, donﾒt get me wrong. But they are not all that is great. Donﾒt believe me? Take in some games and find out for yourself.

Posted by: whiteshadow2k4 on 5/10/2007 at 10:11 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Leave Steger Be

This week for the column I am writing an editorial for the final required column for this class. Afterwards, I will be back to writing strictly sports. No, seriously, I promise.

The decision-making process amongst a group of people in high places is a very interesting procedure.

Anyone who has ever been to a meeting knows that trying to get multiple people, especially those who are likely to have a big ego, to come to a decision is a difficult thing to do.

In the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, there have been many questions raised about the decision of university president Charles Steger to continue with classes after the first shooting. Whenever something as tragic as this happens, people who are directly connected to the victims want someone to blame. In this case, some are saying that Steger should have cancelled classes as soon as the first shooting took place. There are several flaws with this logic.

The first is the fact that Steger did not make this decision by himself. Presidents of universities are not trained to deal with situations as tragic as a shooting of this magnitude. There is no way to even attempt to simulate what to do in that type of situation. People who are trained to handle things of that nature, however, are the police. Steger consulted with the proper authorities and, in conjunction with their recommendation, made the decision to continue with classes in a normal fashion.

Steger also had to worry about the consequences of what would happen if he did lock down the university. The shooter lived in the dorms at the time, so what would have been the most likely scenario if he had locked everyone in the dorms? Would the shooter have just decided that since he was locked into his dorm that he would not continue with his rampage? That is highly unlikely. The shooter would have had more targets lined up in a very easy fashion. With the dorms locked down and nobody allowed out, he could have proceeded up and down the halls taking out people in their rooms.

Finally, take a step back and look at who really is to blame for the situation. Is it possible to pin the blame on Steger, the campus police, the Blacksburg police or anybody else? Not completely. The only person that deserves the blame for what happened is the person who performed the act. The shooter should take sole responsibility for the actions. Steger did the best he could with the information he had and feels as bad about the events as anyone else. He did the best job he could and that is all that can be asked of him.

Brad Jones can be heard every Tuesday and Thursday on 105.9 FM or online at www.kndsradio.com.

Posted by: whiteshadow2k4 on 4/27/2007 at 12:24 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Carey Carries Crowd at Union

The third and final week of the review series by Megan Paradis and I is finally here.  Weﾒve reviewed a restaurant and a movie so far, giving you the guyﾒs and girlﾒs viewpoint on each.  This week we are finishing up our series with our reviews of Edie Careyﾒs concert at Live at Lunch on April 11.  You can find Meganﾒs review by clicking here.  And without further adieu, here we go.

Edie Carey is a Boston native acoustic songwriter who is touring around the country right now.  She has been recently named Female Artist of the Year by Campus Activities, so she came in with a little bit of clout.  In the last two reviews Megan and I did, we had some disagreements and poked fun at each other quite a bit.  However, Carey was so good that we both really enjoyed the concert.

Megan and I went with our coworker Kaylie, who is a member of Campus Attractions here at NDSU.  Kaylie described Careyﾒs music as, ﾓClassic Live at Lunch sound.ﾔ  With her involvement in CA, I take her opinion fairly seriously, despite the fact she spent most of the time talking to Megan instead of listening to the music.

Carey played for two hours in the food court in the Union on campus.  She did a great job of keeping the crowd involved and entertained despite the fact very few people were paying much attention to her.  She was able to tell the stories behind her songs and continue to at least appear to thoroughly enjoy her music.

The back stories behind Careyﾒs work may have been the best part of the concert.  She talked about how she worked a bunch of temp jobs, including one at the World Trade Center up until 2000, and how surreal 9/11 was for her.  She was also able to be funny, pointing out and poking fun at a couple of girls at the table next to us who brought a rather large inflatable pink microphone.

Megan and I both struggled to come up with a proper comparison for what her music sounds like.  After internally battling for quite a while on how to describe the music, the best I could come up with was this:  Michelle Branchﾒs early music with just a bit of a country twist.  She has the soft, clear voice like Branch and the country sound in there is subtle, but definitely there.

Her song selection was very solid and while no one would be able to recognize any of the song names, she impressed me by having a different sound with each of her songs.  Many artists, even mainstream recording artists, have all of their songs basically sound the same.  Carey was able to put something a little bit different into each song and keep her sound fresh.

Bottom line, Carey probably should get about a B+, but Iﾒm bouncing her up to an A simply because both Megan and I enjoyed the concert equally.  She is returning to NDSU in June and thereﾒs a very good chance I will be in attendance then.  Anytime she is in the area I strongly encourage anyone who likes acoustic music to check her out.

You can read Megan Paradisﾒ review of the concert by clicking here.  Our review series has now come to a close and Iﾒll be back next week with my final required piece of writing for the class before bringing back the sports column in two weeks.

Brad Jones can be heard every Tuesday and Thursday at 4 on 105.9 FM or online at www.kndsradio.com.

Posted by: whiteshadow2k4 on 4/20/2007 at 10:30 AM | Comments (3) | Permalink

Bison Baseball

While Bison baseball and softball get little to no publicity or fanfare in the area, I got to see both of them play at home this weekend.  Here's my wrapup.

Baseball

The baseball team looked decent, especially considering their record coming in.  Jake Laber threw okay in the opener, allowing four runs and 10 hits in six innings.  He'll have to throw better than that against teams better than Valpo, but he had a big cushion after the six-run third inning for the Bison.  The bullpen was lights out though as Bowar and Kyllo came in and didn't allow a hit in three innings of work.

The most important things in the games were the strikeouts.  The Bison struck out just 20 times in the four games, which is huge considering they had more strikeouts than hits coming into the series.  If they can make contact with the ball they'll be alright.  This especially goes for Kole Zimmerman.  When he makes contact, you'll rarely see a nubber off his bat, he can flat smoke the ball.  He just needs to make contact more often.  If you get a chance, tune in to the games on Thursday at 2 and 5 on ThunderRadio and listen in to the guys.

Softball

Not much of a test for the softball team, they eight-run ruled UMKC all three games this weekend.  Allison Bakke is just filthy on the mound and the Bison have a lot of players that can make contact and a lot of players that can move around the bases, making things tough on the defense.  Not a lot more to take out of these games since their competition was so bad, but these girls can play and have a good record to go with it.

Brad Jones can be heard every Tuesday and Thursday at 4 on 105.9 FM and online at www.kndsradio.com.

Posted by: whiteshadow2k4 on 4/17/2007 at 12:47 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Explanation

For all of you that are wondering why there are different reviews in here instead of all sports stories, I am also writing this blog for a class and we are required to post a few reviews and an editorial on here.  The sports will still come and the blog will continue after the semester, but that is why I have the most recent two posts on here.  Thanks to everyone who has read these and taken the time to ask what the deal is.

Posted by: whiteshadow2k4 on 4/13/2007 at 1:21 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink