Sports Central

Tiger Woods, I am not.

I had my first golf lesson last week, and though there's nothing earth-shattering to report, I figured I'd keep you all entertained with a few words about my new life with golf.
I decided many months ago that I wanted to learn to play golf, and when I decide things like that, I also decide to do things right.
U-32 golf coach Joe Salerno has been asking me very kindly when I was actually going to golf after months of me saying, "Yeah, I know, I've got to get around to that...", and last week, I did it. He, very very very patiently, ran me through the basics of a swing, and, as the title of this post suggests, we quickly discovered I'm not Tiger. I'm also not that bad. YET. There is still time, and I'm fully expecting to have quite low expectations for a long, long time.
One of my favorite professors at Springfield College, James Ragonett (Raggonet? How embarassing.), wrote a book about golf and Buddhism. I read books by Rick Riley, Tony Kornheiser, Steve Rushin and some of my favorite Charles Barkley stories involve him and the game of golf, so I figured it was about time. That, and I think I might enjoy hitting things with a golf club.
Any suggestions for the rookiest of rookies to golf?

--Anna Grearson

Coaches, coaches, coaches

High school fall sports practices start in a few weeks, so that means it's time to check in on those who are still without a head coach. The biggest job that comes to mind is of course the vacancy in the Spaulding football program, left when Brennan Carney took another Division I coaching position after leading the Tide to the Division II title this past fall.
We should know next week who will fill that spot. In writing about the new coach, we will also be writing about the new athletic director at Spaulding, Patrick Merriam, who came over to Barre from South Royalton.
Other notable programs currently without a head coach include the Vermont Frost Heaves. Still no word there, either, but I assume we'll be writing about that decision sometime soon, too. The Frost Heaves have a little more time to play with in terms of the actual start of their season, obviously. Unlike Spaulding football, the Heaves don't start for another few months.
The Manchester Millrats are also in the market for a new coach, and I called their GM Ian McCarthy today to check in on their search. He said they had about 35 applicants and have narrowed that field considerably and they, too, should have a decision in the next few weeks.
McCarthy did say that their former point guard Anthony Anderson signed with a team in Austria in a league that he was fairly certain former Frost Heave Melvin Creddle played in last winter.

Anyone else in the world of high school sports have a new coach? This will all get covered as we get closer to the start of fall practices in 2-3 weeks, but it doesn't hurt to throw it out there early.

--Anna Grearson

Cross Country kudos

It appears that, after a spring of discontent over the VPA's unwillingness to let a couple of Montpelier runners compete and score points for the U-32 cross country team, the best solution of all has been found. According to a variety of sources Montpelier will field a cross country team this fall and Chris Keller and Liam McSweeney will have their own team to run for. As has been well documented, the pair practiced and traveled with U-32 last year because Montpelier's cross country team was a thing of history only.

Over the winter Keller and McSweeney appealed to the Vermont Principal's Association to allow them to actually compete with U-32 as member of the U-32 team. The VPA's rules allow for movement from school to school to compete in team sports, like football, if the sending school has no team, but not in individual sports like cross country or wrestling, where the athletes can still compete.

Apparently the Montpelier cross country team of the fall of 2008 will start with as many as seven runners, including Keller (one of the best young runners in the area) and McSweeney who has a lot of experience gained last season. However you view the VPA's decision this spring one thing is fairly certain, that had Keller and McSweeney been granted their request to run for U-32, the newly formed cross country effort at Montpelier would likely not have happened, and five more potential runners would have been looking for a team.

The result is the best of both worlds. Keller and McSweeney have a team to run with, a fledgling program at Montpelier has a jump start with a couple of strong leaders and the league has another team to compete against. Now, if we can just drag Charlie Phillips out of the mothballs to coach the team.

Pete Hartt      

Cleaning out some e-mail

In cleaning out some older email files, I discovered some blog-worthy information.

To all you Frost Heave fans: I got an email a while back from Don Mandelkorn, one of the founders of the Cow Bell Club, about the upcoming Barre Homecoming Parade this Saturday. Here's the deal:

Greetings Frost Heaves Fans -

    Bump will be in the Barre Homecoming parade on Saturday, July 26. We're looking for some fans to walk the parade route with Bump and Margaret. Margaret will have the cowbell club banner and we'll have fan signs, cowbells and maybe basketballs for dribbling along the way.

    The parade is scheduled to start at 4:00 pm so assembly at the BOR area would happen around 3:00 pm - will confirm for anyone interested in joining us

    Kids and adults, cowbell club members and non-members are all welcome.....time to start getting all psyched up for Frost Heaves basketball again!!!

    If you're interested in joining us for the parade, let us know.

For those who don't have Don's contact information and who want to join them on Saturday, let me know and I'll pass it along to Don and his wife, Margaret.

--Anna Grearson

Odds and ends of the week

I will never take any credit for what appears in the newspaper having any affect on real life, but shortly after this week's "Drop the Green" column appeared on Wednesday morning, and suggested that the days of impassioned, angry pit meetings by American Canadian Tour and Thunder Road race director Tom Curley might be a thing of the past, it apparently happened.

"Apparently" because it happened out of earshot of the media and fans, and crew members, on Thursday evening at 6 p.m. The regular drivers' meeting that takes place, normally, at 6 p.m. in the pit grandstands and is open to anyone who cares to attend was replaced by a trip to the wood shed for the Tiger Sportsman who, once again apparently, were not cooperative during the previous week's feature, which I did not see.

The wood shed, in this case, was on the back side of the turn one and two berm, with tour officials standing a loose guard to allow the two participants (Curley and the Tiger Sportsmen) some privacy. That said, I have no idea what was said, and didn't see the Tiger feature, so I'm not suer if what was said had any impact on the racing, but there did appear to be a ring of dead grass on the back side of the turn one and two berm.

Also from the track, several of the Late Models that took part in the mid-season track championship were scheduled to hook and haul to Oxford, Maine, to take part in the Oxford 250 weekend. From reports it appears that well over 100 drivers will try to qualify for the 36 car field. On of those will be Daytona 500 winner Kevin Harvick whose presence should pull in fans, as well as racers, eager to take a shot at the big timer.

Saturday the Vermont Ravens will open their second regular season with a game against the Central Vermont Rampage Saturday evening in Manchester Center. The Ravens will play in a new league this year, and make Barre (Spaulding's Pendo Field) their home all season, though local fans will either have to drive or wait to see the home team. The Ravens first scheduled home game is not until Aug. 24, by which time the team will have played almost half its schedule.

Pete Hartt      

Make way for the Ravens

Adding to our already full summer schedule, the Vermont Ravens kicks off their first season a a full-time Barre-based team. They will do that on the road, sort of, against the team that plays out of Rutland at Applejack Field in Manchester, where last year's Ravens played half their home games.

The 2008 season kick off, which features a new league, full-time residence in Barre, several new players and some new foes, takes place on Saturday at 7 p.m. The Rampage were formed by former Raven linebacker Joe Chadwick from Killington and Rutland businessman now Rampage head coach Mike Sheridan.

Both teams have played preseason scrimmages against the Vermont Ice Storm and suffered one-sided losses to Vermont older and higher level team. The Ravens have dropped all three of their preseason games.

Once the season starts it will be a while before the Ravens take advantage of what the team hopes will be a home-field advantage at Spaulding's A.G. Pendo Field. The Ravens scheduled home opener is August 24 against the same Central Vermont Rampage team they play Saturday.

Pete Hartt

This not just in

The ACT's annual (for two years at least) trip to Ontario is almost immediately a particular favorite of Patrick Laperle who won at Kawartha for the second time in as many years. Laperle took the lead from Allard on lap 190, three laps after the race’s eighth restart, then barely held off Allard and ACT Late Model Tour point leader Scott Payea, who slipped by for second place, after the final restart on lap 197. The winner's purse was $5,000.

For Milton's Payea it was his fifth top-five finish in eight races in 2008, but even more impressive was the power shown by the ACT Late Model Series drivers who made the trek north of the border. Joey Polewarczyk, Jr. of Hudson, NH, made a 10-hour overnight trek from a race in Connecticut on Saturday night to finish in fourth place, just ahead of Milton drivers Brent Dragon and Jean-Paul Cyr. The unofficial Top 10 was completed by John Donahue of Graniteville in seventh, defending Kawartha Speedway track champion Larry Jackson of Oakville, ON, rookie Nick Sweet of Barre, and Milton’s Eric Chase. In fact, the only ACT driver to make the haul and not qualify for the feature (which started 36 with 45 drivers attempting to qualify was) Scott Dragon.

The ACT Late Model Tour is back in action on Aug. 2 at New Hampshire’s White Mountain Motorsports Park for the previously rained-out White Mountain 150.

On another note, being just about full of Bret Favre, will he or won't he? should they or shouldn't they? where will he? crap, I thought I'd enter my two cents worth. Having never been Brett's biggest booster, I don't care that much if he comes back or stays retired, but there is one thing that everyone who discusses the subject seems to discount almost completely, and that is whether the Packers will be better with Favre at quarterback instead of Aaron Rodgers. It's a question I absolutely don't know the answer to, but I'm equally sure that there is no certainty that Favre's 2008 Packers would be better than Rodgers 2008 Packers. Rodgers has yet to start a game, but has never been given a legitimate chance to win the job in the preseason, while Favre, though a great player and future Hall of Famer is far from being the perfect quarterback. The legend doesn't actually play the game.

Pete Hartt

Rollin' at The Road

Hopefully Steve Mandigo's two and a half gainer at the end of the front stretch during the first lap of the Street Stock feature won't discourage other racers from taking up the keyboard and writing a "Drop the Green" sometime in the future. So far as I know (and my picture has been up there more than anyone else's) there is no Time Argus Sports section cover jinx. Even in Steve's case, he had a hard wreck on June 26 which prevented him from doing the column for the July 2, then had a clean week, then did the column and then had the hard wreck this week.

More probably, it was a night for hard wrecks with the evenings racing fair dotted with big bang ups, though the Mandigo rollover was the best, especially since it included the Joe Fecteau jump for life over the top of Turn 1. Even the media folk got into the act with Mike McGill black flagged after mildly spinning Jesse Roman. It clearly was that kind of night at the road.

Cover jinx, I think not, though Steve Mandigo may be rethinking his offer to write another column later.

On a connected, but slightly different, topic; Tom Curley's pre-race drivers meeting featured a few words on on-track etiquette. Specifically Curley was concerned that some drivers after being raced side-by-side on the outside for several laps, as the outside car was almost all the way past and tried to drop down to the inside, the inside driver would either not lift the gas to allow the pass to be completed, or actually jump on the gas to try to protect the last 12 inches.

I readily admit to not knowing enough about racing to know who should do what in those situations, but the suggestion makes a lot of sense if the desire is fro as many cars as possible to finish the race in one piece.

Of course, it took almost no time to see that at least some of the drivers either disagreed, miss- remembered, or just plain ignored the idea as three different drivers in three different divisions, who were all but completely passed on the track, stayed close enough to the passing car to clip his left rear quarterpanel as the car tried to pull down. Ironically, on a night filled with wrecks, not one of the clip jobs resulted in major damage.

Pete Hartt      

Old news, sort of

This is not necessarily new news, but it is interesting news and it was new news for me. Last week T.J. Sorrentine, he of the lengthy three pointer that helped Vermont defeat Syracuse in the opening round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament in 2005, was hired as an assistant coach at Brown University. Interesting news, I thought, when I saw it. Then I realized that I had lost track of the whole Brown University coach situation after Craig Robinson, brother-in-law of Barack Obama, stepped out this spring. At the time I wondered whether Jesse Agel, former Harwood, University of Vermont and Colchester boys and men's basketball coach, had been a Brown assistant long enough (two seasons) to be a serious contender for the head job. The idle wondering gave way to disinterest in the midst of other things, so I missed Agel's ascension to the Brown men's basketball throne. That happened in early June, and Agel then lured Sorrentine away from an interesting, if not hugely successful, professional basketball career.

Agel's first Division I head coaching job was overdue and yet, somehow, still surprising. No one will ever question Agel's basketball acumen. He often receives a lion's share of the credit for UVM's men's basketball success on the court as well as being a ace recruiter. That Agel did not get the UVM men's job when Brennan retired after the 2004-2005 season surprised many. It is likely that group included Agel, especially after being elevated from assistant coach to associate head coach a few years before the final season. That Agel did not get the head job at UVM after 17 years and a four-year run of success, ending with Sorrentine's hammer to nail down the victory over Syracuse, that ended his career at the school. The step up to the UVM job seemed like a sure thing, but something else happened, Mike Lonergan became the UVM men's coach. Agel spent one year at Colchester, then went back to the college ranks at Brown where, two years later what seemed an obvious outcome 20 years or so ago at Harwood happened, and Agel became a Division I head coach. Agel clearly has the chops to be a Division I head coach, and he now is. The surprise is that it's in Rhode Island.

Pete Hartt

Why I am not worried about Tampa Bay ... yet

Just wanted to check in, at about the halfway point of the Major League Baseball season, and hopefully talk a few Red Sox fans in off the ledge. Three games (prior to Wednesday afternoon's game against Minnesota) in back of the Tampa Bay Rays, and 4.5 games ahead of the New York Yankees, but I am not worried too much.

The experts tell me I should be worried because, among other things, Tampa Bay is young and hungry, they have strong starting pitching, a solid bullpen and they have built the best record in baseball while playing the toughest schedule in baseball (by opposing team's record) over the first half of the season. Those statements are true and its reasonable to respect the Rays who are likely to be a power for the next several years.

This is why I am not worried. The Red Sox, prior to the recent road dip, were the best team in baseball despite missing three of the team's five-man, start-of-the-season rotation. Those pitchers are back, or will be back, giving the team a starting rotation that rivals, if it's not better than, the Rays who, odds are, will not go trough the entire season with a starter or two missing some starts. The rays have built an impressive record against good teams, but they've played 50 of their first 90 games (after taking on the Yankees in New York tonight) at home, and the road beckons in the final 72 games, 41 of which will be road games. In contrast the Sox have played 50 of their first 93 on the road. In addition, while the Rays five game edge in the lost column is concerning, the Red Sox have played more games than anyone in the majors which means four more days off in the second half which helps keep a team fresh late. Finally, the Red Sox have missed David Ortiz for more than three weeks now, and that's a big hole to fill.

No, I'm not worried ... yet.

Pete Hartt