Monthly Archive for March, 2010

is almost over.  Baseball and softball teams arrived home safely Friday night.  Had the chance to talk with coach Schouten earlier in the day when the team was closing in on St.  Louis.  Overall he sounded pleased with the trip.  His pitching staff got pushed to the extreme, probably even a little past the extreme with ten games in six days.  Remember, the pitching staff is built for two doubleheaders a week, so, some players got pressed into duty that may not see time in those roles this season.  Position players and hitters got lots or reps which is what you’re looking for this time of year.

Softball had a tough go of it but came home with a win in their final game.  Were in most of the games.  Still seem to be looking for a way to divide the innings up that Sarah Visser pitched on the mound last year.

Here’s hoping for the dry warm weather that the weathermen have predicted.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see some local action in the next ten days….stay tuned.

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Defender Gold Pizza Ranch All Star high school basketball game was Saturday night.  Good crowd on hand to close the book on the 2009-2010 season.  Impressions??Top to bottom the level of girls play was pretty good.  Entertaining game with Mackenzie Small getting 14 points, six rebounds, five assists and two steals while earning mvp honors.  Small prepped at Hinton High School.

Boys game was won by the team made up of mostly War Eagle seniors along with Bryce Groeneweg from Western and Sam Van Wettering from Le Mars.  Austin Katje (Unity)  was the mvp with a19 point, six rebound, three assist and four steal game.  Other notables had TylerStuerman from Hinton grabbing 17 rebounds and Jordan Mouw from Boyden Hull had a game high 22 points for the losing team.

High school track meet hosted by Dordt is Monday night and then it’s five weeks of baseball, softball, track, golf and lacrosse along with spring football, volleyball and soccer workouts.

on this Friday morning.  Basketball central right now in my office.  Listening to Sioux Falls getting ready to play their second round game in Branson.  Monitoring the women’s tournament in Sioux City and keeping an eye on the state tournament in Des Moines as well.

A few numbers for you before we get to the state tournament history lesson.  Dordt’s men are 4-3 against the 16 teams remaining in the tournament field.  On the women’s side  of Dordt’s 13 losses this season-ten of them came against teams in the Sweet 16.  In fact, seven of the 16 teams left in the field were on Dordt’s schedule this season……..yikes!

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State tournament history.

Here are the participants from our area to make the field.  We go back a few years for some of these.

Alton-1959

Boyden Hull-1971, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008.  Title game appearances in 90, 93, 2000, 2001 and 2003 with a state title in 03.  Made it as Hull in 1944, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1956

Calumet-don’t know where it is?  Look it up!  1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961.  Title game appearances each year except for 1958.  Championship in 59, runners up in the other three.  Keep in mind it was a two class system back then with 1961 being a single class ala Hoosiers.

Cherokee-1952, 1975, 1984

Emmetsburg-1978, 2005

Estherville-1986, 1987, 1991 with a title in 1987

Floyd Valley-1947, 1959, 1972

Gehlen-1983

George Little Rock-2006 (title), 2008 runner up–coached in each by Ben Gerleman who is in the rare fraternity of people who won a state title as a player and coach.   George 1934, Little Rock 1984, 1985 (familiar with Darwin Klaasen?)

Hospers-1958

Le Mars-1930, 1946, 1957, 1983, 2000–would have thought they’d have more.

Marcus-1980

Maurice-1953 trip for the Monarchs

MOC -back to back titles in 1988 and 1989 under coach Todd Barry who is now at Briar Cliff.  Third place finish in 1990.  Back as MOC Floyd Valley in 1995 when they upset Adam Spanich and Cedar Rapids Regis in the first round and finished second.  Won Dordt grad Loren De Jong’s first state title in 2005 and were runner up the following year in 2006.

Newkirk–Heard the stories of tiny Newkirk making it at the coffee shop in Hospers many times…1939 and 1950.

Okoboji-1993, 2003….no wins

Paullina-one word…..wow.  1954 and then three straight titles in 1968, 1969, 1970.  76 straight wins with Neil Fegabank filling it up.  Then back in 1980 with back to back titles in 1981, and 1982 with Randy Kraayenbrink and Darryl Schnoes.  Kraayenbrink went on to UNI and Schnoes to Morningside.  Haven’t been able to get back as South O’Brien since.

Rock Valley. 1973, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1987, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2005, 2009.  Three titles in 1996, 1998 and 2009.  Sandwiched in between the 96 and 98 titles an unlikely upset loss to unheralded at the time Des Moines Christian.

Sergeant Bluff 1940.

Sheldon 1975, 1977.  Third place finish for the Orabs in 1977.  Haven’t been back since.

Sibley 1958

Sioux Center.  1943, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1955, 1959, 1960, 1967, 1985, 1992, 1995, 2002, 2003, 2004.  Titles in 1959, 1967, 2003.  1959 title came in what was then the big class over Davenport 50-49.  Coach Todd Arends is also a member of that elite fraternity having won a state title with MOC in 1988 and coaching the Warriors to a title in 2003.

Spencer 1952, 1976, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004….the team that stood inWestern’s way a few different times…otherwise the Wolfpack have even more berths.  More on them in a bit.

Spirit Lake-1923, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1942.  Long drought for the Indians.

Storm Lake-1945, 1956, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1979, 1980, 1994.  Ended Western’s run of state tournament appearances at six with the berth in 1994.

Unity 1974, 1986, 1994, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2005.  Titles in  74, 86, 94, 05.  First team to win titles in each of those four decades.    Former Dordt athletic director Rick Vander Berg coached the 1974 team while current athletic director Glenn Bouma coached the 1986 and 1994 teams along with the 1997 team.  Bouma’s assistant in 94 and 97, Barry Miedema, was on the bench in 98 and 99 and coached the Knights to the title in 2005 joining the player-coach title winning fraternity in the process.  Uniquely, he played on the 1974 team with Vander Berg coaching.

Western-1981, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2007, 2008, 2009.  Overall stat record of 26-13 in 15 trips, factor in this year it’s 16 trips and 28-13.  Titles in 1985, 1991, 1996, 2007, 2008.  Gene Hospers coached the 1981 and 1982 teams.  From 1985 Jim Eekhoff has been on the bench.  Current Dordt coach Ross Douma was on the 1988, 1989 and 1990 teams of which the 89 and 90 teams placed third and fourth respectively.

Some things to stir the memory.

Great week for the track teams.  Competed well at the national meet in Johnson City, Tennessee and had  some all-American performances and some personal records.

Mark Eekhoff managed a couple All-American performances.  Got one in the 4 x 800 where the team blazed to a third place finish and got another in 600 meters where he finished fifth.  According to assistant coach Greg Van Dyke, Eekhoff went to make a move in the closing meters and pulled his hamstring, forcing him to hobble in for fifth place.

A disappointment, but still a great finish for the senior from Montana.  Now the team will focus on the outdoor portion of the schedule….hoping the snow is a long ways down by the time spring break is over in a couple weeks.

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Hockey team will head to nationals this week in Florida.  Dave Schenk will also be making the trip to do some work for the ACHA webcasts (they own the rights to the broadcasts so the only outlet is through them…..can’t get it on KDCR or the www.dordt.edu page, sorry).  Anyhow, Dave will be filing reports on the games when they are done and will spend the better part of the week in the ice rink.  Previews for the tournament are up on our website.

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Why do I like athletics so much?  That’s the question I ask myself often, especially on road trips that take me far away from home.   I think I got a glimpse into why this past weekend.

Basketball and baseball are my first loves in terms of athletics.  Growing up we had a basket on the garage and if the work was done I could shoot as many baskets as I liked….or knock the baseball around the yard for a while.  I even got some shots in when the work wasn’t done.

I grew up in a house where athletics, music and  drama all were fine things to pursue if the work was done and grades in school were satisfactory. None was pushed more than another…..you’re listening to someone who performed in two drama productions in high school along with taking piano lessons for five years and played trumpet for seven years.  So why I fell in love with athletics, I’m not real sure.

In the past three years I’ve had the privilege of coaching a youth basketball team.  Started with them when they were in fifth grade.  Practiced once a week and played in some Saturday tournaments.  Full disclosure here, we lost more than we won but we had fun and we got better each year.  Make no mistake, I don’t want to be someone who is living vicariously through his kids, but, I don’t mind showing them my love and enthusiasm for the game.

Anyhow, this past Saturday was the final tournament for the year, and, in all likelihood will be my last tournament with this group.  They’ll move on to bigger and better things and someone will have to fix all the things I’ve done wrong.

Back to the tournament, we lost one to a very good team.  Beat another team on a buzzer beater and got paired up with the host school for the final game of the day.

A ten point  deficit in the first half of that final game, our team fought back and got to within two at halftime.  After trading buckets early in the second half we gave up two three-pointers that made it an eight point difference in the final quarter and we couldn’t get over the hump and lost by six.

Now, you ask, what’s there to love about athletics? You lost for Pete’s sake!  Well, for the final three minutes  of that game I knew it was going to be tough to come back.  So I sat back and just watched.  What I saw was a group of boys who started playing three years ago and couldn’t dribble the length of the court and back without kicking the ball out of bounds–unguarded mind you, having become a group that ran  a pick and roll for a basket and lobbed into the post for a basket in the final minutes.

I saw a group that actually shared the ball with each other and enjoyed it.  I saw a group that may not have been the best of friends all the time, be able to appreciate what each player could do.  I saw players come to the realization of what they were and weren’t capable of.

I saw a group of players who gave up way too many back door cuts on defense earlier this year, play like their lives depended on a defensive stand in the final three minutes and got a steal with everyone playing position defense.

And we were down six points and I didn’t care.  Don’t get me wrong.  If we’re keeping score, I want to win, and I’m going to try to get the players I coach into a position where they can be succesful and potentially win a game, but I also know when things are going to be tough.

We’d improved and we had fun and gave it our best shot.  The players, all eight of them, walked out of the gym exhausted, and I don’t believe there is a better feeling in the world then giving it all and having no regrets.  I hope that’s what they remember, because that’s what I’ll remember from this first coaching experience.

Some may say it’s only a game.  And in this time period where we can get things out of whack very easily, you’re right, it is only a game.  But it, like  many other things can teach us a lot.  It teaches we’re probably more capable to perform acts than we think we’re capable of.  We need to trust and rely on others for success–one man teams don’t go far.  We need to listen to direction and we have to give effort and when we do those things, win or lose, I believe God is glorified.  Did I come right out and tell my team this?  No, I didn’t, and maybe I should have, but,  I still hope the message got through.

Boys, I learned more from you, than you learned from me……….

The big question this time of the year in NAIA basketball circles is: What teams will receive at large berths to the NAIA National Tournament?  Under the system the NAIA has you can map things out and get a pretty good picture where your team falls and with the final day of conference championships being today you can get a pretty good handle on where the at large berths will go.

No, there isn’t a selection committee.  Simply put, the final ranking is your standing for an at large berth.  There are 11 at-large berths available.  If a team qualifies automatically through their tournament qualification you work your way down the list until the 11 at large spots are given out.

Here goes, and remember, nothing is official until the invitations are extended tonight.

Men’s NAIA Division II Qualifiers

Nat’l Rank

1 Walsh AMC Auto

2 Oregon Tech CCC Auto

3 Indiana Wesleyan MCC Championship 3/2 v. #10 Bethel (at large or auto)

4 Oklahoma Wesleyan AT LARGE

5 Indiana Southeast KIAC Auto

6 Bellevue MCAC Auto

7 Dakota Wesleyan GPAC Auto

8 Embry Riddle Sun Auto

9 Cardianal Stritch AT LARGE

10 Bethel MCC Championship 3/2 v.#3 Ind.Wesleyan(at large or auto)

11 Northwood AT LARGE

12 Cornerstone Wolverine Hoosier Auto

13 Eastern Oregon AT LARGE

14 Cedarville AMC Championship v. Notre Dame (auto or at large)

15 St. Francis AT LARGE

16 Grand View MWC Auto

17 Sioux Falls GPAC Auto

18 Black Hills State AT LARGE

19 Davenport AT LARGE

20 Warner Pacific CCC Auto

21 Spring Arbor AT LARGE

22 Friends KCAC Automatic

23 Ozarks Host

24 Hastings AT LARGE

25 Evergreen State AT LARGE or OUT Depending on outcome of Cedarville v. Notre Dame

Women’s NAIA Division II Qualifiers

1 Hastings GPAC Auto

2 Davenport AT LARGE

3 Northwestern GPAC Auto

4 Black Hills State DAC Championship v. #10 Jamestown (At Large or Auto)

5 Cedarville AMC Auto

6 Ozarks MCAC Auto

7 Indiana Wesleyan AT LARGE

8 Shawnee State AT LARGE

8 Briar Cliff Host

10 Jamestown DAC Championship v. #4 Black Hills (At Large or Auto)

11 Morningside AT LARGE

12 St. Francis MCC Auto

13 Iowa Wesleyan MWC Auto

14 Sterling KCAC Auto

15 Minot State AT LARGE

16 Cardinal Stritch CCAC Auto

17 Grand View AT LARGE

18 Huntington AT LARGE

19 Kansas Wesleyan KCAC Auto

20 College of Idaho CCC Championship v. Eastern Oregon (At Large or Auto)

21 Concordia AT LARGE

22 Haskell AT LARGE

23 Holy Names CPAC Auto

24 Walsh AT LARGE or OUT Depending on outcome of Idaho v. Eastern Oregon game

And that’s where the lines fall this year.