Monthly Archive for November, 2007

Hot stove heating up

Published
by
Aaron Schultz
on November 27, 2007
in Herald Journal
. 0 Comments

With the temperature dropping outside, the baseball hot stove is heating up in both the Crow River Valley and North Star Leagues.

Starting off in the North Star League, it was expected that Hamel and Big Lake would join the league in 2008 – Hamel moving into the Central Division (all Class B teams), while Big Lake would be in one of the Class C divisions.

Well, that all changed when Hamel backed out. In their place, the league has added Elk River. With that, the league has switched up their divisions.

No longer will there be a Class B division and two Class C divisions. Instead, the Class B and Class C teams will be divided out equally into three seperate divisions.

Those divisions shape up like this:
North Star East: Loretto, Maple Plain, Mound, Rockford, Delano, and Hutchinson.
North Star West: Buffalo, Howard Lake, Kingston, Monticello, Dassel-Cokato, and Maple Lake.
North Star North: Big Lake, Elk River, Rogers, Albertville, and St. Michael.

The other big news in baseball has the Crow River adding two new teams. This will be the first time the league has changed in well over a decade.

The two new teams will be Brownton and Carver. Both were formally in the Carver Central League. They both will be in the South Division of the league.

Yep, much going on and it’s almost December already. Look for information to come as I find out about it.

DC Sports Preview

Published
by
Jesse Menden
on November 27, 2007
in Enterprise Dispatch
. 1 Comment

OK, this week’s ED had five winter previews (boys’ bball and boys’ swimming didn’t start practice until Monday) so I figured I would expand a little some more.

Let’s start with Girls’ Hockey. I have seen almost all of their two home games this season, and it is already obvious that they are better than last season. The biggest thing is they are getting more offensive rushes. As soon as they team gets the hang of finishing those rushes, they will put up some more goals.

The offense will largely depend on Dayna Sherman after the team lost several scoring threats. Even though she was playing defense last week in the conference opener against Mound-Westonka, the lone Dragon goal was the result of her break-out ablilities.

As mentioned in the preview, eight of the 16 team members are a freshman or younger. The interesting part is almost all of them are seeing regular minutes. Coach Johnson talked about how he thought the attitude on the team was better than it has been in the past, and that influx of young talent is one of those reasons in my opinion. The speed of their development will affect the Dragons’ record this season, but this team is more about the future.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Gymnastics team this season. They are coming off one of the best seasons in the programs’ history, but won’t be quite that good this season. The team lost Krystal Gatz and Jocelyn Salmen to graduation, and three other good talents for other reasons.

The team is not in a rebuilding mode, but they aren’t exactly replacing all of that talent either. There are plenty of good gymnasts left, like seniors Jocelyn Erickson and Leighana Nyquist just to name two, and they will in charge of carrying this team.

When I talked to coach Glur last week, there were still many spots open. But there were no concerns that they could not be filled adequately. All in all, the main goal this season is to try to keep the program at a competitive level. Hopefully they can back up to full strength soon to take advantage of the much weaker section they were put in.

The boys’ hockey team is looking for more wins this season. In 2006-07, they had solid, experienced defensemen and a good goaltender and still gave up four goals a game, the most of anybody in the conference. One of the reasons for that is they play a lot of good teams. With Lucas Johnson back in net however, I expect that GAA to go down.

Offensively, this team will be fine. Brett Danielson is an excellent hockey player, and so is John Barrick, Zac Johnson, and Jordan Lecher. Those guys will score plenty of goals to make up for the loss of Charlie Hamm. From talking to Coach Olson, I gather that this team will play much like last season. They will be gritty and win puck battles in the corners. Hopefully, that will result in more wins this season.

It is still early to tell what will happen with the wrestling team because they had just one day of practice under their belt when I talked to coach Clemen. The one thing that he said is that the team has no superstars, but a lot of above-average wrestlers. That sounds very similar to the baseball or football teams that had a high level of success recently. That means if they stay healthy, they could be fairly successful in dual this season.

The strength of the team will be in the upper weights. Not too many teams are going to head into a meet wanting to face the Larson twins and the Pokornowskis. The middle will be a question for the Chargers, but Clemen seemed confindent that he could fill that with little problem.

Girls’ basketball should be much improved this season. The teams only lost two seniors, and most of the girls on this team saw a lot of minutes last season. Between Aimee Peterson and Brea Revard, this team will be tough in the paint. Combine that will Julie Munson running the point, and this team should score some points. Others like Katelyn Nelson came on at the end of the season and should be good this season.

The prediction: they will win more than one game this season.

Final state predictions

Published
by
Aaron Schultz
on November 20, 2007
in Herald Journal
. 0 Comments

Okay, my semifinal predictions weren’t much better than my quarterfinal predictions. In the 12 semifinal games, I picked eight correctly. I had the Class 1A, 4A, and 5A predictions right; split on the Nine-man and Class 3A picks; and didn’t get either one right in Class 2A, which has been a pattern for me in these predictions. For some reason, in Class 2A, if I pick a team to win, they are going to lose. Alright, here we go. The final fall predictions of the season.

Nine-man
Stephen-Argyle over Waubun

Class 1A
Goodhue over Adrian

Class 2A
Caledonia over Luverne

Class 3A
Glencoe-Silver Lake over DeLaSalle

Class 4A
Totino-Grace over Mahtomedi

Class 5A
Eden Prairie over Cretin-Derham Hall.

Football predictions – revised

Published
by
Aaron Schultz
on November 13, 2007
in Herald Journal
. 0 Comments

Well, my predictions for the state quarterfinals were anything but right on, but they weren’t all that far off. In the six classes, there were a total of 24 quarterfinal games played. I picked the winner in 16 times. 16-for-24, not too bad, but not that great either. The one class that really killed me was 2A, where I only had one prediction right – Pierz over Moose Lake-Willow River. In the rest of the class I had 3-out-of-4 right. So, now I will head to the semifinals and predict who will win those games. Before we get to that, though. In my original predictions I told you who I thought would win state in all six classes, and two of those teams have already been knocked out – Wayzata in Class 5A and Triton in Class 2A. So here we go, my semifinal predictions. They got to better, right?

Nine-man
Stephen-Argyle over Verndale
Wheaton over Waubun

Class 1A
Goodhue over Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg
Adrian over Cook County

Class 2A
Hawley over Caledonia
Pierz over Luverne

Class 3A
Perham over DeLaSalle
Glencoe-Silver Lake over Albany

Class 4A
Totino-Grace over Waconia
Mahtomedi over Sartell-St. Stephen

Class 5A
Cretin-Derham Hall over Brainerd
Eden Prairie over Eastview

Until next week, bye.

Keskeys move on to state

Published
by
Jesse Menden
on November 13, 2007
in Enterprise Dispatch
. 0 Comments

Beth and Lindsey dove their way into state Saturday by both finishing in the top four at Willmar. Just a reminder, it begins at noon on Thursday.

According to a press relase by the state high school league, the diver that beat the Keskeys at Willmar, Orono’s Jessica Stanchfield, is the only returning qualifier from a year ago. That means the competition will be wide open, and don’t be surprised to see both finish fairly high in the finals.

Saturday at the Section meet, Stanchfield beat Beth by a large margin, over 52 points. Lindsey was 65 points behind. But head coach Erin Tormanen always says you have to be good, not great to make it to state, and it appears the Keskeys just did what they needed to in order to move on. I wouldn’t surprised at all if they step it up and put a little pressure on Stanchfield, the 2006 champ, starting Thursday at the U of M Aquatic Center.

Well…it’s over

Published
by
Jesse Menden
on November 13, 2007
in Enterprise Dispatch
. 0 Comments

If you were Jeff Gordon, there was not much you could do in the last half of the Chase. Jimmie Johnson won his fourth race in a row Sunday and all but clinched the championship.

Gordon conceded the champioship after the race at Phoenix, but it isn’t clinched yet. There are several scenarios, but basically Johnson has to finish 21st or better. So it will be two years in a row for the driver of the No. 48 Chevy.

Quite honestly, I’m getting tired of the Hendrick dominance and it probably only get worse once Dale Jr. joins them in ‘08.

One nice sign Phoenix was the performance of the Roush boys. Kenseth got his fourth top 5 finish in a row when he got third Sunday after leading 93 laps. The No. 17 Ford started the Chase with some problems. Kenseth was seventh in the opening race of the Chase, but finished no better than 26th in the next four.

Greg Biffle also had a nice day at Phoenix. He finished second, and had the race been about 10 laps longer, he probably would have won.

Carl Edwards also had a nice day, running up front, until he had mechanical problems. Hopefully, Roush can keep these cars running strong next season so somebody can compete with Hendrick.

Vikings vs. Chargers

Published
by
Jesse Menden
on November 6, 2007
in Enterprise Dispatch
. 0 Comments

Sunday’s game was billed as contest between the top two running backs in the NFL. I billed it as a contest between the two worst head coaches in the NFL. And guess what…our guy won!

San Diego’s Norv Turner has successfully guided a team that was 14-2 in 2006 and made them 4-4 so far this season with basically the same players. Brad Childress, a supposed offensive guru, has successfully destroyed any potential for an adaquate offense by…well, it’s too much to go over.

In the battle of the stupid, ego-driven coaches, it was Turner that prevented his team from winning. I can’t blame the Chargers for running one of the best backs in the game on occassion against a good run-stopping Vikings team, but why continually run him straight into the teeth of the Williams Wall? Also, the Chargers are the only team in the last two seasons to committ that much to the run against Minnesota. Oh, and was Antonio Gates even on the field Sunday?

Of course, Turners bad decision making was compounded by a horrible game by Phillip Rivers. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn Sunday, and a lot of that had to do with the pressure the Vikings defense put on him.

As impressive as the Vikings win was, the stupidity of the Chargers game plan had something to do with it.

Under the “give credit where credit is due” department…Childress should be given some recognition. Adrian Peterson touched the ball over 30 times, and the result as an obvious success. And with an adequate quarterback, the Vikes were able to throw the ball. Wow, that’s an idea. Having said all of this, nothing should be taken away from the Vikings, it was a good performance to watch. But why can’t they win on days when it is not 55 degrees and sunny?

State football predictions

Published
by
Aaron Schultz
on November 6, 2007
in Herald Journal
. 1 Comment

With the 2007 Minnesota State High School football tournament fast approaching, I figured this would be as good a time as ever to post my predictions for all the rounds of all the classes, finishing with my state champions in each class. Mind you, some of these are pure guesses since I haven’t seen or read about many of these teams, but what the hay, here it goes.

Nine-man quarterfinals:
Verndale def. Houston
Stephen-Argyle def. McGregor
Wheaton def. Cleveland
Littlefork-Big Falls def. Waubun

Nine-man semifinals
Stephen-Argyle def. Verndale
Wheaton def. Littlefork-Big Falls

Nine-man championship.
Stephen-Arygle will keep their impressive undefeated streak alive by beating Wheaton for yet another championship.

Class 1A quarterfinals
Goodhue def. Royalton
Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg (KMS) def. Lake of the Woods
Adrian def. Mankato Loyola
Mahnomen def. Cook County

Class 1A semifinals
Goodhue def. KMS
Adrian def. Mahnomen

Class 1A championship
Goodhue will win the title, just too strong and too much tradition for Adrian.

Class 2A quarterfinals
Norwood Young America def. Caledonia
Eden Valley-Watkins def. Hawley
Triton def. Luverne
Pierz def. Moose Lake-Willow River

Class 2A semifinals
Eden Valley-Watkins def. Norwood Young America
Triton def. Pierz

Class 2A championship
Triton will find a way and sneak past Eden Valley-Watkins for the title.

Class 3A quarterfinals
Rochester Lourdes def. DeLaSalle
Perham def. Rockford
Glencoe-Silver Lake def. LeSueur-Henderson
Albany def. Proctor

Class 3A semifinals
Perham def. Rochester Lourdes
Glencoe-Silver Lake def. Albany

Class 3A championship
Glencoe-Silver Lake will win their second straight title, and it shouldn’t even be close.

Class 4A quarterfinals
Mahtomedi def. New Prague
St. Michael-Albertville def. Sartell
Waconia def. Minneapolis Washburn
Totino-Grace def. Duluth East

Class 4A semifinals
Mahtomedi def. St. Michael-Albertville
Totino-Grace def. Waconia

Class 4A championship
Totino-Grace will cruise to the victory over Mahtomedi. The real championship game in Class 4A came in the section title game which Totino-Grace topped Spring Lake Park in.

Class 5A quarterfinals
Cretin-Derham Hall def. Lakeville North
Wayzata def. Brainerd
Eastview def. Mounds View
Eden Prairie def. Andover

Class 5A semifinals
Wayzata def. Cretin-Derham Hall
Eden Prairie def. Eastview

Class 5A championship
In upset fashion, Wayzata finds a way to top Eden Prairie for the championship.