November 6, 2017
Monday, October 16, was a glorious fall day in the Twin Cities with temperatures in the high 60s. As I walked on the sidewalk parallel to Ramsey County Highway 96 in Vadnais Heights, I was in awe of the radiant colors—yellow, red, orange, green—highlighted by the late-afternoon sun. But I enjoyed more than fall beauty. I found four golf balls, pushing my season total to 62, possibly a record.
September 2, 2017
Twelve years ago, I posed the possibility to my son, Ian, that he try running as a fall sport as he started his high-school career at Mounds View High School. I brought him to Mounds View on an August day in 2005; we entered the school, not knowing where to go. A short, non-descript man came by and said, “Wrestling gym.” Even though my oldest daughter knew some of the athletes on his championship track teams, I didn’t have a clue about this man…little did I know.
August 10, 2017
With the start of August, the media are saturated with coverage of the Vikings training camp and the inaugural Gopher football season of Coach P.J. Fleck. Yet the biggest sports story that should not be ignored is the ongoing success of the Minnesota Lynx basketball team.
July 23, 2017
Who is Pernell McPhee?
June 30, 2017
When I was in seventh grade, I entered my junior high school’s free-throw contest. Entrants shot 25 free throws and then, based on their total made, were seeded for match play competition—best of ten. In both seventh and eighth grades, I won the school championship. In ninth grade, I set the school record by swishing 25 straight shots in qualifying—but I was upset in match play.
June 20, 2017
When I was growing up, few opportunities existed for women in athletics. I wondered which of my female classmates would have excelled in sports. Covering sports for the Minnesota Daily in the late 1960s, we rarely reported on female athletes because women’s teams did not exist.
April 5, 2017
As the high school version of March Madness ended last weekend with the state basketball tournament, I came across a dusty scrapbook chronicling the Duluth East High School l965-66 season—51 years ago, more than a half century. Newspaper clippings were falling out, and I had to re-tape them in order to reconstruct that memorable experience.