Lakers win soccer opener

After months of slow down on the blog, here comes my fourth post tonight. Lakers win their opener 7-0 over Marlette.

Here are the stats:

Adam Chiotti 3 goals

Tyler Yoder 2 goals, 1 assist

Eric Turner 1 goal, 2 assists

Shay Wruble 3 assists

Cory Maust 1 goal, 1 assist

David Maust and Jesse Maust combined for the shutoutint the net with 2 saves each.

Talkin' Smack week one

For those who were intrigued by my earlier post, here is your chance to share your thoughts on all sports, not just football. Have any thoughts on who will be league champions? Who will make a run?
Want to vent after Friday about how your team did?
Here is the place to do it. Just a couple of "rules."
Have a take and come strong with it. I really don't want to or plan to run to run alot of "good luck team X on Friday" crap, although as we go on in the post-season, support pages are a possibility.
But I'm looking for your pure, honest feelings about what is happening in high school sports.
Leave a name, the name at the bottom of your post is how it will appear in the paper, whether it is a pseudonym, your last name, your real name, etc.
Keep it clean, keep it controversial and keep the posts coming!

Make your week one picks

Trying to kick get this kicked off today, so I thought I give you my picks. Reminder: These picks will just cover the eight teams we cover in our paper (Bad Axe, Cass City, EPBP, Harbor Beach, North Huron, Owen-Gage, Ubly & USA).

Arenac Eastern @ Owen-Gage
Bad Axe @ Harbor Beach
Cass City @ Sandusky
Deckerville @ EPBP
Marine City Cardinal Mooney @ North Huron
USA @ Ubly

News season brings new changes

This season our sports coverage is going to be even more exciting at the Huron County Press, Newsweekly and Harbor Beach Times.
One of the many upgrades we plan on making will be to have our first ever “Outpick Ogryski” contest. The rules of the contest are pretty simple, the person with the highest percentage of correct picks will win a $20 gift certificate to the local business of their choice. But in order to claim the prize, they need to have a higher percentage of correct picks then I do.
The contest is formatted this way so people that don’t hear about it right away can still jump in after week one, but the winner must pick for a minimum of six weeks. In the case of a tie, the first tiebreaker will be number of weeks picked.
This contest will be held completely online with picks being posted at our sports blog by Friday at 5 p.m. The time of every post is listed as part of the message, so in the case of a discrepancy we will go with the posted time on the message.
The official post announcing this contest will be up on the blog sometime Tuesday night.
You can reach the blog by going to http://www.huroncountypress.com/ and clicking on the link “Sports Blog.”
In addition to the online contest, we’ve added the Elite Eight football poll, which will continue on in similar forms in both the boys and girls basketball, too.
In one final item, we are looking for fans to react to the action over the week form football, as well as volleyball, cross-country, soccer, tennis and sport I may have forgotten because of the season change. When there is space available, we will publish some of these comments as part of “Talkin’ Smack.” Comments for “Talkin’ Smack” can be made any time during the week, but the cut off time to have comments published in a given week is Monday at noon as that is our production date.
Hope you all enjoy these new ideas and I’ll see you at the games.

Still here...

For those who have been looking for an update lately and haven't seen one lately, it is do largely ot the fact that our editor is currently on medical leave and I've been filling in for her for the last three weeks.
She will be out at least three more weeks, but could be as long as nine more. Putting in major hours at this point, but I'm really enjoying the exper ience and could see myself wanting to do that at some point in my career.
I also like my daughter telling everyone we see that daddy is "the boss."
Anyhow, as the sports season gets closer we'll be back in full swing and better than ever. Look for another update in the next few days

Let the Can-Am Cup hype begin...

One of my favorite events of the year to cover is the Maritime Festival, because those duties have given me a chance to check out the Can-Am Cup. The Cup is a series of jet ski races between American and Canadian racers, to crown a champion.
Well that might not mean a whole lot, it just happens over the course of the last few years it has become one of the top jet ski races by fan attendance in the entire Untied States. Add in the National Racing action that will also be takign place over the weekend and you've got some pretty of the most exciting watercraft action you will ever see.
If that hype does get your engines going, jsut check out this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxkKBU1PV98.

Top Five Most Memorable Moments of the Year

So now is the time of the year that blog like these hit a slow period. Not that there was always great discussions, but when the topic was right there was some interesting back-and-forth banter.

In the spirit of keeping that going, I decided to post this topic about eveeryone's opinion on the top five five most memorable moments from the past high school sports seasons. I encourage you all to do the same.

So here's the list...

5. Grant Pichla scores a two-point conversion in the waning seconds of the Regionals to give Ubly a 22-21 win over Royal Oak Shrine.

Ballsiest call I've ever seen. Coach Sweeney left it up to the team as to whether they went for the tie ir the win... the players wanted to go for it and apparently made the right call.

4. Kaycee Damm returns as an honorary captain for the Laker/Harbor Beach game.

In sports, most of the special moments I get to cover revolve around accomplishments on the playing field. This one had nothing to do with that. Damm, who ws recovering from a life-threatening car accident, made an appearance atthe game, had a meal with the team and served as a captain for the game. Damm inspired her team to a win that night and to many more throughout the season. Who would have thought she would be back on the court playing volleyball just a few months after this.

2 (tie). Ubly wins second straight D4 track title; USA wins second straight D3 softball crown.

Two state champions, how can you pick one over the other?

1. Brennan Pitcher is diagnosed with cancer.

I really went back-and-forth on to whether this should be included on the list as it wasn't necessarily a sports moment per say, but when you factor in its impact I decided to include it (Pitcher played football, was a starter in basketball and held a D4 State Finals record in the 3,200 relay). I remember it was halftime of the USA/Bad Axe game at USA and me and another reporter where in the room where they store concessions and where we stuffed our bags. A parent came in two grab some more pop and asked if we had heard about Brennan. When he told us, we were shocked and pretty much nothing that happened the rest of the night mattered... it was only a game. On a positive, as sad as that moment was, it has been a true joy everytime I have seen him at a game since, hanging with his boys like just another high schooler.

So here is your chance... share your thoughts on my moments and let me know yours!