Girls get big win over Melrose at home

Tigers 3, Melrose 2

MACA volleyball won with a dramatic flourish Thursday night (10/3) at our Morris Area gym. The foe was Melrose, a team with winning credentials who had beaten the Tigers earlier this season.

Melrose was several wins over .500. Coach Kristi Fehr's Tigers entered the Thursday competition on an impressive roll, winners of six straight! The Dutchmen too had won six straight. These were two premier volleyball teams.

Not surprisingly, the match extended beyond the minimum three games. It went the full five.

MACA needed to carve out a two-point advantage at the end of game #5. This was done with Hunter Mundal at the serving line. Hunter executed with poise to deliver those final two serves, and for the last point we had Terianne Itzen ending it all with a spike, delivered on the edge of the Melrose defense. The Tigers won!

Here's a review of the game scores in this 3-2 win: 25-22, 21-25, 25-16, 22-25 and 18-16.

Morris Area Chokio Alberta came out of Thursday with a 13-4 season record, 7-3 in conference. The Melrose numbers: 11-4 overall, 8-2 in conference.

Mundal ended the night eight of ten in serving. It was Beth Holland with the most powerful serving arm as this Tiger performed five aces and was a flawless 29 of 29 in good/attempts.

Sydney Engebretson was a serving force with two aces on 15 of 17 G/A. Courtney Giese had eleven good serves in as many attempts. Haley Erdahl was nine of ten. Itzen's G/A stats were 10/11. Chelsey Ehleringer was a perfect 23 of 23.

A five-game match is always very demanding for the setters. Here we have Ehleringer performing 22 set assists followed by Erdahl with 12.

Engebretson and Lacee Maanum were the major forces in blocking, finishing with seven and five ace blocks respectively. Nicole Strobel, Itzen and Kayla Pring each had one ace block.

Itzen and Holland led the way in digs with 30 and 29 respectively, and they were followed by Ehleringer (14), Erdahl (12), Engebretson (11), Giese (10), Strobel (7), Paige Schieler (6) and Pring (5).

Itzen's triumphant spike at the end of this win was part of 41 of 49 G/A in hitting with 15 kills. Engebretson led the kill list with 19 and her G/A stats were 46 of 48.

Schieler was a force to be reckoned with, and her hitting stats were 41 of 45 with ten kills. Maanum had six kills as part of 20 of 23 in G/A. Pring came through at 14 of 17 with five kills. Strobel had two kills to go with 14/16 in G/A.

What a memorable evening of volleyball in Tiger country of MACA! It was a memorable week. Fans are beginning to anticipate the post-season.

In other Thursday volleyball, BOLD beat Benson 3-0 and Sauk Centre beat Montevideo 3-0.

The Tigers are scheduled to visit Wheaton on Monday (10/7). A home match follows on the next night, Tuesday, with Minnewaska Area as the foe. The rest of the week is open - a well-deserved respite from competition.

 

What's in a name?

The Washington D.C. team of the National Football League has always given us interesting stories. The current one has to do with the nickname. 

That name has the same unsavory air as the "Charlie Chan" movies. You know, those Charlie Chan movies that now appear to have been blackballed, all because a certain cable movie channel once announced plans for a "Charlie Chan Marathon." There was a tempest of a reaction, just like when Trent Lott opined that America would be better off if Strom Thurmond, the old Dixiecrat, had been elected president.

Old westerns are treading rough water in terms of still having circulation among the public or getting on television, "marathon" or not. The Washington D.C. team of the NFL is of course called the "Redskins." The name is right out of an old John Wayne type of western, right in there with other terms like "pale face" and phenomena like smoke signals and "Indians lining up on the hill" (ready to charge and scream).

No doubt there was conflict and misery in the old west. But to take a term like "redskins" and attach it to a contemporary sports team, making Native Americans a sheer mascot, is unacceptable in the year 2013.

I remember when Charlie Berg, a long-time politician from West Central Minnesota, used the term "smoke signals" in a quote of note. Berg has an uncanny talent for delivering the quotable quote. He even continued that during the big local protest vs. the proposed jail in Stevens County.

He once talked about how his constituents might get lost trying to find a big league sports stadium in Minneapolis. Dick Guindon of the Star Tribune did a cartoon on this, showing Berg delivering this statement not in the capitol but in a nearby church cathedral (i.e. with dome), because he had gotten lost.

Remember Guindon? He did the famous cartoon of Minnesota kids "walking to school backwards" against a wind in mid-winter, part of the panorama of our (beloved) Minnesota lifestyle.

"Redskins" should be ushered aside. The new name for the Washington D.C. franchise should be "Red Tails," honoring the Tuskegee Airmen. This suggestion is being put forth strongly vs. the stubborn owner of the team.

When I was a kid, the Washington NFL team was known as the "over the hill gang," a group of older players who were more than the sum of their parts, coached by the eccentric George Allen. I believe Allen eventually got blackballed from the league because, legend has it, he made a coaching decision based on the (gambling) pointspread for a game. That's an utter no-no.

The Redskins also gave us the ungodly sight of Joe Theismann experiencing a compound fracture in the leg on national TV.

The Redskins also made it clear through Doug Williams that African-Americans, lest there be any doubt, could man the quarterback position with 100 per cent capability and acceptance. It took a while.

Today the Washington quarterback is the African-American "R.G. III" who has found himself in controversy not because of his skin color, but because he was likely exposed to unreasonable risk of aggravated serious injury in last year's playoffs, perhaps jeopardizing the rest of his career.

The "Redskins" name might be the least of the NFL's problems now, as the revelations keep coming on the unacceptable health risks all players have playing the game.

Go Vikings? I couldn't care less.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com