A wonderful mid-fall morning here on the prairie. Sun has come out to bless the day. Last night (Friday) was a blessed night even though the MACA football Tigers were defeated. It was a night for saluting Neal Hofland. Man, what a fixture this man was to the west of here once. From days of "the Spartans."
Let us not let the red-themed Spartans fade in our collective memory. Life was more rich here when Morris and C-A each had their own extracurricular. Maybe the combination was done smoothly - that's fine. Seamlessly? That would be better.
But there had to be some sad feelings with the retiring of the Spartans from local sports. And Neal was the football coach, presiding over so much success at the "nine-man" level. I had my own humble role observing from my media perch.
I had the good luck of seeing Neal this morning (Saturday) at DeToy's Restaurant. He entered with his daughter who I instantly called "Lynn." Oh my goodness it was actually Beth. I caught the mistake as I said "oh, you're not Lynn." Beth took it all good-naturedly and said "I get called Lynn all the time." Through the years I have known Lynn better than Neal's other children. I remember that Neal called daughter Amy "the tail-ender."
Before leaving the restaurant I walked over to Neal and Beth and reminded that "when all else fails, use the toss-sweep." I immediately think of the toss-sweep when remembering Neal's time with the C-A Spartans. The toss-sweep seemed like an unstoppable machine so often with the likes of Jon Hallman carrying the football.
I made several trips to Minneapolis and the Metrodome for Prep Bowl when the Spartans were in it. I remember that the will-call window seemed never to have its act together for the bright and early nine-man game. As early as 8 a.m.? That's what I seem to recall. There was a fan bus that departed from the Old Lumber Yard in Chokio. We all had to set our alarms!
I wondered if the Morris sports fans got jealous about all the times that C-A had the privilege of playing at the Dome. Such prestige. A big down note was when George Dieter had his health emergency. I remember George with clipboard along the sidelines for C-A games. He had to withdraw from those duties.
John Mithun was a right-hand man for Neal. I remember John being a very candid guy when I interviewed him for basketball articles. I hope my memory stays accurate for all this stuff.
Cate Kehoe of MACA is a granddaughter of Neal's. Unfortunately she experienced the all-too-common affliction of a torn ACL for the current school year. The Kehoes and Carringtons are related. The Carrington girls had problems with the same type of injury, so when I mentioned this to good ol' Tom Carrington, he said "not enough Carrington blood." With a sense of levity I presume.
I remember interviewing C-A coaches like Paul Daly and Jill Willis. Jill was amused at how I sometimes over-dramatized things. Paul frustrated me sometimes because he'd be out ice-fishing at times when I wanted to do a phone interview! I never have seen the appeal of ice fishing. To each their own, I guess.
And I'd say "to each their own" about parents who even allow their sons to play football. I am hoping and praying for the day when this Neanderthal sport comes to an end.
Assuming that no one gets hurt in a game, then I would say that nothing would beat seeing the C-A Spartans roll down the field using the "toss seep" under coach Hofland! I am no longer in the corporate media. But no one can ever take those memories away from me!
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| You can see coach Hofland in front. |
I would love to type a few paragraphs about the Tiger football game against the opponent from the "Flintstones," Rockford.
I must rely on info from other media sources. This new academic year is especially daunting. The West Central Tribune as you may have noticed assaults us all with a paywall. It is a more rigid paywall than they have used in the past. Sometimes you can get in for free but then they have this funky system where they count your visits and then they throw up a barrier again. Leave it to Forum Communications to do pissy-ant stuff like this.
I encourage coaches to contact the Willmar paper and to say "take down the paywall or we aren't going to call in information any more."
I compliment kmrs-kkok on having decent if minimal Tiger sports updates on its website. That's a helluva lot more than what the Morris newspaper does. My Central Minnesota friend from my (halcyon) newspaper days says "the Stevens County Times website is worse than if they had no website at all." Quite true. I don't know why they bother.
Both the newspaper and radio station websites are loaded, saturated with links about UMM sports. The sad part about that is that UMM's own website is a one-stop shop for appreciating Cougar sports. It has all the bells and whistles. So let's please emphasize the Tigers and make all the coverage free-access. We are not expected to pay to watch the wonderful YouTube broadcasts about the Tigers.
The mayor should sign a proclamation honoring the "YouTube geniuses" of Morris Area High School. Let's see, he's not running for re-election. Will the upcoming election be a referendum on the Morris Police? I say to hell with the Morris Police Department. That and good riddance. We don't need to see their guns in holsters at the Morris restaurants any more.
Have you heard about the new trick by the police? If you use your phone camera to record them doing something, they might shoot and kill you and later claim "we thought the phone was a gun." A guy got roughed up badly recently because of this. And the cops have "qualified immunity." They can get away with almost anything.
I suppose there is strength in numbers if you are trying to videotape some cops. That's what happened with the George Floyd incident.
Sparse media
As I write this, the radio station site has not yet reported on the MACA vs. Rockford game. I was able to penetrate the West Central Tribune site and could find no coverage there either. To the rescue comes the "Minnesota Scores" site which is free-access - bless them. So the Tigers came out on the short end Friday, score of 28-20.
A friend emailed me about the game this a.m.:
We attended the game last night, went mostly to hear the pep band of course, but enjoyed the athletic endeavors as well. I didn’t see you prowling the hill to the North in your usual location. Pastor Dan came and sat right behind us, we pretty much conversed the entire game. Given the superiority of the Bedrock team, the Tiggers did surprisingly well, stayed in it until the 4th quarter. At one point, a MAHS kid picked up a fumble and ran 50+ yards for a score – we had missed the actual fumble and retrieval as we were yacking with Dan. So, I fired up YouTube on my phone, found the “genius” telecast of the game, backed up the feed until I got to the play in question, and watched it to see what happened. (Almost) instant replay! Ain’t technology wonderful? It was neat to see the pregame tribute to Coach Hofland, he was brought out to the field and surrounded by former players and family. He has coached for 60 years – as John Davidson would say, that’s incredible. I had wondered if he had been neglected as a coach in recent years and was on the staff strictly as a “token” to the C-A contingent, but it sounds like he’s considered “one of the guys”.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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