The Tigers beat Rocori, Paynesville and CGB before coming back down to earth in a pretty big way. The Friday score was remindful of when coach Dale Henrich's squad was humbled by Minnewaska Area. It's hard to explain these things. Yours truly sure can't. In am a mere observer. Allow me to observe that MACA lost to Minnewaska 70-29 and to the BOLD Warriors Friday at Olivia by a score of 73-31.
Well, ouch. But the season record is not dismal. Below .500, yes, but not dismal. It's 5-7 overall, 2-2 in section, 1-3 in conference and 4-6 at the home court. I don't think we're even at the halfway mark yet.
Coach Henrich needs to figure out why we hit those bumps in the road. Tomorrow (Monday) could be difficult: a road challenge vs. "big school" Willmar.
BOLD had a player who by herself got us struggling on the scoreboard. Lilly Henriksen was this Warrior, pretty dead-on with her outside shooting. Henriksen brought lots of cheers from her home crowd with five 3-pointers. Cheers flowed also for three of her mates who joined her in double figures scoring. Here's the rundown: Henriksen (21 points), Lainey Braulick (16), Kenzie Visser (16) and Rylee Boen (10).
Henriksen's five 3-pointers were followed by Braulick 4 and Boen 2. Visser and Kenna Henriksen led the rebounds with 9 and 7 respectively.
Braulick and the Henriksen girls all contributed four assists. The Henriksens were tops in steals, Kenna with five and Lilly with four. Kenna blocked two shots. Surely the Henriksens were a foundation for how the Warriors took charge.
Cihak leads Tigers
The MACA story had my next-door neighbor Addison Cihak lead in scoring with eleven points. Way to go! The totals are pretty anemic after her: Maddie Fehr 5, Brianna Marty 3, Samantha Konz 3, Cate Kehoe 3, Chloe Fehr 3, Ryla Koehler 2, Brenna Jergenson 2 and Kaylee Harstad 2. The West Central Tribune is generous as the totals add up to 34 points, not 31.
Marty, Fehr and Cihak each made a '3'. The report in the West Central Trib did not say which Fehr made the '3'. The other stat categories have "N/A" in the WC Trib. But it was nice seeing a fair amount of stats from this game in the WC Trib. Let's say it's a rarity. And on Saturday morning I did not encounter a paywall.
I wonder if behind closed doors, the WC Trib and other similar newspapers are wondering if they can keep the paywall going. The newspapers depend on coaches' cooperation. The coaches hold all the power, don't they? Without info from the coaches, there's nothing. So if word gets around that parents and fans find it a hassle to deal with a pay system on the website, well. . .
You see, all this information could so easily migrate to other platforms like social media. Social media is user-friendly by its nature.
Things have to be tough for the West Central Tribune now, a paper that used to publish six days a week. It's a shadow of its former self. And would you believe, the paper in Duluth - a pretty major city - only publishes twice a week? The Morris paper published twice a week through most of its history (like the whole time I was there).
The Morris paper acts like it does not want to give away anything. It's pretty naked, this push to try to get everyone to "buy" the legacy "newspaper" in its ink and paper form. Like at Willie's or Casey's. And what does it cost there? Well, a heck of a lot more than it used to. When you consider the considerable food inflation, adding a couple dollars to your bill for a newspaper is not chump change, it really is not.
The school's coaches should reach out to fans in a friendly and useful fashion with info on free-access sites IMHO.
Speaking of food inflation, this is compounded pretty badly by "shrinkflation" and "skimpflation." What's "skimpflation?" Well, let's use a little sawdust and fill out this sandwich, make it seem normal. Perhaps a little exaggeration there, but you get my drift. Such maneuvers are no minor deal. It all adds up.
Dreaded drumbeat
Oh no, a dreaded old drumbeat: teachers proclaiming "we aren't paid enough." Are we going to go through this again? The pain of disgruntled teachers who were presumably quite happy to be hired in the first place? Of course it's all about power. If the system allows teachers to behave in this fashion for a possible reward, they'll do it.
So the most recent school board meeting had a formal presentation, I gather from having looked at the Morris paper at the library. Maybe the problem is the newspaper coverage itself. The coverage accents how the teachers are leaning with their attitude, and the biggest fear to be gleaned from this is that the faculty may start tilting back to an attitude that was kind of a scourge here in a past time. I'll suggest the 1980s. It got truly ugly toward the end of that decade, replete with attempted business boycotts. Oh yes it did.
The Dairy Queen became a controversial place, perhaps the lightning rod. But it was not alone. On the other side of the fence: a "chippy" teaching staff, or at least a royal pain in the ass element of it, who all had their own lightning rod too, a particular individual. I don't know why more of the teachers couldn't have just minded their own affairs, minded their own business, just tended to their top priority of being positive-thinking teachers, idealists. That's what we want them to be more than anything.
For them to be sullen, defensive, scheming, gossipy and "chippy" is just maddening. So, I hope this presentation by Ms. Messner to the board does not presage anything. Let me emphasize that such behavior is highly disturbing to financial benefactors like myself. I personally support MAHS music which I know does not get the headlines of sports. Surely I am interested in sports too.
For the teachers to get greedy and bitter and demonstrate such qualities in a public way, makes me rather want to heave. I wonder if the teachers still get together in their "house parties." Maybe covid has caused a drift away from that.
The teachers were once so notorious for being tribal. They'd read something like what I'm writing right here, then they'd make sure a target got put on my forehead. They'd spread stories and negative comments, anything to smear me. I haven't seen evidence of such attitudes and behavior for a very long time, so I thought maybe, maybe it was gone. I'm not as "on top of things" as when I was with the Morris newspaper.
Teachers created all sorts of problems around Minnesota in the early 1980s. I don't know why we had a system that allowed that. To be frank, I think it was the DFL Party as it was constituted at the time. I was a "Reagan Democrat." Reagan would not recognize the Trump-led Republicans of right now. And it looks like the Iowa evangelical Christians are going to lead Trump to glorious victory in the caucuses.
Christians! They are going astray so badly now. Ask yourself what Jesus would think of it all.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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