Rod's Friday Night

Pierre wins the Mitchell Invitational girls golf tournament shooting a 358 to record a two stroke victory over runner up Brookings. Paige Erickson shoots a 82 to finish in 3rd place, two shots off of the winning round. Hallie Getz had a 87. Karissa Guthrie a 92 and Paige Lonbakken a 97 to account for the 358. Tatum Richards had a 107 and Katheryn Bartlett had a 110. Congratulations girls.

Rod on Friday

The first round of the NFL draft is now official. The Vikings took quarterback Christian Ponder out of Florida State with their pick in the 12th round last night. While Ponder is a pretty good quarterback, he wasn't among the 4 or 5 elite in the NCAA last year so the pick is interesting but you never know, it might work out for the Purple crew.

Three members of the Governors track and field squad have been invited (and they have accepted) to run in the special 400 meter run at the Black Hills Relays in Sturgis. Parker McKittrick, Steven Nielsen and Eileen Leong will all run in the Special Event. And Pierre will have to wait until Tuesday to head to Sturgis as the meet has been postponed for tomorrow and rescheduled for Tuesday due to the forecast of imclement weather for tomorrow.

The Lady Governor golf team has won their last two tournaments and are golfing today in Mitchell at Lakeview Golf Course in the Mitchell Invitational tournament. They will see a majority of their ESD competiton at the tournament, but they should do just fine. And the Governor tennis team will find out a little more about itself this weekend at the Rapid City Invitational tennis tournament. Despite the fact the Governors are 5-0 in duals this season, they have not been pressed yet by any of their opponents. Rapid City Stevens and especially Sioux Falls O'Gorman will do that this weekend. We will see how the Governors react.

Sophmore golfer Hallie Getz is the Pierre Athletic Coaches Association Athlete of the Week after winning the rain shortened Aberdeen Invitational on Tuesday by 4 strokes over two other players so congratulations to Hallie.

And our congratulations go out to Dick and Jan Stabnow of Pierre for being named the Hometown Hero award winners by Modern Woodman at last night's Pierre Post 8 Roast Beef Sandwich feed which was a huge success with a large number of poeple attending. At 5:45 pm they were lined up outside the door! The Stabnows have been long time baseball fans in Pierre and you can usually find them sitting in their lawn chairs if their is a Legion game being played at Hyde Stadium in the summer.

Rod's Thursday thoughts

Like the song of the 70's said It never rains in California, but it sure does here in South Dakota. Three more events cancelled today due to (in part) the rain, wind and cool tempretures. The Pierre Legion Relays Track and Field meet. The Huron Invitational girls golf tournament that Pierre was to play in and the tennis duals with Aberdeen Central and Roncalli in Aberdeen. All cancelled, All that will not be rescheduled. While for Track and Field, cancelling a meet at this time of the spring is unfortunate but not an essential evil, cancelling the tennis duals and the golf tournament is another thing. Spring is such a short season for sports in this part of the world and you can not make up lost matches on the court or the course. Hopefully the Lady Govs can play on Tuesday in Aberdeen, the tournament that was made up after last week's rain out, but the forecast does not look promising. In tennis, the Sioux Falls and Rapid City schools will gain the advantage once again because both cities have indoor courts that the players can go to and continue to play, something that is not allowed in Pierre.

The High School Activities Association Board of Control voted to change the Class AA football playoffs beginning next year. Instead of all 16 teams automatically qualifying for the playoffs, only the top 12 teams will qualify putting more emphasis on every regular season game now. The top 4 teams will get a first round bye meaning that all 4 Sioux Falls schools have a chance to get a first round bye more years than not. At a minimum, at least 3 schools should recieve byes on a yearly basis. That is how much the Sioux Falls schools have taken over the sport of Class 11AA High School Football in the state. Perhaps a Watertown might get a bye once in a awhile but the fact of the matter is the Sioux Falls schools will continue to dominate so changing the playoff system won't do anything to change that. Now next year the Activities Association is expected to split up the 11AA ranks a bit and create 4 11 man divisions and 2 9 man divisions of football in the state. With the top 9 or 10 teams in the top division, teams like Pierre may actually have a chance to make the playoffs, do well in the playoffs and play for a state championship, something they have not done since 1988.

Also, money worries continue in sports and teams are left to try to raise as much money as they can for things like going to camps, purchasing T-Shirts and eating money for the players at State Tournaments. So when a team is having a fund raising event, please help them out and attend. The Lady Govs basketball team will be having one such fund raising opportunity Monday evening at the Pizza Ranch in Ft. Pierre from 5 to 8 pm. Proceeds from that 3 hour event will go to the Lady Gov basketball team. Also, school only will be going on for 4 weeks or so and then it is summer and basketball camps will pop up all over the place. Pierre boys and girls from high school to middle school to elementary school can go to the Pierre Park and Rec Departments website and sign up and be registered for coach Kannegeiter-Bahe and coach Becker's summer camps in Pierre. It is www.pierreparkandrec.com. And five members of the Governor boys basketball team will be playing summer basketball against in state and out of state competition. Lane Severyn and Zach Hanson along with Conrad Adam and Matt Monfore will be playing with the Dakota Schoolers program and Austin Christopherson will be playing with the South Dakota Wildcats organization this summer.

That is all for now. Have a Happy Easter.

Rod

Rod's Monday Thoughts

Today's rescheduled Corn Palace Relays in Mitchell that Pierre was scheduled to attend has been cancelled due to the weather. The Governor tennis team meanwhile travels to Sioux Falls to face Sioux Falls Washington and Brandon Valley in a pair of tennis duals this afternoon. If they can't play outside they will move the matches indoors.

The Governor and Lady Governor Track and Field teams' still continue to do well on the track. Last Saturday at Rapid City, Parker McKittrick won twice on the track winning the 110 Hurdles and the 200 meter dash. Geena Burley continues to win in the High Jump clearing 5'3 in winning the event on Saturday. And the Medley Relay teams for both the Govs and Lady Govs crossed the finish line first. Pierre will now turn their attention to Thursday as they are scheduled (weather permitting) to host the annual Pierre Legion Relays.

The Stanley County Track and Field team is scheduled to return to the track tomorrow as they compete in the Big Dakota Conference Meet scheduled to be held in Miller (weather permitting). And the weather won't. The Meet has been called off so their is no Big Dakota Conference Track and Field meet tomorrow in Miller.

Also, the first middle school track and field meet of the season for Pierre scheduled for tomorrow has been cancelled due to tempretures forecast to be 37 degrees and a chance for rain and snow.

The South Dakota High School Activities Association will be meeting in Pierre over the course of tomorrow and Wednesday for their annual meeting and to finalize the re-alignment of Districts and Regions and talk about changing some of the classifications for high school football in the state although they won't take, or are not expected anyway to take, any action on that.

And several people have asked me about when we start our Legion Baseball broadcast this year. The answer is "We Aren't". We will have details later.

Rod's Thursday Sports Things

The winter weather we are going to get over the course of the next couple of days has forced the postponement or cancellation of a couple of Track and Field meet. Pierre was sending some athletes to Mitchell Saturday for the annual Corn Palace Relays. That meet has now been postponed and rescheduled for Monday beginning at 4 pm. And the track and field meet scheduled in Chamberlain for Saturday has now been cancelled. The weather forcast has also forced cancellation of the opening weekend at Oahe Speedway north of Pierre. They have moved that back to two weeks and the first weekend will be April 30th and May 1st.

Meanwhile the South Dakota High School Activities Association's Board of Directors will have a two day meeting next week in Pierre on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday afternoon will be the Activities Association's Annual Meeting. The Board will meet Tuesday morning beginning at 9 am at the Pierre Riggs High School Theatre and will be adopting District and Region Re-Alignment for the next two years as well as adopt any proposals from the it's advisory committee's and the South Dakota High School Athletic Directors. There will also be several COOP request from various schools. Among the reqest is one from Sanborn Central and Woonsocket to coop in boys and girls basketball, boys and girls track and girls volleyball. Kimball and White Lake are requesting to coop in boys and girls basketball beginning next year. Cheyenne Eagle Butte and Tiospaya Topa are requesting to form a coop in football. Hoven, Eureka and Bowdle are asking to dissolve their football coop and Hoven is requesting to form a football coop with Gettysburg beginning next year.

Rod's Tuesday thoughts

And the plot thickens in the NFL's race against the clock to come to an agreement with it's players to avoid a delay at least in the start of the NFL season. Federal mediation is scheduled to begin in Thursday in Minneapolis and not Washington D.C. So far the players have won every move from getting a federal judge in Minneapolis to listen to their case to getting cases that involve the players and former players combined to having the federal mediation hearings in Minneapolis. The plot thickens.

Brian's "Tradition Unlike Any Other"

The couch potato in me (which controls about 95% of my personality on a Sunday afternoon, and at least 75% the rest of the week) had a very interesting and enjoyable day. A little after 1:00 I thought I'd sit down and watch the Twins game, since I decided my honey-do list wasn't nearly as long as it probably should have been. As it turned out, the composer of the honey-do list already had control of remote and was curled up under a blanket in the corner of our sectional lounge about 10 minutes away from drifitng off for an early spring snooze on a drizzly afternoon. I guess we both decided that our couch potato personalities -- make that our sectional lounge potato personalities -- would win the battle of good versus evil on this day. Of course we all know, good always prevails in the end.

So with the remote stopped for the time being on Animal Planet, we watched an episode of River Monsters, a reality series that I highly recommend, if you haven't seen it before. Yes, reality TV sucks, but there are a few exceptions if you watch cable instead of network TV. Anyone for Pawn Stars? Anyway, we watched the end of the episode on Snakehead species, which I had seen before, and then next also the episode on Bull Sharks that inhabit fresh water rivers in South Africa. I've seen this one before, too, but sharks are always worth watching, no matter how many times you've seen them. By the way, for the trivia buff, the largest fish ever caught in fresh water, according to the episode, is a bull shark in this very location in South Africa. It's a man-eating predator that seems to leave humans in this river alone, for whatever reason - go figure.

Okay, so after a while, Mama has now dozed off, and during a commercial break, I ended up on the Twins game, hoping their offense would finally wake up and get some momentum going in what has been a slow start to the young season. Obviously, that didn't pan out, so luckily I remembered that the final round of the Masters was going on, and that's where the afternoon got real interesting. You know, I absolutely love golf, even though I only get about five chances to play every summer, if I'm lucky. And, I've always enjoyed watching golf on TV, even though I haven't taken my chances to do that in a long time either. Well I wasn't tuned in more than a minute or two, when a no-name South African made an amazing bump-and-run chip-in from probably about 100 feet to birdie his first hole of the day. I was hooked now - no pun intended, since I was just watching River Monsters a short while ago.

Watching the early coverage of the front nine of the final day of the Masters, great shots were being turned in by several players, and they all seemed to contributing to what would turn out to be quite a log jam on the first page of the leaderboard. In fact, said South African had another unbelievable shot on the 3rd hole when he holed out his approach for eagle after spinning his ball to the back left, straight toward the cup -- back, and to the left....back, and to the left.

Everyone seemed to be off to a good start - everyone except the third round leader, that is. God bless the heart of Rory McIlroy, whose day would turn into a complete disaster, after starting the day with a four-stroke lead, but finishing 10 strokes behind the eventual champion. Six-over-par on the first three holes of the back nine to many of us is nothing new, but for a Masters tournament leader with just 9 holes to go, well, let's just call it a valuable learning experience.

So anyway, with the exception of McIlroy, yes, everyone else seemed to be off to a good start, and that everyone included the myth, the legend, Tiger Woods. Notice I didn't mention "the man" in that cliche' colloquial sequence because Tiger Woods the man is still not much worth talking about. However, Tiger Woods the GOLFER, in my opinion, is still very much worth spending a Sunday afternoon keeping an eye on. And I'll tell you what, when Tiger made up 5 strokes in his first 8 holes, I believe I said at the time, boy, he's gonna win this tournament. Well okay, so that didn't pan out, but I for one was glad to see Woods making some noise again -- or more specifically, making the crowds of spectators make some noise. I think everyone watching thought Tiger would continue his amazing day on the back nine, but when he missed a few opportunities, that he normally would not have missed, it became clear that he'll have to wait one more year for his fifth Green Jacket.

But that didn't mean there wasn't other excitement to watch. What'd they say, something like 8, maybe 10 golfers, had at least a share of the lead on the final day? Many of those were guys that people who don't follow golf every week have never even seen before, let alone perhaps guys they've even heard of. There weren't many household names in the bunch, but man, could these no-names make some golf shots! Several of these young players made great runs, but the best of them all, and the one that should be remembered, was the run of four straight birdies to finish the tournament by Charl Schwartzel, the "kid" who started the day with two absolutely amazing shots on the first three holes, a rather ho-hum performance, although still with very few mistakes between the 4th and 14th holes, and a finishing performance literally reminiscent of Jack Nicklaus, exactly 25 years after his storied back-nine run to win in '86. I've never heard of this guy until this weekend, although I guess he was ranked 29th in the world. For me personally, I would have loved to see a battle of big names coming down to the wire, but as it turned out, a battle between six or eight lesser names, plus one huge name, was about as good as I could have otherwise hoped for on an afternoon that was conducive to sectional lounge potatoes all around our area. Certainly a lot more interesting than the Twins, who finally showed some life in the 8th inning, but lost 5-3 to the Athletics. Even my wife, who was awakened after a while by one of our little dogs walking across her face, was a quite riveted by the Masters, despite asking a few times if we could watch anything else.

As I think about it, my afternoon started out watching the pursuit of bull sharks in South Africa and ended watching a young South African golfer out-perform them all, in a tournament that also featured a final-round collapse by a third round leader that reminded many of another "Shark" (Greg Norman), an Australian who coughed up third round Masters leads three times in his career, and although 3 other Aussie's had a great final day, that country is still left without a Green Jacket.

You know, all this talk about Australians and South Africans makes me think the only way to finish this day is to throw in Lethal Weapon 2. If you're a movie buff, or at least a Mel Gibson fan, you'll know what I'm talking about. Have a good week. FORE!!!

Rod's Saturday Things

Pierre had 5 first place finishers in the boys division and 1 in the girls along with a number of top 5 finishes in individual events Friday at the Huron Invitational Track and Field meet. Parker McKittrick won the 110 meter hurdles to lead the boys division. Stephan Nielsen won twice winning the 400 and 800 meter dashes. Steven Gordon won the 1600 meters and Connor Berg gathered a first place finish in the High Jump. For the Lady Govs, Geena Burley won the High Jump for the only first place finish of the day but again there were a number of 2nd, 3rd and 4th place finishes for both the boys and girls.

Rod's Thursday Thoughts

On the NFL Lockout. Owners had better look out. The judge that the NFL and the Players had their case before yesterday seems to be leaning towards the players. She is insisting that the two sides go back to the negotiating table and get a deal hammered out because if she has a rule in a couple of weeks, the NFL owners are not going to be happy. The players need to shut up also. One of the members of the Baltimore Ravens referred to Commissioner Roger Goodell as an "Idiot" on a radio show earlier this week. Number 1, the Commish is not an idiot. He is limited to what he can do and does not sit in a position to make any offers to the players to end the lockout. The owners are settling in for the long haul. All season perhaps until the union de-certified and the case when the courts. We all know what the legal system could come up with and it ain't pretty. At the rate this is going, it seems that at least the start of the NFL season is in jeapordy and that is exactly what the owners want.

Rod's Wednesday Thoughts

OK, I missed on Monday Night's game and missed badly. How was I to know that Butler would come out and lay an egg and shoot a record low 18 percent from the field. It wasn't UConn's stiff defense that cause Butler to set a record. It was Butlers inability to put the ball in the hole. Simple as that. It was just one of those nights. Unfortunatly, Butler picked a bad night to have one of those nights. But there were at least 66 other teams who started the tournament that wished they were in the spot Butler was in. I don't know if Butler will be back in the tournament or the final four next year, but I hope they do. And by the way, I did pick the NCAA Women's tournament championship game right.

Rod's Monday Thoughts

Tonight is the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament championship game. It is time for me to make a prediction. Although UConn is playing well, so is Butler. Butler plays defense and as I heard over the weekend can look good while not playing good. They were denied last year when the half court desperation buzzer beater rimmed out no good. They will not be denied tonight. Butler will be the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Champion. Predicted Final Score. Butler 65, UConn 61.

Tomorrow night is the Womens NCAA Championship game. A surprise. Texas A&M vs. Notre Dame. Not UConn vs. Stanford. My prediction for tomorrow night. Texas A & M defeats Notre Dame in a close game, 62-60.

Closer to home, don't forget tonight is the Pierre Post 8 American Legion and Teener Baseball Registration. All players, from the 13-14 Teener team to the two 15-16 A Teener teams Pierre is planning to put on the field this summer to the Legion squad, should bring a $25 registration check with them. And then community, get ready for raffle ticket sales so the players can help fund the program. Registration is 5 to 7 pm and then the Post 8 Baseball Board Meeting will be held after that. The Legion will start their season again in May on the 14th and the 15th when they host Aberdeen and Rapid City Post 320 in triangualars at Hyde Stadium. Bob Sullivan will begin is third and final season as head coach. Bob will be moving to Omaha after the season is over. He resigned from his teaching position and assistant head wrestling coaching position with Pierre Public Schools on Monday. This of course also means that I will need to find another person to be color commentary guy for Governor football broadcast next fall. Best of luck Bob.