Transitioning As Calendar Flips To November
November 1, 2017 at 3:50 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
Yesterday was Halloween, and tomorrow the first girls basketball games in our area are scheduled – that makes this “transition day.”
This is the day we come to grips with the fact that, for about the only time in the high school sports schedule, sports overlap from one season to another. Sure, track teams run a few indoor qualifiers for the Hoosier State Relays in March, but this is where volleyball players and cross country runners become basketball players literally overnight.
So today, I want to hit on a bunch of different things.
Phil Jensen is now the all-time winningest coach in Warsaw football history. The Tigers’ win over Chesterton in the playoffs last Friday was his 104th over two stints at Warsaw – one more than George Fisher, whom Warsaw’s football field is named after.
Remember the “what if” article I wrote two weeks ago? Here’s another one: What if Phil Jensen had never survived that first season at Warsaw?
Jensen’s first game in 1996 was a 12-0 home loss to Tippecanoe Valley. The picture in the sports section of the Times-Union the following morning was one that stunned the community. It was an artfully-taken Gary Nieter special of the new coach addressing one of his players, loudly, while holding his facemask very, very close to his own face.
There were many who were not impressed.
Warsaw hung with him through a two-win season that first year to win six the next year, and then from 1999-2002 they won a total of 35 games.
Now his name is on the flag at the top of the mountain at Warsaw Community High School, and he deserves that.
I hope the community appreciates it … and appreciates him.
Tippecanoe Valley opens up the local girls basketball schedule in our area tomorrow night when it hosts Bremen. The Lady Vikings start the year at No. 6 in the Class 3A preseason poll. They will look much different than they have for the last few years without a class led by Anne Secrest, who is now at Youngstown State, that was the heart and soul of the program for four years.
For Warsaw, the key word also is “new.” The Lady Tigers have a new coach in Lenny Krebs and a whole new starting five after they graduated all five starters and nearly 82 percent of the scoring from last season.
Krebs is a high-energy guy, and the girls seem to have taken to his approach quickly. The question that will have to be answered over time will be “will they be able to score enough points to win games on their schedule?” It might be that they have to hold teams to under 40 points per game until the offense catches up. It’s a 22-game season, so they have time to do that.
This World Series has been fantastic for all of the reasons that we love baseball and sports in general.
One thing that hasn’t been that great – what time the games get over! Sunday night’s epic 13-12 Astro win in Game 5 ended after 1 a.m. eastern time.
Baseball has to address this, and I have the answer.
Why not start the playoff games at 7 p.m. eastern time? The Grossman Plan would then have the game start live in the every time zone in the country. The network would then record the game and start a tape delayed version at 7 p.m. in all of the time zones. So, for example, a game would start at 7 p.m. eastern live, 7 p.m. central an hour later, 7 p.m. mountain two hours later and 7 p.m. pacific three hours later.
The argument to the Grossman Plan is that, via social media, anyone could find out what was happening in the game before it was shown on TV in their time zone – and that is true.
But if you want to watch the game, it won’t hurt you to stay off Twitter for a while.
The game airs in prime time in all markets, it gets done before even the late night local news anchors go to bed and most importantly it allows kids to see more of, if not all of, the games. With football in some real trouble from a marketing standpoint, baseball has an opening to gain back some of its “America’s Past Time” nickname.
It can’t do that when kids go to bed in the third inning because it’s already past their bedtime.
Kids can’t dream about what they have not seen.
Yesterday was Halloween, and tomorrow the first girls basketball games in our area are scheduled – that makes this “transition day.”
This is the day we come to grips with the fact that, for about the only time in the high school sports schedule, sports overlap from one season to another. Sure, track teams run a few indoor qualifiers for the Hoosier State Relays in March, but this is where volleyball players and cross country runners become basketball players literally overnight.
So today, I want to hit on a bunch of different things.
Phil Jensen is now the all-time winningest coach in Warsaw football history. The Tigers’ win over Chesterton in the playoffs last Friday was his 104th over two stints at Warsaw – one more than George Fisher, whom Warsaw’s football field is named after.
Remember the “what if” article I wrote two weeks ago? Here’s another one: What if Phil Jensen had never survived that first season at Warsaw?
Jensen’s first game in 1996 was a 12-0 home loss to Tippecanoe Valley. The picture in the sports section of the Times-Union the following morning was one that stunned the community. It was an artfully-taken Gary Nieter special of the new coach addressing one of his players, loudly, while holding his facemask very, very close to his own face.
There were many who were not impressed.
Warsaw hung with him through a two-win season that first year to win six the next year, and then from 1999-2002 they won a total of 35 games.
Now his name is on the flag at the top of the mountain at Warsaw Community High School, and he deserves that.
I hope the community appreciates it … and appreciates him.
Tippecanoe Valley opens up the local girls basketball schedule in our area tomorrow night when it hosts Bremen. The Lady Vikings start the year at No. 6 in the Class 3A preseason poll. They will look much different than they have for the last few years without a class led by Anne Secrest, who is now at Youngstown State, that was the heart and soul of the program for four years.
For Warsaw, the key word also is “new.” The Lady Tigers have a new coach in Lenny Krebs and a whole new starting five after they graduated all five starters and nearly 82 percent of the scoring from last season.
Krebs is a high-energy guy, and the girls seem to have taken to his approach quickly. The question that will have to be answered over time will be “will they be able to score enough points to win games on their schedule?” It might be that they have to hold teams to under 40 points per game until the offense catches up. It’s a 22-game season, so they have time to do that.
This World Series has been fantastic for all of the reasons that we love baseball and sports in general.
One thing that hasn’t been that great – what time the games get over! Sunday night’s epic 13-12 Astro win in Game 5 ended after 1 a.m. eastern time.
Baseball has to address this, and I have the answer.
Why not start the playoff games at 7 p.m. eastern time? The Grossman Plan would then have the game start live in the every time zone in the country. The network would then record the game and start a tape delayed version at 7 p.m. in all of the time zones. So, for example, a game would start at 7 p.m. eastern live, 7 p.m. central an hour later, 7 p.m. mountain two hours later and 7 p.m. pacific three hours later.
The argument to the Grossman Plan is that, via social media, anyone could find out what was happening in the game before it was shown on TV in their time zone – and that is true.
But if you want to watch the game, it won’t hurt you to stay off Twitter for a while.
The game airs in prime time in all markets, it gets done before even the late night local news anchors go to bed and most importantly it allows kids to see more of, if not all of, the games. With football in some real trouble from a marketing standpoint, baseball has an opening to gain back some of its “America’s Past Time” nickname.
It can’t do that when kids go to bed in the third inning because it’s already past their bedtime.
Kids can’t dream about what they have not seen.
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