Tigers Take First Class Title

The nickname is Minutemen, named after the men who would be ready at a minute's notice to pluck their guns out of a haystack or barn or wherever and go to war. The war in front of the Concord Minutemen was not on a battlefield but on a basketball court against Warsaw.And for 12 minutes against Warsaw, the Minutemen fired nothing but blanks. The fruitless stretch was too much to overcome as Warsaw, a team with eight seniors on its roster, beat a Concord team with three seniors 53-42 in Saturday's Elkhart 4A Sectional championship.The sectional title is Warsaw's first in the class system and first since 1997.Elkhart Central ousted Warsaw in the sectional the last two years. "For me, this sectional championship is special for a lot of reasons," Warsaw coach Al Rhodes said."I believe it's my 14th in 20 years at Warsaw.With this format, this is like winning a regional now.It's tougher to win a 4A sectional.

'The General' Still Commands Attention

Bob Knight hadn't opened his mouth, but already the former quick-tempered Indiana University men's basketball coach was intimidating people. His reach extended outside, beyond the doors of the Ramada Wagon Wheel Theatre. "Do you think he will be mad at us if we're late?" asked someone trotting to the doors with seconds to spare before Saturday's 4 p.m.show. No, if people arrived late, Knight didn't call them on it.But the time away from coaching hasn't turned him as soft as the belly he carries, either.The emcee started his introduction of Knight by telling all those present to turn their cell phones and pagers off."Better me asking you than someone else," the man warned as the audience chuckled.

Both Sides In School Debate Have Merit

I guess I was kind of disappointed that the dispute between Warsaw Community Schools and some of its patrons wound up in court. I really hoped it wouldn't come to that. I don't like the idea of lawsuits, motions, hearings, injunctions and the like when it comes to educating kids. It has been a difficult few months for these two groups of people and I can see why. On the one hand, if I was a parent in a small town, I wouldn't relish the thought of having my kid take a long bus ride to a portable classroom. On the other hand, if I was a school administrator, I wouldn't be too thrilled about budget shortfalls in my general fund. On the other hand (I know, that's one too many hands) I can see where it might be a little hard to take as a taxpayer when the school corporation's telling you they can't afford to maintain schools in small towns and simultaneously approves $30 million worth of sports, auditorium and administrative construction.

A Man Named Brown

MENTONE - Raise the roof. That's all the kid - the skinny one with the long sideburns, the Nike armband wrapped around his left bicep and the band wrapped around his right leg - asked of the fans.Get up one more time, he motioned with his arms.Stand up.Make noise. Again the Tippecanoe Valley fans obliged their basketball player.The harder Jeffrey Brown Jr.pumped his arms, the louder they roared. Brown, with the help of the Vikings fans, led his team to a 33-32 overtime win over Columbia City in last Friday's sectional championship game. Brown scores 17.3 points and grabs 7.9 rebounds for the 12-10 Vikings this year.He is a slasher, arguably the best in the area at moving and cutting to the basket and splitting two defenders.He is blessed with long arms, quick hands and the ability to read the floor well. "He's the most skilled athlete we have out there," Valley coach Gregg Sciarra says.

Triton Repeats Trip To State Finals

BOURBON - Mark Heeter didn't mind at all that it rained Saturday while his top-ranked Triton girls basketball team hosted unranked Adams Central in the championship game of the semistate. Afterall, it rained last year when Triton won the semistate en route to the school's first state championship in history. With a 59-45 win over the Jets, Triton earned a return trip to Saturday's state finals at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, where the Trojans will face No.2 White River Valley. After the 14-point win, Heeter was doused with, not water or Gatorade, but a bucket full of packing peanuts. Triton (22-3), which rolled over its sectional and regional competition, came back from a five-point deficit after one quarter to top Clinton Prairie 75-60 in the morning game.

Lancers Struggle At Beginning, End

WINONA LAKE - Just erase the first two innings of game one and the last inning of game two and the Grace College softball team did an admirable job against Mid Central Conference foe Indiana Wesleyan in a doubleheader Thursday.But those three innings stung as the Wildcats outscored the Lancers 15-1 to sweep Grace 12-1 and 7-2. Freshman Rachel Liebsch, a Warsaw Communtiy High School graduate, pitched 10-2/3 innings and allowed just three earned runs for Grace. However, Indiana Wesleyan scored seven unearned runs when Liebsch was on the hill, including all four that came home in the seventh inning of the second game. The Lancers struggled offensively with just four hits in the first game, which went just five innings because of the 10-run rule.In the second game, Grace put together eight hits but got just one with runners in scoring position.

T.Valley Offense Lights Up John Glenn

MENTONE - A few weeks back, when the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal was breaking, White House Press Secretary Michael McCurry strode to the podium and started one press conference by saying, "Welcome to the theater of the absurd." The theater and all its absurdity - from fans with umbrellas to a professional wrestler on hand to watch - hit Tippecanoe Valley's gym Friday night, as the Vikings hammered John Glenn early and often en route to a 78-60 win. When Valley's offense is right, it can dominate a game.And it was right in the first half against Glenn.The Vikings had 6-foot-4 forward JayDee Parker and 6-9 center Maurice Looman scoring inside and three-point demon Eric Love scoring outside. The inside/outside combination toasted Glenn.Love finished with 27 points, while Parker added 20 points and nine rebounds.Looman had 10 points and 12 rebounds.

Miss America Asked To Abstain From Abstinence

Strange things happen in American culture. The most recent strange cultural turn of events is brought to us by none other than the venerable Miss America pageant. You know, the Miss America pageant officials really ought to take it easy. They just can't seem to avoid controversy. If they don't have some contestant embroiled in a nude photo flap, they're firing their CEO. They canned Robert Beck, their CEO of a little over a year, because of controversial rule changes he proposed. He thought the pageant should allow divorced women and women who have had abortions to enter the pageant. Pageant officials disagreed.They said they didn't fire Beck because of the proposed guideline changes, but, coincidentally, the new guidelines were put on hold right after Beck's involuntary career change. And the decision on Beck came just a couple weeks after the proposed rule changes.

College Roundup

NORTH MANCHESTER -ÊThe Manchester Spartans opened the baseball season by splitting a doubleheader with Grace College Saturday in North Manchester. In the first game, the Spartans edged the Lancers 11-10.Manchester was up 3-0 in the second inning, but Grace exploded for seven runs in the top of the third to take a 7-3 lead. However, Manchester made a comeback and scored eight runs, two in the bottom of the seventh to earn the 11-10 win.Darren Reed led the Spartans with two doubles, while Jeff Hartzell and Trevor Haley added one double each.Joel Barrus pitched the win. Grace College's Ryan Sturm led the Lancers with a home run.Thomas Boyd hit a double for Grace.

Warsaw Takes Out Central

ELKHART - Last week Warsaw boys basketball coach Al Rhodes said if his team followed the game plan, his players would beat Elkhart Central in the sectional. Never mind that Elkhart Central hosted the sectional. Never mind that Elkhart Central handed Warsaw its worst loss of the regular season, 67-52. His players followed the game plan, and the Tigers avenged their 15-point loss and knocked Elkhart Central out of its 4A sectional with a 58-50 Tuesday win.Warsaw improves to 15-7, while Elkhart Central finishes the year 14-7. The game plan was to limit the Blue Blazers' transition baskets, keep their guards from driving the lane and force them to take perimeter jump shots.

College Roundup

NORTH MANCHESTER - In the conclusion of what has been the most competitive conference season in years, Defiance capped off its season winning the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship by defeating host Manchester College 104-97. Manchester and Defiance earned a share of te regular season conference championship along with Hanover College.Defiance receives the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Division III National Tournament set to begin March 1. Manchester started the game with a 10-2 advantage and increased its lead to 23-11 with 13:05 left in the first half.Defiance proceeded to go on a 22-2 run over the next six minutes to pull ahead 33-25.Manchester was able to regroup as a team and went into halftime down by four, 46-42.

U.S. Population Impacts World

Something interesting will happen very soon, probably without a lot of fanfare. The U.S.population will pass the 300 million mark. I started writing this on Thursday morning. According to the U.S.census bureau, as of 7:49 a.m.on Thursday, the U.S.population was 299,961,592. The bureau says there is one birth every seven seconds, one death every 13 seconds, and one international migrant (net) every 31 seconds. That means there is a net gain of one person every 11 seconds, translating to a population increase of 7,854 per day. Based on those numbers, sometime next Tuesday morning there will be 300 million of us. (We hit 100 million in 1915, 200 million 52 years later in 1967.It took just 39 years for the next milestone.Experts say we'll hit 400 million sometime around 2043.) Intuitively, over the years, I've noticed the population increase. Consider things like traffic.

Area Baseball Capsules

Carroll Ends Tiger Five-Game Win Streak

FORT WAYNE - Second-year Warsaw boys basketball coach Doug Ogle said his team couldn't get over the hump at Carroll Friday night. As close as the game was at times - on the scoreboard at least - it looked more like the Tigers were staring at a mountain. A team that entered on a five game win streak, Warsaw simply turned the ball over too many times and missed too many shots in the basket area Friday, falling 62-58 to the host Chargers in front of a near-packed gym on Carroll's senior night. "In the first half we shot poorly," Ogle said."We got good shots we just didn't make them.At the same time, our transition defense was not very good and they made us pay." The Chargers certainly made Warsaw pay at the charity stripe, where Carroll cashed in by making 11 of 15 attempts in the fourth quarter alone.

Candidates' Differences Undebatable

The debate Wednesday night seemed to go pretty well for George W.Bush. He did a pretty good job talking about foreign policy, which probably surprised some people. Bush opponents have long been criticizing him for a lack of foreign policy expertise, but he came across as quite knowledgeable during the debate. Gore and Bush mostly agreed on the foreign policy matters they discussed.The only parting of the ways came when Bush suggested he might be more judicious with the use of armed forces around the world than Gore. For the most part, I don't see vast differences in the candidates on matters of foreign policy. But there are other issues where they have vastly different philosophies. Take taxes, for example. Bush believes that tax money belongs to taxpayers.That may seem ridiculously simple, but it eludes Gore, who believes that tax money belongs to the government. That's why Bush advocates across-the-board cuts in income tax rates.

St. Joe Indians Edge Warsaw Tigers

The last kind of game Will Shepherd wanted to see at Warsaw's baseball opener was a close one where one mistake decided the outcome. Of course that's just the kind of game the coach and his players got. South Bend St.Joseph edged Warsaw 1-0 Tuesday.South Bend St.Joseph's improves to 3-1, while Warsaw falls to 0-1. "We lost that game, didn't we?" Shepherd said."It wasn't a dream or a nightmare." Shepherd fretted about this kind of game because the Tigers are in a transition period with four returning lettermen on the varsity roster.Compare that with St.Joe, which features 10 seniors on its 13-player roster. The inexperienced Tigers made the one critical mistake, and the veteran Indians made them pay for it. With one out in the sixth inning, Oliver Keultjes singled to right field, sending Mike Towner from second to third.Michael Barger fielded the ball cleanly, and Towner appeared ready to stop at third.

On The Court Basketball Previews

College Roundup

FORT WAYNE -ÊNicole Chessum threw a two-hit shutout against No.16 Bethel Saturday, the best pitching performance for the Grace College softball team this year.But Rachel Liebsch matched that outing Wednesday, throwing a two-hitter against St.Francis in the first game of a doubleheader sweep of the cougars. Liebsch pitched seven shutout innings, striking out four and allowing just one runner to reach second base.The Lancers broke a 0-0 tie in the fifth inning by scoring six times as Kelli Irish, Shannon Haskins and Christina Clark hit back-to-back-to-back doubles.Grace added three runs in the sixth for a 9-0 win. The Lancers completed the sweep by defeating the Cougars 8-7 in game two.Chessum, who was named Mid-Central Conference Pitcher of the Week last week, struggled at times, but still recorded the win and struck out seven batters. Grace (5-11, 3-5 MCC) will host Marian today at 3 p.m.and is now on a three-game win streak.

'Wizard Of Westwood' Applauds Kindy's Hall Of Fame Induction

Walter Kindy's induction into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame was applauded by one of his closest friends during his lifetime. John Wooden. As in the John Wooden. As in "The Wizard of Westwood," the coaching legend. As in the basketball coach who guided UCLA to 10 national championships in 12 years, from 1964 through 1975. "He'd be very pleased," Wooden says."He took Beaver Dam to the Sweet 16 two years in a row.That was quite remarkable.The size of Beaver Dam High School...it was quite a wonderful thing he did." Kindy died in 1984, but he was inducted posthumously into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in ceremonies held in Indianapolis on Wednesday.He was one of 14 people who were inducted. Kindy coached Beaver Dam for three years.He won three sectional titles and two regional titles in those three years.His teams went to the state finals at Hinkle Fieldhouse his last two years, 1933 and 1934.

Defense, Depth Lift Warsaw Past Concord

DUNLAP - Dorothy (of Wizard of Oz fame) once said that there's no place like home.But the Warsaw girls basketball team might have found the next best thing. Playing in their first sectional ever away from Warsaw, the Tigers remained unbeaten in Concord's McCuen Gym in the Will Wienhorst era with a 59-38 win over the Minutemen in the first round of the Class 4A No.5 girls basketball sectional Tuesday. Wienhorst is now a perfect 14-0 against Concord. "Since I have been at Warsaw, we have not lost on this floor," Wienhorst said."We play pretty good basketball.We felt if we weren't playing at home, we might as well play at Concord." Warsaw did it with the defense and depth.The Tigers' trapping, halfcourt pressure defense helped force 25 Concord turnovers, and Warsaw got 25 points from its non-starters as 11 of the 12 Tiger players scored at least two points each.