Sports

Last week came the stunning news that Norwegian long-distance runner Grete Waitz had died at age 57. If there’s one person who had a profound affect on long distance running it was Waitz
She put women’s running on the map what with nine New York Marathon wins including the inaugural running of the event.

For four days every April, I get hooked on a televised sporting event called The Masters. The sport in question is “goff.” It looks a lot like golf, but according to patrician looking elderly men in green blazers appearing on the Masters television broadcasts, it’s “goff.”
Masters goff is about wealthy young men playing a golf-like game in front of an extremely well dressed and polite audience in a fairyland setting known as the Augusta National course.
The Augusta goffcourse with its almost Photoshopped hyper real green grass, magnificent magnolia tree blossoms and birds chirping happily looks and sounds like it was created by Disney Studios.
Almost every image from the Augusta goffcourse is accompanied by a truly bad soundtrack of new-age piano tinkling backed by lush strings. Add in some oh-so-gentile banter between the goffers and the television talking heads (one of them, Nick Faldo, is a British Knight) and you have a very surreal sporting event.
What makes The Masters even cooler is that the television talking heads anoint the new champion days before the event starts. This year Phil Mickelson won the tournament. His win was celebrated by a half-hour homage entitled “Phil at Augusta” that aired on the third day of the tournament. That was followed later by a five-minute slavish tribute later during that day’s television coverage.
Put it out of your mind that your local newspaper this morning will say somebody named Charl Schwartzel won the tournament. He didn’t, Mickleson won easily.

Actually, this report from last night’s edition of Frontline was a startling, if not shocking, look at the business behind the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament.
While this year’s tournament has been crazier than just about any year prior, the report outlined the big money behind this sport.

Last year, the sixth-grade Pilot Butte Middle School girls “Greenwave” basketball team went winless. However, they ended the season showing what team sports could be as the team played for the fun of it, smiled, laughed and made new friends.

Every year, I promise myself never ever to pick any of the extremely over-rated Big East teams on my NCAA basketball tournament bracket. But I succumbed again this year and picked Pitt to go to the Final Four.

Local skiing and biking coach, Bill Warburton was just chosen to go to Finland to support the US Team at the Winter Triathlon World Champs in Jamijarvi. Bill is known in Bend as the Cycling Program Director and Nordic Coach for the Bend Endurance Academy.
A Winter Triathlon combines running with skate skiing and mountain biking on snow. Bill will help the US team with ski waxing and coaching. Last year, USA team member Rebecca Dussault won the 2010 Winter Triathlon World Championship individual title in Eidsvoll, Norway. The USA Women’s team also won the Team Relay in 2010.

Hot of the presses: The Redmond Student Selection Committee has announced the three finalist for the mascot at the new Ridgeview High School in Redmond. We like all three of the names that they’ve come up with, Rattlers, Coyotes and Ravens,  and a few of the ways that they could be tied into Ridgeview’s homecourt (gym).

Earlier this week, Forbes magazine told Northwesterners what most of us already know: Seattle is the most miserable sports city in the entire country.
For those of us that grew up in Seattle — or those Oregonians who consider Seattle their home teams —  it’s hard to argue with this declaration.

In the afterglow of the Green Bay Packers win at last weekend’s Super Bowl, I started thinking about how I came to being of those  “once a Packer fan, always a Packer fan” people.
It began when I first got interested in pro football at age 10. My dad, a Wisconsin Badger through and through, loved the Packers with equal passion. Then, some 13 years later, fate put me on the sidelines on December 14, 1963 with the great Packer team quarterbacked by Bart Starr.
How I came to be on the sidelines started innocuously with an invite from my pal, Dr. Ed Washburn, to help him out during the high school football games at San Francisco’s old Kezar Stadium, then the home of the 49ers and host to all the important city league high school games. Washburn was the official head physician for all high school games played at Kezar.