Here’s the complete conversation with John Loney, Rushford-Peterson High School Athletic Director, looking ahead to the possibility of spring sports. No question, there’s a lot of uncertainty right now.
Spring sports in Minnesota have been put on hold, just as many other sectors of the state have, due to the coronavirus. Just as spring sports athletes across the state were getting underway with practices they’ll have to take a short break. The Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) suspended all activities between Wednesday, March 18, through Friday, March 27.
Because of the Emergency Executive Order signed on March 15 by Governor Tim Walz, there will be no MSHSL activities and athletics at any of the member schools. That includes training, practices, scrimmages, and contests. Rushford-Peterson Athletic Director John Loney says students won’t have any organized practices with coaches after Tuesday, March 17.
Spring sports like baseball, softball, track, and golf are all on hold in Minnesota, thanks to the coronavirus. As of right now, they’re tentatively scheduled to resume on April 6. (photo from kfilradio.com)
“As of right now, we’re scheduled to return to school on March 30,” he said. The activities association says we can resume spring sports on April 6. I’m sure they’ll be gathering information and monitoring the situation leading up to that date.
“The one thing we have going for us here is the spring activities we offer are all outside,” Loney added. “They are also not quite as physical as basketball and football, where kids spend a lot of time running into each other.”
Loney is concerned about the fact that the recommended number of people in group settings keeps getting smaller to help control the spread of coronavirus, which could be a challenge for getting spring sports contests going once school resumes. Loney is still hoping to get at least some games in so the seniors can end their high school years on a positive note.
Here’s the latest Chad Smith Media podcast with the full interview from Mensink. It’s downloadable. Just click on the three buttons stacked on the right side and hit download.
Fillmore Central football fans will find things look a lot different when they head out to the home field in Harmony for the season opener on Friday, August 30th, against United South Central. After a couple of years of plans and discussions, as well as several months of hard work, the football facility upgrades all but completed. Falcons’ head coach (and Athletic Director) Chris Mensink said the upgrade idea got started because of very little room on the home sideline.
Falcons didn’t have enough room
“Our home sideline was right on a hillside,” he said, “which
meant there were some safety issues. We talked initially about sliding the
field away from the hill but were limited because we host junior high baseball
on that same field. The question was how do we do that slide things over?
“We ended up moving the baseball field up behind the
community center where we practice football,” he said. “The school owns all
that practice area up there. Once we found a new place to put the baseball
field, that kickstarted the process of putting a football-only facility
together.”
He said sliding the field to give the team more room on the sideline, as well as adding in a 500-seat grandstand, eventually led to a larger-scale renovation process. Eventually, the project included new lights, crowning the field, and putting in a new watering system. “We’re now building a structure to hold the concession stand, a ticket area, some new bathrooms, and a locker room for the referees,” he said.
Mensink said the Falcons the kids were “basically standing on a hillside and couldn’t have any benches on their sideline.” Back when the district built the press box, they added a bunch of fill to the area so the fans could see over the top of the kids standing on the sideline.
Safety concerns
“That made the sideline really tight to the hill,” Mensink
said. “If we had a player get injured, he wouldn’t be able to sit on a bench
along the sideline because of that hill. If they tried to sit on a table so the
trainer could look them over, the tables would tip over.
“Also, the area where the old concession stand sat was fenced,” he added. “That fence was a little tight to the back corner of the end zone. If a player went too far out of the back of the end zone, they were running into that fence and we don’t want kids getting hurt.”
Workers lay the foundations for the new facilities at the Fillmore Central football field. (Contributed photo)
When a football field doesn’t have a crown on it, that’s when it can get flooded by heavy rainfall. “The soil contained a lot of clay, which made it really hard,” Mensink said. “We were having a hard time keeping grass on it, so the surface wasn’t what it should be. When we took a hard look at the field, we decided to do this right and crown the field.”
Crowning the field
For those who don’t know, crowning a football field is a lot of work. Workers start the project by removing the topsoil from the field. “They brought in a sandy mixture of soil as soon as we were done playing last fall,” Mensink recalled. “You use that sandy soil to build the crown. After that, workers brought in eight inches of black dirt and piled it on top of the sandier soil last spring. They re-graded everything, slid it over to where it needed to be, and that’s when we put the sod down.”
There was a lot of good help as Fillmore Central’s football field got some new sod this summer. Sand brought in and piled underneath the sod gave the field a crown it had been lacking to help promote drainage. (Contributed photo)
School officials even talked about flipping the field, so it
ran north and south instead of east and west. Mensink said that would have
involved a lot of extra work, including moving the crow’s next.
Thanks to everyone who helped
He said they wouldn’t be able to make improvements of this magnitude without the support of the administration. “The district has been putting some money away in their building fund,” Mensink said. “The fund balance helped us make a lot of improvements at the football field and helps with ongoing projects at the school building.”
Falcon fans will be sitting on the other sideline this fall. Mensink said officials put in a 500-foot grandstand that will be “nice and close to the action,” and everyone will have a great view of the game. He said the field has a “nice crown on it” and looks “really nice.”
Mensink thanks everyone who helped out. He says the list of everyone who helped with the project is gigantic. “We put sod down with a great deal of volunteer help,” Mensink recalled. “We put down five semi loads of sod in a day, which was an amazing cost-saving for our district.
New seating at the Fillmore Central football field means the fans get a great view of the games. (Contributed Photo)
“Scheevel and Sons Construction handled all of the gradings
on this project,” he said. “Stateline Cement did all the cement work for areas
underneath the bleachers, for the sidewalks, and the concession areas. Morem’s
Electric handled all the electrical work. VIS Plumbing handled all the plumbing
work at the facility.”
Fillmore Central fans will get to enjoy the new facility right away as three of the first four games of the fall season will be on the Falcons’ home field.
The University of Minnesota-Crookston baseball team describes itself as “gritty, not pretty.” Whatever they’d like to call themselves, it’s working. In spite of the challenges that come with a small-college program, the Golden Eagles won 14 of their first 22 games. Eagles head coach Steven Gust said they’re playing some pretty good baseball in spite of fielding a young roster this spring.
“We’re getting the job done,” he said with a smile visible through the phone. “it’s been a bit of a surprise because we lost key contributors from last year’s team. However, we’re finding ways to win in spite of that.
Steven Gust is the head coach of the University of Minnesota-Crookston baseball team. (Photo from goldeneaglesports.com)
“We aren’t going to overpower people on the mound this season,” he said. “Our best kid from last year, Zach Seipel, got drafted by the Atlanta Braves. That’s good news but he was only a junior, so we did expect him back this year. The kids we do have back are doing a good job of filling the strike zone, mixing their speeds, and are attacking hitters.”
The first player drafted
Getting a player drafted into Major League Baseball is a feather in the cap of any program. However, it’s an even bigger feather for a small school like Minnesota-Crookston because he was the first Golden Eagle ever picked in the MLB draft. What makes it an even better story is the young man didn’t originally come in to pitch for the Golden Eagles.
“I saw him as a catcher in legion baseball,” Gust recalled. “I
thought he had a pretty decent arm behind the plate. I wasn’t sure about his hitting,
but good defensive catchers can be hard to find. It was one of my first years
coaching and our pitching was thin. We needed someone to pitch the end of a
scrimmage and he volunteered after pitching just nine total innings in high
school.”
Gust said, “The ball jumped out of Zach’s hand and he was around the zone. After that, we told him to sell his catcher’s glove and he became our closer. He left here throwing a 93-94 mile-per-hour fastball. He’s a great kid and he’s only going to get better as a player.”
The University of Minnesota-Crookston was understandably excited when Zach Seipel became the first Golden Eagle drafted by a Major League Baseball team. He went to the Atlanta Braves in the 27th round and head coach Steven Gust said he expects Zach to do well and move up the chain. (Photo from goldeneaglesports.com)
Getting a player drafted is big milestone considering that
before Gust and the current staff arrived, the Golden Eagles had won just two
of their previous 100 games. Literally, the team was 2 and 98 before Gust showed
up.
Building a program
“We were fortunate to add some good players to some really good-character kids that were already here,” Gust said, “and they all bought in right away. There are so many pieces to the puzzle when you’re trying to build a program like Minnesota-Crookston.
“The pieces include working on facilities and trying to get
the highest quality you can,” he added. “You have to find good assistant
coaches that don’t mind working for literally nothing other than their passion
for the game. We also don’t have a lot of scholarships to offer, so that’s not
a strength either.”
When Gust took over the program, there were 18 Golden Eagles
on the roster. Now, in spite of some limitations that come with smaller-school
athletics, they currently have 46 players on the roster. They recruit primarily
in Minnesota and North Dakota. They’ll include a few kids out of Wisconsin,
Iowa, and South Dakota as well.
“The majority of our kids come in from our backyard,” he
said. “We’ve created some excitement in the area by bringing in a lot of
familiar players. The attendance and support from the community have been
great. We’re just trying to do the little things that maybe one day will allow
us to start thinking about winning a championship.
“We don’t have any 5-tool recruits,” Gust added. “We’re
getting better players who happen to be good students as well. Our team GPA in
the fall was 3.3, which is almost unheard of. We’re looking for guys who might
have a little chip on the shoulder because they weren’t recruited by some of the
bigger schools. They’ll have a passion for what they’re doing out there on the
field.”
Gust added, “There’s no way I could run a program if I didn’t have a great group of people around me.”
Weather is a challenge
Like most schools in the north, the weather is always a challenge to deal with. Gust said one of the biggest goals for all the Crookston programs is to get a covered practice facility. What really hurts the team is not being able to get outside much early in the season to get some much-needed practice in. Gust says, “I think that’s coming here at Minnesota-Crookston, it’s just a matter of when.”
The Eagles team is basically brand-new this season. They
graduated a lot of seniors from last spring’s squad. Last year, Crookston won
24 baseball games, but Gust said they were “disappointed” because they thought
they were headed back to the postseason tournament. However, it didn’t happen.
“We have several junior college players on the roster this spring,” Gust said. “Sometimes, it’s hard for Junior College players to buy in when they come to a four-year school. However, our guys seem to have bought in right away. We’ve found ways to get things done so far in spite of facing some really good pitching in the first three weeks of the conference season.”
NSIC a solid conference
From top-to-bottom, the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference is one of the best Division Two conferences in the country. For example, they have the defending national champion Augustana (Sioux Falls, SD) Vikings as a member of the conference.
“Minnesota-State Mankato is always good,” Gust said. “Concordia-St.
Paul has some really solid arms this season. St. Cloud State might be the team
to beat. Even the teams that have been on the bottom over the past few years
have gotten better. Teams like the University of Mary (Bismarck, ND) and Minot
State (Minot, North Dakota) are among the teams taking steps forward.”
Even before they got going in their conference schedule,
Crookston headed south to play some very good non-conference squads. They
started off their season with perennial power Central Missouri State. Gust said
people told him he was crazy to play them. However, he did see some good things
in spite of losing to CMS.
“I thought a lot of good things came out of playing tough
competition like that,” he said. “I saw signs that we could be a pretty good
team. We also went down to Florida to play some really tough teams too. I think
our non-conference schedule really prepared us well to do some good things in
the conference.”
I expected controversial, but what I got was a delightful sports conversation. I was glad to be wrong. I caught up with Jim Souhan, the long-time sportswriter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, during an interview for a weekly podcast I co-host called Minnesota Sports Weekly. If the old saying is “never judge a book by its cover,” I get what that really means.
Jim Souhan, long-time sports writer and columnist, sat down with me to visit on our podcast, Minnesota Sports Weekly. (Photo from Twitter.com)
“I’ve been with the Star Tribune 28.5 years,” he said. “I was an Air Force brat growing up and moved all over the country, but I’d never visited Minnesota until I came here for a job interview in February of 1990. Back then, my industry was mobile, so I thought I’d be here for a bit and then head someplace else. Had kids and settled in, so, as I always tell people, I’ve been here 28-and-a-half years and, if I make it another 30, Minnesotans might almost think of me as a native.”
Souhan describes himself as a “geek” growing up, so he was an avid reader. He played Strat-O-Matic baseball, Sports Illustrated baseball, and was really into reading about sports, especially baseball (he’s a baseball guy, in case that hadn’t clicked yet). Souhan grew up in the Pennsylvania/Maryland area when the Baltimore Orioles were one of the best franchises in baseball. It was during the era of colorful characters like Earl Weaver, Brooks Robinson, and Jim Palmer.
“I have a thousand autographs from each of them,” Souhan said. “Going to big-league games wasn’t very expensive, so you could go to a lot of them. That was in my formative years. I loved reading and I loved sports. When I went to high school, I ran track and cross country. The student newspaper wasn’t covering it, so I volunteered to write about it myself. That was my introduction to getting published and I loved it. I was living in St. Louis at the time and went to college at the University of Missouri.”
During the early years of his career, Souhan described himself as a “grunt,” typing in box scores while making six dollars an hour with no benefits. After that, he was promoted to an assistant high school writer for ten dollars an hour with no benefits. Then, he became the primary high school sports writer for the Dallas Morning News. Souhan then took a big jump, getting promoted to the Dallas Cowboys beat writer position. After a year in that job, he said the Star Tribune came calling.
Souhan made the jump to become the Vikings beat writer for a few years. He’s also covered the Twins and was a roving feature writer for the Trib back when “budgets were a little bigger.” A column position came open in 2004 and he’s been doing that ever since. Souhan has even gotten into podcasting, starting his own company called Talk North. His early years in the beat writer position, combined with his experience writing columns has given him unique insights into the Minnesota sports market. A recent column on the Timberwolves dysfunctional situation, saying the NBA is a little bit more public than other leagues when it comes to this.
“I haven’t seen a winning team with this much dysfunction,” he recalled. “That’s where the NBA is different from other sports because it’s all about personalities, egos, money, and how all those things mesh together. I’ve really never seen anything like the last year in Timberwolves history. Here they go, winning close to 50 games, they go to the playoffs, they win a game against a very good team in the playoffs, they have loads of talent, and nobody is happy.”
It’s hard for anybody in the Wolves organization to know what will happen next. Souhan says it’s hard to know what (Head Coach/GM) Tom Thibodeaux is going to do, if it’s sustainable, and whether he can maintain relationships. He’s basically made star player Jimmy Butler a de facto assistant coach, who might be leaving after next season. And that’s not the only challenge ahead.
“Karl-Anthony Towns is said to be less-than-thrilled with the way things are going and I get that,” Souhan said. “He’s the most talented guy on the team and he’s not the focal point. You never know when Andrew Wiggins is going to play hard. Jamal Crawford came in eager to play with this team but couldn’t wait to leave after the season. It’s fascinating, but troubling, that two years ago, they looked like the most promising young team in the league. While they are still promising, there are some big decisions ahead.”
On a brighter note, the Minnesota Vikings are gearing up for a Super Bowl run after falling one game short of being the first team in history to host a Super Bowl. After signing quarterback Kirk Cousins away from Washington, Souhan said the Vikings season will be fun to watch because this team is loaded.
“This team looks really good on paper,” he said. “Cousins is going to do really well in this offense. (Running back) Dalvin Cook being back in this offense could make them really dynamic. You could even see (wide receiver) Laquan Treadwell finally emerge. Kendall Wright is a very good slot receiver. They are really loaded but keep in mind, so is the rest of the NFC.”
Looking into professional baseball, he said a lot of the Twins challenges this summer have been multiple injuries to several key players. Souhan said the team did a great job of building what may be the deepest pitching staff they’ve had in years, and that’s with Ervin Santana eventually coming back from an injury. There are some middle relief issues they need to figure out, but he said, “that’s not unusual for any team.”
Souhan offers some additional thoughts on the injury situations surrounding young Twins stars Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton:
