Dixon volleyball "Digs Pink"

Got some good photos, I think, but as always my photos always look better before I put them online. The whole gallery is on the Daily Guide website here, there's a partial game story here.

(S)Iberian Divide

This does it for my baseball coverage this year...most of my damn games were rained out. I got stuck with soccer.

Now I must live with endless pointless summer activities that no one cares about until I finally get some Friday Night Football in August.

Here's the baseball:

IBERIA—By his own admission, Eugene junior pitcher Damon Adrian is not the ace of the Eagle staff. His performance in Wednesday night’s Class 2 District 8 championship game against Iberia could have fooled anyone.

“It’s a pretty good feeling,” he said after his 6-1 complete game victory at Hooper Field in Iberia.

But he’s not the ace.

“No, our ace is going to pitch on Monday,” he said when asked if he’d go again in the Class 1 sectional. “Not me.”

Really? Adrian’s not the ace?

“Well, I guess we’re pretty even,” Adrian said. “But he’s number one.”

Adrian fanned eight in a complete seven innings of work, holding the top-seeded Iberia Rangers to two hits.

Rest of the story is here: Daily Guide

Ten Second News

Maybe this will take longer than 10 seconds to read, but I got some front page treatment last week:


That's my photo, too. You can read that full story here.

There's more:

-Some recaps of district basketball action from last week can be found here, here, here and here.
-Posted some of my highlights from basketball season on the Collegian Writers' Blog.
-An entertaining (if I do say so myself) preview of the Dutch baseball team for our World Baseball Classic coverage over at Bugs and Cranks.
-Finally, been helping out a bit on the news side. One kinda shitty story about the census, and another fairly okay story about the digital TV transition.

My back pages

The inch-thick sheet of ice that caked the entire sidewalk block of my apartment melted today, thanks to the 66-degree weather this afternoon. That's right, 66. It will go from 66 to below zero in a matter of days. I used to think that Michigan had messed-up weather, but now I know Missouri takes the cake.

I guess it doesn't matter how cold it is, though, since it's winter sports season and I'm inside all the damn time. This week, I went to three different sporting events at Waynesville High School. I have pep-band renditions of popular music permanently stuck in my head. Mostly classic rock fare - the band's rendition of "Carry On, Wayward Son" is the main offender here, along with the team's fight song, which I'm pretty sure really is "Eye of the Tiger," seeing as how they play it every timeout. The third-most-played song, though? Green Day. "Holiday." Damn if it isn't really catchy when played by a pep band...now that I think about it, brass makes it a better song.

Anyway, enough horseplay: tomorrow marks my very first sports "section." I got one-and-a-half pages instead of one because there's never anything for the "outdoors" page and no one actually wants to write anything. So I was able to write two long features. Both are about wrestling. Go to the SadBear blog for more info on the Minnesota wrestler, it's a weird story...) No electronic link yet, but you can see the layout. Here you are:

Ballin' it up

There's something I really like about this photo, and I'm not sure what it is (it goes with this story, which isn't that good...I should have written better). Maybe it's that their poses are so creepy-looking and seem unnatural - almost like something you'd find in a wax museum or on a mannequin. Especially Mariah Wilder's (21) face and where she has her hands in relation to the ball. But it's real game action. I like the color, too. I got lucky, I think.

(I also like this photo of the boys team, just for the action of the guy in front.)

Ed. Note: A slight tweaking. Content has not changed. I wanted two sidebars. There you have them. Carry on.

SportsTime

Despite the terrible header (which we're getting rid of, thank God), I like today's sports page. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I wrote 80 inches of copy tonight. What can I say? I'm proud of the fruits of my labor. And my game story (on the Waynesville-Lebanon game) is probably the best I've done since I got here. Check it (full story online here):



Here's a bit of that game story - the beginning, anyway:

Jack Hittinger, Daily Guide
WAYNESVILLE--Going into Friday night’s tussle with Ozark Conference and district foe Lebanon, Waynesville head basketball coach Tim Bildner knew his team would have to be ready to defend the three. His team prepared accordingly.
He didn’t, however, prepare for this: a 68-66 “barn burner” that saw the Waynesville Tigers (13-3, 2-0 Ozark Conference) come back from an eight-point deficit, lead by nine, and then win by two. All of this, mind you, took place in a span of eight minutes in the third and fourth quarters.
“I’m glad to survive that one,” Bildner said while sitting on the bleachers after the game.
He needed the rest. The visiting Yellowjackets (8-7, 0-3) made 13 three-pointers out of 26 attempts–a 50 percent clip.
“We can’t even get that on two-pointers,” Bildner said, shaking his head.

The rest of the story, as I said, will be online Monday. So you'll have to wait. But here are some pictures, if you are so inclined: BJ Ray dunking; Kendall Lewis (this one would be sweet if he wasn't blurry); Donald Perry (need to figure out how to edit so the flash from another camera doesn't look so obvious); Brandyn Preston; Preston dunking.

Tigers eek out 'W' vs. Prates

By Jack Hittinger, Daily Guide

From the beginning of Thursday night’s meet, it certainly looked as if the Waynesville High School wrestling team would have a big upper hand against Branson. But the Tigers didn’t wrestle their best, and only beat the Pirates 44-27—a score that, according to WHS coaches, should have been higher.

The rest here.

Fight to the finish

By Jack Hittinger, Daily Guide

LEBANON - The raw numbers of the final score wouldn’t indicate it, but the Waynesville Tigers were lucky to get out of Lebanon High School’s Boswell Auditorium with a 64-53 win in Thursday night’s Central Bank Invitational Basketball Tournament.

Jefferson City Helias hung with the Tigers the entire game thanks to some shoddy defense and costly turnovers on the Waynesville side.

Tiger head coach Tom Bildner certainly didn’t like what he saw on defense.
“We weren’t following our own defensive rules tonight,” he said. “We did not apply the proper defensive help or pressure.

“I know that they understand what to do because they execute it in practice, but for some reason live games are different.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Basketball season tips off

By Jack Hittinger, Daily Guide

LAQUEY - The Frisco League’s annual conference basketball tournament kicked off Saturday afternoon at Laquey High School. Saturday were both boys’ and girls’ play-in games as well as both boys’ and girls’ 4 vs. 5 first-round matchups.

More here.