A chance meeting three falls ago made me a high school cross country fan of Allie True and C.J. Barnett of Northview ever since, and now I’ll get to follow their careers a little farther.
The two Knights signed letters of intent recently to become members of the first cross country team at St. Mary-of-the-Woods, and both are excited about the opportunity — as is coach Danelle Readinger.
“We wanted to be able to run, and do it together,” said True. “St. Mary is a really good college, and we really liked the coach. It was the best opportunity presented to us.”
“Honestly, I wasn’t considering running in college,” added Barnett. “But after meeting Danelle, I thought it would be a great opportunity — to start on [St. Mary’s] first team, and be running with my best friend.”
“I’m so excited to have them,” said Readinger. “The team is coming together well for an inaugural team, and that’s not difficult with girls like [True and Barnett]. They are a joy to be around.”
Readinger has already signed six girls for next fall’s first SMWC season, including Jennifer Hughes of White River Valley.
“My goal was [to sign] eight, and now I think we may end up with eight to 10,” she said. “And it’s great to have two local girls.” A former SouthWestern Indiana Athletic Conference girls cross country champion while at Eastern Greene, Readinger also feels a connection to Hughes, she noted.
Readinger has solicited help from John McNichols and John Gartland at Indiana State in the eventual construction of a home course at The Woods, and the Pomeroys will be able to get some practice time at LaVern Gibson Championship Course. As far as a schedule is concerned, she said, “We’ve been able to get in a lot of [invitational meets], but we’ve got to publicize to a lot of schools that we’re here [fielding a team].”
The coach has no small goals for her new team, however. She’s already looking forward to the United Small College Athletic Association national meet in the fall — and not just to give her first-year team some experience.
“I think they’re more prepared [for college cross country] than they think they are,” she said of her new recruits.
For their part, C.J. and Allie are currently training for their spring track season. They admitted they hadn’t run outside on Thursday — you remember Thursday, don’t you? — but Readinger knows they’ve been diligent. “The last time I talked to them, they were laughing about getting in each other’s way and falling down while running on ice,” the coach said.
C.J. isn’t sure about what she wants to study at The Woods, while Allie has apparently taken a vow of poverty (she wants to study journalism). They’ve applied to be roommates too; “It’s almost guaranteed,” C.J. said. Since Thursday’s call to Allie’s house took care of finding both girls, they apparently almost are already.
• End of a rivalry — or not? Saturday night’s high school basketball game may have been the last between Terre Haute North and Gary Wirt because of change in the Gary school system.
Lots of the Wirt people Saturday said their school was closing after this year, although coach Omar Vazquez isn’t convinced. “The School of Performing Arts is moving into our building,” he explained, “so [Wirt] will probably be known by another name.”
If Wirt’s athletic future is questionable, Vazquez’s is not. “I’m going into the college game [as an assistant at South Suburban College],” he said. “But I know whoever comes in [to Wirt] will have some great kids to work with.”
Possibility of lawsuits in Gary could hold up any plan, I’m also told.
I’d be horrified to see Wirt cease to exist, since it was the site of my greatest (i.e. only) high school football performance, allowing me to average 24 tackles per game my senior year.
For those of you who don’t know that story, that’s four minutes, during which I was credited with two tackles. One tackle every two minutes equals 24 tackles per game.
Of course I didn’t actually make either tackle, but that’s the statistician’s fault.
• Legion tournament here — Got an e-mail recently from John Hayes letting me know that the 2009 American Legion baseball state finals will be hosted by Wayne Newton Post 346 at Terre Haute North High School from July 30 or July 31 through Aug. 2.
Post 346, with one of the younger lineups Hayes and his coaching staff have ever dealt with last summer, will be playing as the host team, and could be a pretty tough out for the other four teams who visit.
• New job — Thanks to alphabetical order, the transaction recently from Trinity (Conn.) College announcing the school’s new assistant women’s tennis coach and assistant women’s squash coach was buried at the bottom of the list.
That person is recent Indiana State tennis player Joanne Schickerling, one of only two women I know from South Africa.
I don’t know how good Trinity’s Bantams are in women’s tennis, but I know the school must have confidence in her to let her coach squash. Trinity’s women are 254-79 in that sport during the past 24 years, the men slightly better than that.
In case you don’t read Sports Illustrated, Trinity’s men’s squash team might be the most dominant college sports team in the country, with a current winning streak of 183.
• MIC honoree — Sarah Higgens of Center Grove is the 2008-2009 Gatorade Indiana Runner of the Year in girls cross country after winning the state championship by 10 seconds at LaVern Gibson Championship Course during the fall.
Andy Amey can be reached after 4 p.m. for comments or news items at (812) 231-4277 or at 1-800-783-8742; by e-mail at andy.amey@tribstar.com; by mail at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN, 47808; or by fax at (812) 231-4321.
Amey Takes Aim
Amey Takes Aim: Northview pair gets to run together for The Woods
- Amey Takes Aim
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Amey Takes Aim: NHL playoffs to put TVs to good use
If Jenny had known, she probably wouldn’t have bought that TV.
But four or five years ago, my Fathers Day present — for those unfamiliar with Amey family traditions, the Fathers Day one is “let’s get something we all really want and pretend it’s a gift for Dad” — was a 42-inch Vizio. It’s been used even more than the cell phone I never would have bought for myself, or the TomTom that disappeared since Jenny’s smartphone arrived.
And it came with high-def.
I’m not going to insult you by telling you how great high-def is, because to do so would be to imply that you are even farther behind the technological curve than I am. I’m guessing, however, that not all of you have yet discovered what it does for hockey. -
Amey Takes Aim: Can’t bottle the joy of Amey vacations
The first bad sign was the Gatorade bottle.
In the Bataan-Death-March drive to Orlando that got the Amey family spring break vacation off to a bad start, seeing it between lanes of I-24 — as we zipped along at a 100-miles-in-five-hours clip — filled with an ominous yellow liquid was a little bit scary. And although we didn't stop to check for sure, I'm fairly certain I knew about its contents.
And the person stuck in the same traffic jam with us, the one with the existential license plate YMIHR4, couldn’t have asked a more pertinent question.
But, after seeing a lot more of Oak Grove, Ky., than we’d planned, and after enduring more traffic slowdowns in Nashville, we were on our way. Even some rain in the dark in the Smokies didn’t slow us down much, so you would think our first-day troubles were over.
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ANDY AMEY: Farewell to basketball
I believe you’ve heard me say before — just about a year ago, perhaps — that a boys high school basketball season that ends with the Tribune-Star in Bankers Life Fieldhouse can’t be considered a bad one, which is why we have a little celebrating to do thanks to the Linton Miners.
Lover of irony that I am, I’ve also got to point out that this season was another branch sprouting from the Wabash Valley’s most legendary coaching tree, that of Joe Hart.
Joe never got much credit for his work at Dugger, but he took Brody Boyd, Clark Golish and the Bulldogs to a state championship game in 2000, and since then three of his former players — Joe Pigg, Clint Swan and now Joey Hart, his son — also have coached teams in the final game of the season.
Joe probably wishes he could take credit for Doc Nash, another down-home type who gave a banjo lesson earlier Saturday in leading Borden past a bigger, more athletic Triton team (banjo lesson is a Howard Sharpism, for you younger readers), but his lineage is still the best I can think of around here. -
AMEY TAKES AIM: Maroons, Rox final a true Classic
I don’t make predictions nearly as often as I used to, but I had one several months ago that was proven correct last week.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Nitpicking aside, West Vigo Hall of Fame selections spot on
I can’t imagine a better first class of inductees into the West Vigo High School Athletics Hall of Fame than the one that was feted Saturday night in the Jim Mann Green Dome.
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Tough bunch of people
I’m getting my warm clothes ready for a trip to Linton this week, and if a few thrills from the Miners, Casey or North Vermillion happen the next couple of weeks, I hope I get to see them.
But high school football is over in Vigo County for the season — as coach Chris Barrett of Terre Haute North said, prematurely — and I’m sadder to see it go than usual.
Walking the sidelines and doing midweek or postgame interviews enables me to meet quite a few of the guys whose names you are about to read, and haven’t been more impressed than I was this fall. What outstanding groups of young men. What a tough, tough bunch of people.
Many know that one of my favorite athletic adjectives appeared consecutively in the previous sentence. -
AMEY TAKES AIM: A weekend to remember with ISU’s ’72 football team
They’re all still pretty hale and hearty, the boys of the fall of 1972 who returned to campus over the weekend to honor their former football coach.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: ISU reunion raises more questions than answers
One of the wrestlers I used to hang out with occasionally claimed to be a pretty good second-story man — although he may have just been talking, since I never saw any of the goods — and it was with him in mind that I was able to get access to the Indiana State Wrestling Alumni Reunion late Saturday night.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Deciding not to ‘vacate’ during ‘vacation’ – & other ventures
Flaunting the law, setting a bad example for the kids in other ways, grooming and acquiring dogs … not a typical Amey family vacation, but an appreciated one just the same.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Huntsville’s Stars, Havoc take back seat to GGS
The second-best thing about the Amey family’s spring-break trip to Huntsville, Ala., is that we left a lot of things on the table to do the next time we’re down there.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Rox well represented on Amey teams
If having the state finals in town makes it a successful girls high school basketball season, then certainly having a team to follow at the state finals makes it a very successful boys high school basketball season . . .
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AMEY TAKES AIM: A feeling of pride, not disappointment, comes from watching Rox play
It’s not going to come as a startling admission that I — once the rest of the local opposition has been eliminated from consideration — am an unabashed fan of whatever team the Wabash Valley sends onward in postseason high school sports competition.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: This private school plays basketball the right way
Any girls high school basketball season that ends with state championship games in Hulman Center is a pretty good one — even though I wished I’d seen Riverton Parke and Seeger knock off a couple of private schools the week before to even the public school-private school battle a little bit.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Even 2 of state’s best once had doubts
Look at them now.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Getting ready for the dance
Terre Haute North got the good news Sunday night — or did it?
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Harrowing path for state hopefuls
The bad news is that the winner of Class 4A Sectional 13 in boys basketball heads northeast instead of southeast for regional play in March — to Hinkle Fieldhouse instead of Seymour as a result of Indiana High School Athletic Association’s changes.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: A superior all-star arrangement
I don’t work on Wednesdays, so I wasn’t able to attend the first Wabash Valley Football Coaches Association draft last week to set up the annual all-star game that will be June 23 this year.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: The biggest & baddest of a holiday classic
There are more things to love about the Pizza Hut Wabash Valley Classic than could fit in this newspaper, but one of this year’s best things was that for an hour or so on Wednesday, it was Justin Paddock’s world and we were just living in it.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Taking note of ISU’s latest football win
The biggest difference I’ve noticed, as I transition from the high school football beat to quasi-official status as the Indiana State football beat writer for a few weeks, is the length of the games.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: IHSAA playoff draw not as bad as it could have been
First reaction to the Indiana sectional football pairings drawn late Sunday by the Indiana High School Athletic Association? It could have been a lot worse.
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ANDY AMEY: Between the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & a hard place
Just in case any of you noticed — with some anticipation — the recent lack of my bylines, I can tell you that your wish (and mine) did come true. It was vacation week for the Amey family.
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Amey Takes Aim: UFC fighter’s bloodines traced back to ISU brothers
As a mild-mannered reporter from a great metropolitan newspaper — or thereabouts — I admit I haven’t paid much attention to the burgeoning mixed martial arts scene.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Predators’ win is music to new fan’s ears
For many, many years, the number of live games televised on WGN has been cited as perhaps the main reason for the popularity of the Chicago Cubs (it’s got to be something besides masochism, right?).
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AMEY TAKES AIM: You’ll be having a good ol’ time on vacation with the Ameys
When one of the first people you meet is Tammy Wynette’s stepdaughter, when you’ve stepped on the feet of people you haven’t met while trying to navigate Ernest Tubbs’ old Silver Eagle tour bus, and when the activities director of your resort is, well, Elvis, you might be vacationing in Nashville.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: The Annual All-Amey basketball teams close out the prep season
The most encouraging boys high school basketball event I’ve attended so far in 2011 has been the Lafayette Semistate a couple of weeks ago.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Family remembers Cheryl Weatherman as caring grandmother
As far as Riley and Keely Davis are concerned, Cheryl Weatherman was simply their grandmother, and a pretty darn good one at that.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Honor to see Turkey Run girls close out memorable career
I don’t know if anyone in this part of the state could actually say they enjoy going to Fort Wayne and back, but I was glad to see the Turkey Run Warriors play one last time during the girls basketball state finals Saturday.
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So many matches, so many favorites
Go ahead, ask me anything about the 224 wrestlers who competed last week at the Indiana state finals — or at least about the 112 wrestlers who survived Saturday’s first round.
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ANDY TAKES AIM: A sportwriters’s lament: Oh, the games we missed
I was already tired of winter by the time that first bitterly cold snap passed through in mid-December, so it’s safe to say the season hasn’t grown on me.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Time of the season for teams to tough it out
In the last month or so I figure I’ve seen at least four boys high school basketball teams with legitimate state-championship dreams as the season heads into its dog days.
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Shakira's Shocking Talent
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Demi Moore a Rocks Bikini at Harry Morton's Family House
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Kate Middleton's Dress Flies Up
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