By Tom Reck
Spring training will begin soon for baseball teams, and Clint Barmes again will be in the Colorado camp.
The former Indiana State player recently signed a contract extension to avoid arbitration at a published amount of $3,225,000.
Barmes had a nice year for the Rockies in 2009, hitting 23 homers — a club record for a second baseman. He also had career bests of 135 hits, 76 RBIs and 69 runs scored to help the Rockies gain postseason play as a National League wild-card team.
Barmes is from Vincennes and played for Vincennes Lincoln and Vincennes University before coming to ISU.
• Higham era ends — Mike Saylor e-mailed us last week to let us know that an era recently ended in Vigo Count basketball when Andy Higham resigned as the coach at Woodrow Wilson after winning another county championship.
That era began when his dad, Steve, began coaching basketball at Otter Creek in 1974 and continued coaching basketball and other sports at Terre Haute North until 2004. He did basketball until 1999, when he was the girls coach, and did both boys and girls golf, being named to the Hall of Fame for golf coaches.
And he still is involved with golf at St. Mary-of-the-Woods. “We had a good recruiting year,” he said this week.
He said brother Joe coached the sport for nine years at Chauncey Rose and that his sons carried on the tradition at Wilson, with Greg coaching 10 years and Andy for nine years. Both of them coached several county champions at the school.
The combined Higham total is nearly 60 years and lots of players were coached by the family. It would be easy to list some of them but others would be omitted.
Steve is a big Indiana University fan in basketball and was in Assembly Hall for Sunday’s game with Iowa. He was not too pleased by the outcome.
He was pleased, though, that Saylor had called attention to the Higham Era and thanked him for it.
• Dooleys doing well — Some former Terre Haute athletes are doing well in Alabama.
Mark Dooley says daughter Emily is a sophomore and a reserve guard on the 10th-ranked Andalusia High School team that was 15-4 and 4-0 in its area earlier in the month.
Justin is a junior and is a starting guard on the boys team that was ranked No. 2 with a 17-2 record and 4-0 in the area. He has started every game and is a team captain. His dad said he recently had a 14-point, nine-assist game.
• Tom-Cattin’ It — Linton recently defeated Bloomfield in girls basketball to clinch no worse than a share of the SWIAC championship.
• Dave Shelbourne has resigned as football coach at Avon after winning 61 games in eight seasons at the school.
He has been a coach for 33 years and was at Warren Central before going to Avon; he also coached at Highland.
• When UTEP beat Memphis in Conference USA men’s basketball, it ended a 64-game winning streak for Memphis in the league.
• Indiana teams ranked high in the USA Today girls basketball poll again last week with Ben Davis No. 2 and Floyd Central No. 23.
Bloomington South was No. 9 in the boys poll.
• Owen Valley recently won the Western Indiana Conference junior high basketball title, defeating Sullivan in the final game. Sullivan defeated North Clay and Edgewood to gain the finals.
• Pete Carroll will be making another run in the NFL. He earlier was 27-21 at New England and 6-10 with the New York Jets.
Tom Reck may be contacted by telephone at (812) 232-3231, or by e-mail at tm_reck@yahoo.com
