He Plays For A Different Team of Angels Now..

He had just pitched the game of his young MLB career. Six scoreless innings, allowing only seven hits against a tough Oakland Athletics squad. Even though his bullpen let that lead slip away and cost him the win, it was still the most promising start of this budding young baseball superstar that no one had heard about. That night would be the last game he would ever pitch

He was drafted in the 14th-round of the MLB Draft by the Los Angeles Angels a couple of years ago out of a Baltimore high school, slipping that far because of arm problems. Some even viewed him as the top pitching prospect in the nation. But the Angels took a chance on this kid with a golden arm. He spent two seasons in the minors and made his first MLB start on May 1, 2008. He went on to make four more starts that year, picking up his first MLB win along the way.

To the Angels organization, they knew him as "Nicky" and to the rest of the world he went by Nick Adenhart. On Wednesday night/early Thursday morning Adenhart was one of four passengers in a Mitsubishi Eclipse that was sideswiped by a minivan running a red light, the driver, Andrew Gallo, a 22-year-old who has a prior DUI conviction and a suspended license. Early reports indicate that after he was apprehended (he fled the scene on foot), that his blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit.

Two of the passengers were killed instantly and Adenhart died later in surgery. The fourth remains in critical condition and in intensive care.

He was only 22 years old.

Shockwaves rippled around the country on Thursday after the death was made official by the Angels. The Angels postponed their game that night against the Athletics and players were there to console one another. Fans who watched the game that night before saw Adenhart pitch out of his mind for six innings, in line for his second MLB win, his promising future coming to fruition before their very eyes. The player that was ranked as the top prospect in their organization was finally making an impact, far from the high school player they drafted in 2004.

Fans from all over California drove to the stadium and began memorials against the fences, leaving hats and posters and flowers. The pain of the loss being felt throughout the Angels organization.

Perhaps the most painful part was that Adenhart was an only child and since he was making his first start of the season hours before his death, his dad was in the stands watching his every pitch in the last game he will ever see his son play. Jim, his father, had flown out from Maryland to watch his son live his dream, little knowing that within hours, he would be back. When he returned, he stood next to his son's empty locker, filled with memories and heartache. He was handed the jersey Nick had wore the night before. The flags were lowered to half-staff at the stadium and there stood Jim Adenhart on the pitcher's mound in a red Angels pullover, saying goodbye to his son in the best way he knew how.

This is just a reminder that those people in that car could have been any one of us and that life could end at any moment, you just never know when. Show love to those who are special to you and live life for today. Nick Adenhart did just that, playing baseball and making friends.

Now he plays for a different team of Angels...RIP Nick Adenhart

2nd Column Rough Draft

Learning Life’s Lessons...All By the Age of 19


Sara is your typical college student, she goes to class, does homework, plays a little golf and hangs out with friends. When looking at her, you would never be able to see what has happened in her life that has made this girl so special.

When Sara was just 15-years-old she began experimenting with alcohol, going to barn parties and failing to realize the potential consequences. That is when she got her first MIP (minor in possession), a term all to familiar for college students, but not 15-year-olds. But Sara thought nothing of it, as most young teenagers would, took diversion and kept on drinking every now and then, but not excessively.

She began smoking pot at age 17 and it began to take over her life. Before she knew it, Sara was lighting it up when she woke up, on her lunch break, after school, at night and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. It was that year that her best friend was killed in a car accident - he had huffed de-icer and froze his brain while driving.

“ After that, I hated God. I didn't believe in Him anymore,” Sara said. “I wanted to end my life, my best friend was gone and I didn't know why.”

That didn’t deter her from smoking as she continually skipped class to go blaze a couple. That was until she was finally caught by the school and was suspended from playing in her school’s golf conference tournament. She came back, however, and won Districts and even became the State champion that very year. Golf was the only thing going for her and she knew it.

It was that summer, however, when she obtained her second MIP and she knew enough was enough. She began going to church again to regain her faith in Jesus Christ, going on mission trips to Louisiana to help hurricane victims, to Romania to work in communist orphanages and teach bible study to kids, and to Chicago to work in homeless shelters.

What she saw on these trips changed her life immensely, but none more than her mission trip to Romania.

“ They were left in beds as children and fed maybe a spoonful of oatmeal every three days. So when I saw them, their real age was about 40 but they acted like they were two. Most couldn't talk and some couldn't even walk,” Sara said through tear-filled eyes.

The ones who couldn’t walk hopped around on all four’s to move. She became attached to these “kids”, some being adults. Sara put life in perspective when she talked of a young girl who she met while there.

“We brought them candy and their eyes lit up so big. I played patty cake with a girl for two hours and she laughed harder every time. It made you realize it’s just the little things that were so important and how much of an impact we made on these people.”

The Romanian government wants to tear down this orphanage to extract the clean water from underneath it, putting all of these people on the streets who have never been out there before. It is Sara’s goal to raise awareness about homes like these in danger of destruction. That is the kind of girl she has become.

She wants to complete the first four-year degree in her family and become the best women’s golfer in UNK history. She also has dreams of opening up her own beauty shop and get a degree in social work. It has all come full circle for Sara, who has come a long way from that little girl getting MIP’s, to a girl who is letting God lead the way.

“Knowing that I was strong enough to over come something like that led me to know I am strong enough to do anything.”

Fal-AWFUL: West Bank Story

What happens when you take a giant pot and mix in a cup of West Side Story, a teaspoon of heated middle-eastern fast foot establishments and a pinch of quirky songs with full choreography? Well, stir well and bake on crazy for about 30 minutes and you get the 2006 Academy Award winner for Best Action Short Film, West Bank Story.

The first thing you will notice about the film is that two opposing restaurants, the Hummus Hut and Kosher King, break out into song on the dirt-paved roads of the West Bank. Now why would a Palestinian-owned hummus eatery and an Israeli-owned falafel establishment be feuding and exchanging lyrical bullets at one another? Well the story runs deeper than pastry and witty dance moves.

You find yourself lodged into a full fledged middle eastern love story that only West Bank Story could get away with. Fatima, a Palestinian clerk at the Hummus Hut, has fallen in love with an Israeli soldier named David. But the constant West Bank struggle between the two sides creates a forbidden bond between the two. An obstructed love that can only be solved through a series of cleverly placed songs and dancing menorahs.

This story will leave you laughing, crying and probably snapping your fingers. For the length of the film and the creativity in making a West Side Story, it is obvious this short movie is not for everyone. If you are a fan of obscure musicals that take an odd look at serious issues, then West Bank Story is right up your alley, or should I say strip...like Gaza Strip..nothing? Alright.

If you are looking for a quick laugh and a film that is the length of a bad sitcom, than this movie may catch your eye. It's available for just $1.99 on iTunes and that is a reasonable price for a feature that doesn't go over thirty minutes and will leave you wondering what you just watched. This film will suit you better if you have a general idea of what West Side Story is about and then be able to apply it to this movie.

Despite the off-color attempt at humor, this film takes a swing and a miss. But don't blame us if you walk away from it craving a falafel for supper while dancing to your kitchen busting out in song.

Perfection..Why You Never Saw It

31 points per game in the regular season. 25.6 points per game in the NCAA Tournament.

That is how much the University of Connecticut Women's Basketball Team won on average against every single opponent. On Tuesday night, the Lady Huskies beat the Louisville Cardinals 76-54 to capture their sixth NCAA title and complete a 39-0 undefeated season. Perhaps the greatest team in women's college basketball history, the Lady Huskies won every single game by double digits, something never before accomplished, not just in women's college basketball, but college basketball - period. And get this:

During the regular season, the UConn women trailed for only one possession during the entire year in a game against Oklahoma. One possession.

The closest games the entire season for the Lady Huskies were two wins by a margin of ten points, that's it. There have only been five undefeated teams in the history of women's college basketball and UConn has three of them in the past decade, but none finer than this team. Their closest game in the entire NCAA Tournament, a field of elite college basketball teams, was 19 points.

Throughout the season, sophomore Maya Moore and senior guard Renee Montgomery have had a chip on their shoulder after being upset last season by Stanford in the Final Four. They bulldozed through each game with the same tenacity, same desire, same passion as the last, determined to capture that title.

What amazes me about this whole situation is the relatively lack of little coverage on the media's part. As the title game grew closer, ESPN began running more coverage on it, but it dwelled in comparison to the hype of North Carolina-Michigan State. Just look at massive differences in attendance between the two games (which also has to do with the size of the stadium).

Men's title game (sold out): 72,922
Women's title game (not sold out): 18,478

That is almost a 54,000 person difference between the two games and I don't know about you, but I would rather see a team make history by capping off an undefeated season in dominant fashion than watch a game with little meaning except to the fans of those two teams. Even more shocking was when I went to Yahoo's homepage and clicked on sports. UConn completing an undefeated season, winning every game by an aveage of over 30 points per game, has to be the featured story right? Wrong.

What came up was the story about how Michael Jordan's son chose to play college ball at the University of Central Florida. It has just within the past couple of hours changed to a story about the Masters. Why is this unbelievable story not on the front page of every sports website and newspaper? In a time when parity creeps into every single sport in America, a team that completely dominates every single opponent has to be worthwhile news. But, it is a fact that a majority of this country can be viewed as cynics and pessimists, who will view the glass half empty.

This country, who doesn't follow sports very closely will look at the dominance of this team and state that women's college basketball is a joke and that there is no good talent, that UConn basically had a free pass throughout the entire season. Try telling that to the girls who pour their heart and soul into these teams, the coaches who mold and develop this girls into women, whom 95% of us couldn't be in a game of one-on-one. Don't sit there and tell me that this undefeated season of dominance is due to no competition for the Lady Huskies because it is everywhere.

These girls simply outstrategized, outplayed, outthought, outhustled and beat everyone they faced into a bloody pulp. This is bigger than the Masters, which doesn't even start until Thursday, bigger than the MLB, which has a whole season to go, bigger than the men's title game, which is already done with and it is definitely bigger than what school Marcus Jordan decided to play college basketball for. This is a story about a group of girls who put everything that had into a season and turned it into one of the greatest seasons in sports history. Not just college history, but all of sports. When you can take your opponent, no matter if they are ranked or not, and make them tap out each and every game, with that big red bullseye tagged and painted on your back, it is truly something special.

UConn got the best from every single team they faced and hardly anyone knew about it. More people know about what color belt Roy Williams like to wear during Final Four games than they knew about this Lady Huskies team and it makes me sick, as a propriator of great athletes. Maybe if ESPN could change their titles of men's and women's college basketball to that, instead of "College Basketball" and "Women's Basketball", inferring that women don't deserve to have the college in their description, than maybe stories like this won't get buried behind the mediocre stories that "sell" the show.

Congratulations UConn Lady Huskies for all of your accomplishments this season. No one can take that away from you, not the media, not the public, not anybody. Enjoy it, you deserve every ounce of spotlight.

Baseball Diamond Blowout

The box score of the game between Eastern Kentucky and Kentucky State looked like a misprint. If you were to see it in the newspaper the next day, you would swear that the editor must have missed something. Or maybe it was just some April Fool's joke that the fine people at Eastern Kentucky were playing on the newspaper.

But this was no laughing matter. Okay, maybe it was.

According to an article of foxsports.com, Eastern Kentucky put up 22 runs against Kentucky State in a baseball game - in the first inning. EKU ended up winning the game 49-1, a game called after only five innings of play. According to the article:

"After Kentucky State (2-16) got a run in the top of the first, EKU scored 22 times in the bottom half. EKU scored five times in the second inning and 19 more runs in the third, and finished with 38 hits including five home runs."

The teams were scheduled to play a second game in the doubleheader, but the game was canceled. And in an act of pure class, the EKU website held out the final score and game details in their recap. The really outstanding statistics came from the pitching staff of KSU, which produced nine errors.

According to the article, "Freshman Kendall Wilson started for Kentucky State and allowed 13 runs - albeit only four of them earned - while getting only one out. Reliever Jamaal Duncan didn't fare much better, surrendering 25 runs - 14 of them earned - in 2 1-3 innings."

And perhaps you were wondering if this was the largest defeat in Division I history, but oh the contrary. Kentucky State is a Division II school, eliminating it from being able to consitute as a Division I game. However, this blowout doesn't even hold the jock strap of the largest defeat in DII history, as St Francis defeated Robert Morris 71-1 in a game in 1996. 71-1!

My question is, how do you even let it get that bad? How can you let the other team score 71 times, let alone not even call the game. I applaud the officials who decided to call the game after five innings to avoid further embarassment to those kids from Kentucky State. Also, a pat on the back to EKU for calling the second game and not requesting a forfeit.

In another story of class from a university, it is buried by the final score and all that caught my attention was the 49-1 score. And that's all that people will care about. As for the Kentucky State pitching staff, perhaps they will bounce back and have great seasons.

Or maybe they should stick to teeball.

"It's Like Watching Your Parents Have Sex With Your Dog"

"Hearing Escape The Fate slather Carlos Santana’s “Smooth” with teenage screams is like watching your parents have sex with your dog." - Blake Solomon

This is a review I found for a CD I recently purchased titled "Punk Goes Pop: Volume 2". I had been awaiting the release of this CD back in mid-March due to previous songs from Vol. 1. I am a fan of punk, screamo and hard rock music and this CD takes some of the up and coming punk bands and has them cover a variety of top-40 hits from the past few years. On this CD, everything from "..What Goes Around" by Justin Timberlake to "Toxic" by Britney Spears is covered by bands known more for their screaming then their vocals. When given this assignment, I knew I wanted to do this CD, just because of the possibilities for reviews and the analysis I found of the album definitely takes the cake.

I googled "review for Punk Goes Pop Volume Two" and received a calvalcade of hits, with everything from video blog responses to actual reviews from magazines and online sites. The review I chose was written by Blake Solomon of absolutepunk.net.

When I first read this review, I laughed so hard I nearly peed myself. It offers up a serious, yet hysterical view of this album from top to bottom. You can tell Solomon means business throughout the review, never meaning for it to be funny, but the way it comes off when you read it aloud makes you burst out with laughter. The review begins as a take on Solomon's younger days, relating the album to trying to maintain with his youthfulness, even though he has since passed that time. He then fires up his curveball by stating "I can no longer feign youth after hearing “in the name of fun” compilations like Punk Goes Pop Vol. 2. Don’t cry for me, though; cry for Fearless Records. They’re killing music and they don’t care."

This is where Solomon begins his case for why this album is god-awful, presenting to you the line at the beginning of this piece. It caught me so off-guard that I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. The rest of review goes over different songs and how they are an abomination to their respective original creator, stating how each song fails. In the following paragraph, he contends that a couple of the artists took completely different songs and made them sound exactly alike, leading him to question how this was recorded by "various artists".

He ends the review in the same manner he started, ripping apart Fearless Records for releasing this album to the general public. Perhaps the greatest atrocity of the album, according to Solomon, is the selection of the songs. It was believed these artists would venture out of the current age range and attempt songs from the late 90's. Solomon's last line caps off this review and it will still have me laughing from now until class tomorrow. His finishing line:

"14 year-old girls, eat your hearts out. Everyone else, blow your heads off."

I felt this review was really well-written and gets his point clearly across that this album sucks. I have to agree with him except for many 3 or 4 songs and that is because I like the bands performing the songs, so automatically I am biased towards their work. But I do agree with the review that the majority of the album leaves you wanting your money back from wherever you got it. Some of the songs are just plain unlistenable. But for a good laugh, I will let you read the review and just for those who are wondering who Solomon recommended this album for:

"Recommended If You Like: pop and/or punk, hickeys"

Does UNK Need A Baseball/Softball Complex?

Last night on my radio show, "Double Coverage" with Josh Kaufman on 91.3 KLPR (the student radio station), a topic came up that I had never thought of before it came out of my mouth. We were discussing Loper Athletics and how much the athletic department here supports certain sports. The topic at hand was the Lopers Men's Golf Team and their first tournament of the Spring down in Arizona. It wasn't surprising to hear that after the first day the team was in 19th place out of 20 schools and being a fellow golfer and ex-member of the UNK team, I knew the first tournament of the Spring is following hardly any practice due to winter. There had always been talk of the university building a UNK golf facility, an indoor area with a couple of practice bunkers, some putting greens and maybe some other areas so that the golf teams could work on their games to compete against the schools that get to play year-round.

Well that conversation fired me off into this argument: that the UNK Athletic Department only focuses its money on a few select teams, at least it seems that way. The sports that I feel get a majority of the UNK sport budget are football, volleyball, basketball and just recently, baseball. This led Josh and I to have a conversation about where the money goes and why it isn't more spread out and going to the sports that can make this university a Division II powerhouse.

When I came to UNK in Fall of 2006, I was told by the head golf coach that he gets $7500 for the golf team for the entire year, which includes travel, practice and everything. That's hardly anything for an athletic program. Now, Josh said he doesn't see the UNK golf programs being a threat to ever compete for a Division II crown and I totally agree with the lack of funding for the program. Without a facility to practice in during the months that don't allow for play, UNK will always come out of the blocks slow during the Spring, leaving them at a disadvantage.

Needless to say, that talk led to a discussion about the baseball and softball teams struggling and Josh stated that poor fan support could be one of the key elements in their struggles. Low fan attendance equals low ticket sales which leads to budget cuts within the department for certain programs. I responded to that with a reason for low attendance being the fact that noone knows where the baseball and/or softball team plays. It's not on campus and it changes, it seems, every year. I bet half of the class or more can not give me directions on how to watch the softball team or baseball team play, except for Cody and Amanda. One thing led to another and it turned into a question of whether or not UNK needed its own baseball/softball complex?

I do believe UNK does need its own baseball/softball complex if they look to compete for an RMAC and Division II title in the forseeable future. A new complex will bring in better recruits and in a centralized location, will allow for more fans to come to the games. My idea for a potential area was the field past West Center and next to the Buckle Warehouse, with enough room for a baseball field and softball field, some bleachers...enough to build a nice facility that will be a mainstay in Loper athletics for years to come. But I know what you're asking, where is the money going to come from? Well didn't we just start a new women's soccer team? I'm not against the women's soccer team, don't get me wrong, I feel it's great that UNK is expanding its athletic horizon. My feeling is just that UNK could have done better things with the money that it would take to run a new athletic program, such as the new golf facility or go towards a new baseball complex.

I just wonder where the athletic department money goes since I know the wrestling team is mostly self-funded (except for 1.2 full-ride scholarships), the golf teams don't receive much money, swimming and diving could use some rejuvenating and other programs that could use some much needed rennovating. Now I know this is a hefty claim in an economy like the one we're in now, but somehow we found the cash to fund a new program altogether. Maybe it's cheaper than I thought, but I have a feeling that it's not. Some of my argument against the athletic department helping out its athletes was also built off of Callie's blog about her tennis roller-coaster every week.

So this is where I ask you, the viewing public and UNK students, how do you think the UNK Athletic Department treats its athletic programs? Do they all get treated equally or do others get left in the backburners for others? More importantly, I want to get a sense of how the idea of a baseball/softball complex is received by you, the UNK student body. I have a feeling that one day, this will become a reality, but it's not for sure when. If UNK wants to become a Division II power and bring in top dollar and top recruits, it needs to upgrade the programs it has now, instead of implementing new ones.

Do you think UNK could use their own baseball/softball complex in order to gain better recruits and make it easier for fans to find and attend games? I think they do and should begin looking into it as soon as possible.