Monday, June 15, 2009

That's a Big Number


Anyone want to guess what CML is? True, true, it's got a bunch of different meanings in computing, and if you play the marimba, you would know all about the Classical Marimba League, which is all about the marimba baby! (as a percussion player, I'm all for a little marimba love). But alas, the CML I'm thinking about is the roman numeral for the number 950. So what's that got to do with ISU athletics? Well, 950 is the approximate number of high school football players that were involved in the ISU Football Camp on campus last week, basically 18 high school teams. Want to venture how many of those were from Idaho? Naysayers? Anyone? Bueller? Try seventeen. Yes, 17 of the 18 teams on campus last week were from Idaho.

Yeah....Zamberlin doesn't recruit Idaho....

Speaking of Idaho
Nice bit of news with the announcement that Josh Hill originally out of Blackfoot High School is going to be a Bengal. With ISU thin on experience at the tight end position and with the departure of the graduated Trevor Messersmith, Hill has a short to see plenty of action as a freshman. He redshirted last year at Boise State, so he is a 4-for-4 guy, meaning he has four years of eligibility, and four years to play those. Good stuff for the Bengals there...his size is legit.

The long national search and nightmare is over
So being the administrator for soccer and softball, I was the fortunate guy that had to chair the national search for a softball coach to replace Larry Stocking. Andrea Wilson was the interim last year, and after an exhaustive search that has taken quite a while, Andrea was named the permanent head coach literally minutes ago. Congrats now have to go out to her assistant Shelly Prochaska, who now is on board full-time as well with the announcment. Those two took a team that went a combined 17-59 over the past two years and went 20-21 this year, defeating an NCAA Tournament team in Kent State (three-time MAC champs) along the way.

Next year, the softball team joins the Mountain Division of the Pacific Coast Softball Conference, and the team went 10-6 against future PCSC members last year, and they have a solid shot at a championship run in them. Things are moving as well on the Miller Ranch Park front, but we always have the only manually operated scoreboard in Division I, so that's something.

After all that work, I needed to relax with my wife. I needed to laugh with my wife. This was the perfect remedy.

Facebook!
I'm working on a Facebook group thing for ISU, that hopefully I can post stories there for folks (I am now posting my isubengals.com stories there). I get way more comments there than I do here, which is sorta funny.

Congrats...
To Paul Shahen, my only other hockey lovin' buddy around here, who got to watch his Penguins hoist the Cup. As a goalie, I can only guess what Marc Andre-Fleury was thinking at the tail end of this sequence to win the thing.

No comments: