And Away We Go....

Finally, after scrimmages, exhibitions, you name it, we officially, officially start the 2009-10 athletic year with the soccer team traveling to New Mexico to take on the Lobos. I personally have a soft spot for the Lobos as the first football game I ever worked was the ISU at New Mexico game in 1998. Ironically, my predecessor the esteemed Glenn Alford worked HIS first football game at New Mexico for a Bengal-Lobo encounter in 1967. If we ever schedule New Mexico in football for a season opener again I'm gonna start looking behind me though....

Soccer Stuff
Tim Flagstad previewed today's match in the Journal, and then he really goes in-depth on the blog about the freshmen and his thoughts on the season ahead...a must read for the soccer fanatics in all of BengalLand. Also, you can get ISU's match notes here, and New Mexico's here.

Volleyball Scrimmage Tonight at 6:30 pm
Pretty self explanatory headline...that scrimmage is taking place at Reed Gym. I have to score the thing....it could get ugly.

Scooter Hanging in There
Sometimes Kelvin Ang gets this odd rap for being a bad guy which is always funny to me, but he's been covering football now for a while, and for the most part, his stories, such as this fantastic piece on Tubotein Taylor's recovery that ran today, and how the team has come to his side, are just fantastic reads. Kelvin tries to look for stories, and maybe that's it, but he's proving to be a very good writer. That Taylor piece is a great read on a story many reporters might have just forgotten about and dismissed.

Football Scrimmage Inside Holt Arena on Saturday
Holt Arena is fairly busy today and tomorrow, with the old lockers getting torn out today, and then the scrimmage tomorrow. Bengal Foundation members should have received their invitation to the BF BBQ tomorrow at Holt, and all freshmen students will be at Holt Arena for Holt Hurrah, where the incoming freshmen will learn the fight song and get to meet the various teams, take part in drills and such, and generally speaking, have a good time before watching the scrimmage.

The SID and statguy in me prefers the scrimmages inside by the way, because I don't have to guess at the numbers, and I can see the stuff better then from the sidelines.

The New Kids In Town...
Not only are the student arriving, but all the department graduate students as well. Brandy Crum in the training room is already here, but Kristin Kehrer formerly with the University of Detroit is here as a G.A. in the strength and conditioning office with Mark Campbell (she and Joe Cullen can swap stories about moving from Detroit to Pocatello), and even the new G.A. in our office, Jaime Schroeder, straight from Washington State University, will get in town today. In a case of who you know, when I worked at the NCAA Tournament in Boise, Jaime was part of the Wazzu student crew assigned to me. When Mitch Worthington left the G.A. spot to head to air traffic controller school (way more money for equal stress LOL), we ended up getting Jaime, who was the star of the student staff at Wazzu and will handle track, cross country, golf, and assist with other stuff. Of course, Katie Zigars is still around, and it's funny, this is officially year two for her, but she also has a year as a G.A. here, and then the interned for three years, so it's more like six years (heck, this is just my 12th here).

I'm personally hoping Jaime ends my run of one-year G.A.s...and she has no relation, but her last name is pronounced just like David Schroeder.

Facebook Me
Funny that that is now a verb, but you can befriend Idaho State Athletics on Facebook, and there's photos and lots of news there. Good addition to the Blog and the website. I'm on there too, and I tend to post funny videos links there (because I'm a highly entertaining guy)

Speaking of Funny Videos
So the Marching Band has been practicing RIGHT OUTSIDE MY OFFICE DOOR for a week now, and without giving the whole thing away, they have been working on reproducing some classic video game themes, which is cool, but, and this is not a slight on the band in any way, but it will never top this. Have a great Friday!