Softball suspensions for prank stir controversy at Central
Duluth Central’s softball team has been forced to take a six-game detour on its planned route to prove it is the best fast-pitch team in the entire Up North area. Eight starters and 10 players altogether were suspended for six games this week.
Parents who claim the whole issue is an over-reaction have protested and held meetings with administrators, but to no avail. The previously undefeated Trojans lost 8-0 to Cloquet on Tuesday and 7-0 to Esko on Thursday. The suspensions will continue through this weekend, which will include a Friday game at Grand Rapids and a three-game tournament at Grand Rapids on Saturday.
That also could be long enough to hurt the team’s chances to solidify the No. 1 seed for sectional playoffs, which could affect potential advancement to the state tournament. The suspended players will be able to return by next Monday, when the Trojans are scheduled to play Iron Range power Virginia at Wheeler Field.
The players were suspended for “disorderly conduct,” according to one parent, but it took the broadest of interpretations to find a violation of a high school league bylaw that warranted such punishment for what the families involved say is a needlessly humiliating response to an April Fool’s Day prank that didn’t work out.
“We are not condoning anything,” said one parent, “but to be suspended for six games means the punishment far exceeds the seriousness of what happened.”
School administrators, who did not respond to or return repeated telephone calls, are prohibited by data privacy laws from naming the players involved or discussing the details of the matter. The players involved and coach Donna Hanna have been ordered to not talk, as well, and the players’ families are reluctant to talk for fear of reprisal, although several discussed the matter under the guarantee that their identity would not be disclosed.
The compelling story might be considered on one side to be the strictest possible show of discipline, and on the other side to be an overreaction to a humorous prank gone awry.
The story goes back to March 31, when the Central team went to the Twin Cities to play three scrimmages, staying overnight at a motel in Stillwater. At the team’s motel, some of the players came up with the idea to hire a male stripper to visit the team’s coaches as an April Fool’s Day joke. A phone call was made, but when the, uh, “performer” arrived, the coaches were nowhere to be found. The girls suddenly realized their idea was not as good as they had envisioned, so they sent the still-clothed fellow on his way, before he had a chance to get down to business.
“He didn’t even get so far as to take his shirt off, and they told him to leave,” said one parent.
That appeared to be the end of it. The team returned home, going to school, playing and winning, as their record soared to 9-0.
However, last week, one of the girls on the team responded to a speech class assignment to write a speech to amuse, in which embellishment would be allowed. A description of the humorous incident in Stillwater didn’t require much embellishing, but its intended humor went south when the teacher took the information to the office.
Principal Fred Tarnowski, athletic director Kerry Loeks and coach Hanna were not available to discuss the matter, but school officials did consult with the Minnesota State High School League. Even though no rule governs the situation, an extreme interpretation of one bylaw could justify some disciplinary action, and the suspension of the 10 girls followed.
Members of the families involved said they had been assured there was absolutely no beer, alcohol or drugs involved, although the lack of information has caused speculation far worse than the actual facts. Some parents are curious about what rules were violated, which is indeed a grey area.
“There isn’t a hard and fast rule covering something like this,” said Skip Peltier, an associate director of the high school league. “But there is something of an ethics code, in fact, it is ‘bylaw 206,’ that describes general eligibility. It says athletes should be of ‘good character and a student of good standing.’ A school can determine what ‘good character’ means.”
Central’s administrators determined it should include this attempted prank.
The only starter still allowed to continue playing is shortstop Michelle Jakubek, who happened to be feeling sick and was resting in her own room when the incident in Stillwater took place. With essentially the junior varsity on the field as replacements, the team’s biggest game of the season turned into an 8-0 loss to Cloquet, and then came the 7-0 loss to Esko.
Concerns about the incident and the way school officials handled it prompted Central parents to meet with administrators. Tarnowski informed the parents at a meeting earlier this week that the suspensions would end by next Monday. That hasn’t soothed all the feelings, however.
“We were never notified of the whole thing by the school in the first place,” said one parent of a suspended player. “We never heard a thing about any of this until our girls came home from school and told us.”
Another mother said: “The poor girls are suffering a lot emotionally right now.”
The father of a suspended player said: “These girls aren’t stupid; these are National Honor Society girls, and they know they made a mistake. Just by being suspended for one game humiliated these girls, throughout their school and throughout the whole school district, because everybody assumes the worst when they hear about it.”
Parents offered a compromise to school administrators after the Cloquet game, suggesting that the girls would do community service work, or tutoring, or cleaning the grounds, in addition to the one-game suspension. But the six-game suspension stood.
Some parents theorized that the administration’s severe action was ordered to obscure the fact that coach Hanna wasn’t present to supervise her team.
The suspended players were allowed to practice all week but not play. They have helped the JV replacement players as much as possible, one mom said, and they attended the games to offer support to their teammates.
Data privacy laws may also prevent disclosing what grade was given in that speech class, but it undoubtedly deserved an “A,” if provoking a speedy and forceful reaction counts.
McDougall survives 84 rivals going both ways for Enduro win
To someone who hasn’t attended a short-track oval auto race, a normal race program might seem to approach chaos, with all the different classes, rotating through preliminary heats, consolation and feature events. Then there is something called an “Enduro.” Now we’re talking REAL chaos, but it was the perfect way to kick off the Twin Ports auto racing season.
Eighty-five cars were hauled or driven to Proctor Speedway Saturday with the express purpose of being driven into the ground — in some cases, literally. These are not race cars, but vehicles rescued from junkyards, or from backyard storage, no race modifications allowed.
Al McDougall of Proctor, who drives a gravel truck for Chuck Mahnke, found a 1979 Chevrolet Impala in an impound lot run by his father, where cars are abanadoned after being confiscated by the Highway Patrol for DWI violations. McDougall had a giant wing fastened to the roof of the Impala which made it stand out among all the cars that took off, running in an endless stream around Proctor’s 3/8-mile banked dirt track in the usual counter-clockwise fashion.
Well, some of the cars went counter-clockwise. Others slewed sideways on the chunky dirt surface, which was repeatedly sloshed with water to keep the speeds of the stock racers under some sort of control. Because these aren’t real race cars, and thorough waivers are required with the $50 entry fees, the usual safety precautions are not enforced. Passengers, in fact, were allowed as long as they wore racing helmets.
“We’ve had guys drive their cars to the enduros to race,” said Chris Sailstad, promoter of the Proctor show. “All you have to do is chain the bumpers on, remove the glass and molding, strap down the battery, and race.”
After an hour, not counting occasional red-flag stoppages to remove disabled cars from precarious positions after their conversion from race cars to obstacles, the field was gathered up and restarted, for another hour of competition, going clockwise. The No. 66 car, driven by Brian Olcott, was listed in first place with 41 laps completed.
That was a welcome sight for John Parzych, a Duluthian who graduated from Denfeld High School with Olcott a few years back, and who now does maintenance work for Jeno Paulucci. “I come to the races at Proctor every Sunday night,” Parzych said. “I’ve got a couple of other friends out here running too.”
Parzych also has his eye on an old car he could get for under $150, and watching the Enduro tempted him to race in the next one. About 1,000 fans on the 80-degree afternoon probably had similar thoughts as they watched the cars careen around the track, and off each other.
Olcott was driving a Chevrolet Celebrity, a front-wheel-drive vehicle, which seemed to have a distinct advantage for stability around the slippery surface. That is, until his car threw a left rear wheel and tire, which rolled up and over the banking in what used to be Turn 4, but was now Turn 1 with the cars going the opposite direction. No matter; Olcott kept driving for several laps, the front-drive engine pulling the dragging left-rear hub around the track.
Olcott finally figured out why his car was dragging a bit and got to the pits, where a new tire — new to that car, anyway — was installed during a pit stop. Back out, Olcott was moving up for a few laps before that tire went flat.
As the day neared its completion, one last red-flag stoppage allowed trucks to clear some of the 23 cars that were parked at various angles and positions around the track, while fewer cars than that remained in operation in various forms of smoking disarray. On the final restart, some of the chaos was because it was difficult to discern the race cars from some of the abandoned, disabled vehicles.
As the cars roared, sputtered and slithered around for the final lap to the checkered flag, more chaos ensued because nobody had any idea of which car was leading. The post-race gathering of officials was to tabulate form charts kept by scorers supplied by each racer, and the winner would be whoever made it the most laps, combining both halves of the show.
That was McDougall, who covered 99 laps for the afternoon, 10 more than Chuck Micklewright of Cloquet, whose Mustang took second. Third was Mahnke — McDougall’s real-life boss — who covered 87 laps.
The crowd filed out, filled with concession burgers or Polish sausages and beer or pop, perfectly prepared from the warm, sunny afternoon for this weekend, when the REAL racing season begins. Superior Speedway and Grand Rapids will open Friday night, Ashland on Saturday night, and Proctor on Sunday night. Hibbing will wait another week before opening on May 20.
As the top 10 drivers waited for their paychecks and the top three got trophies, McDougall was seen wiping tiny clots of ,mud off his tee-shirt while talking on a cellphone. He conceded later that it was NOT President Clinton calling to congratulate him.
USA Hockey faces challenge after Ann Arbor firings
It was just a terse little announcement, in the fine print of statistical information in the nation’s hockey-caring newspapers, that carried the words. Jeff Jackson and Bob Mancini, head coach and assistant of USA Hockey’s program for Select 16 and 17 age hockey prospects maintained at Ann Arbor, Mich., have been fired.
So far, there has been no explanation. The project is about four years old now, and has left a trail of controversy. USA Hockey started the program at about the same time it conceded control of the U.S. Olympic hockey team to the National Hockey League, which made it a curious situation at best. Here was USA Hockey, plucking top players away from various programs, including Minnesota’s outstanding high school scenario.
It was the perfect program for hockey hotbeds such as Massachusetts, where top players go off to prep schools anyway, or Michigan, where top players go off to junior anyway. But it was a damaging, controversial program for Minnesota, where players have an extremely wholesome social and psychological development basis in high school hockey. Naturally, skimming off the top half-dozen sophomores and juniors each year could only hurt Minnesota high school hockey by diluting the product, although pro scouts, whose job it is only to find hockey prospects, and college coaches who have left behind the inclination or ability to develop their own players, would disagree.
On top of that, Jackson was an extremely competent coach at Lake Superior State, winning a couple of national championships with a sticky defensive system, while Mancini is a personable coach who had some success at Michigan Tech before leaving for a large raise to assist Jackson. Critics who shook their heads at the thousands of dollars being spent on only two small focus groups of prospects, also took shots at a style of left-wing-lock hockey that was a cautious, Czech-based system of developing a winning style even if it didn’t provide all individuals optimum, equal-opportunity development.
Checking around, the word was that the dismissal — technically, a non-renewing of their contracts — was foreseen by many, after the abject failure of the U.S. Junior team in the past world tournament, but it was a surprise to the rest of us.
The big question remaining, is: What now?
Will USA Hockey merely plug in new coaches and continue with a controversial program, even while Canada and other countries are abandoning this sort of program? Or will it close down the Ann Arbor project and try something new?
One answer might be to start anew, in Minnesota. Let’s say USA Hockey decides that it actually can be beneficial, to developing people as well as college and pro hockey prospects, to leave kids in their own high schools. They could still organize a program of high-test training for selected players to be conducted during a month or two of the summer in the Twin Cities, and they could still reorgainize a selected smaller group nationwide to participate in worldwide select 16, 17 and junior tournaments during Christmas break.
To do that, USA Hockey would have to select a couple of selfless coaches who have studied creative, international hockey training techniques and could combine the best of those with the U.S. hallmark of educated defense.
It would be a perfect program for Herb Brooks to run. And, word is, that Mike Sertich is available these days. And Bill Butters, considered by many to be the foremost developer of young defensemen, could probably be lured away from White Bear Lake High School. That would be a pretty interesting coaching staff. You could name other outstanding coaches, but I’d put this trio up against the best from the NHL, Sweden, Russia, CanadaÂ…anywhere.
The question can only be answered by USA Hockey. The pressure is squarely on the Colorado Springs governing body to make a unique move here that is above and beyond the usual political gamesmanship and could make the Ann Arbor project a valuable stepping stone to success, and not the continuation of a program that began under question, continued under controversy, and has ended — for now, at least — as a complete failure.
Enduro racing offers a lot in the fun quotient
The start of the “real” auto racing season is this weekend, and it couldn’t be more timely. Up North racing fans might already be punchy from trying to keep up with a couple of early-season enduros, last weekend at Proctor and the weekend before at Hibbing.
“Real” racers may look down their face-shields at enduro races. After all, these guys don’t spend a lot of money on their salvage-lot cars, they don’t spend anything on mechanical or chassis development. They just go out there and thrash and crash and see who can go the farthest.
But before the racing fraternity sounds too elitist, let’s put things in perspective. Consider low-budget enduros to be the same as sandlot baseball, or no-check hockey, touch football, or a shirts-against-skins basketball game in the driveway. Once you move above the enduro stage, racing costs more, and the amount of pressure rises commensurately, and in inverse proportion to the fun quotient of the sport.
At Proctor, last Saturday afternoon, it was impossible to keep track of who was leading during the first hour, when 85 cars started and almost half of them broke, crashed, lost too many parts and otherwise eliminated themselves. Every time it looked like some cars were going too fast, the crew red-flagged the race, ostensibly to remove abandoned cars from dangerous places on the track, but really to get the tank truck out to flood the track and turn the surface into a slippery slope of mud. The stretch Cadillac limo with the bottom half of the female mannequin protruding, feet-up, through the sunroof, did pretty well, and so did the Chev Celebrity, until it threw a wheel and the driver tried to keep going, apparently not realizing that the extra drag he noticed in the mud was because his car was dragging its left rear wheel hub.
Kevin Davey wasn’t at Proctor, but he won the race two weeks ago in Hibbing. Davey used to be president of Hibbing Raceway, but he and a friend decided to race in the enduro just for kicks. “I got a car last year, so we did it again,” said Davey. “A buddy of mine who works with me at Hibbing Taconite paid $50 each; I paid for the car and he paid for the entry fee. He was going to drive the first half, but they put too much water on the track and he didn’t have tear-off lenses on his helmet, so I drove the whole way.”
“The car we bought was a 1978 Impala, that had run a couple enduros but was in good shape. It didn’t do well in the first one becaue they had a fire and burned all the wiring, and in the second one, it got smashed up. We bought it, pounded out a couple of dents, put in a new gasket for the transmission, then we drained the oil, fixed it, and poured the old oil back in. It was burnt, fried and didn’t smell the best, but it still worked.”
When the second half of the event started, with the cars going the opposite direction around Proctor’s 3/8-mile dirt oval, the field sorted itself out. But amid all the crunched, smoke-belching hunks of metal swerving around out there, one car emerged. It was a 2-door Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, blue and white, wearing No. 05. It stood out for two reasons: for one, it was comparatively pristine compared to the dented-up other cars, and for another, it was being driven with smooth precision, and it was passing cars right and left, practically slaloming inside, outside and around cars while the driver let off the gas to avoid the demolition-derby style of many of the entries. The 05 Ciera passes the entire field, then passes it again. Only about two laps later, 05 would again be picking its way through to lap the field again. A fellow sitting next to me and I decided that 05 was probably far ahead, by the time it lapped the whole field for the fifth or sixth time in the second hour.
Kevin Davey and his old Impala did OK the first half at Hibbing. “I knew we were in the top three,” he said. “In the second half, I tried to keep track of who passed me and who I passed. One guy was going to run me off the track, so I let him get by and tagged him in the rear corner and spun him around. It turned out to be a friend of mine.”
Is he still a friend, after that?
“Oh, yeah,” Davey answered. “I gave him a beer afterward and everything is fine.”
The great thing about enduros, Davey explained, is that the entries are rank amateurs, and they spend no more than they might for a night out on the town. Sometimes an entry might buy a car, put a lot of work into making it runable, get onto the track, and break something after five laps. And they still go home thinking they’ve had a good time.
Meanwhile, back at Proctor, the announcer notified the crowd that the checkered flag was out, and even went so far as to estimate that “the No. 05 car” appeared to be the likely winner. After the race, the announcement came of the top 10. Al McDougall of Proctor won it, Chuck Micklewright of Cloquet was second, Butch Mahnke third, Rick Cannata fourth, Stan Sayler fifth, Don Koivisto sixthÂ…no mention of 05. I spotted the car driving out of the track and stopped him. He identified himself at Mike Smith of Superior. I told him I thought he’d won the race and he said, “A lot of guys told me that. I don’t know what happened, I thought I might have won, too.” So I went to the officials and asked if they could check the scoresheets just to find out how many laps “Smith in 05” had finished. They checked, and rechecked. “It looks like there’s no scoresheet turned in for 05,” said one official. “Every entrant was informed they had to have a scorer, but somehow it seems either Mike Smith didn’t have a scorer, or else his scoresheet didn’t get turned in.”
Incredible. Maybe Smith had more total laps than McDougall, but there’s no way to know. The words of Kevin Davey came back one more time. “Other forms of racing have some serious pressure,” he said, “but enduros are just fun. Everybody who’s ever had road rage should run one, because it would get rid of all of it. I laugh and giggle all the time I’m on the track in an enduro.”
But then, Davey won at Hibbing. He might have giggled less if nobody could find his scoresheet.
Proctor driver wins Proctor Enduro
[Cutlines or short story on Saturday’s Proctor Enduro:]
Al McDougall of Proctor, who drives a gravel truck for Butch Mahnke in the real world, drove a Chevrolet Impala to victory in Saturday’s season-opening Enduro race at the Proctor Speedway. Mahnke finished third, behind Chuck Mclewright of Cloquet.
The event was run in two timed segments, with the first half going in the normal counter-clockwise form around the dirt oval, and the second half going clockwise. Mahnke, driving a 1979 Chevrolet Impala that was bought from the Highway Patrol’s impound DWI storage lot, was credited with 99 laps,10 more than Micklewright, and 12 more than his boss.
The regular season of auto racing gets underway Friday at Superior and Grand Rapids, and Sunday at Proctor.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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