New recruits on campus and team camp at Ohio

Team camp full capacity exposing young players to the Convo/Ohio

New players in for summer. Time to run open gyms and get started.

Stopped by Butler on Thursday on the way to taking my wife and her grandson to Indy Childrens Museum. Met new staff and caught up with old friends. Similar situation to this week in Athens with kids camp going on at Hinkle. Grandkid was in Basketball office meeting coaches and saw Gordon's pic with the Jazz and excitedly asked Coach Kampen if he knew Gordon. Good for a laugh. Talked a bit about Chris leaving and the return of Lavall. Interesting. Great to expose a born Ohio fan to Hinkle and start him on the road to "collecting" gyms

Basketball in the summer is take what you can get. 96 days till hoops starts but every day in the summer goes into the coming season. Good weekend with kids, team camp and new players on Richland.

I got a late start on collecting gyms, but we're getting there year after year. Not sure where, besides Athens, Dayton and NKY we'll end up this year.

Thanks for the countdown til hoops starts. It's a plus and a minus - signals how quick summer will fly by, but it's always easy for me as we get into the first weeks of the fall to look past football towards hoops.

One of the more interesting gyms I have ever been to was Carver Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City. It is set into the ground so while you enter and street level you walk down into all seating. Was a special experience for this former wrestler.

I always come back to this flashback when I think of "Ohio" and Weekend Update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wTI9bBViFU

Carver has always been a cool place to go... I was in Ft Dodge IA for residency when one of the staff said "wanna go to a Hawks game" ...uhhhh yeah. Left after lunch, saw the Hawks and got back at 3 am...those folks are crazy for their teams and CH is a similar to New Castle in layout.http://bluegrasspreps.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=480...
Dayton has some of the same feel but nothing emulates "pit gyms" that a handful of architectural firms came up with.

REally appreciate the wrestling reference...I remember coming home from the hospital in Ft Dodge to see many cars parked in front of houses in the neighborhood. My neighbor came out and said to come over to watch the Iowa/Iowa ST wrestling dual. I begged off saying "nahh I am going to grab a beer and watch Miami vice" he laughed. I wondered why.... when the time came to switch on Miami VIce I found it was pre empted by the TV broadcast of the Dual Meet. I went over and joined in the watch party. It seems to be a "thing" in Iowa. Gable is a minor deity.

Interesting OCF.

The Girls TOurney often drew bigger crowds than the boys in years past. The summer softball State tourney is HUGE.

While I was a resdent Ft Dodge won the last 6 0n 6 girls state title and the townfolk had a cow as the Dodgers decided to play 5 on 5 the next year with a full compliment of returning letterwomen. They went on to win it as well but not without the peanut gallery watching over every step of the way.





On the Weekend update thread....I can not believe how dead it is around here. Fuss leaves, new asst named, new ops guy on board...lots of going on and no one seems to have raised an eyebrow. Hmmmmmm

Glad you found it interesting, borna. On a related topic, and contributing to additional thread drift, I've found it interesting that if you look at old Athenas or yearbooks of high schools in at least rural Ohio (suspect the same was true in urban areas), you'll find female athletic teams as far back as the 1890s. However, sometime between the world wars female athletics almost completely disappeared from the college level and the high school level. I've never found a completely satisfactory explanation for why this phenomenon occurred. Sounds like a good topic for a Ph.D. dissertation in sociology. Perhaps, someone has done it, but I've not run across it.

Hmm, sounds like a good hire. https://www.athensmessenger.com/sports/ohiouniversity/joy...

Ark did a great job on the article. He played at D2 Northwoods under my friend Barry Huckeby . Good background and has been on the rise early in the coaching world.

borna, interesting link, but that doesn't really describe why it happened. It does precisely tell when it happened -- on the eve of WWII, which might have had something to do with it. But, I'd really like to see an in-depth sociological study of the various societal variables that were at play (what a pun) in this decision.

oldkatz, I believe that shot was taken by an AWOL army grunt in a helicopter. Was that you? ;-) n

Not sure about the late coming of the baseball and softball. I always thought it was because the winter gets over so late. Never thought about it but Ft Dodge did host Tourneys in late June out north of town at the diamonds.


My first RAGBRAI was purely accidental. I was studying for Boards part I after my 2nd year of med school. Knowing that I would not study living blocks from Wrigley and all the things I did I knew we had to be in San Diego in July of '83. I put all my study subjects on Note Cards and told my wife she would be flying home alone as I was going to ride my Miyata 1000 back to Chicago. She did not bat an eye after dating for 6 years and being married for 2. I studied as I rode and averaged 107 miles a day. After my best friend brought her out to Des Moines to visit one weekend I departed up to Guthrie Center. Camped at the city park to awake the next morning to a swarm of activity. Bikes and cars and trucks everywhere. I asked what was going on and found out about RAGBRAI. After 21 days on the road alone suddenly I had 15K riding,beer drinking, loud partners for the next 2 days. Rode several since then. The Great Beer Ride Across Iowa never disapoints.