By DR. LARRY MOSES
No one asked me but… As the New Year progresses, the battle of the buldge continues. On January 1, 2014, I topped the scales at 234 pounds. When I was assigned my own zip code it became apparent that this was a little much for my five foot nine inch body.
I set a goal to lose a pound a week for 52 weeks. By January 1, 2015, I weighed in at 180 pounds. My goal of 2015 was to maintain the weight loss. After a rather disastrous 2015 Christmas season, I had ballooned to 187 pounds. I am presently in the process of getting rid of my Christmas weight. Part of that program is walking from four to six miles a day. That explains the “crazy walking man of Logandale.”
While I am sure you could care less about the incredible shrinking man that I have become, I find it fascinating that as a child no one would have ever believed that I would join the ranks of those who would be in the never-ending battle with obesity.
As a high school football player, I was “a pound for pound kid.” The kid that people said pound for pound, he was as good as anyone. The only problem was there weren’t very many pounds. It is the kind way of saying, “The poor kid tries hard, but he isn’t all that good.”
I graduated from high school at about 140 pounds and went off to play football at Tarkio College in Missouri. In those days, I still had vision of playing professional football for the Green Bay Packers. Yes, I was delusional about lots things in those days. I believed in Compassionate Republicans, Conservative Democrats, unicorns, and the tooth fairy.
You probably never heard of Tarkio College. It was a small church college with four hundred undersized and under-talented male athletes hoping against hope they would be able to continue an athletic career in football, basketball, or track. While our dreams were of professional athletic careers in real life most of us became teachers, preachers, or small town businessmen who coached little league.
The four hundred girls enrolled in Tarkio College had hopes of finding a husband amongst those undersized and under-talented athletes. These were 1950’s girls, not the career-minded girl’s of the 90’s. I will not speak to the beauty of those young ladies; suffice it to say a sixty-year-old boy’s dorm mother was elected the 1959 Homecoming Queen.
Years later, when I visited the campus, it had been turned into a reformatory for delinquent boys. When I remember many of the antics of the boys at the school when I was there, I would say nothing much had changed.
Two years ago when I visited the campus, it had been shut down and weeds had taken over my field of dreams. However, I digress; I was talking about my battle against weight.
Weight did not become an issue until I left the Marine Corps, got married, and returned to college. I established new dietary rules. I would not eat anything that was too heavy for me to lift.
If it was green and in leaf form, it was the food my food ate. I did not wish to put myself in a position where I would compete with a cow for dinner. PETA should have made me man of the year as I refused to encroach on the food source of grazing animals.
I love all kinds of animals: chickens, pigs, and cattle are favorite. They taste so good.
No one asked me but… I just read a couple of news articles that dealt with the issue of the lopsided talent pool in girl’s basketball in Clark County. There seems to be three public schools and a private school that have a monopoly on the top talent and top coaches in the city.
Whatever happened to the non-recruiting rule in CCSD? A few years ago as these four schools played schools with less talent, games were being won by 70 and 80 points. One team made national news by winning a game 100-2. To curb this humiliation, the NIAA put some rules in place in hopes of curbing these slaughters. After a 40-point differential is reach, a running clock is instituted.
Of more interest to me was the actions aimed at the successful coaches. The first time a team wins by 50 or more points the winning coach must file a general statement with NIAA as to the reason for the lopsided win. I would assume that it would have to be more than our opponents were an untalented, undersized group of miscreatants who could not walk and chew gum at the same time.
A second win of more than 50 points requires a coach to fill out a detailed form that includes how many minutes the starters played, what kind of defense was played, and the score after each quarter.
The third time this occurs the NIAA may recommended the school suspend the winning coach. I wonder if the NIAA ever thought of recommending the coach of the team that lost by 50 or more points be suspended?
One of the successful coaches indicated that a losing coach instructed his team to score in the winning team’s basket pushing them over fifty in hopes of getting the successful coach suspended for the rest of the year. It might have been the best defensive move that coach made all night. I wonder if she missed the shot.
Winning coaches report instructing their players to violate the rules turning the ball over to their opponents. Winning players are instructed to deliberately miss free throws to keep the scoring differential under 50 points. One team went seven minutes without taking a shot. It seems to me that coaching young athletes to take actions against the rules or deliberately not functioning at their peak is as wrong as demoralizing a lesser opponent.
Let me make a suggestion. Since the Clark County School district is the agency of learning let’s make the game a learning experience. When a team’s lead reaches fifty-points, declare the game over. Then mix the two teams together and play a second game. This would give the less talented an opportunity to play with the more talented. Both coaches would have an opportunity to coach more talented and less talented athletes. This would be an opportunity for peer tutoring for both the athletes and the coaches.
Thought of the week…Equal is every child having a pair of shoes. Equitable is every child having a pair of shoes that fits.
–Bradley Stevenson
