Page Eight SCARLET AND BLACK Friday, January 23, mo SCARLET & BLACK SPORTS mmmrmmaxwasasmhsdsee Fable of the Novice Sportswriter 1 John Nigel Pepper The Associated Colleges of the Midwest, as you have all been told, is an organization devoted to the pursuit of Good Clean Fun at the intercollegiate level. It consists of colleges which send athletic newsletters to each other and to the Press. The minute he gets these Lloyd puts them in my wire basket, leans hack in his swivel chair and tells me. Except on vacations. When I arrived on Saturday, Lloyd put a month‘s accumulation in my wire basket, leaned back, etcetera. Knowing No Better, 1 opened and read 1 NCAA newsletter, 4 from Carleton, 3 from Grinnell, 2 each from Coe and Beloit, and 12 from Monmouth. There was another from some tennis organization, but Lloyd kept that, so you'll have to ask him if you want to hear about it, Just as well for me that I went through all this trouble, because it Disencumbered Me Good and Proper. There is, it seems a notion abroad among the laity that sports is made up of roughly equal proportions of Good and Bad Teams, and mat the two meet periodically and the For- mer defeat, trounce, edge, down, romp over, upset, detenestrate, or similarly demonstrate their unbridled superiority over the valiant, but (alas!) doomed Latter. Needless to say, I couldn’t have been further from the truth if I’d tried. There are neither Good Teams nor Bad Teams, but no need to worry. (Where there remains so little as a Former and a Latter, there springs Hope in the pedant’s mind.) The fact of the matter is that there are Optimistic teams and seasoned ones (players 32 years and older), and that these regularly encounter and defeat, trounce. edge, down, romp over, and upset the Latter, which are Building Teams (generally paraplegic sophomores). Promising Teams (a specialty at church-affiliated colleges). and Teams Plagued by Injury (in- cluding, in our own ACM, at least two cases of blood poisoning, not to mention outbreaks of House- maid’s Knee on the field hockey rosters), When I had learned all this. Iputmy newsletters in a Campus Mail Envelope, sealed it, and Pioneers Beat Beloit, Face Crucial Trip The Grinnell Pioneer Basketball team beat Beloit 7560 last Saturday after losing to Coe the night before. Two weeks ago the cagers opened conference play with a road trip to North field, Minnesota and battled defending league champion St. Olaf and then Carleton. The Pioneers faced a tough Carleton team and were leading going into the last few crucial minutes of the game until the Carls put on a sudden later game surge and took the victory away from the Pioneers, finally win- ning by seven points, The next night, Grinnell played an inspired game against St, Olaf. Grinnell was forced into overtime before losing by four points. The Oles are currently leading the Mid» west Conference with a 4-0 record. Sophomore center Bob Burnett played a tremendous game and led all scorers with 29 points. St. Olaf’s two all» conference players could not stop Burnett as he played his finest game of the season. This road trip proved that Grinnell is capable of beating any team in theleague. On January 16th Coe invaded Darby Gym and coasted to a 103- 62 win over the Pioneers, becoming the first team in the league to break the century mark this season. Junior Scott Hanson and senior captain Don Peterson led the disappointing scoring with eleven points each, while sophomore Greg Bombinski had ten points. The next night was a successful one for the Pioneers, as they nailed down their first home conference victory of the young season. The Pioneers outplayed Beloit and rolled to a 7560 viri- tory. Junior Greg Bumbinski scored 18 first half points and finished with a game high of 21 points. Hanson and Bombinskihit double figures again, scoring 17 and 11 points respectively. Tonight Grinnell plays at Lawrence against a team which was soundly beaten by Beloit. The Pioneers are favored to beat Lawrence and if they do, they could go into Ripon with some momentum and possibly sweep the road trip. This would give the basketball team a creditable .500 record going into a live game home stand. FOR SALE: 52 Chevy. Ex- cellent condition. low mileage, Gary Zarker. 236-7029. Filed It Carciully Away in a drawer somewhere, coming away somewhat chastcncd and certainly Educated MORAL: Ask Lloyd for the tennis magazine, Since it might be interesting Swimmers Easily Win Relays By Reggie Graham The ups and downs of the past two years have produced an excellent group of swimmers. Many of us have come up from poor to mediocre backgrounds With the help of Coach Ober- miller, and we are now a team of winners. Enough said: Examine the results of last week's Grinnell Relays. The annual invitational affair was attended by three nonr conference schools: Wayne State University, The University of Northern Iowa, and Luther College. These are large schools compared with Grinnell and usually afford excellent com- petition. This year Grinnell produced an outstanding per- formance. We are in good shape, just closing out our two weeks of prersemester, two-a-day workouts. Our relay teams took first in eight of the ten events, placing second in the other two. In a relays meet such as this one, swimmers compete in pairs as teams. Thus, for example, in the 200 yard butterfly, Jim William's and Hal Dale’s times were combined. Their total being less than that of any other team, they won the event, the trophies, and kisses from the queens (Kathy New Wrestling Coach Interviewed When I went to Darby on Tuesday afternoon I found Maurice Hunt in the locker room with his four~man wrestling squad. The team was preparing to leave later that afternoon for a meet at Wartburg. and there hadn’t been time to arrange a trainingmeal. ”Don’t worry,” he said ”a hungry man is a dangerous man.” and he sent them off to the Forum for their training meal. Hunt comes from Kentucky State College (captain of the football team) by way of Gary, Indiana’s city school system, where he taught and coached. Coaching the wrestling team of a school with an enrollment of more than 2,000 (compared to Grinnell‘s 1180), he guided at least one of his wrestlers to a city championship. And all navelr staring urges aside, it would be difficult not to wonder what his reaction to coaching at Grinnell has been. Maurice is disappointed, though keenly sensitive to the athletic situation at Grinnell, and hewas willing to talk about it. First of all, Grinnell does not have a reputation as the sort of school at which highly competi- tive athletes can do great things, and A c M, regulations prohibit any recruitment of prospective students by coaches. So the college must depend, says Hunt, on alumni aSSlstance and team records within the conference. But alumni of Grinnell tend towards urban areas, and urban athletes tend towards large asaszoeosssoaw THE WEEKLY SPORTSPACE soaaaesmameasmmsasm «A7 aaoahsaeaaagmsm Our man in the flowered bathing trunks hits the water ahead of all the rest. Abbott and Val Siedert). Records of the previous Grinnell Relays have been kept, and several were broken this year. The 1000 yard freestyle is a new event for the relays, and the team of John McBlain and Mike Daley set a good mark toward which future teams can aim. Don Linke and myself set a new diving record; Bruce Rollins and Jim Carns, a record in the 60 yard freestyle. Rollins and Steve Ward broke the 1000 yard freestyle record, and the unbeatable distance team of Daley and McBlain set a new record in the 500 yard freestyle. A new 400 yard freestyle relay record was also set by the team of Ward, Carns, Chris Freeburg, and Rollins. Individually, Mike Daley didn't get into the pool without breaking schools which can offer the busi- ness and professional programs as well as their athletic attentions and scholarships. Nor can Grinnell draw to the Same extent on alumni and organizational loyalties as can schools like St. Olaf, forinstance. Hunt, who also coaches the football and track teams, feels that despite these drawbacks, the college can attract talent in par- ticular sports by virtue of team records in these sports. He cites as an instance the increase in prospective football players after last year's winning season. But no matter how good his wrestlers, he is dogged by cir- cumstance and appearances, in this aspect. The wrestling team at its full strength will number five men: Jim Weiser, Mason Klippell, Washington Alston, Torn Ratliff, and Chuck Farr. As a complete team should cover all eleven Weight classes, Grinnell must forfeit most matches in dual meets before they are into their tights and out of the locker room. Consider also this: Grinnell is slated to meet Hofstra next Wednesday at Iowa City. Hof- strau is ranked well up in the top-ten small-college wrestling teams in the country, and the Grinnell squad is understandably nervous about the meet. Hunt, whilehe feels that this scheduling is a mistake, thinks that there is a real possibility of strong individual performances making a contest of it. But the fact remains that a meet like this tends to discourage the team, and perhaps more importantly, can present an erroneous picture of AfonliEss HERE: a meet record. even breaking the old pool record in the 500 by swimming a 528.4. 1 scored 213.60 points to get the individual diving record; Rollins swam a 28.5 second 60 to get the in dividual record in this event. Coach Obermiller thinks the team is in excellent shape, and is looking forward to a whole season of meets ending as hap pily as our relays. The second dual meet of the season is Saturday (the first was with Coe before vacation, and we won it handily). We face Mons mouth, which has had a string of excellent teams. They beat us last year by one point, so we’re up‘ior a grudge victory. We have only one other home meet this year s why not come tomorrow atpnethirty? its genuine strengths. This sort of thing also can inhibit the team from cashing in, as no doubt the football team did, on an attrac- tiVe record, and from good perv tormances that looked good. But, given all this, What ac- counts for the apparent apathy of Grinnell students towards varsity participation? Here the coach was genuinely puzzled. He pointed out that wrestling, like track, differs from :rnost coller giate sports in that'th’e'socus of blame and attention is on the individual, and that he has little chance to cover up mistakes and inadequacies. 0n the other hand, he feels that individual compe- otion has as much as, if not more to offer a highly motivated athlete than team sports. Train- ing is limited to about ninety minutes a day to find a balance between conditioning and fresh- ness, Hunt’s city champion was a kid he buttonholed on the basketball court. who first came on as team manager and only later wrestled himself. But of those who signed up for wrestling at Grinnell, most did not even appear. And of those others who show an aptitude for the sport, but will not come out for it, he can only shake his head at their lack of interest. While conceding that he an- ticipatcs low team scores in dual meet competition due to under staffing, Hunt says that he is hopeful of strong individual performances, and with luck and proper climmations, a chance at a championship showing at the Midwest Conference Meet early in March.