Review of First Husker Luncheon in Fremont

For what my opinion might be worth, plus the comments I heard from other attendees, I think the first Husker Luncheon today (August 29) at the Wooden Windmill in Fremont was a big success.

Dale, Wayne, and I were among the first ones to arrive shortly after 11 AM, so we had our pick of the seats.  For those of you familiar with the Wooden Windmill, the buffet was set up in the main dining area but the eating and the program were in the large room on the south side.  The food was typical buffet food, but as is also typical of the Wooden Windmill, it was excellent and plentiful.  It consisted of a salad bar plus BBQ sandwiches, two types of chicken, potatoes, beans, rolls, and a beverage.  Cost of the meal and program was $12.

We thought attendance might be low due to some apparent glitches in the advertising.  I couldn’t find anybody who ever saw any mention of the event in the Fremont Tribune.  But people obviously found out about it in other ways as they continued to arrive during the entire eating hour.  I estimated about 45 people attended with about ten of those women.  The Roadrunner didn’t accompany me this time as she had a small conflict, but I don’t think she wanted to be the only woman there.  That will not be a problem the next time.

All attendees received a Husker Sports Network Fall Sports Guide, a card good for one free appetizer with the purchase of two meals at the Wooden Windmill, and a ticket good for any of about ten prizes at the end.

The program started promptly at Noon with Lincoln Journal Star sportswriter Steve Sipple as the speaker.  I have found that the best speakers are people who talk about what they know and just pass that on to the audience by telling stories.  Steve Sipple is very good at that.  He ran through what he thought would be the starting lineups, but mixed in enough humorous stories about players and coaches to keep the audience’s attention, as well as causing outbursts of laughter. He talked for about 45 minutes and then answered a wide range of questions for another 15 minutes.  I would give him a big thumbs up for his performance.

At 1 PM drawings were held for the prizes, which ranged from cups, T-shirts, and hats to a framed photograph of the Huskers emerging from the stadium tunnel.

Next Wednesday (September 5) the speaker will be Sean Callahan.  Sipple will be back on September 12, with the two alternating throughout the season on any Wednesday when there is a Nebraska game, home or away, that week.

Based on what I saw today and when the word gets around about this event, the Husker Luncheons are going to be a must-see for Nebraska fans.

First Husker Luncheon in Fremont

The first Husker Luncheon will be held today (August 29) in Fremont at the Wooden Windmill.  Doors open at 11 AM with the program from Noon to 1 PM with Sean Callahan or Steve Sipple as hosts. The cost is $12 for an all-you-care-to-eat buffet.

I don’t know why this event has not been promoted better.  Last night I finally saw a large ad in the Fremont Area Shopper, but I never have seen anything in the Fremont Tribune.  Perhaps I missed it.  I have had some calls about it since my email and Facebook post on August 24.  I have no affiliation with this event, but I have been promoting it among my friends.  It is open to the public and women are also welcome.  The Roadrunner (see my post on January 22) hasn’t decided if she will accompany me yet.  

This luncheon comes in advance of the Nebraska opener this Saturday afternoon, September 1 against Southern Miss.  We have been assigned new parking this year, in a parking garage northeast of the stadium on 14th Street.  Formerly we parked near the baseball/softball complex.  The walk will be similar in length, but with no streets to cross.  However, I will miss walking through Sodom and Gomorrah, the name I have given to the big-time party that takes place under the I-180 overpass west of the stadium.  The security guards won’t allow people to walk through the area before the game without a pass, but it is possible to get close enough to catch a flavor of the event.  Following the game people, are allowed to walk through the party as it is winding down, or up, as the case may be.  I doubt that you will ever see Tom Osborne in this area, unless he is accompanied by the Temperance Union ladies as bodyguards.

The Roadrunner will be going to the game with me as it is still prior to the Autumn Equinox, after which it is too “cold” for her to sit outside.  If Saturday’s game is a blowout, she will probably walk downtown for a salad.  The Roadrunner is quite the fan!

One last item.  What is the structure being build on the east side of Highway 275 just north of the Breaking Ground Nursery near Valley?  Is it a Shrine, Church, Barn, Store, or what?  If you know, please let me know. 

Golf Balls too Old to Use

On August 7th the First United Methodist Church held a Best Ball Outing at Whitetail Run near Fremont.  For the history leading up to this event see my post on August 2nd.

Picking up from there, as Karol and I were leaving the practice range my 50 year old golf bag finally gave its last gasp and the handle fell off.  The bottom had previously fallen off and was being held on by two bungee cords.  So, not wanting to take my clubs to the big event in a plastic garbage bag, I picked up a new bag at a local sporting goods store.  While transferring all the contents of the old bag to the new bag, I found a now expired credit card I had been looking for during the last 12 years.  The contents also included a nice collection of nice, but old, balls, pencils, gloves, tees, and just about anything I would ever need to tear up the course.

I was telling this part of the story to Glenn and Dave on Tuesday night and Dave said, “I hope you didn’t use those old balls”.  I said, “I did but why?”.  He went on to tell me that golf balls have a shelf life and they were probably “dead”.  DEAD BALLS!  Where did that come from?  In the 50 years I have been stomping around golf courses I have never heard anything about DEAD BALLS. I told Pastor Greg about this and he told me he had just bought 150 balls for 13 cents a piece.  I asked him what he thought the chances were that they might all be “dead”.  He said it didn’t matter as he had already lost half of them and besides that the price was right. As I thought about this “dead ball” idea some more, maybe that could explain a lot about my golf game for the last 50 years, or why I never could beat Leo, Karol’s father. More on balls later.

On the day of the big event, Karol and I eagerly arrived but with some apprehension.  After all it had been years since we last played.  Karol got paired up with the other women and I went with Gail and Wayne, with Roy as a driver and official scorekeeper.  As we headed for the first tee I was informed that I was to tee-off in a special place.  You might remember that at the end of the August 2nd post I made a tongue-in-cheek remark about the Methodists needing to loosen up.  They must have taken offense at that because here is where they sent me to tee-off.

                   

How nice of them to provide ramps for me to get up there.  There was a side benefit.  Most of my tee-shots have gophers and ground squirrels diving into their holes.  At least from up there I had a built-in loft that gave me a chance of hitting a bird.  But, I learned a valuable lesson.  DON’T MESS WITH THE METHODISTS!

Whitetail Run is a beautiful course, which I assume gets its name from deer.  We didn’t see any deer but we did see seven turkeys strolling across the fairway.  It is an unforgiving course in that if the ball goes anywhere but straight, it is gone for good into the Enchanted Forest.  If we were playing our own shots, I would still be out there, but I least I would have satisfied all the field requirements for a forestry degree.

But, we all had some good and bad shots.  The important thing was that we all had fun.  As we headed back to the clubhouse we spotted smoke, which we thought might be a grass fire due to the drought.  But, it was only Claude cooking up some of those world-class hamburgers he is famous for.  Here are some more selected pictures from the outing.

Now, what about dead balls?  For that answer I turned to my golf expert, nephew Brandon, who is CEO of Dancin’ Dogg Golf (www.dancindogg.com/), which makes OptiShot, a well-respected golf simulator.  He wanted to know what brand of golf ball I was using and what temperature extremes they had been subjected to.  I said I wasn’t sure about the brands since most of them had XXXXXX’s over them.  Combining the time the balls had spent in our garages in Sioux Falls and Fremont, they had seen temperatures ranging from 110 to –30.  When Brandon heard that he pronounced them “not fit for use”.  He suggested I put them all in a box for Matt, Niki, and Suzy, and, like my grandmother, mark it “Golf Balls too Old to Use”.  He also added that OptiShot will not be able to differentiate between a bad golf ball vs. a good one.  OptiShot measures the clubface through the impact zone - so the condition of the ball is not relevant to the simulator's performance.  OptiShot would probably analyze my swing as some kind of weird karate attack.

So, it appears that the best solution is to use old balls on an OptiShot to perfect one’s swing and then use new balls on the course. In fact, I heard that the Hooper Elevator is selling a new kind of golf ball that has the core made out of super-compressed soybeans.  Not only would that be a “green” ball, but buying it would help out the farmers in this drought.

But, next time I tee-off with that soybean ball, if it comes down short of Cherry County, I am giving up golf and switching to croquet.  Now, I suppose somebody will tell me wooden croquet balls have a shelf life.  What’s next?  Tiddly-Winks!

Olympic Volleyball at Logan View High School

If you have been following the Olympics like most of us, you are probably aware of the Nebraska connection to the USA Women’s Indoor Volleyball Team.  Starter Jordan Larson grew up in Hooper, Nebraska, graduated from Logan View High School, and became an All-American at the University of Nebraska.  Hooper and LVHS are just up the highway from Fremont.  Her volleyball accomplishments throughout her career have all been richly deserved.  She also stated a desire  at an early age to play in the Olympics.  So, that dream came true in London in 2012.

NBC has been less than helpful in finding out when the USA matches will be televised, in that they are sometimes live, sometimes on tape-delay, and sometimes not all, except for streaming video over the Internet.  On Thursday, the match was scheduled to be televised live but then wasn’t, so I ended up watching a play-by-play printed account on the Internet as it was typed out word by word.  How archaic is that in this age of instant communications?

So, with the final gold medal match against Brazil on Saturday not scheduled to be televised live, in favor of a tape delay on Saturday night, Karol and I decided to travel to Logan View High School where we could join other volleyball and Jordan Larson fans watch the streaming video projected onto a large screen in the gymnasium.

The boosters were selling Jordan Larson T-Shirts so we had to buy a couple of those before finding seats in the last row of the bleachers.  The boosters were also providing hot dogs, nachos, and water free of charge.  It was a little hard to see the big screen on the stage from the last row, so Karol went on a recon mission and found two folding chairs in the second row.  Much better!.  Other people with more sense than us had even brought their own lawn chairs.

So, how did the game go?  The first set was a complete surprise with #1 ranked USA winning so easily 25-11 against #2 ranked Brazil.  Every time the USA made a good play or there was a close-up of Jordan Larson, the crowd erupted in applause and cheers.  That continued throughout the match, but the second surprise was how easily Brazil won the next three sets (25-17, 25-20, 25-17) to take the match and the gold medal.

Written news media accounts of the match mentioned the different standard of sportsmanship displayed by the Brazilian fans and players than what we are accustomed to, but the USA players seemed to take it all in stride because they are used to it.  Brazil could have taken a few sportsmanship lessons from the fans at LVHS, who broke into applause at the end of the match, even though the USA lost.  I expect that is the norm for LVHS, as it is at many Nebraska high schools and the University of Nebraska.  In any event, Karol and I thought it was a nice touch at the end of a disappointing loss.

The 2016 Olympics will be held in Brazil.  Many of the top women either play professionally in Russia or Brazil, so it seems likely that we could see many of these same players again in four years.  Brazil will also be the early favorite to repeat their victory. I did find one report that said that Jordan Larson was committed to playing one more year in Russia, but it will be interesting to see if she tries for a second Olympics.  Nebraska coach John Cook has already said he would like to see her coaching at UNL some day.  But whether she tries again in 2016, she will always be remembered as a small town Hooper girl who realized her dream in 2012.

Kudos to LVHS for making it possible to watch the match in real-time.  I’ll bet they are already making the arrangements for the day when Jordan Larson makes a return visit to her school. Now that will really be a BIG event!

I’m preparing this post for the first time with Windows Live Writer, which should make it easy to attach the pictures that I took on Saturday.  Check below to see if it was.

With the Nebraska football season on the horizon, and a new Nebraska basketball coach in the wings (the season ticket order arrived this week) it is time to start writing again.

I changed the title of this blog in honor of my paternal grandmother.  She was a great saver of all things important, as the family discovered after her death.  She even had a large plastic bag full of pieces of string.  It was labeled “String Too Short To Use”.  Thus, the title of this blog.  I also changed the focus from Nebraska basketball to anything I feel inclined to write about.

Our church is planning a Best Ball Golf Outing next Tuesday morning.  The Road Runner (Beep-Beep-Get Out of My Way) and I thought we might give it a try.  Since neither of us has played for some time (years) we decided to hit a bucket of balls to test whether joining the Outing was a good or bad idea.

I found our golf bags, both covered with a layer of dust that may have come from the last Mt. St. Helen’s eruption.  The bottom of my bag fell off several years ago and is held on by two bungee cords.  Karol and I have also believed in keeping our sporting equipment up to date.  My clubs are signed by Sam Snead and Karol’s are signed by Patty Berg.

So, we find the golf range, buy a bucket of balls, and head for the tee-off area.  I go first because Karol says there are too many nearby golfers for her to embarrass herself.  My first test is to see if I can stay upright during the swing, what with my new knee and a not-so-good other knee.  Well, I pass the test probably due to the Ibuprofen flowing through my veins   But I almost take the head off a gopher about 25 yards out.  So much for getting loft on the ball, but at least I taught that rodent a lesson.  He probably hasn’t seen anything like that since he had to deal with Bill Murray in Caddyshack.

Karol goes next and only has two whiffs so she hasn’t lost her touch.  We alternate back and forth until we start to see cars stopping on the road to watch.  Finally, we use up all the balls and traffic starts moving again.  Why do people always flock to see disasters?

We decided to try another bucket over the weekend before the sign-up deadline on Monday.  But, we will probably give it a try, if for nothing else than to give the Methodists something to smile about.  They could definitely use a little loosening up.