Metro Sports Report

Small college route worked out for Osborne

It was a tough decision for a high school senior, but also a decision most prep athletes can only dream of facing, especially those at relatively small high schools.

He had scholarship offers in both football and basketball from the state university, which just a few months earlier had played in the Orange Bowl.

His decision? To turn them both down and attend the local college -- enrollment about 1,000 -- and pay his own way, to boot.

Would Tom Osborne make the same decision again?

"I never regretted it," he said with a smile.

The legendary football coach, now athletics director, at the University of Nebraska was at the Cedar Rapids Marriott Monday to speak at an affair sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, an organization with which he first became involved in 1957.

That was two years after the multi-sport star in Hastings, Neb., decided against taking those scholarship offers from the big university 90 miles away in Lincoln. He had been named the state's top high school athlete that year after making first-team all state as a quarterback, leading his team to a state basketball championship, starring on a good baseball team and topping it off by winning the discus at the state track and field meet.

Metro stars help make Everyone Counts

The idea was for some of the Metro area’s biggest high school basketball stars to teach fundamentals of the game to a bunch of little kids.

So what was the one thing 6-year-old Jace Fopma of Marion and 7-year-old Kaylee Herr of Cedar Rapids learned Thursday night at the first-of-its-kind clinic at the downtown Helen G. Nassif YMCA?

“How to dribble between our legs,” said the tow-headed Jace.

“That was the funnest part,” agreed his new friend Kaylee.

“These days, that is one of the fundamentals,” said a half-joking Kasey Semler, the Marion Indian senior known for his dazzling dribbling and no-look passes during an all-state career.

Semler and his childhood buddy Wes Washpun, the Washington Warrior senior all-stater who recently signed with Tennessee, were teamed up for the two-hour hoops session organized by the YMCA’s Patty Bezan, volunteer director of the Everyone Counts Campaign.

Through the program, memberships are provided to children and families who otherwise may not be able to afford them.

The clinic Thursday night, though, was a come-one-come-all affair for area kids promoted mostly through word-of-mouth throughout the metro-area Y branches. Mostly grade school-age youngsters showed for what Bezan hopes will become an annual event.

Grading the sprains, soccer's common injury

Twisted your ankle in Soccer?
You twisted your ankle in a soccer tournament over the weekend. It’s already Wednesday and it is still bothering you when walking to class and in soccer practice. X-rays at your doctor’s office were negative and you have been following the doctor’s instructions -- taking Tylenol, using ice packs at the end of the day and using an ace wrap for practice. The swelling gets worse by the end of the school day, especially after practice, and you do not seem to be getting better. Your doctor diagnosed your injury as a “simple ankle sprain”. What should you do?

Ankle Sprains in High School Soccer-the most common injury
Thirty-four percent of all high school soccer injuries are ankle sprains, with a higher rate of these injuries in girls soccer than boys soccer. Ankle fractures occur more often in girls than boys, and girls are more likely to be injured while still wearing an ankle brace than boys. Boys' ankle sprains were more likely to be related to a mechanism involving another player, and girls are more likely to sprain an ankle in a non-contact situation and while contacting soccer apparatus (goal post, the ball, etc). Is there such a thing as a simple ankle sprain?

Stamp making progress

It was a celebration Sunday afternoon for the folks who showed up at the benefit for Coach Gary Stamp at Mount Vernon High School.

They saw a man with a new lease on life.

Just three weeks ago, the veteran high school coach thought cancer might be getting the best of him, sooner rather than later.

But back Saturday afternoon from a follow-up visit to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, he said he feels better than he has in months.

Better yet, doctors in Texas told him that the cancer-killing drug he’s been taking for the past month may be doing what they hoped it would.