Ramdom Sports Stuff

I read a couple of interesting articles in The Washington Post recently.  The first was about a high school track coach who decided to have his girls run in skorts over their spandex shorts.  The girls were uncomfortable running in the spandex shorts because of how the shorts clung to them and boys were making fun of them.  Their coach was watching tennis one night when he saw that some of the players here wearing skorts; that gave him an idea. "I've seen other women run in skorts before but running and racing are two different things," said Dunbar Coach Marvin Parker*, so he introduced wearing a mini skirt over top of the spandex shorts that was the old uniform.  The skorts have done a lot to raise the confidence of the team. "That skort is a miracle worker," said one of the runners, “you look good, you run good."*  I think it’s a good idea to add the skorts as part of their uniform.  If I was on their track team I’d much rather wear the skort than the tight shorty-shorts.

*Quotes from The Washington Post, May 26, 2011.

The second article read was the obituary of Australian Bill Roycroft.  He was an equestrian for the 1960 Olympic Equestrian team because he said he was unimpressed with the performance of the 1956 team.  He rode in the three day eventing, which includes dressage, cross-country, and show jumping.  During the cross-country, his horse Our Soul clipped his legs going over a jump, flipped over, and landed on Mr. Roycroft knocking him unconscious.  When he came to, he asked “Where’s my bloody horse?” and was offered oxygen by the Canadians and whiskey by the Americans.  He was airlifted to the hospital where he was found to have broken a bone in his shoulder, bruised his ribs, dislocated his collar bone and suffered a concussion.  Despite his injuries he demanded to be let go when he found out that one of his teammate’s horses was injured and couldn’t compete.  He told his doctors that he would walk out in his knickers if they didn’t give him his clothes back which they had confiscated to keep him from leaving.  He completed all 13 jumps successfully even though he was only able to hold the reins with one hand.  His performance helped Australia win their first equestrian gold medal at the Olympics.  I wish I had known Mr. Roycroft, he sounds like a very entertaining man.

(information about Mr. Roycroft came from his obituary in The Washington Post, June 4, 2011)

And finally, the Boston Bruins have managed to dig themselves into a 2-0  hole (best out of 7) in the Stanley Cup series with the Vancouver Canucks.  Humm, lucky them. But the next two games are on home ice so there is hope