11/27/07: Monday With the Mounties

November 27, 2007

Assassinations…. What exactly defines an assassination? And, who is the one that says the person murdered is important enough to be considered assassinated? The word is tossed around too much. In my personal opinion, losses like John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations; Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. are not assassinations.


Let’s examine the phrase, “… too much money.” This phrase makes no sense, and holds absolutely no weight. Think about it, the only people who say someone is making too much money, is when they don’t have enough. You never hear an NBA player, or Alex Rodriguez, saying someone else is making too much. I realize I am saying this a week after ridiculing Rodriguez for making too much, well it’s because I’d like more money. If you have trouble believing this, think about if you saw a $20 on the ground, and decided not to take it because you have enough money already.


Well, it was a slow week in the Eastern Athletic Department, the fall sports came to an end and the winter sports are slowly starting up. I waited until late Monday to write this to recap the one sport in action, women’s basketball. The EOU women held off a stingy Whitman College team, winning in Walla Walla 65-56. The lead changed five times during the game and was tied many times. Eastern was down by as many as nine in the first half and four in the second. The Mountaineers and Missionaries were tied at 51 with 4:48 to go, when EOU closed with a 14-5 run.


Huge games coming up on the men’s and women’s sides for basketball this weekend, as EOU opens Cascade Conference play. Southern Oregon enters La Grande Friday evening, the Raider men are currently 4-5 and the women are 3-1. The Oregon Tech women will bring their undefeated record to Quinn Coliseum Saturday evening. The Hustlin’ Owl men currently have a 6-1 record and are ranked 11th in the country.


Last week many awards were given out amongst Mountaineer athletics. Cross Country runners Sara Bates and Stephanie Windle were named Daktronics-NAIA Scholar Athletes. This prestigious honor is given to athletes who have a 3.5-4.0 GPA. Grace Deboodt added to her growing lists of awards with a Region One first team honor. Region One consists of the eleven Cascade Conference members and eight teams from the Frontier Conference. And, after scoring 39 points in two games in Caldwell, Mark Carollo was named the Cascade Conference player of the week for men’s basketball.


Continuing the awards and with the finish of fall sports, I will now give out some awards myself. We’ll call them the MWM’s (Monday with the Mounties, of course).
MWM Team of the Fall: Men’s Cross Country
MWM Athlete of the Fall: Marcella Bosch (Women’s Cross Country)
MWM Coach of the Fall: Ben Welch (Men’s and Women’s Cross Country)
MWM Surprise of the Fall: Volleyball sweep in Portland, Cascade, Warner Pacific, and Concordia
MWM Upset of the Fall: Football victory over 21st ranked Montana-Western on Homecoming
MWM Game of the Fall: Soccer closes season with 1-0 victory on College of Idaho’s senior day


I’d love to know who or what started the “Black Friday” thing. I hated the hype and build-up and could not understand why people would wake-up at 4 am to go sit in traffic then wrestle someone over an Elmo doll, 31 days before Christmas day. So, last week I picked up a local ad and flipped through it thinking, “How dumb, 4 am…. Hmm, a Crock-Pot for $15… but how stupid, all that traffic… Wow, a DVD player for $25…” So needless to say, I was in line at 5:30 am Friday morning.