This only on Fridays blogging has got to stop. I have got to find a way to make myself do this more often during the week, if not every hour of every day, at least once a day or maybe twice. But I keep leaving long gaps in between entries, and my life is lost, never to be recovered. Once I lose a day, I lose it forever, even with my great memory, and I can't recover it.
Tonight, I'm heading to a new venue to cover Smith Center football. I will be in Bennington, a small hamlet about 10 miles north and east of Salina on Kansas Highway. If I were the adventurous sort, I could drive up US 281 from Russell and then take K-18 all the way across past Waldo, Luray, Lucas, Sylvan Grove, Lincoln and Tescott, but (a) I don't have that kind of time (I do, but I would rather not waste it) and (b) I'm not that adventurous today. I want to go to Salina, fill up on gas and get a snack, and then drive up the rest of the way before the game. I want to get there by 5 p.m. so I can relax and be focused on the task at hand.
Smith Center has won all three of its district games and is 4-3 overall. If the Redmen win tonight, they will clinch a playoff berth. I suspect they will. Bennington is 4-3, but they have beaten mostly sub-par teams, and they tend to give up a lot of points to the better teams on their schedule, including 44 to Plainville two weeks ago.
I have to make a beeline back to Russell, because I have to be out of the house by 9 a.m. tomorrow morning to go to a sub-state volleyball tournament at Oberlin, which is 150 miles from Russell. I've been to Oberlin each of the last five years for the annual track meet hosted by Decatur Community High School (Oberlin is in Decatur County, and the other school district in the county, Jennings, no longer exists; thus the Decatur Community name), but I have been to only one other event at Oberlin, and that was back in first year in Kansas.
I remember it well. It was a wrestling regional tournament. I didn't cover the first day, since the semifinals weren't contested until Saturday morning that year. I stayed the night before in Colby after covering a basketball game in Ellis, and when I got up, it was 6 degrees below zero, the ice on Jack's Buick LeSabre was thick, and the pop in the trunk had frozen. I also remember snow being piled up along the sides of the narrow K-25 between Colby and Atwood, which scared me a bit, since it was my first Kansas winter, and I wasn't used to driving on snow. It got worse the next year; I went into the median on I-70 just east of Hays, and then I slid off the road one morning going west from Russell; I got out that time, but had to cancel my trip to Hays.
I have now covered events on every Kansas county seat on US 36 between St. Francis and Washington, and also in Kensington, which is on the highway between Phillipsburg and Smith Center. Tomorrow will be a very long day, since the volleyball matches don't start until 1, and I'm guessing the Lady Red will play for the title, and if they don't, Ellis will. I'll probably end up in Colby tomorrow night and then drive back Sunday to Russell.
Okay, here are some of my high school football picks:
Smith Center over Bennington
Phillipsburg over Minneapolis
Oberlin over Ellis
Plainville over Republic County
Beloit over Norton
Osborne over Pike Valley
Stockton over Palco
Trego over Hill City
Thunder Ridge over Northern Valley
Hoisington over Russell
Scott City over TMP-Marian
Salina South over Hays
Salina Central over Great Bend
Shawnee Mission East over Shawnee Mission West
Topeka over Junction City
Manhattan over Washburn Rural
Hutchinson over Garden City
Derby over Wichita East
Blue Valley over Pittsburg
Emporia over Andover
DeSoto over Spring Hill
Paola over Prairie View
Wichita Collegiate over Rose Hill
Holton over Topeka Hayden
Andale over Nickerson
Lakin over Holcomb
Garden Plain over Hutchinson Trinity
Caney Valley over Neodesha
Meade over Elkhart
McLouth over Valley Falls
Madison over Peabody-Burns
UPSET: Atwood over Ness City
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