It’s mid-summer, but the thoughts of every red-blooded Illinoisan are already turned to autumn. The fields resound with the satisfying crunch of pads against pads, helmet against helmet, brain against skull as college football squads go through their two-a-days. College football, like basketball, is a tribal thing, and I’m not of that tribe. It isn’t […]
Sports
Posted inOpinion
The needle and the records won
San Francisco, city and club, are famously tolerant of people who don’t play by the book, but Major League Baseball tolerates it only among its umpires. The game’s poobahs have ruled that a player who uses the same sort of methods to win a job on a big-league club that its owners used to acquire […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Scrumming in Springfield
It is easy to imagine the Springfield Celts as third-graders. These are the guys who loved dodgeball, the ones who laughed and screamed “Whoa!” when balls found their mark in particularly violent fashion, the ones who pleaded for one more game before recess ended, the ones who didn’t notice when classmates cowered or developed sore […]
Posted inOpinion
Cheating is the American way
There is no shame in quitting a race you know you can’t win. Lance Armstrong’s shame is the many races he perhaps should have quit rather than win. It was apparently to prevent unsavory facts about his long-rumored doping from coming out into the open that the seven-time Tour de France winner abandoned his years-long […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Golf classic to benefit injured motorcycle riders
Charlie Roberts, 51, of Springfield, knows what it’s like to race a motorcycle at speeds of more than 130 miles per hour around a flat track. He also knows what it’s like to lose control of a bike, ending up seriously injured and hospitalized a long way from home. After an injury in 1980, Roberts […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Springfield Sliders, a family operation
Some children draw pictures of dogs and cats, but when Shane Martin was a child growing up in the early 1980s, he drew baseball stadiums. Shane, the new owner and CEO of the Springfield Sliders baseball team, grew up in Farmington, Minn. – a rural suburb of Minneapolis – in a gray tri-level house with […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Talk derby to me
“The night that I fell in love with a Roller Derby Queen, Round and round, oh round and round, The meanest hunk of woman that anybody ever seen, Down in the arena …,” – Jim Croce, “Roller Derby Queen” Used to be, saying somebody hit like a girl was an insult. Not anymore. Don’t believe […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Everybody plays
With the end of summer come the beginning of a new school year, the harvest and the start of an area tradition that draws thousands of children away from their video games and outside onto the mown grass lawns of parks and schools across Springfield. It is the fall soccer season. “Did you have fun?” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Swim, bike, run for fitness and fun
Maybe it’s the obesity epidemic that has so many people worried about their waistlines. Or maybe it’s the ongoing recession that has people looking for low-cost extracurriculars. Whatever the cause, it’s clear that Americans are more interested than ever in getting fit. Last year was the first in which the number of marathon finishers topped […]
Posted inArts & Culture
‘Ultimate Frisbee’ offers fitness, fun and community
If you’re home from college or just wanting to get fit and have fun in central Illinois this summer, ultimate Frisbee may be for you. A game of “ultimate” is like soccer but is played with a flying disc and an edge of competition. The game has no referees, and players can even call a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
School’s out, but there’s plenty for children to do
For at least a few students, the countdown to summer vacation began last August. Others maybe waited until January, by which time the bitter cold and recent memories of semester finals started giving way to daydreams of summer sunshine and three months of test-free bliss. But Illinois summers also come with high humidity, and, come […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Not ready for the big time
As the University of Illinois Springfield in October 2008 made another move toward full membership in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, then-Chancellor Richard Ringeisen said the eventual achievement could only mean good things for the school’s future. He said he was excited because joining the Great Lakes Valley Conference, an academically high-achieving NCAA Division II […]
