Is it over yet?

I love springtime, even if after each nice day snow is blowing, I still like it. 

The snow is usually wet and it melts quickly, but as a person who likes and takes sports somewhat seriously, this is my down time. 

I am not a big baseball fan. I like college basketball 100 times better than professional basketball. I love track and have as much respect for any boy or girl who competes in that sport as a person could have, and have no idea what is supposed to happen in the game of hockey. 

So this past weekend when I was faced with watching either the Stanley Cup or a professional basketball playoff, I chose basketball where at least I had heard of the two teams playing. 

At a break in the basketball game, I flipped through the channels like I usually do and saw that the hockey game was just starting an overtime period. In my thinking, maybe that would be something different so I watched it and fell asleep towards the end of the 20-minute or two-hour time limit—whatever it was—and when I woke up they were in the second OT. 

I couldn’t take any more excitement so I shuffled off to bed. They may still be playing, I don’t know. I honestly did not know who was playing and can’t remember the announcers ever mention the teams other than by mascot and that didn’t help. 

In my many years of going to sporting events, I have only been to one hockey event and that was when I was in college and had gone home with a friend of mine who lived in McKeesport, Penn. He took me to a semi-pro hockey game in Pittsburg and it was the longest three hours I have ever spent at a sporting event.

I only remember a couple of things about the game and one was that in the warm-ups, the teams shot goals at their own goalkeeper and one of the goalkeepers took the puck right above the eye, received multiple stitches and came back out and played the game. Those were the days before goalkeepers had a mask to protect them. 

The other thing I remember was when you saw the gloves come off and the sticks get thrown down, there was going to be a fight. There were a couple of those in the game. I don’t question a hockey player’s toughness, but the game is another one of those where they play forever and hardly ever score. I find not a whole lot of excitement as a spectator in that particular style of activity.

SPVA

My other thought this week is how or maybe why is the SPVA track meet ever in Sidney, Nebraska? I know the answer and yet I also know when the SPVA expanded, the two Western Nebraska teams added knew coming in that the other five schools were EAST of them a bit. 

I also know that concessions are made to get more schools into a conference, but I have a hard time with the track situation and with the SPVA basketball first-round concessions. 

I am getting old and cranky, I know, but I would have had a difficult time with those changes if I had been part of the SPVA at that time. 

I certainly have survived the changes and I would bet there are more changes I will have to deal with in the future.

Let’s hope that the weather stays good for the rest of the school year and the golfers and the track people can have a chance to compete with just the other participants and not old Mother Nature.

Go Plainsmen!