The Omnigeek

Once basketball season ends in Kentucky, life turns towards Kentucky’s other sporting passion, Horse Racing. Kentucky is known as the horse capital of the world, known for its picturesque plank fenced horse farms sprawling over rolling hills of Kentucky Blue Grass.

In Kentucky, horses are raced, trotted, shown, jumped and danced. Horses of all breads and pedigree can be found on farms all across the state. There are however two major concentrations of Equine activity: Lexington and Louisville.

Lexington’s sphere of influence includes Keenland, a popular thoroughbred racing track and home to the annual Yearling Sales, where the best 1 year olds are auctioned off from the breeding farms to the owners who will eventually race them. The Kentucky Horse Park is located just north of Lexington and while a state park, it is home to various major equestrian events and has hosted the US Olympic Horse Trials and will be hosting the FEI World Games in 2010. Lexington is surrounded by horse farms. The major equine research facilities and horse database companies are located there as well.

But this time of year, the attention turns to Louisville when the greatest of horse races is run on the 1st Saturday in May, the Kentucky Derby. Ran at historic Churchill Downs in the center of Louisville, the Derby is led up to by a two week festival for the race.

My wife and I have traveled to Louisville to participate in these events and today, we chased hot air balloons during the “Great Balloon Race”. You can read about the chase at http://www.robmiracle.com. The chase carried us to an area with several horse stables north east of Louisville.

One of our missions this week is to photograph horses when and where we can and well, I had a camera and there were horses. With the Balloon race over, and before having to travel two hours south to visit with my family, it was horse photo time. Strapping on my telephoto lens to shoot horses at a distance, I snapped a few shots of a group of horses in one field. I then moved to a small black plank fenced field that contained a couple of horses, one white, one chestnut.

Immediately, the white horse took attention to me and decided I was interesting, perhaps it was my bright red Carolina Hurricanes shirt (I write this from a sports bar watching the Canes play the Devils) or perhaps it was my movement, or the horse was naturally curious or a camera hog.

He got within petting distance and turned his left neck toward me, obviously wanting petted. This horse has spent a lot of time around people. I obliged, petting his neck for a few seconds and as I pulled my hand away, he turned his head toward me and nuzzled me square in the face with his big and very wet nose.

I had been slimed . . . by a horse.

I was stunned for a moment as this came completely out of the blue.

The only thing I could think of was “Lucy” from Peanuts and the dog kisses Snoopy laid on her over the years: “Oh horse kiss. Gross. Bring the disinfectant.” Sherry, my wife was laughing hysterically at the scene and retold the story dozens of times to family and total strangers as the day progressed.

The white horse and his stable mate stayed near by. I regained my composure, switched over to a wide angle lens and shot the horses close up.

We wanted to see some horses and this was definitely “seeing” some horses.

It was a foggy Sunday morning in Charleston, South Carolina. Four white 15 passenger vans rolled into a nearly empty parking lot of an unassuming shopping center. Tucked into one end of the strip mall is a pair of ice rinks and on this particular Sunday morning, two hockey games would be played. This is the story of one of the games and one of the teams.

But lets back up 48 hours earlier. Two of the vans pulled into the parking lot of the Chilled Ponds Ice Facility in Chesapeake, Virginia to load a hockey team for a trip to Charleston to play in the South East Junior Hockey League’s end of season tournament. The Hampton Roads Junior Whalers Green team had a seven hour drive in front of them.

Their bother team, The Hampton Roads Junior Whalers Blue team had to leave the night before as they had a 5pm game Friday night. The Green team got a morning skate in before they packed up and left a couple of hours later.

Their destination was the Carolina Ice Palace. The top two teams from the tournament would join regular season champions, the Atlanta Knights in Marlborough, Massachusetts in two weeks to participate in the USA Hockey Tier III National Championships. “Three Wins and your In” was the motto of the Green team as they headed down I-95.

At the same time parents, family and friends were packing up their cars to make their journey to watch this end of season tournament. It would be one of the best parental showings of the year for these men between 14 and 21 years of age. Some traveled from as far away as Louisville, Kentucky and West Palm Beach, Florida to cheer their players on.

Text messages from the parents already at the rink were sent to the players on the road to keep the players updated on the progress of the Blue Team’s game. The two teams had not officially played each other during the regular season, but their league records were nearly identical and their scrimmages were split. Either of these two teams could come out of this with a bid to nationals and there was a chance they both could.

After the Green team checked into the hotel and got dinner, most of them migrated to the rink to watch the last game of the day. The Tampa Bay Bolts were playing the Space Coast Hurricanes, both teams had come up from central Florida. At the end of regulation, it was tied. After a 5 minute overtime, it was still tied. The Green team had an early 9am game on Saturday and the lateness of this game was becoming a concern. Surely the ensuing shoot out would be over quickly and they could get back to the hotel. A long shootout took place, going 15 shooters per team deep. Finally a team had an advantage giving the underdog Tampa team the win, effectively eliminating the Hurricanes. The Green team headed to their hotel to get some sleep before their 6:30am wake-up call the next morning.

“Three Wins”

The Whalers would need to win their two round-robin games and win their semi-final game to qualify for nationals. They would not need to win the championship game. Just three wins.

First up was the Tampa Bay Bolts. The Whalers Green team quickly dispatched them 10-2.

With many thanks to the Davies family, the boys were treated to a cookout for a post game lunch. The Davies were staying at a Residence Inn next to the rink, which had a large gas grill in the pool area and some 40 hamburgers, 40 hot dogs and 2 boxes of chicken later, the boys were fed and playing pickup basketball on the adjacent court.

But for one player, Billy Varley, basketball wasn’t his post meal entertainment. It was Billy’s birthday. His mother surprised him with a belly dancer who performed for him. It was pretty clear the boys were having a good time.

A post meal nap was scheduled before the boys had to be back for their 8pm match-up against Space Coast. Two junior hockey games in a given day is taxing to the body. Space Coast had nearly 20 hours to rest between games, the Whalers less than 8.

Everyone was nervous going into this game. Though the Green team was 2 and 0 against Space Coast for the year, the games were reasonably close and in their last meeting a major brawl broke out after the game. Would there be any bad blood?

“Two Wins”

The game started out hard hitting. It was clear these teams did not like each other and that Space Coast was here to extend their season. The teams went to the locker room with the Whalers up 1-0 at the end of the first period. The second period started up with more hitting. But starting 5 minutes into the period and over a period of the next 7 minutes, it was “Good Night Sally, See ya” as the Whalers effectively ended the game. The Whalers found the net 3 more times to end the game 8-0 putting the Green Team into top seed in their bracket going into Sunday.

Earlier the Blue team gave the East Coast Eagles Majors a tight game, but the Eagles prevailed to take the number one seed in their bracket. This setup a match-up between the Whalers Green and the Whalers Blue team in their first official meeting of the year.

With the top two teams getting bids to the nationals, the winner of the Blue-Green game would get a bid, the other’s season would be over. The other semi-match-up pitted Tampa Bay against the Eagles Majors which the Eagles would easily win. The championship game only mattered for seeding in the nationals.

“One Game”

The season was on the line. This had the billing to be a very good hockey game.

Five minutes in, Nate Atangan put the green team ahead. Ten minutes later, Chris Armand, for the Blue team tied the game. It was a hard hitting fast paced game. The Blue team climbed to a 3-1 lead on goals from Barron Sluder and Michael DePatto in back to back goals within 35 seconds half way through the 2nd period. The Green team would not go easily. Atangan picked up a short handed goal to narrow the deficit to one at the 7:32 mark. Four minutes later, Brandon Rumble scored an unassisted goal to knot the game at 3-3. Just before the period expired, Alex Byrne scored to give the Green team a 1 goal lead going into the 3rd period.

Two minutes into the 3rd Period Brandon Rumble gave the Green team the most dangerous lead in hockey . . . a 2 goal lead. The game moved back and forth until a 5 minute major penalty put the Green team on a power play that would consume most of the remaining 3rd period. The Blue team killed it off and with about 2:00 left, the Green team took a penalty that gave the Blue team some life. With the goalie pulled giving the blue team a 6-4 man advantage brought the game to a 5-4 score just after the penalty expired with 11 seconds left on the clock. The Green team killed the last 11 seconds. Joy was on one end of the rink, sorrow and sadness on the other.

In a great show of sportsmanship, instead of shaking hands, the players were all hugging each other. This was extra special since the referees were not allowing post game handshakes in many of the games. To see these guys being so emotional to each other after such a hard fought game was amazing.

The sun was out. The fog has been burned away. It was a glorious day for the Green team.

From the beginning of the year, the Green team was focused on making it to the Nationals. Instead of “We’re going to Disney World” the chant was “We’re going to Natties”.

The team headed to Hooters to celebrate achieving their season goal. More birthday embarrassment for Varley and the captains were forced into doing the hula-hoop.

There was another game to be played and congratulations to the East Coast Eagles Majors on their bid. It was an amazing weekend for the boys. They happily piled into their van’s for their seven hour drive home knowing their season was extended as they were:

Going to Nationals!

We’ve all heard the description of this basketball rivalry.  Two teams who in recent years seem to stay at the top of the college basketball pack live a mere 9 miles apart and is considered to be the best rivalry in all of college basketball.  They play each other twice during the year with a potential 3rd meeting in the ACC playoffs and a possible 4th run-in during the NCAA championship.

But today at the Dean Dome (Dean Smith Center named after the Evil Overlord himself — remember I’m a Kentucky fan!) the powder blue clad Tar Heels host the Blue Devils or as they are known affectionately as the “dookies”.   Today’s game will determine who wins the ACC regular season title.  This title doesn’t mean much other than seeding for the ACC tournament later this week.

In an interesting twist, because of the ACC’s quest to be a football conference and the growth to accommodate their BCS dreams, all basketball teams do not play each other twice during the season.  This has created some very interesting scenarios for the sports geek to ponder with the ACC Tie breaking system.

If UNC wins today, they win out right, two games head of Duke.  Duke is a game behind UNC going into today’s contest and if Duke wins, they will be tied since they have split their head-to-head match ups.  The tie breaking scheme is basically one of looking at head-to-head match-ups until one of the teams has an advantage.

The process is complex and given that I don’t give a squat about the ACC or its member teams, I’m not going to delve into it any further than saying today’s game should be a good one with the title on the line. If you’re interested in more details go see this forum post.

Now Kentucky has struggled and as much as I like Billy Gillespie, the coach, they are on the outside looking in at the moment and may not make the NCAA tournament.   If I were writing the contract for the coach as Kentucky, this would be a reason to fire clause.  The other two are never loose to Tennessee or Vanderbilt.  But I’m not the AD, so I don’t get my say in these matters.

At the end of the day, UNC will probably gain another 4-6 wins on Kentucky before the season is out, halving the lead the Wildcats have.    Therefore I need Duke to win today.

So why for the life of me, when I went to get a glass for ice water this morning and I was looking at a plastic cup did I make the conscious decision to choose a baby blue cup from a UNC game over one from a Carolina Hurricanes game?

Am I loosing it?  Could I actually start liking UNC?  Or is it a case that I really loath Duke and UNC is the lesser of the two evils?  Why am I so tortured by this? I swore when I moved to NC that I would not become a NASCAR fan and well hell would freeze over before I ever cheered for an ACC school.

I’m going to watch NASCAR and ponder this….

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A couple of weeks ago, my wife received a pair of free tickes to see the UNC Tarheels play the Virginia Cavilers at the Dean Smith Center on the UNC Campus.  The arena is named after their retired Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith.

No one can argue that Dean Smith was a great coach.  He has a national championship under his belt, coached the likes of Michael Jordan and James Worthy.  His famed “Four Corners” offense, where he intentionally tried not to score is directly responsible for the “shot clock” in College Basketball.  Even as a Kentucky fan, growing up in the Adoph Rupp era, attending the University of Kentucky during the Joe B. Hall era, you have to appreciate his accomplishments, even if he is the Evil Overloard  of Tarheel nation.

But free tickets are free and it was an experience my wife, the “Queen of Free” wanted to have while we live here.

Now we have been here in ACC hell for nearly 10 years.  I call it ACC hell because this has to be the most arrogant conference in all of college sports.  And you ACC fans who hate Billy Packer, the long time color commentator for CBS for the ACC being as strong as it is.  It could be game between Indiana and Notre Dame and all Billy Packer could do is pimp the ACC.

With the exception of UNC everyone else’s basketball programs are no where near the level the fans believe them to be.  Duke has its moments and has probably benefited most from Packer’s free advertising.  But UNC has always been there near the top and from a Kentucky perspective, they are the enemy, the biggest threat to our way of life

All teams ebb and flow through the years.  Some coaches will do well, others will not.  Some recruiting classes are stronger than others and this is to be expected.  But to be a top program you have to be there, every year.  You need multiple national championships and you need them in different eras and you constantly have to be posting strong winning records.

So as I was picking out my clothes to wear today, I called down to my wife “I don’t have anything Navy and Orange do I?” since that would be the Virginia colors.  “Do I have a UK cap?”.  It brought a chuckle to her, but I couldn’t dare wear anything close to resembling light blue.  So I found a Navy sports shirt with red trim.  She went with a very neutral white color.

We traveled to Chapel Hill to a park-n-ride spot on Highway 54.  If you feel you must ever attend one of these evil events, I highly recommend using park-n-ride.  Its $5 per peep, but you don’t have to deal with traffic at an on-campus arena with no practical parking.  The UNC campus is a bunch of twisty passages all alike.  Being dropped at the door and picked up at the door is a very handy option.  For the $10 we paid, we were handed lovely Tyvek green wrist bands, which I found out later is how you find the right line to get into to find the right bus.  So far, this is a positive event.

Once we arrived at the arena, it was a short climb of steps through people holding up various numbers of fingers, people begging for tickets. Why can’t they just go to the ticket booth?  There were quite a few open seats in the upper deck corners.  Now at this point, I was tempted to sell out gift tickets, pocket the money and call it a successful day.  But I didn’t want to deny my wife her experience.

The entry lines were dividied into people with bags and people without.  Since we packed light, we headed into the non-bag line and was quickly ushered into the arena.  Once inside, the small concourses caused the sea of powder blue lemmings to pack together like penguins huddling to keep warm.  The line for the ladies room was at least 50 people deep.  As we moved from gate A around to find our seats, there was plenty of chances to look down upon the hardwood and see the pre-game activities.

We took a full tour around the arena as we were looking for a co-worker of my wife’s who was working a concession stand.  We never found him, but we ended back in to the Blue sardine packing company again.  We grabbed a bite to eat and headed to our seats.  Now at this point, I was feeling a bit of awe about the building, but it was only a tinge.

Our seats were upper deck on the asile and for the most part had a pretty good view when the man in front of me sat back in his seat, but he leaned forward most of the game and his melon blocked about 1/4th of the court.

The game for the 1st half was pretty boring and we spent most of the time checking out the people than the game.  The endzone students who bounce the whole game was better in person than it appears on TV.  The section of students besides the band who stand the whole game was a nice touch.  The band sounded good and though none of the dancers, grouped into 4 groups along each edge of the floor were in sequence with their dance steps, they at least were well cooridinated with the music.

Half time came and they were honoring members of the Basketball Hall of Fame.  The problem I have with this is that they were inducted years ago.  How many times are they going to honor James Worthy or Billy Cunningham or the Arch-devil overlord himself, Dean Smith?  The latest inductee was several years ago.  Now supposidly there is a new banner or something, but the banner was already revealed and it was something to show on the big TV screens and get these UNC legends some more face time.  Seriouslly, WTF was that about?  Someone explain it to me.

Now Coach Roy Williams, one of the HOF inductees, must have had a “Come to Jesus” talk with the players at the half because they came out and made Virginia look like a pickup team.  We enjoyed the two “line changes”, where they brought in their subs late, to get about a minute of play time each.    (This is why we like hockey.  Everyone pretty much has to play…..)

After the game, we went down to the floor level and actually stepped out onto the hardwood.  I was hoping I would get a feel of emotion from being there.  It was cool, but that overall feeling of greatness just wasn’t there.

We colleted a set of the nice plastic cups, 4 small and 4 large.  It should serve at torture for my NCSU loving son and my die-hard Duke co-worker.  Free game, free glassware!  On the way out, one of the concession stands had left a bunch of hotdogs on the counter, more freebies.

We met a parent of a hockey player who played with our older son so the line for the shuttle bus passed quickly as we reminised and caught up on our kids.

My soul did not rot and there is no risk of me becoming a UNC fan anytime soon.  I would go back again should more free tickets come our way.

That said, here is my list of sports venues tha speak too you based on their history and feeling of the ghosts watching over you.

1. Rupp Arena, Lexington, KY.  Home to Kentucky’s Legandary basketball program.
2. Joe Lewis Arena, Detroit, MI. OMG what a feeling you get when you walk into that building.
3. Hershey Arena, Hershy Park, PA.  Wilt Chamberlain’s scored his famous 100 points here, but it was the hockey ghosts of minor league hockey that spoke out there.
4. Wrigly Field, Chicago, IL.  While the Cubs are championship free, you know some major baseball love has been felt there.
5. HSBC Arena, Buffalo, NY.  While very new in the scale of arena’s go, you feel it when you walk through the doors.

Now I will admit, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, the old Chicago Stadium and the Boston Gardens should be on this list, but I’ve not had a chance to visit them.

But I’m glad I went.  It was a good experience.