Inside Sports
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Sports
The Kansas softball team looks to break .500 today against Southwest Missouri State.
Kansas Track
Wednesday
April 21, 1999
Section:
B
Page 1
SEE PAGE 3B
The Kansas track team's results are in from the Mount Sac Relays.
SEE PAGE 4B
Pro Baseball
Cal Ripken and Barry Bonds will miss part of the season because of injuries.
SEE PAGE 5B
WWW.KANSAN.COM/SPORTS
Contact the Kansan
Sports Desk: (785) 864-4810
Sports Fax: (785) 864-0391
Sports e-mail: sports@kansan.com
Baseball team to make up for rainouts against WSU
By Matt Tait sports@kansan.com
Kansas sportwriter
As a result of two rainouts against Wichita State last week, the Kansas baseball team is scheduled to play a game at 7 tonight against Rockhurst College at Hoogland Ballpark.
The game, although officially unscheduled, was placed on the schedule at the beginning of the season as a possible "rain game," or one to be played in case other games were canceled.
The Jayhawks, 10-30 overall and 4-20 in Big 12 play, have lost a school record 12 games in a row.
The Jayhawks were swept last weekend in three games by the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
There have been few player highlights this season. Sophomore Brandon O'Neal pushed his hitting
pushed his batting streak to nine games and tied for the team lead in home runs with four. Sophomore John Nelson got back into the swing of things at the plate when he hit .556 against Oklahoma State. Center fielder
harrison Hill also came alive at the plate, hitting .440, including his first two extra base hits of the season — a triple and a double.
Despite the several offensive accomplishments and mostly solid defense, the end results have still been losses.
The players and coaches are having a tough time accepting the losses but are still looking forward to the chance to snap the streak.
"I know it's hard for the guys," Coach Bobby Randall said. "But there are only two things we can do—keep working hard and always keep fighting."
Kansas pitcher Rusty Philbrick, who will take the mound for the Jayhawks, said he was looking forward to a good performance.
"Everyone's wanting to end the streak," Philbrick said.
See BASEBALL on page 3B
Senior tennis player Kris Sell is the only senior on this year's women's team. Sell also is ranked 27th in the nation in Division I women's tennis.
Photo by Graham K.
Johnson/ KANSAN
A comeback volley
Senior leads tennis talent
By Amanda Kaschube
Kansan sportswriter
Kris Sell has been a vital part of the women's tennis team ever since her arrival at the University of Kansas in 1995.
The Moorestown, N.J., senior stood out her freshman year with a 22-13 singles record and an advancement to the semifinals of the Big Eight Indoors, her first collegiate tournament.
Sell was then named to the Big 12 All-Conference team as a sophomore, and in her junior season, she finished the season 32-10, the most singles wins on the team. She finished second in singles last fall in the Central Regional and had the best fall record. 14-5.
Ever since then, she has been unstopable.
Freshman Cheryl Mallaiah, Sell's doubles partner, said Sell had helped her adjust to college tennis.
said. "She's helped me get through the big matches."
"We really work well together," she
This spring, Sell, ranked No. 27 nationally, has defeated six ranked players, including two upsets of two players ranked No.4.
"In the beginning, I was very intimidated to play higher-ranked players because I was not ranked before," she said. "They are all really good, and I have to be, too."
On March 7, Sell also reached another first in her career: She was named Big 12 player of the week.
Coach Garrity said she was proud of the way her No.1 singles player had performed this season.
In high school, Sell lost in the state finals as a freshman. After this, it was clear that tennis would be in her future. She left New Jersey and attended the rest of high school in Florida at the Palmer Tennis Academy where her younger sister Kathy also enrolled.
"I feel that she is as good as any player in the country," she said.
"The tennis in New Jersey wasn't all that good, and I wanted to play at a top school," she said. "So we went to Florida."
After completing high school, Sell said she wasn't interested in coming to Kansas.
"I had never been to Kansas before, and I had no interest in visiting," she said. "But I did, and when I did, I fell in love with the school."
Throughout her career at Kansas, Sell has been coached by three different coaches, but one coach stands apart from the others.
Last year, Sell's older sister, Jenny Garrity, was named as the new head coach. Garrity said she had heard good things about the Kansas tennis program.
"I knew about the program from Kris, and I knew it had a high level of athletics," she said. "It's nice to witness Kris' senior year with her."
See INJURIES on page 3B
Spring practice for kickers differs from rest of teammates
Pelfanio, Garcia forgo full-contact practice
By Michael Rigg
mtrigg@ukans.edu
Kansas sportwriter
Punter Joey Pelfanio's days are admittedly easy: go to football practice early to work on his kicking game, sit on the sidelines for two hours while the rest of the team practices, then go home.
Place kicker Joe Garcia thought of a more creative way to spend his practice time. He spent a hefty portion of Saturday's practice playing with a fan's dog.
While spring practice means full-pads practice and hard hitting for the rest of the Jayhawks, Garcia, Pelfanio and the rest of the kickers are left on the sidelines as observers.
"I own a boxer." Garcia said, "And I'm looking for a woman boxer for him just like that one, so I was just playing with her and checking her out."
"We mostly just try to stay out of the team's way and out of trouble," Pelfanio said.
So goes a day in the life of a kicker
But the lack of activity doesn't mean that the kickers don't get any of the glory in the spring. Garcia will appear in an IMAX short film about Kansas City, Mo., which premieres May 1.
The short film features Garcia kicking at Arrowhead Stadium as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Chiefs didn't want to use their own players because the film will run for
seven years, so Garcia appears in a Chiefs uniform with no name on the back.
"If the Chiefs draft me, then it'll be true," said Garcia, who co-stars with wide receiver Harrison Hill and tight end Jay Ferguson in the movie.
Garcia is hoping to improve his performance after what he said was a subpar 1998 season.
Garcia missed three field goal attempts in last fall's game against the University of Alabama-Birmingham.
"I feel good about my kicking, but I can be a lot better," said Pelfanio, who was the seventh-ranked junior college punter last season. "I just need to keep working."
Garcia said he tried to kick 20 balls per day from every makeable distance.
Pelfanio is trying to get acquainted with the team after transferring from Sacramento Community College.
Pelfanio also has taken over as place kick holder, a job Hill had last fall.
"I used to hold in junior college, so it's not completely new to me," Pelfanio said. "I like it because it gives me a chance to get out on the field more."
The Jayhawks practice at 3:20 today. Kansas will have a full-contact scrimage tomorrow, complete with officials as the team prepares for Saturday's spring game.
Spring Football Notes:
Kansas punter Joey Pelissano watches practice from the sidelines. Pelissano and the other kickers spent most of their practice time yesterday on a separate field from the rest of the team. Photo by Eric Schramm/ KANSAN
Edited by Allan Davis
Commentary
Sports activities not much more than kids' games
Despite the T-shirts that say otherwise, sports are not life. Take away basketball or football or golf or hockey, and the rest is more than just details.
This thought pounded my consciousness last weekend, which I spent at my mom's house in Durham, N.C.
The buzz around the Triangle area — which includes Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill — surrounded the decisions of Duke sophomores Elton Brand and William Avery to become the first two Blue Devils to enter the NBA early.
With the University of North Carolina about a 20 minute drive down Highway 15-501, there is never a shortage of comments from obsessed fans about the local college basketball scene. I spent part of last year's spring break — during the NCAA Tournament — at my mom's, and the things I saw and read make the Kansas-Missouri rivalry look downright civil.
Here are a few examples:
■ My mom and I took a walk in downtown Chapel Hill the day after. UNC clinched a spot in the Final Four and Duke missed out by losing to Kentucky. A restaurant used its front-window advertising space to rip Duke point guard S t e n i c e w o J w o j ch l e c h w o s k i s i 'Look at Wojo, what a player, what a
Sam
Mellinger
sports @ kansan.com
■ Brad Frederick, a UNC walk-on with whom I went to high school, once described the rivalry like this: "It's beyond hate. I'd root for Russia if they played Duke. I root for their bus to crash." I'm not sure he was exaggerating.
"This doesn't happen at Duke," my avid Blue Devil fan of a stepfather told me. "The corruption of college basketball is complete now that it has reached Duke. They should just scrap the whole thing and turn it into what it is: a minor league farm system for the NBA."
reader," the sign said in small, cursive writing. Then, in bigger, bold block letters: "WHAT A LOSER!!!"
And the scariest part about what my stepfather Alan said was that he's not the worst of the bunch, not by a longshot.
He's a highly rational person, one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. He even has a degree from UNC and a son who is a freshman there.
Duke fans reacted to Avery's and Brand's departures the way you would expect a father to react if his 6-year-old daughter came home with blue hair, a barbed wire tattoo and plans to move out.
In many ways, he may be the most discerning Dookie in Durham.
I argued with him for a while but then realized it was wasted breath. You'd have a better chance convincing a Serb to spend the holidays with Croatians than you would talk sense into a Dookie about the Tar Heels, or vice versa.
But that fact goes the way of toilet paper when you realize that in the Triangle area, where so much is based on which shade of blue you wear — the lighter Carolina shade or the darker Duke tint — there is no such thing as neutral. You're a Blue Devil, you're a Tar Heel, or you stay the hell out of the way.
Geez.
Don't get me wrong, it's great to root for your team and sometimes our loyalties make us do crazy things. Heck, just last October I broke my phone against the wall when Javy Lopez hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth against my beloved Cubs in the playoffs.
but keep perspective. Sports are fun. That's why we follow sports, that's why we buy the tickets and watch the games.
I understand more easily the feelings of athletes such as Brad, who are directly involved in these souped-up kids' games, but the rest of us need to remember that's exactly what they are.
Kids' games.
Kids games.
The rest is life. This is just details.
Mellinger is an Lawrence junior in journalism.