SPORTS UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, April 7, 1994
11
Tennis is Kansas sophomore's racket
Sophomore Reid Stattery has become the Jayhawk's No. 1 singles tennis player with a 16-14 record. Stattery also is the No.1 player in the region, which includes the Bie Eight and Missouri Valley conferences. Stattery and the rest of the Jayhawks will play satish against towa State in Lawrence.
Regional No.1 looks to professional rank for future matches
By Matt Siegel
Kansas sportswriter
As a freshman, Reid Slattery experienced tennis success by winning the Rolex Indoor Championship and achieving a top 20 ranking.
But this season things haven't gone as smoothly for Slattery. He has been bothered by shin splints and chronic knee problems, and his national ranking has slipped to 57.
Slattery, however, isn't overly concerned. He is playing in the No.1 singles spot for the Kansas men's tennis team.
"My goal coming into this season was to make the NCAA in singles and doubles," he said. "I'm right on track."
To help him achieve his goal this season, Slattery stayed in Lawrence during the summer and trained with Kansas men's coach Michael Center. It was Center who convinced Slattery, who is from San Marino, Calif., to attend Kansas.
Slattery turned down schools such as Southern California, UCLA and Arizona State to play for Kansas.
"It's kind of weird, I agree." Slattery said. "I knew a couple of people on the team here, and they told me it was a good situation. I took a recruiting trip, but I didn't think I would come to school here."
When Slattery took his recruiting trip to Kansas, he was impressed by what he saw: a young program on the rise and a place where he could play. But when the coach who recruited Slattery, left before his freshmen year, he had second thoughts.
"It was kind of a strange situation," Slattery said. "When he left, I really didn't know if I was going to come here. I think when you come to a program a big part of it is the coach."
Luckly for Kansas, he met Center at a tournament two weeks prior to school startting. Slattery said that up until that time, he hadn't decided what he was going to do.
Slattery is ranked the No. 1 player in the region, which includes the Big Eight and Missouri Valley conferences. The top four players in a region receive automatic bids to the NCAA tournament. Being the top player this early in his career doesn't bother Slattery.
"I think everyone is trying to beat me because four players get a bid to the NCAA Tournament out of our region," Slattery said. "Right now I'm New I so everybody gets pumped to play me. But I like it. It's exciting."
He hasn't always been this way for Slattery. He started playing tennis at age 11, a late age for a short such as tennis. He wasn't an immediate star. Ironically, this is what Slattery attributes a lot of his success to.
"The thing about me is that I've kept getting better," Slattery said. "I always had something to look up to and try to get better. I'm happy as long as I keep on improving."
he said he is hoping to improve enough in his final two years at Kansas so that he can play ten professionally, he said. One of the things that Satterly had hoped would allow him to play
professionally is that he is extremely competitive. Off the court though, Slattery said, he is laid back. But he is annoyed by the suggestion that his laid-back persona is a "California" attitude.
"People say that a lot," he said. "It's kind of funny. You get a lot of questions and comments about things in California. I just don't stress about things or take things too seriously. I lived in California all my life, and I wanted to see a different part of the country."
Just the same, Slattery said he was thrilled when the Jayhawks took a California trip during Spring Break. Slattery that the didn't play
Center said the tough competition that Slattery had faced on the trip and other places would help him later on this season.
"He has had some streaks this year where he has played really well, and he has had some streaks that he hasn't played as well," Center said. "I think that is only going to make him stronger. He has so many competitive matches I
think he should feel confident because he's played better competition than anyone in the Big Eight this year."
Slattery is 1-0 in conference play and helped the Jayhawks edge defending conference champion Colorado Saturday.
But just as important as winning, Slattery said, is having a good time — with tennis and being at Kansas.
"It been more than I could have hoped for," he said. "It's worked out great, and I have no regrets."
Chiefs release running back Williams
eAssociatedPress
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The strange sign of the Kansas City Chiefs' running backs took another turn yesterday with the release of former No. 1 neck Harvey Williams.
Williams, who was to have been the featured back as the Chiefs turned to a new San Francisco-style offense last year, suffered a concussion in the eighth game against Miami and was not seen again on the playing field.
He joins Christian Okoye and Barry Word as backs banished from the Chiefs for no apparent reason.
The Chiefs released tackle Reggie McElioy on Tuesday and, yesterday, signed former Dallas Cowboys kicker Lin Elliott and formally announced the signing of Cowboys defensive tackle Tony Casillas.
But the Chiefs announced the release of Williams, their first-round pick in 1991, with merely a paragraph. Coach Marty Schottenheimer said during training camp last year that Williams would get the majority of carries as the Chiefs switched to the new offense that generally had only one back line up behind the quarterback.
The Chiefs had signed Marcus Allen as a free agent, but Schottenheimer said he thought that the 34-year-old Allen could take the rigors of playing every down.
Then Williams was injured and Allen took over, finishing with more than 800 yards as the Chiefs advanced to the AFC championship game before losing at Buffalo.
for the new offense.
The Chiefs had released Okoye and traded Word to the Minnesota Vikings before the season. Both backs had 1,000-yard seasons for the Chiefs, but both were big, bruising backs rather than the slashing-type runner needed
Williams had been involved with the law after his wife said that she had been beaten. But other Chiefs players had also been in trouble with no apparent retribution by the club.
Williams appeared in 35 games for the Chiefs in his career, rushing for 858 yards and two touchdowns.
McElroy had been signed as a free agent from the Los Angeles Raiders and played in eight games for the Chiefs. He is an 11-year veteran. Elliott scored 119 points for the Cowboys in 1992, making 24-of-35
field goals, but attempted just four field goals last year.
Casillas had signed a four-year contract for $6 million with the Chiefs on Tuesday as an unrestricted free agent.
The signing leaves the status of nose tackle Dan Saleaumua unclear. Saleaumua is designated a restricted free agent, meaning the Chiefs could match any offer made to him.
But the Chiefs had earlier re-signed tackle Joe Phillips and probably cannot afford Phillips, Casillas and Saleumua under the salary cap.
Strawberry visits doctors
The Associated Press
NEW YORK—Darryl Strawberry returned to Los Angeles yesterday after meeting with one doctor representing the players' union and another representing the owners to determine a course of treatment for his drug problem.
"The doctors evaluated him, and we are guided by their recommendations and their conclusion," he said. "This is an area where everybody is an amateur psychologist. We prefer to rely on experts."
Strawberry met with psychiatrists Joel Solomon of the Players Association and Robert Millman of the Player Relations Committee.
Gene Orza, associate counsel for the union, said he expected the evaluation of the outfielder to be completed in a matter of days.
Allan Lans, a psychiatrist affiliated with the New York Mets, treated Strawberry for alcohol problems four years ago. Lans did not see Strawberry yesterday.
"Here's a guy who's had nothing but trouble, a guy everybody expects to be in some terrible place," Lans said. "This is another terrible place."
"Conventional wisdom has it that if you smoke a joint at age 14, you are destined to become a heroin addict," he said. "I don't think that's true. What is true is that people with addiction problems have to be vigilant because those problems can crop up in many ways."
Lans said Strawberry's past problems complicate his current situation.
Strawberry was under Lans' care in February 1900 at Smithers Institute in New York, the same facility where the outfielder's friend, Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden, was treated by the psychiatrist for a cocaine problem three years earlier.
By then, drug abuse, once a major problem throughout baseball, largely had subsided. Kevin Hallinan, major league baseball's executive director for security, said despite Strawberry's situation, the problem is largely non-existent in the game.
Just as Lans remained close with Gooden, he did the same with Strawberry, even after the outfielder left the Mets as a free agent following the 1990 season. For a time, Strawberry even kept the psychiatrist's picture in his wallet, a reminder of his days at Snithers and his addiction.
"I see this as an isolated, unfortunate event," Hallinan said. "There are no indications of other problems."
Luck of the Irish lacking for the Boston Celtics
By Tom Canavan The Associated Press
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Jayson Williams had seen enough of the Boston Celtics in his four NBA seasons to know something was wrong with the team he was watching from the New Jersey Nets bench Tuesday night.
"They really look tired. Did they play last night?" Williams recalled saying after scoring a career-high 19 points and combining with the Nets reserves to run the Celtics off the court in a 120-94 victory.
So the Nets' backup center turned to rookie Rex Walters and asked what seemed to be a logical question.
Unfortunately for the Celtics, they hadn't.
What Williams was seeing, and what a lot of people around the NBA are seeing in the 1993-94 season, is the Celtics' worst team since 1978-79.
With the retirement of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale over the past two seasons and the death of Reggie Lewis last summer, the once mighty Celtics have fallen hard.
The loss Tuesday night eliminated the Celtics (26-45) from the playoffs for the first time since 1978-79.
"I knew this would happen eventually," said
Celtics coach Chris Ford, a member of the Celtics during that losing season. "We were relying on the big guys. I knew at some point we would have to rebuild."
The Celtics have rebuilt in the past, but make no mistake, rebuilding will probably be a lot tougher than in the late 70s.
"I remember they really had a bad team the year before they drafted Bird," Reed said. "Ifjust wasn't a very good team. Then they drafted Bird, made the trade for (Robert) Parish and got McHale, and they were off and running."
The bottom line is a future that doesn't look bright for the Big Green Machine, which will add only its eight losing season to a history that boosts 16 NBA titles.
The problem now is there is no bird seemingly available in the draft. The Celtics have little to offer in a trade and the salary cap makes signing a lot of high-priced talent impossible.
"I read in the paper a month ago that management and the coaching staff expected us to have this kind of year," Celtics forward Xavier McDaniel said. "We're doing just what they expected, so what's the big deal?"
The big deal, Xavier, is that this is the Boston Celtics you're talking about.
Royals ready for return to the glory days
Come to think of it, I sometimes think maybe our family was addicted to those men and the team they for which they rooted.
"Oh jeez," you say. "Royals Baseball?" You mean the team that hasn't won a season opener in nearly 10 years? Come on, getreal — didn't they go out with bell bottoms?"
Every night, usually starting around May, our house would echo with the play by play action of Denny Matthews and Fred White. No kidding, this would go on all summer long.
Whether sitting down at the dinner table or going to baseball and softball games in the car, the radio was always on and tuned into ... Royals Baseball.
When I was just a kid, I think I was about a fourth-grader, I remember a certain magic began each spring and lasted clear until the end of the summer.
Now, if you're from Chicago and you're a Cubs fan, go ahead and laugh. And if you're from Colorado and you think the Rockies are cool — go ahead and laugh. But hey, I think it's about time for the Kansas City Royals to make a comeback. For Pete's sake (Rose, that is), the Royals are past due.
Well, bell bottoms are back in style. So maybe that means Royals Baseball will find it's way back into our lives this year, too.
Let me take you back to the good old days.
Remember the pine tar incident and the year George Brett was going berserk with the bat hitting .390?
That was Royals baseball
I was in junior high in 1985. It was the I-70 Series, and I was wearing Royals T-sirts to school on a daily basis like every other crazy kid my age. The Series went down to the line. The St. Louis Cardinals had racked up three wins and so had the Royals. It was do or die, a World Series just the way we like 'em.
At that time in my life, Royals Baseball was amazing and a lot of fun but very stressful on a poor junior high kid like myself.
They say when "earth shattering" events take place, people remember the details that accompany them.
I remember sitting on my bed, doing my homework and listening to the Royals on radio. I was decked out in my Royals attire psyched for the game.
Well, the Royals in the World Series? Believe me, this was one of those earth shattering events. I can remember the very details of that night, right down to the number of times I said the Lord's Praver that night.
And then the inexplicable happened. The Kansas City Royals won the 1985 World Series. I screamed, jumped and ran downstairs to watch the TV. I called my friends and wore Royals clothes for a week straight.
I don't think I studied that night. I was too busy praying for the Royals through the innings with every fly ball, line drive, ball and strike.
Around my junior or senior year in high school though, the excitement of Royals baseball began to wear off.
Remember those "catchy" Royals theme songs? One particular year when the Royals were looking especially sorry, the theme song was, "You've got a hit on your hands — Royals Baseball!"
Those were the davs.
Well, in my family, we were down and out on the Royals baseball scene. We modified the tune to make it more appropriate for the season. We placed an "s" in front of the word "hit" —and sang along to the tune.
I haven't been the world's most enthusiastic Royals fan for quite a number of years. But something tells me this year might be different.
Last night, the Royals played the Baltimore Orioles in Camden Yards. Maybe by the time you read this they'll be .500, with a 1-1 record. We can only hope.
V
Maybe I should go home right now, forget about this column, put on my only Royals T-shirt, open up my homework and spend the night saying prayers for the Royals.
But why? The Royals are due. Their time has come.
This summer, I might even find myself enthusiastically sitting in Kauffman Stadium watching Vince Coleman steal bases and Brian McRae make dazzling catches in center field.
And I might even look into renewing an old childhood acquaintance with Denny Matthews and Fred White.