Inside Sports
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Sports
The Kansas baseball team is ready to take the field and improve on last year's 10thplace finish.
SEE PAGE 3B
Woman's Basketball
Guard Kristen May is looking forward to her freshman campaign for the Jayhawks.
SEE PAGE 4B
Tuesday
Aug. 24, 1999
Section:
B
Page 1
WNBA
WWW.KANSAN.COM
Kim Perrot, a former Houston Comet who died of cancer, was remebered by teammates, family and fans at her funeral on Monday.
SEE PAGE 4B
Contact the Kansan
sports Desk:
Sports Fax:
Sports e-mail:
(785) 864-4810
(785) 864-0391
sports@kansan.com
ESPN2 offers late-night TV alternative
I can't help it. I'm a television-age baby.
When it's time to relax, I sink into a warm, bum-like couch, assume the fetal position and allow a 3/4-inch cable to become my umbilical cord.
And what a magical cord it is, nurturing my hunger for sports, sports and more sports. Football, baseball, basketball, golf and women's billiards?
Perhaps the best thing about the glut of sports programming is the coverage of sports that stray outside the mainstream. Of course, some are ridiculous. I certainly don't need to watch some no-neck Canadian freak see how far he can carry a keg in the 1976 World's Strongest Man Competition.
But every now and again, I find myself hooked on the intricacies of a sport that I encountered only by the grace of my precious cable.
One such experience came a little more
than a year ago.
Blurry eyed, I was doing some late-
night channel surfing and finding
nothing that interested me. As I
flipped through what I like to think
of as the heart of the batting
line-up,
channels 44-46, an enormous man
wearing what appeared to be a dia-
mage caught my attention. ESPN2 was
Derek Prater columnist sports@kanan.com
showing a Sumo wrestling tournament,
and it blew my mind.
The wrestler who caught my attention wasn't Asian. I wasn't even sure he was a man. You've heard the expression "manmountain." At 6-feet-7 and 728 pounds, Emanuel Yarbrough is a whole mountain range.
To most Americans, myself included at the time, Sumo is little more than a bit of corpulent comedy. Two big, fat Asian men with buns in their hair, bellies and butts hanging out of diapers and the smack of tubby tummies as they grope at each others diapers. How could this be a serious sport?
Yarbrough is a nightclub bouncer from New Jersey, and I'm sure that if he were to "bounce" me, I'd end up swimming in the Atlantic.
Preter is an Lawrence graduate student in journalism.
What was even more impressive than Yarbrough's girth was when an Asian wrestler about half of Yarbrough's size stepped up and tossed him on his enormous duff. I forget the other wrestler's name, but he overpowered a 728-pound man and made it look relatively easy.
This is serious stuff. Good Sumo wrestlers use strategy, technique and determination to go along with their massive bodies and strength. Balance is the key, and wrestlers must understand how to maintain their own while trying to knock off their opponent's.
After I got into the skills involved, I learned the history and traditions of the sport, which are even more cool. Sumo is to Japan what baseball is to the United States, only about 1,000 years older.
Sumo is one of the earliest forms of martial arts, and its traditions are derived from Japanese culture. Shinto, Japan's oldest religion, has a strong influence on the way wrestlers conduct themselves. They must always act in a dignified and courteous manner, probably not along the lines of our professional football players.
Those diapers? They're called mawashi. After a wrestler throws on his mawashi, he climbs onto the dohyo (the ring) and throws salt to purify the ring. He then holds out his hands to show he's unarmed, claps them together to alert the gods, stamps his feet to ward off evil spirits, squats and faces his opponent to show respect.
How could any sport with so much tradition be thought of as silly? Especially when compared to the World's Strongest Man Competition, which I must admit I've also watched blurry-eyed in my dark, warm living room.
Kansas shuts out Park College
Lindsey Horner, junior forward, races to the ball while her Park College opponent stands in hesitation. Horner scored four of the Jayhawks seven goals in yesterday's exhibition game against Park College. Photo by Chad Cummings/KANSAN
Pair of hat tricks get win for team
By Chris Wristen
cwristen@ukans.edu
Kansas sportswriter
Maybe Lindsey Horner's teammates saw this coming.
Horner, junior forward, whose teammates refer to her as "Tap," did quite a bit of tapping yesterday at the expense of Park College goalkeepers Jenni Visala and Helene Balmir, as she netted three goals to help lead the Kansas women's soccer team to a 7-0 exhibition victory at Park.
The game was Kansas' final tune-up before Friday's regular season and conference opener against Colorado.
The Jayhawks came on fire, unloading 20 shots during the first period. They didn't connect on any of them, with their closest opportunity coming just over a minute into the game on junior forward Hilla Rantala's sliding attempt that blasted off the crossbar.
"The first 30 minutes I thought we dominated the ball," coach Mark Francis said. "We had a lot of chances, but we didn't do a good job of finishing in the first period."
That changed in the second period when Horner entered the game.
The scoring barrage began in the 37th minute when Johanna Larsson, senior midfielder, fed a pass to Horner who tapped it past the keeper into the left side of the net. Just more than a minute later she struck again, snagging a pass from Kylie Watts, junior defender, and burying the shot from 20 yards out. Midway
through the period she completed the hat trick by burying a shot off a pass from Katie Hensley, junior midfielder.
On the third one I had time to set up my shot, so I figured I might as well go for it," Horner said.
When the third period arrived it was Melanie Schroeder's turn to join the show by adding a hat trick of her own.
Schroeder, sophomore forward, who along with Watts, led the team in shots attempted with eight, netted her first goal on a solo run down the right side of the field. Four minutes later she scored from the top of the box off a cross from Mervi Kuittinen, freshman midfielder. Meghann Haven, junior forward, added a goal before Schroeder completed her hat trick.
Although happy with the number of goals scored, Francis would like to see improvement. His team attempted 49 shots during the game but only 21 were on goal.
"Against teams in our conference we're not going to get anywhere near that number of shots, so as a percentage for number of goals we score for number of shots we had, we need to do much better," he said. The defense also shined for the
The defense also shined for the Jayhawks, allowing only one shot attempt the entire game.
Overall, the players were pleased with their performance and saw it as a confidence builder heading into the regular season.
"It's given us a lot of confidence," Schreder said. "We come out here with so much more excitement. We know we actually want to play, and when we do score, it boosts us even more. It shows that we can do it."
Edited by Chris Hopkins
By Michael T. Rigg
Beefier schedule could bolster Buffalo hopes
By Michael T. Rigg
sports@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
Wanting to rejuvenate a once-dominant football program, first-year Colorado coach Garv Barnett went right to the schedule.
Gone from Colorado's future schedules will be the San Jose and Fresno States of the college football world — schools that the Buffaloes have easily defeated. The Buffaloes instead are slated to play national powers such as Florida State and Penn State in the next five years.
Colorado's philosophy is in complete contrast to schools like Missouri and Kansas State, who routinely schedule struggling Division I-A teams like Temple and
memphis, or Division IAA teams for their non-conference foes. Such opponents become problems in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) formula that helps decide the national champion, because strength of schedule is used to determine the nation's top teams.
For Barnett, the reasoning behind the toucher scheduling is simple.
"I really believe that if you're going to sit down and coach a program and have a program that wants to be in the national title chase, you have to have a schedule that attracts attention, voters and the media." Barnett said. "We're trying to take an aggressive role, fill our non-conference openings with teams that are big games, but if you win, you get a lot of points in the BCS championship chase."
This philosophy is a contrast to that of Missouri coach Larry Smith's. Smith schedules his three non-conference openings with one game his team will win easily, one game against a team with lesser ability than that of the Tigers', and one game for national exposure. For example, last season Missouri played a home game against a weaker Bowling Green team, then two weeks later traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to play national championship-contender Ohio State.
Missouri will play an easier schedule this season to help out the Tigers' inexperience, then will bolster its schedule next season with games against Michigan State and Clemson.
See BARNETT on page 3B
NON-CONFERENCE OPPONENTS
Colorado: Colorado State, San Jose State Washington
Iowa State: Indiana State, Iowa. UNLV
Kansas: Notre Dame, Cal State Northridge, San Diego State, Southern Methodist
Kansas State: Temple, Texas-
El Paso, Utah State
Missouri: Alabama-
Birmingham, Western
Michigan, Memphis
Nebraska: Iowa, California,
Southern Mississippi
Four new linebackers preparing for season opener
By Mike Miller
sports@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
The four starting linebackers for the Kansas football team are bigger, faster and more athletic than last year's group.
"We've got better personnel in place to get that accomplished," said coach Terry Allen of junior middle linebacker Dariss Lomax, junior outside linebacker Chaz Murphy, sophomore middle linebacker Andrew LeClair and senior outside linebacker Tim Bowers. "The depth and ability that we have is better than last year." Allen said.
Averaging 6-foot-3, 240 pounds, they are supposed to be better at stopping the run something the Jayhawks were horrible at last year.
But with the first game of the season four days away, it's unclear how this new group of linebackers will do this season. Inexperience can be devastating to a defense made up of four new starters.
Lomax sat out last season
because of academic difficulties and Murphy transferred from Garden City Community College. LeClair and Bowers have two career starts each. Their total of 63 career tackles is fewer than teammate Chad Coellner had last season.
LeClair, whose father played for the Cincinnati Bengals, points out that simply learning defensive schemes can be difficult, let alone executing them during games.
"We have to look at the formation the offense is in, the personnel they have on the field, how the defensive line is lined up, if anybody's in motion. There's a lot of stuff to recognize and sometimes it takes a couple of years to learn all that stuff." he said.
"We're getting used to playing together. Getting used to where each person plays is the biggest thing," he said. "And we're a lot closer. Maybe it's because we're so used to running the same defense with the same people."
But Bowers is confident they can overcome the inexperience.
Lomax echoed Bowers' statements by emphasizing teamwork.
"Our camaraderie is better. We worked harder in the summer than we have before," he said.
Couple their physical aspects with teamwork and they might be more effective than last season's players.
They'll be tested right away when they face Notre Dame on Saturday at South Bend, Ind. The Fighting Irish had the 16th-ranked rushing offense in the NCAA last year, and quarterback Jarious Jackson is a threat throwing and running the ball.
"He's kinda like some of the quarterbacks we see in the Big 12." Bowers said.
"We've got game plans similar to quarterbacks we've seen in the past, like Tony Lindsay, Corby Jones and Michael Bishon."
—Edited by Ronnie Waschter
The challenge presented by Jackson just begins what the Jayhawks will see for the rest of the season. Teams like to run the ball, and quick, elusive quarterbacks dominate the Big 12 Conference.
Kansas linebacker Dariss Lomax stares into the backfield during yesterday's practice. The Jayhawks are preparing for a preseason game in South Bend, Ind., this Saturday against Notre Dame. Photo by Jay Soldner/KANSAN
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