THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
3A
ORGANIZATIONS
Debate coach wins national award
Strategies help contribute to team's ranking as country's top varsity squad
BY DANNY LUPPINO
Men's basketball coach Bill Self may have a multimillion dollar contract extension, but another, lesser-known KU coach was recently named National Coach of the Year.
Scott Harris is the coach of the KU debate team, which routinely performs as one of the best in the country. Earlier this month during a tournament at Wake Forest University, Harris was named the winner of the award as voted by a committee of coaches and former peers.
"It means the recognition from the community of your peers that you're doing a good job," Harris said. "It was a total surprise."
The KU debate team ended last season as the top-ranked varsity
squad in the country according to National Debate Tournament points, Harris said the official rankings
for this season would not begin until the end of the semester.
Harris
The award is not just for performance during the past season, but also considers
career accomplishments.
Lindsey Lathrop, Overland Park junior, said the most noteworthy of those accomplishments was taking a program with a comparatively small budget and still managing to recruit top talent and make the team a national contender.
"Most of the people we face from other schools are on there free rides," Lathrop said. "He turns it more into
a game about passion than a game about money"
Lathrop said that traditionally Harris had mostly stayed with his debaters during tournaments, but recently he had become more accepted with coaches from traditional powerhouses like Harvard University and Kentucky University.
Jon Wright, Topeka senior and debater, said it was Harris' long history of success at the national tournaments that led him to be one of the most respected coaches in the country.
Wright said Harris was not the only reason for the success of his debaters, but he was certainly the main reason.
"I think that Scott, on the strategic level, has a lot more going on than a lot of other guys," Wright said. "The strategy and pre-ground preparation
against certain teams that he brings have really helped us a lot”
Wright and Lathrop said Harris was renowned for his sharp strategic mind but also his eccentric personality. In addition to barely sleeping on weekends of tournaments and consuming "about three pounds of chocolate" during those times, Lathrop said Harris had memory problems that sometimes kept him from knowing the names of his debaters. He once took his children to the wrong school.
"He's like the definition of absent-minded professor," Wright said. "It's all part of his charm, 1 guess."
Kansan staff writer Danny Luppino can be contacted at dluppino@ kansan.com.
Edited by Shanxi Upsdell
BUSINESS
Lawrence's Yello Subs change ownership
Manager's history with former owner dates back to 1976
BY JACK WEINSTEIN
Yello Sub has a new owner.
Fans of the Lawrence sandwich shop shouldn't worry; nothing will change, new owner Don Keen said.
A longtime manager, Keen, has taken over majority ownership of both restaurants, 624 W. 12th St. and 1814 W. 23rd St. He explained the ownership shift as a "passing of the torch." Former owner Bob Jones would still retain some ownership interest in the restaurants, but Keen said Jones was getting ready to retire.
Two Planet Sub owners in Kansas City also have ownership interest in the Lawrence locations after franchising from Jones eight years ago. Keen said they wouldn't serve an active role in the management of the Lawrence locations, but they would help him if he needed it.
Keen has been at Yello Sub on 23rd Street for the past 17 years and worked at the one on 12th and Indiana streets before that. He said his relationship with Jones, the former owner, went back to 1976 when Keen began working for Jones at Long John Silver's.
lones is out of the country until
next March and could not be reached for comment.
Attention was brought to the Yello Sub location at 12th and Indiana streets over the summer when property owners Jeff and Kathy Morrow, along with The Crossing owner, Manhattan attorney Robert Pottroff, proposed to redevelop the corner. The proposal called for demolition of the buildings for the construction of a five-story mixed-use building. The plan included retail stores on the first floor and condominiums on the top four floors.
Keen said that he wasn't concerned about the proposal and that it wouldn't affect his decision to buy a share of the Yello Sub restaurants.
"That's some kind of pipe dream
to do something with the Oread Folks," he said, referring to the opposition from the members of the Oread Neighborhood about the proposal. "We've still got a lease over there."
Keen said the property owners at 12th and Indiana streets couldn't just kick him out.
Kansan staff writer Jack Weinstein can be contacted at jweinstein@ kansan.com.
— Edited by Shanxi Upsdell
EVENTS
BY ERIN CASTANEDA
Pool tournament to benefit charity outreach
Andy Agnew, owner of The Pool Room, will finally achieve his dream of giving a charity event at his bar this Saturday. He has been trying to do so for several years.
The Pool Room, 925 Iowa St., will be host to Cue Up 2006, a pool tournament to benefit the Jubilee Cafe. The Jubilee Cafe provides breakfast for the in-need community of Lawrence every Tuesday and Friday morning from 6 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 946 Vermont St.
The charity event couldn't have happened at a better time. Paige Blair, Chicago junior and co-coordinator of the Jubilee Cafe, said the cafe was having one of its lowest funding times.
"The last three meals have been out of pocket for a couple of the people really involved," she said.
She said any money that came out of the pool tournament would mean a lot. She said it cost about $110 to serve between 115 to 130 breakfasts. Each meal is about $1.38, she said.
"We aren't running out of
efforts to raise money, such as a breakfast for dinner for the community for $5 on Wednesdays.
"We aren't running out of people to feed, but we are running out of money to feed them."
running out of people to feed, but we are running out of money to feed them" she said.
PAIGE BLAIR Chicago junior
"It hasn't really caught on yet," she said. "We're hoping people would regularly come down, but it hasn't worked out that well."
"If you're going to have a pool tournament, this is the only place to do it in town," he said.
Agnew is expecting about 300 to attend the pool tournament.
from sponsors such as 75th Street Brewery, 3512 Clinton Parkway: CD Tradepost in Topeka, and Jayhawk Cafe, 1340 Ohio St. The grand prize winner will receive an Intel Core Duo Apple MacBook.
The event, which is sponsored by The University Daily Kansan, will be at noon. People who want to watch must pay $5 at the door, and competitors must pay $15 to play. Competitors can e-mail their name and phone number to cueup@kansan.com to register or show up at the door on Saturday.
Kansan staff writer Erin Castaneda can be contacted at ecastaneda@ kansan.com.
Ryan Soderlin/ASSOCIATED PRESS
EDUCATION
Perfect attendance pays off Schools use cars to motivate students
Kayte Christopherphon, a junior at Natrona High School in Casper, Wyo., won a 2016 Chevrolet Colorado recky cab pickup truck in a drawing for good attendance last spring.
BY MEAD GRUVER ASSOCIATED PRESS
"I take it everywhere. To work, school, I don't know, anything I do, I have it out with me," the high school junior said. "I pay attention to where I park it, though."
And not just any truck, but a $28,000 Chevrolet Colorado crew cab, in red, with an MP3 player. Freedom comes standard.
Public schools commonly reward excellent attendance with movie tickets, gas vouchers and iPods. But some diligent students like Kaytie are now hitting the ultimate teenage jackpot for going to school: They have won cars or trucks.
In most cases the car or truck is donated by a local dealership, and the prizes typically are awarded through drawings open only to students with good attendance.
School districts in Hartford, Conn.; Pueblo, Colo.; South Lake Tahoe; Calif.; and Wickenburg and Yuma. Ariz., are also giving away vehicles this school year.
CASPER, Wyo. — Sixteen-year-old Kaytie Christopherson was getting ready to do her homework on a Friday when she got a call that made a big improvement in her life: She had won a brand-new pickup truck for near-perfect school attendance.
Do so bribing students with the possibility of winning a car or truck actually get them to think twice about staying home from school? Some educators think so, but the evidence is not clear cut.
Jack Stafford, associate principal at South Tahoe High School, said attendance increased slightly last year, the first year the school system gave away a car, and is up slightly so far this year. He said changing times call for such incentives.
"I can't tell you that it's increased attendance," district spokesman Terry D'Italia said. "But what it has done over the years is just kept a focus on it and kept it at the top of kids' minds."
Katie — who has a 4.0 average at Natrona County High, Dick Cheney's alma mater — won her truck last spring, in the school system's first such drawing. But she said that was not what motivated her to keep up her attendance; she just didn't want to fall behind.
District attendance officer Gary Somerville said he hopes to raise attendance and also reduce the district's 29 percent dropout rate, which he blames in part on Wyoming's booming gas-and-oil industry.
Hartford has been holding a drawing — for either a car or $10,000 — for the past six years. Five of those times the winning family chose the money.
"These kids can go out and earn $15, $16, $17 an hour swinging a hammer. It's kind of hard to keep them in school past their 16th birthday," he said.
"My mom had the three-B rule: Thered better be blood, bone or bart, or 1 was going to school." Staffard said. But "that's not the case now."
---