SPENCERVILLE — Track and field coaches in particular have been frustrated with the way the late winter and early spring weather has hindered their teams’ preparations for 2013.

That was so true in Friday night’s 37th annual Spencerville Bearcat Relays held at Charles Moeller Track at Spencerville High School.

The cold and windy conditions left many a coach thankful that they got through this 8-team invitational without injury and still had some solid results.

Spencerville’s boys took second behind Columbus Grove, while St. John’s was fifth and Jefferson sixth.

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FORT JENNINGS — John Von Sossan has coached a lot of years in various positions in the Fort Jennings boys basketball program, being the head coach from 1986 to 2013.

He decided that the 2012-13 season was his last.

“It was no specific reason. It was just a bunch of things that added up,” the 52-year veteran of the sidelines noted. “I’ve been talking about it for the last 3-4 years. I talked to the superintendent and he more or less told me it was up to me if I wanted to come back. I still enjoy the practices — when I take that left into the parking lot every day, I never regret it — the game situations and especially the kids. That’s what it’s all about; it was never about me or the time I put in. I always tried to focus on us as a team; I tried to take the ‘I’ out of the game. I think we need more of that in our society these days.”

Von Sossan won with a simple game plan.

“I tried to make it fun for the kids and play the style they most liked,” he explained. “I never really had a goal every season of winning a State title but we won a lot of games, especially from 1998-2008; we were in the regional four times and won State in that span.

“It’s all about the kids; you could tell the ones that really put a lot of time in the game, the gym rats. You need those kinds of kids to have success, especially considering how small we are. Everybody goes through ups and downs and that is more true for smaller schools. Having those kinds of kids is getting harder each year because they have so much going on.”

Men’s college basketball needed a game like Monday night to end the season.

With all the seemingly endless things, all negative, going on in the college world — such as the brouhaha over Rutgers head coach Mike Rice and his staff and the “stuff” going on at Auburn — we needed a great game like that to decide the men’s title.

It was rather enjoyable to watch.

Some say it wasn’t a “great” game — define “great” for me! — but it was a fun game, the way it should be to decide who is the best: two guys from either side —Luke Hancock from Louisville and Spike Albrecht from Michigan — going crazy and having once-in-a-lifetime games (consider the moment!) and at the same time, two superstars coming up clutch in the clutch; a crowd that sounded extremely energized and very loud; two teams playing with nothing to lose and going for it.

An aside here. I read a few articles and watched a few programs over the Mike Rice firing and it seemed as if the ones defending him were the players, the ones who were the victims of his actions.

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DELPHOS — Both Jefferson and Antwerp had gotten off to slow starts in the 2013 fast-pitch softball wars, neither having a win yet.
Something had to give on a warm yet gusty Tuesday night at Lady Wildcat Field.

The visiting Lady Archers used 10 hits, seven errors, seven wild pitches, six free passes, two hit batters and two passed balls to amass a 15-3 5-inning rout.
K. Jemison got the win (1-5; 5 IPs. 4 hits, 3 runs, 2 earned, 3 BBs, 7 Ks). “We’ve got a lot of young girls in there for the first time and we’re learning as we go. We’re learning where we need to be in every situation but when you are a work in progress, you will have mistakes,” first-year Jefferson coach Josiah Stober said. “At the same time, we have improved from our opening game to today but it’s going to take time to be where we want to be. The weather this spring didn’t allow us to get out on the diamond a lot and you can only do so much inside, so we’re dealing with that along with everyone else. Same thing offensively; we’re facing live pitching for the first time for many of the girls and getting comfortable will take time.”
Antwerp head man Gary Rodenberger is in the same boat.