Catching Back Up On Things

Time to dust things off here on this blog now that spring has (finally) sprung after a somewhat cruel and unpredictable April.

First, the good news is that I'm well on the road to recovery from my hip replacement surgery back on March 19th.  It took a while but I gradually graduated from the walker I was using to get around to a cane and finally weened myself off of that a few weeks ago.  I can't even begin to tell you how incredibly good it feels to be able to walk normally again - and without any pain as well.  I have my second post-op visit tomorrow (Wednesday 5-16) with my surgeon and I'm hopeful that he'll give me the green light to return to the tennis and working out.  It's been a long time coming.

Of course, the big thing over the last month was, as you know by now, the vacancy created by the departure of Marlene Stollings over at the University of Minnesota was filled by none other than former Golden Gopher and current Minnesota Lynx standout Lindsay Whalen which, by the way, I think is an excellent, excellent choice by University of Minnesota Athletic Director Mark Coyle.  Even as an Iowa grad and a die-hard UCLA Bruin, I cannot help but be excited by this.  This is about as close to a home-run hire as can possibly be and I have no doubt that Whalen will do a great job with the Gopher women's program.  In the wake of this move, however, was that it forced change on the MIAC women's hoops front as well as Whalen tagged former teammate and Macalester Head Coach Kelly Roysland to be on her new coaching staff.  Roysland, of course, was on the Minnesota staff before under former head coach Pam Borton so, in the big picture anyway, I think this was a solid move.  The bigger question now is who does Macalester get to fill the vacancy there?  I think Roysland was taking the Scot program a step higher each year in an incredibly competitive MIAC where everybody is fighting, scratching and clawing to try and take that next step.  Given how hard it is to get recruits into Macalester in the first place, whoever they do wind up hiring will have their work cut out for them so we'll just have to be patient and see what happens here.

Elsewhere, no real resolution on the situation at Roseville involving Head Coach Jeff Crosby on allegations of possible racial discrimination and harassment that came to the surface back in March.  As of this writing, I'm not sure how long the investigation will take much less what the actual findings will be.  The more I read into this, it appears to be coming down to a he said/she said sort of thing and, with that in mind we may never know the whole story here.  Again, I do give credit to the team members for coming forward and expressing remorse/regret on the events that transpired at the banquet so I think we at least have to give them kudos for that. 

I was able to attend at least one day (Sunday 5-6) of the AAU State Preliminary Tournament to catch some of the action over at Bloomington Kennedy High School.  Some very good teams and talent there and I would expect that the AAU State Tournament this coming weekend will be just as good if not better so if you get a chance, I would highly recommend checking it out.

Also, am hoping to get information here soon on the upcoming Midtown YWCA Women's College Summer League that will begin this next month.  I anticipate that there will be a smattering of the college teams mixed in with some alumni teams as well and will let you know when things are slated to start up.