The Current Online

Cross-country building a quality program with help of Coach Tittle

by JOHN ELKIN

The goal for every sports team at the beginning of a new season is to build and improve on the experiences of the previous season. The 2001 Lakers cross country team has no groundwork to build on. In a sport that requires five runners to have a team, they have three, none of whom were on last year’s team. Coach Lee Tittle is also in his rookie season as a head coach.
The three members of this year’s team, Jennifer Ziegler, Erin Johnston and Cynthia Holmes, are not here to win any sort of championship. They are here simply to have fun, stay/get in shape, and to push themselves beyond what was previously their physical and mental limits.
They look forward every day to facing the challenge of “working to get better,” Cynthia Holmes said.
With only one girl on the team with any cross country experience under her belt that being half a high school season working to get better is the foundation needed to be competitive in the years to come.
With inexperienced runners on his team, Tittle knows he has his work cut out for him, but he is “looking forward to the challenge of building a quality program here.” Being a former Division I cross country runner himself, Coach Tittle knows “what it takes to be a good runner.” He is confident about both his ability to coach these women and his ability to recruit future runners to Longview’s program.
Tittle is aware that he is laying the groundwork for the future of this program right now. In order to keep building, it is important to bring in new talent. He plans on doing this by “going to high school cross country meets and getting to know the coaches,” Tittle said. If he can bring in one impact runner by doing this, then his job as a recruiter will have been done well.
His job as the head coach, according to his athletes, is a job well done already. All three runners agree that Coach Tittle knows what he doing. In order to build a quality program, a coach must have both the respect of his athletes and their confidence in his abilities to teach them. Coach Tittle has both and could have a great program here in the near future.

Legendary MJ returns

by JOHN ELKIN

Very different emotions are swirling through the sports world with the return of Michael Jordan to the NBA. Some say he is doing it for money while others say it is for the spotlight or the attention. Some believe he is coming back to help improve the Washington Wizards–the team he owned, but had to sell in order to return. But perhaps what has been overlooked in all this guessing and pondering is Jordan’s statement he made to the press, “I am coming back to play the game I love.”
Jordan is perhaps the most competitive man in the history of sport, if not the world. Every time he has been told that he could not do something, he has done it. According to experts, Jordan was never supposed to win a single NBA championship. He won six, and he did it with ease– never once playing in a seventh game of the NBA Finals. In fact, the only two seasons in the 1990′s when a team other than the Chicago Bulls won the NBA Finals, Jordan was “retired.”
I will not argue that Jordan is the same player that he was three years ago. He quite simply is not. Nor will I argue that the Wizards have anywhere near the talent the Bulls had for all those years. I will, however, argue that Jordan’s ability and will to win are beyond human comprehension.
Jordan has been able to get teammates to play beyond their talent level. He gets them to use their minds as well as their ability like no one else in the world (except maybe Phil Jackson) can do. When Jordan played for the Bulls, his will and confidence brought journeymen like Steve Kerr, Bill Wenington and Jud Bueschler to a level of greatness they would never have dreamed possible before playing alongside Jordan. Kerr not only became a great player, but he made the final three-point bucket that won the 1997 NBA Finals.
Kerr gives all the credit to Jordan for that game winner saying, “I am so happy that I got to play with someone [Jordan] who made me believe that when my moment came I could do it…and I wasn’t afraid.”

In the last three years without Jordan by their sides, all three of these men have all but disappeared from the NBA. Even Scottie Pippen is not the player he used to be.
Some people are concerned about Jordan tarnishing his legacy as the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. That would be a concern for me if that was what his legacy meant to me. It is true that he is the greatest player to ever play the game of basketball. But what is also true is that no matter what he does upon his return, he will still be the greatest player to ever have played the game.
The greatest player is defined by what he does in the prime of his career. In Jordan’s prime, he won six NBA championships in the middle of which he played two miserable years of professional baseball. And to me, that is his legacy. He is a man who has to try. He has to know what he can do no mater if he fails or not.
Jordan could quite possibly fail by not achieving the goals he has set for himself. He is well aware of this, and he is coming back anyway. He has more to lose than any other person who has come out of retirement anywhere for anything, but he is doing it. What is most remarkable is that he is doing it when nearly every basketball expert in the world says he cannot. They say he will fail, but he does not care.
That is his legacy. That is Michael Jordan. When everyone else would say, “I can’t,” Jordan says, “I can.” Not only is he not tarnishing his legacy, he is, in fact, reinforcing it.