news-record.com

MOSCA, Colo. (AP) — A newspaper editor in Colorado is recovering from serious injuries after being hit while covering a high school football game.

Sports editor Lloyd Engine of The Valley Courier in Alamosa was hit Saturday while taking photographs on the sideline. Engen was hit by three players from Norwood and Sangre de Cristo high schools.

Engen sustained a shattered pelvis and three cracked vertebrae. He was taken to a Denver hospital for treatment Sunday.

Golden Eagles football coach told me for today's story that Smith's last 2-0 start was in 1965 under Claude Manzi, but he acknowledged a few gaps in the school's record books. I woke up this morning to a note from a reader who said he played for the 1980-81 team which started 3-0, and who thought the next two Smith teams started 2-0 en route to 7-3 records as well. As I wasn't born yet, can anybody else help dust off these memories?

Yes, for just under $20, you can have yourself a Southern Guilford Indians T-shirt from this ambiguous apparel website called Zazzle. Never mind that Southern's mascot is the Storm now. That baby's going to be a collector dream!

http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/08/28/article/high_school_footba...

Biggest storylines for Week 3:

-Can Northeast avenge last year's loss at rival Eastern, which snapped a 16-year string of dominance? The Rams could use a win with Reidsville and Page waiting before conference play, while Eastern has now lost seven straight dating to last season.

-Can Grimsley move the ball? Counting last season, the Whirlies have been held to 10 points or fewer in eight of their last 11, including two shutouts this year. They face Andrews, which has allowed 57 points in a pair of defeats.

-Can surprising Southwest Guilford remain undefeated? The Cowboys, who held off Eastern 7-6 last week, get their home opener against 0-2 Ledford, which has been outscored 51-13.

-Can Southern avenge last year's controversial last-second loss to rival Southeast? It might have been my favorite game of the season.

-Is Smith for real? A pair of 40-point wins, however soft the competition, have awoken the Golden Eagles' spirits. But Northwest is shaping up to be a serious contender after running over Eastern and Western, and the Vikings' defense is strong enough to keep Smith's speed in check. One thing's for sure: You know Smith is enjoying at least one week above Dudley in the standings.

-Speaking of the Panthers, they could get a huge rebound win against Northern Guilford in a game featuring a ton of Division I talent. Northeast coach Tommy Pursley said he's never seen a defensive player control the game like safety Keenan Allen did in last week's 26-20 Nighthawks win. Can Dudley, which managed only one touchdown last week for the first time in almost two years, find a way to start moving the ball again?

JR passed this along to me a while ago, and I keep forgetting to put it up.

Former Grimsley quarterback Robert Lane, who helped lead the Whirlies to the 4A championship in 2005, is a senior slot back at Georgetown now. Though he missed all but two games last year due to injury, he was recently chosen to wear the No. 35 jersey that's been given for the last seven years to a Georgetown football player who best embodies the spirit of Joe Eacobacci, a former Hoya standout who was killed on Sept. 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center terrorist attacks.

"Without a doubt in my mind, this is the greatest honor I have ever received," Lane said in this GU story. "It is an elite group of guys that I have so much respect for, playing to carry on the spirit of Joe Eacobacci."

Understandably, football coaches have a lot to do on Friday nights. Between delivering that rousing/sobering postgame speech, making sure the field is cleared and going back to the proverbial drawing board, calling the newspaper isn't always atop everyone's list of priorities, Most schools rely on a scorekeeper to phone in results, but that's not a foolproof system, either. In Week 1, we got 1-of-11 Guilford County scores called in to us. I stayed in the office last week to try and track down the games we didn't have a reporter at.

A few people have perceptively e-mailed about the only one we missed - Northwest's 22 -14 win over rival Western. The problem there lied with some errors in the Northwest score book, which took a precious chunk of time to correct. By the time Vikings head coach Joe Woodruff was able to return my call at 12:30, the paper had already gone to print. No one's fault, just the perils of a deadline. We've got a story planned for tomorrow on Northwest's offense, which has rushed for more than 500 yards in two impressive victories. And, you'll be happy to know, Woodruff has turned the scorekeeping duties over to his wife, who held them for his whole coaching career before he got to Northwest. Woodruff smartly called her "the best scorekeeper I've ever had."

If you want to see what should be one of the best regular-season games in the county, you can pick up your tickets early by visiting Ragsdale's main office until noon Friday. They'll also be available at the Ragsdale gate on Friday night.

Quote from Alan Ashkinazy that didn't make it in Saturday's story:

“You can bring in all the horses you want, but it’s just as important to have the facilities in place for them. They’re going to have a powerhouse over there in basketball, no question about it. Baseball, it’s a little tougher to do that (at a private school), but it can be done so yeah, I’d like to know more.”

Good fit for both sides?

Didn't find about it until after the fact, but I'm hearing that P.J. Hairston and Jay Canty were shown on ESPNU last night while playing with the CP3 All-Stars at the AAU Super Showcase. Anybody watch it or know of a clip online? Here's the only recap I could find:

Both teams displayed athleticism throughout the opening half, opting for transition. After trailing for most of the first quarter, All-Ohio Red pulled away for a 47-42 lead at the break. Craft of Liberty Benton (Findlay, Ohio) scored 13 points, canning a trio of 3-pointers and Kevin Gray added eight. The Reds were 9-of-17 on 3-pointers in the half.

Melvin Tabb, a Wake Forest recruit, led CP3 with 13 points and Bullock and Jay Canty scored nine points apiece.

Tabb would total 20 points and Canty added 15.

Great story from my friend Stephen Schramm at the Burlington Times-News about Cummings head football coach Steve Johnson's return from a near-death experience. An excerpt:

A member of the Altamahaw-Ossipee Volunteer Fire Department happened to be in the neighborhood and heard the call on his scanner. Within minutes, he was at the Johnsons' passing information to the ambulance that was rushing to the scene.

"That day, when I was going down the driveway (in the ambulance), I wasn't sure I was coming back," Johnson said.

Once at Alamance Regional Medical Center, doctors had a tough time figuring out what the problem was. Johnson was put into a drug-induced coma and placed on a ventilator for nearly four days while a team of specialists searched for a solution.

They discovered a chemical imbalance that caused the attack and hit on a way to remedy it.

"When you take out the thyroid, your body chemistry changes," Steve Johnson said. "There's a 1 percent chance that this can happen. That 1 percent fell on me. ... It was just a fluke thing that happened after surgery. Something in the body went haywire."