Random Sports Thoughts:
• Few are as rebellious, or think outside the box, as the track and field athletes who compete in the discus: they like to twirl around and throw stuff as far as they can. They play by their own rules, and nobody else’s.
Take, for example, the out-of-towner (from Duncan MacMillan High School in Sheet Harbour) who competed at track and field districts last weekend in Stellarton. Dude showed up and threw with a baseball cap turned backward, wearing skinny jeans, and carrying a cell phone in his pocket.
Maybe it was his way of telling school administrators to “buy us some freaking real track and field clothes, you cheap, pencil-pushing bureaucrats.”
Yeah, that could very well be.
This not to poke fun at him because I’m about results, and besides, at a time in my life when colour-coordination was not a big priority, I once showed up a tennis tournament in Truro wearing bright blue track pants and a fluorescent-green T-shirt, which, believe it or not, was popular around 1990 or so. Not much later, those blue track pants were virtually destroyed in an on-court tennis fire, ignited by two books of matches rubbing against each other. Sadly, that story is completely true, and I only bring it up to illustrate the danger of carrying matches in your pocket when playing tennis.
But enough of that near-death by misadventure on Court 3, the kid from Duncan MacMillan High deserves credit for even showing up at track and field districts – and he also finished in second place in the discus, giving a big middle-finger to conformity. So obviously, the clothes do not make the discus thrower.
• New Glasgow Academy sprinter Cara MacDonald finished in her usual spot at track and field districts: in first place, running in both the 200-metre and 400-metre races.
In fact, her time of 1:01.6 in the 400-metre sprint was four seconds faster than the first-place finisher in the senior division, two divisions above her own.
Some of the other local athletes who showed up and delivered: NRHS’s Parker Swain, who swept the javelin, discus and shot put events in the senior category; Luke MacDonald of Pictou Academy, winner of the 1,500-meter and 3,000-metre runs (intermediate); Jenna Reid of PA, who took first place in the discus, shot out and javelin (senior). Those are just a few of them – there were others who had multiple first-place finishes, also.
• Another Victoria Day weekend, another day of the Joe Earle Memorial Road Races in Trenton. Now in its 55th year, there is no cost to enter, and rain or shine on May 20, hundreds of runners will show up to take part in an event that might be around for another 55 years.
• Beating the buzzer.
The final five minutes of Game 7 between the Toronto Raptors and Philadelphia 76ers on May 12 were the first five minutes of pro basketball I’d watched all season. What a dramatic finish it turned out to be. With the game tied in the dying seconds, a series-ending, buzzer-beating shot from Kawhi Leonard sent the Raptors into the third round of the playoffs.
We shouldn’t jump on bandwagons, but it will be interesting to see how far the Raptors can go, and maybe there’ll be a championship parade in Toronto this year after all.
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Non-Sports Thought of the Week
• Your baby is probably adorable, but sorry, it isn’t this adorable:
My buddy and his wife made Wolfie Clarke, who someday could grow up to be a curler, golfer, or (worst-case scenario), a rock drummer. Right now, though, he wins the trophy for the Cutest Kid Ever.
Kevin Adshade is a writer with The News. His column appears each week.
