PLAY, DELAY OR STAY AWAY? -- MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 JCPS ATHLETIC BOARD MAKES THE CALL TONIGHT

The Jefferson County Public School Athletic Board meets this evening to make a decision on fall sports in the Louisville area. 

If you're wondering what exactly this has to do with the joy and excitement of University of Louisville athletics, consider the rosters of the women's fall sports squads on the Belknap campus. You'll find several "homegrown" student athletes on the squads. Women's Soccer star Emina Ekic, who went to Louisville Manual. Sam Minrath and India Reed both played field hickey locally. Louisville Volleyball has a couple as well on  the 2020 roster with Alexa Hendricks and Anna DeBeer. Local talent has always been a "feeder"for the Louisville fall women's sports squads -- and there are many other high school seniors who have played at Jefferson County high schools and gone on to other colleges and universities to establish student-athlete careers. 

Earlier this month, the KHSAA (Kentucky High School Athletic Association) voted to proceed with fall sports. Jefferson County, however, has a bit of different circumstances than some of the smaller counties and communities that make up the KHSAA. The wider spread of COVID-19 being the main one. 

This is a decision ahead that isn't going to be popular, no matter which way the athletic board votes. 

If they decide to start fall sports, there will be worry about the health and safety of the participants, coaches and those who attend the events as fans. If they cancel the fall events, there will be an outcry from the coaches, parents and student-athletes who want events and participation. The third option is a delay. That, in itself, had subsections -- in, how long a delay? For a month, until the spring, until January 1st, 2021? 

This is no easy decision to make and I'm glad I'm not on that board that will make the decision tonight.

To the north of Louisville, Southern Indiana high schools, who have already gone back to school, are also playing fall sports. Including football. With fans in the stands. Of course, it's too early to tell what COVID-19 case will spring up from that. From all indications, spacing and masking has been in place in the stands. But, what about the linemen, or forwards and defenders on the field that are breathing on each other unmasked? 

The vast majority of fall sports are, of course, outdoors. Volleyball, though, in Kentucky can start practice today and begin matches/competition on Sept. 7th. 

It'll be interesting to see how the Jefferson County High School Sports board votes tonight. 

APOLOGIES AND CHANGES

Our platform for posting articles here at Cardinal Couple is Blogger. Blogger recently went through some updates and changes designed to "improve the experience". 

Maybe...

What has happened here on the posting end is that the format has gone to double spacing only, which is annoying and not great for a daily column like ours. Also, pictures and labels have become much harder to add to articles. And, finally, the ability to comment on articles has disappeared, it seems, for many of our readers. 

On Thursday of last week, commenting suddenly stopped functioning for a lot of you. I've gotten e-mails from you and I thank you for letting me know about this function not working for you. I apologize for not jumping on this situation earlier, but, it took me awhile just to figure out how to try and change things in the blogger format and, quite honestly, I'm not sure I understand it yet. 

Gee, I could use an IT guy...

And, I haven't commented in awhile, admittedly, so I don't know if it affects the staff here or not, and, let's be honest, our guys aren't much on commenting to begin with -- but the loss of readers' comments does concern me. And, the staff here is registered to comment under a different category than the "anonymous" commentor....we're registered through Blogger.  

I know, commenting "anonymously" can be trickey with the verifying stuff you have to do...like "how many fire hydrants are there above?" or "choose the automobiles" but we have to have some type of verification/identity procedures here -- otherwise the comments would be over-run by "bots", spammers and sellers. 

So, my request is simple. Would you try to comment today? It doesn't need to be long or eloquent. Just a simple "Interesting article" or "I disagree" or even "Hi guys!"  -- anything, just to see if we can get comments again. I'm no I.T. specialist, so maybe I messed something up in the change-over. 

Thanks for you help.   

paulie

Tuesday Cardinal Couple -- A woman's work is never done!

TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE


(Sandy takes us through Cardinal women's golf and soccer, Sally Ride, high school hoops and the 2012 Olympics today in her report. It's our version of '60 Minutes' but it'll take a lot less than that to read it. Only thing missing is Andy Rooney and a ticking clock. Enjoy!) 



The summer seems to produce more and more laundry.  Here are today's loads

GOLF

U of L Golf Coach Courtney Trimble has announced the signing of Oldham County High School Meghan Theiss.    Meghan is a great example of the student athlete we seek as beyond playing varsity golf for 7 years – the last 5 of which she was named the team MVP – winning multiple awards including the Junior Bluegrass Championship in 2009 and 2010 – she graduated as Cum Laude and was a member of the National Honor Society.

Picture by Doug Thomas

SALLY RIDE

In this 40^th anniversary year of the passing of Title IX we also are experiencing the loss or cruel illness of too many of the pre and early Title IX year female program pioneers who broke ground where others had not yet traveled.  Sally always directed her own ride through life as she became a physicist at a time when high school girls were still regularly maneuvered into the limited choices of teaching, secretarial work, nursing or homemakers. 

Picture compliments of NASA

Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman and at the time, the youngest American astronaut at 32 years old, to go into space, died Monday at the age of 61 after battling pancreatic cancer. In 1983 this was a feat which absolutely inspired many others to seek to crack the “glass ceiling” as was exhibited on launch day when spectators all across America wore “Ride, Sally, Ride" shirts and buttons. 

I had some trouble embedding the CBS video but this hyperlink will take you to a page, which after a commercial, contains a video of Sally during an early interview.  It is worth the short amount of time to view it.http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7415910n or you can find a more complete CBS article with the video at http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57478225/sally-ride-pioneering-astronaut-dead-at-61/?tag=cbsnewsLeadStoriesAreaMain.

“In 2001, Ride founded Sally Ride Science, part of her ongoing mission to encourage students - and especially girls - to take up science studies. The foundation developed camps, festivals, and classes for children who dreamed about reaching for the stars.”

Ride is survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam O'Shaughnessy, her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin, and nephew, Whitney; her staff of 40 at Sally Ride Science; and many friends and colleagues around the country.”

ESPN HoopGurlz High School Girls Basketball

2013 Listed Louisville Prospects

The current ESPN HoopGurlz list of 2013 players considering Louisville as of Sunday are Mercedes Russell, Kendall Waters, Alexandra Harris, Nina Davis and Emmonnie Henderson.   Others have been named elsewhere but these are those listed as considering Louisville at http://espn.go.com/high-school/girls-basketball/recruiting/school/_/id/97/class/2013/page/considering

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USA SOCCER TEAM IN LONDON LIP DUBS

“PARTY IN THE USA”

You can view a hilarious video where members of the USA soccer team let off some steam while creating a hilarious video which can be seen at:

www.cbssports.com/olympics/2012/blog/eye-on-olympics/19640453/video-us-womens-soccer-team-lip-dubs-for-their-country.  Their first game in on Wednesday against France where they absolutely need to focus their time and energy as lip dubbing music video stars they will never be.

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WOMEN'S BASKETBALL COVERAGE

Saturday, July 28: USA vs. Croatia, 11:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m., NBC

Monday, July 30: USA vs. Angola, 5:15-7 p.m., NBC Universal Specialty Channel for basketball

Wednesday, Aug. 1: USA vs. Turkey, 5-7 p.m., NBC Sports Network

Friday, Aug. 3: USA vs. Czech Republic, 5-7 p.m., NBC Sports Network

Sunday, Aug. 5: USA vs. China, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., NBC

Tuesday, Aug. 7: Quarterfinals, either NBC Sports Network at 4:30 or 5:15 p.m. or NBC Universal Specialty Channel for basketball at 5:15 p.m.

Thursday, Aug. 9: Semifinal Game 1, NBC Sports Network, noon-2 p.m.; semifinal Game 2, 4:15-6 p.m., MSNBC.

Saturday, Aug. 11: Bronze-medal game, noon-1:45 p.m., MSNBC, gold-medal game, 4-6 p.m., NBC.

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WOMEN’S SOCCER

Women's soccer head coach Karen Ferguson-Dayes has announced the addition of Mexico City, Mexico resident Charlyn Corral to the Cardinals' 2012 team.  Charlyn has extensive international experience playing for the Mexican National team and is one of her countries most decorated players.

“She will have two years of remaining eligibility starting with the 2012 season after transferring from Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico.

Corral and the Cardinals will begin preseason preparation when they report to campus later this month. Louisville, which won a school record 14 matches, won the BIG EAST National Division title and advanced to the third round of the NCAA Championship in 2011, will host a pair of exhibition matches on Aug. 10 (Ohio State, 6 p.m., ET) and Aug. 12 (Wright State, 1p.m.) before opening the regular season on Aug. 17 at Butler.”  See http://www.uoflsports.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/071912aaa.html.

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OLYMPICS - ACROSS THE  NETWORKS

The Hartford Courant has gathered the following Olympic Broadcast Information.

NBC: Daytime coverage will begin on most weekdays at 10 a.m. Primetime shows will typically be broadcast from 8 to 11:30 p.m. with a 30-minute break followed by an hour of late-night wrap-up coverage.

NBC Sports Network: Serves as the home to U.S. "team sport" coverage, including basketball and volleyball. The cable channel will offer about 258 hours of original programming, starting with Team USA's opener vs. France in women's soccer on July 25.

MSNBC: Will deliver 155.5 hours across several of the 32 sports, including badminton, wrestling, table tennis, basketball and soccer.

CNBC: Will showcase boxing, with 73 hours of coverage over 16 days.

Bravo: Is dedicated to tennis, televising 56 hours worth of matches (July 28-Aug. 3) from the All England Club.

NBCOlympics.com: Will provide comprehensive live streaming.

Telemundo: Spanish-language Olympic coverage will feature more than 173 hours.

NBC PRIMETIME DAILY COVERAGE

FRIDAY

7:30 p.m.-midnight: Opening Ceremonies.

SATURDAY, July 28

8 p.m.-midnight: The first night of swimming finals includes the men's and women's 400m IM events. Also, men's gymnastics qualification and early-round beach volleyball.

SUNDAY, July 29

7 p.m.-midnight: Women's gymnastics qualification-round competition. Swimming finals include the men's 4x100m free relay. Plus, diving's first gold medal is awarded in the women's synchronized springboard event.

MONDAY, July 30

8 p.m.-midnight: In their first head-to-head duel in the London pool, defending Olympic champion Michael Phelps and reigning world champion Ryan Lochte race in the 200m freestyle final. Also, Jonathan Horton leads Team USA against the world in the men's gymnastics team final, and diving crowns its champions in the men's synchronized platform event.

TUESDAY, July 31

8 p.m.-midnight: The U.S. women target team gold in gymnastics, plus diving, Michael Phelps (men's 200m fly final) and more.

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 1

8 p.m.-midnight: Swimming and diving finals, plus the crowning of the men's all-around champion in gymnastics and the U.S. beach volleyball team of May-Walsh in action.

THURSDAY, Aug. 2

8 p.m.-midnight: Gymnastics determines its women's all-around champ, plus swimming finals (Phelps vs. Lochte in 200m IM) and more.

FRIDAY, Aug. 3

8 p.m.-midnight: Swimming finals include the men's 100m butterfly, plus track and field's opening night, diving and more.

SATURDAY, Aug. 4

8 p.m.-midnight: Swimming concludes with four finals, including the medley relays. Plus the women's 100 meter race and more.

SUNDAY, Aug. 5

7 p.m.-midnight: Track and field's centerpiece event, the men's 100-meter dash, plus apparatus finals in gymnastics and more.

MONDAY, Aug. 6

8 p.m.-midnight: More apparatus finals in gymnastics, plus the men's 400-meter final in track, diving (men's springboard) and more.

TUESDAY, Aug. 7

8 p.m.-midnight: Finals in gymnastics, track and field, and diving, plus a key U.S. women's beach volleyball semifinal.

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 8

8 p.m.-midnight: Gold is determined in women's beach volleyball and track (men's 110-meter hurdles). Plus diving and more.

THURSDAY, Aug. 9

8 p.m.-midnight: Track and field finals include the men's 200 meter, plus diving (women's platform) and quarterfinals from BMX cycling.

FRIDAY, Aug. 10

8 p.m.-midnight: Cycling's BMX finals, plus relays at track, men's platform diving and more.

SATURDAY, Aug. 11

8 p.m.-midnight: Track and field finals include the men's 4x100-meter relay and women's 4x400-meter relay. Plus, gold will be won in men's platform diving and women's volleyball.

SUNDAY, Aug. 12

7-11 p.m. Closing ceremonies.

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