Sports
8A
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Th e Observer
OSAA approves March 1 start for sports
By BRIAN RATHBONE
The Bulletin
SALEM — In one way or
another, high school sports are set
to return to competition starting
March 1.
The executive board of the
Oregon School Activities Associ-
ation approved the start of soccer,
cross-country and (partly) vol-
leyball during a Monday, Feb.
8, Zoom meeting, while football
players still are waiting for fur-
ther guidelines from the Oregon
Health Authority to determine if
they can play games this winter
and spring.
“That was a priority for the
board,” Peter Weber, executive
director of the OSAA, told The
Bulletin. “Let those who can go,
go. And those who can’t, provide
alternative options.”
Those who can: Soccer and
cross-country are allowed to start
practicing Feb. 22, while ques-
tions remain about what the post-
season will entail. Those ques-
tions will likely have more clarity
following a Feb. 17 OSAA execu-
tive board meeting.
Those who cannot: Volleyball
EO Media Group, File Photo
La Grande’s Payton Cooper tries to elude a defender from The Dalles
in the 2019 4A state semifi nal high school football game in Hermiston.
Football teams began offi cial noncontact practices Monday, Feb. 8, but
it is uncertain if the Oregon School Activities Association will allow
tackle football in the next couple of weeks.
and football are waiting for more
state guidelines to fully return.
Due to the state’s indoor
restrictions, the start of the volley-
ball season could start on time, or
some teams could elect to move
their seasons to later in the year
when their respective counties
could move below the extreme-
risk level.
As of now, with new county
risk levels set to be released this
week, roughly 50 schools have
the option of starting on time due
to being in a lower-, moderate-
or high-risk county. Those in
extreme-risk counties may have to
play later in the spring. The board
approved “change-of-season
request forms” for volleyball.
Football teams began offi cial
noncontact practices Monday, but
it is uncertain if tackle football
will be allowed in the next couple
of weeks.
Contact sports — football,
basketball and wrestling — have
been prohibited, thus making it
impossible to play under the cur-
rent guidelines.
During the Feb. 8 meeting,
the OSAA made it clear that the
OHA would be releasing new,
more lenient guidelines that could
give contact sports a chance at
returning.
“They can’t prohibit (the con-
tact sports) any more (than they
already are),” Weber said.
Football cannot be moved to
a different season like volleyball
and played past May 1 because
that is too close to the start of
the 2021 fall season. And given
the uncertainty of the upcoming
OHA guidelines, there is the pos-
sibility that parts of the state play
non-contact 7-on-7 football while
others play tackle, Weber said.
The OSAA has been providing
information to the OHA showing
how other states who did not play
football in the fall — such as Illi-
nois, New York and New Mexico
— are approaching their plan to
restart football safely. Still, the
decision is left in the hands of the
OHA and the governor’s offi ce.
“I think this is better than
not having any football at all,”
said Curt Shelley, the 4A repre-
sentative on the executive board
and superintendent of the
Tillamook School District.
Remembering the 1939 NCAA champion ‘Tall Firs’
ack in 1988, when I
After I came to the AP
was Oregon sports
in late 1975, I’d see Hobby
editor for The Asso-
often. He was a fi xture at
ciated Press, I got a mes-
Portland Trail Blazers con-
sage from one of the bosses tests, sitting in the upper
in New York.
press section, still analyzing
Was anyone still around
the game he loved.
from the University of
That ‘39 team’s starting
Oregon
lineup was
team,
Oregon
the “Tall
grown,
Firs,”
and very
BOB BAUM
that won
tall for
SPORTS COLUMNIST
the fi rst
the era.
NCAA
The front
basketball
line was
championship in 1939?
6-foot-6 John Dick, 6-6
“Heck,” I replied. “The
Laddie Gale and 6-8 Urgel
coach is still alive.”
“Slim” Wintermute. Wally
Howard “Hobby”
Johansen, 5-10, was one
Hobson was just 35 years
guard. The heart and soul of
old when he directed
the team was 5-9 playmaker
Oregon to that national title. Bobby Anet. Johansen and
He’d come to Oregon
Anet had played together
in 1935 after four years at
since junior high.
Southern Oregon Normal
The NCAA tourna-
School.
ment was founded by the
I fi rst met Hobby in
National Association of
1973, when I was a senior at Basketball Coaches to com-
Oregon working on a story
pete with the prestigious
on the Tall Firs for a his-
National Invitation Tourna-
tory of the school’s athletics ment, which rarely invited
for the student newspaper,
West Coast teams.
the Daily Emerald. A soft-
Champions of eight
spoken, exceedingly kind
regions squared off. Oregon
man, he invited me to his
beat California twice to
Lake Oswego home to dis-
advance to the regional
cuss those old days.
tournament on Treasure
B
Island in San Francisco
Bay, where it beat Texas
56-41 and Oklahoma 55-37.
“We had a heck of
a travel disadvantage,”
Dick told me back in ‘88.
“We had to play Cal on a
Thursday and Friday in
Eugene; then we had to
get on a train and go to
San Francisco, play there
Monday and Tuesday, then
get on a train to Chicago
and be ready to play on
Monday.”
The title game against
Ohio State was played in a
rickety gym on the North-
western campus.
“It was terrible,” Hobson
recalled. “I don’t know why
they had it there except Tug
Wilson was prominent in
organizing the thing and
he was athletic director at
Northwestern.
“We beat Ohio State on a
Big Ten fl oor with Big Ten
offi cials in front of a Big
Ten crowd.”
The court was elevated,
so coaches had to crane
their necks to see the action.
Basketball’s inventor, James
Naismith, was among the
5,500 people in the crowd.
“They said they had
5,500 people there,” Hobson
told me. “I think they gave
half the tickets away.”
The fi rst tournament lost
$2,600. Oregon beat Ohio
State in convincing fashion,
46-33. Hobson went on to
coach at Yale and wrote
several basketball books.
He died in 1991, a month
shy of his 88th birthday.
Oregon’s triumph
barely caused a ripple
nationally, but it was a
very big deal back home.
“We expected the stu-
dents, the people who
were close to the program
and the people who were
interested in athletics to
be excited about it,” Dick
said in that interview
32 years ago. “But it
seemed to touch across
all parts of our society
here in the state, from
the governor on down.”
———
Bob Baum, who grew
up in Union, covered 10
Olympics and four world
track and fi eld champion-
ships in a 43-year career
with The Associated Press.
He retired last year after
23 years in Portland and 20
based in Phoenix, Arizona.
He lives in Island City with
his wife Leah and their four
cats and two dogs
February is National
Heart Month
Pandemic shakes up Olympic gymnastics qualifi cation
LAUSANNE, Switzer-
land — The United States,
Russia and China were each
given an extra entry to the
Olympic women’s gymnas-
tics competition in Tokyo
on Wednesday. Feb. 10,
after the coronavirus pan-
demic forced a shake-up in
qualifying.
The International Gym-
nastics Federation said it
was canceling its all-around
World Cup series of events
because of the pandemic.
Those events were sup-
posed to offer countries one
extra spot for the Tokyo
Games, helping the nations
to compensate after Olympic
teams were reduced in size
from fi ve athletes to four.
FIG is going back to 2019
world championship results
to determine those places.
That means the United
States, Russia and China
get one extra women’s spot
each, and Russia, China and
Japan each receive an extra
men’s spot. All of those
countries already quali-
fi ed a four-person team
for the men’s and women’s
competitions.
Of the four planned all-
around World Cup events,
only one has taken place.
— The Associated Press
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