Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1977-1989 | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1988)
SPORTS Clackamas Community College ' June ì, 1988 Page 17 Crane running to the top at CCC by Steven Ziolkowsla ^^aKe^Zrane, freshman track’ star at Clackamas Community College, played basketball and competed in relays since grade school, but didn’t really find his niche in track until he attended Newberg High School. “I didn’t grow enough in junior high school—I was too short for basketball—and that set me off for varsity basketball in my junior and senior year,” Crane said. “The track coach at Newberg saw me playing basketball and soccer and he hounded me to go out for track,” Crane added. “So I did.” The coach’s name was Monte Bradley. Crane was no newcomer to track in high school. Even though basketball was his first choice he was on the junior varsity track team and ran the low hurdles in junior high. He also competed in the team relays and the mile. “I did the mile in the fifth grade. It was my first big race. I took off and held onto first,” Crane says. His dad must have been proud too, “He gave me ten bucks for winning.”< Coach Bradley at Newberg wanted his new recruit to go out for the 1600 relay team. All four knew each other at school—but the real surprise was when Bradley suggested the in termediate hurdles. “Bradley tried me at the in termediates but found that I was really good at the 110 highs,” said Crane. But he wouldn’t get to participate in his first meet of the year because he sprained his ankle the night before playing basketball. He remembers his first meet in high school well. At Hillsboro he ran the third leg—and the team won. “I ran it in 3:31. After that we went to the Centennial Invita tional and I ran a sub 0:48 in my leg of a 400 relay, bringing us to third overall in the race,” Crane remembered. Talking about the hurdles he starts to light up. “At Sunset I had lane eight. I won. I was a se cond off the school record.” Crane laughs, “I felt like I was going way too high over the hurdles, but it was fun as far as endurance goes ” At Clackamas Crane broke the old 110 hurdles record bringing in a time of 14.8 seconds. The old record was held by Steve Kuchab- sky at 14.9, set in 1983. Crane’s key to success: “Being a hurdler I’ve doubled my time spent on stretching. I have to be a lot more flexible?’ When Clackamas Track Coach Mike Hodges first tried to recruit ’ Crane he couldn’t reach him. “He called several times while I wasn’t at home. When I got back from a trip to California I called him back,” Crane remarked. ' “Clackamas had the best track team. I liked the facilities arid the coaches were fun to hang around,” he added. Crane gives Hodges and Assistant Coach Wynia credit for his improve ment, “They have a lot of con structive pointers.” What’s in the future? “I’m not exactly sure as a freshman, which way I want to go yet. I like my management and English classes—long range I’d like to get into sports business and try to work towards the management end of that,” Crane comments. Photo by Both Cot toy Freshman Gabe Crane finds his niche in track. Photo by Beth Coffey CCC Rally for 1987-88: Wendy Jensen, Cathi. Pearson, Joy Harris, Rebecca iulley and Stephani Veff. Cougar rally brought back by Stephan! t. Veff Opinion/Copy Editor This past winter brought something new to Clackamas Community College basketball games - a rally squad. Although there have been rallies at CCC in the past, it had been several years since the last one cheered the team on. That is until freshman Cathi Pearson came along. Pearson, a graduate of Sandy High School, was involved with rally during high school and took on the challenge of getting a rally together at CCC because she thought it would be something to do to try to pro mote school spirit at Clackamas. “I was told that no one ever attended the games and so I set out to try to get some atten dance at the games and give them (the basketball team) some support since we have an ex cellent basketball team, said Pearson. And so the idea of a CCC basketball rally was born. Tryouts consisted of about three weeks of learning a cheer to be performed by ofte’s self and of making up a dance routine with two or three peo ple. Thé judges’ decision called for six girls to be on the 1987-88 basketball rally: Kris Ball, Joy Harris, Wendy Jensen, Pear son, Rebecca Tulley, and Stephani Veff. Kris Ball later resigned from the squad due to personal reasons. The squad then began the frantic tasks of learning more cheers, working on stunts (pyramids), and the most fran tic of, all finding uniforms before the first game in early December. It was decided by the group that they would look for some sort of sweater or sweatshirt at the local shopping malls and have the skirts made by a seamstress. This plan worked well enough, but the practices for the cheers and stunts were another story. When five people are re^ quired to work their schedules around practices, problems generally arise and such was the case here. Not only were all of the girls attending school full time, but all of them were also working part time and soon time conflicts arose. “If you want to have a decent squad, you’ve got to be there and practice. You’ve got to have everyone there because if one person’s gone the whole squad loses it,” stated Pearson when asked her thoughts on the topic of practice. All too soon it was time to go in front of the crowd. It was now a matter of acceptance. “I don’t think it (the rally) was ac cepted entirely because the squad wasn’t very unified, we were lacking in experience, and we didn’t get a chance to prac tice enough and a lot of people didn’t know we were there,” responded Pearson. Despite the difficulties the rally faced this year, Pearson would like to have rally con tinue next year. Her first step will be the Stu dent Success Day that is held before classes begin Fall term for all new students. “I figure if you go around to each one of those classrooms, you’re going to have a bunch of new students on campus who are just coming put of high school who have still got all that spirit,” commented Pearson about recruiting next year’s sauad. Tryouts are going to be run differently next year. This year’s rally will make up a dance routine “so that everyone’s doing the same exact dance routine, but give the girls enough time to rehearse it so that they’ve got it down for tryouts, so that those who want to be on rally again don’t have too much of an advantage,” Pearson stated. The dance routines will be performed in groups of three, but tHe cheer will be one-on-one. “You do it yourself. Make up the motions yourself. You’ve already got the words...so that they (the judges) can hear your voice and see if you can be pep py without the others,” she said. There will be certain re quirements for the cheer that the girls will have to work into their own personal routines so that technique and sharpness will be more easy to judge, “because this year it was really difficult to tell because it wasn’t a rally style,” noted Pearson about the dance routines at this year’s tryouts. Pearson commented that the most important thing about a good rally squad is unification and that this is going to be stressed this year. She also said that, “A lot more emphasis needs to go on sharpness, technique, and the way you use your voice, the way you use your body. You don’t just go out there and jump around. It’s a sport.” Next year’s squad is going to be asked to sign contracts about dedicating time to rally, so that schedule conflicts don’t inter rupt practices, “They’re just going to have to work their schedules around practice. That’s just the way it’s going to have to be,” said Pearson. She is hoping for a bigger tur nout at tryouts next year with more experience and more motivation from the contestants which she hopes will include some guys. “That was our pro blem this year, I mean we were all on our own. The school didn’t help us, we didn’t have an advisor. I mean we were just out there doing our own thing,” commented Pearson. One of her most important projects for next year is finding a new rally advisor, “We need to get a rally advisor, someone who knows what in the heck they’re doing. Someone who would do something,” she said. In conclusion, Pearson com mented on how well this year’s rally did: “For a first year I guess it was okay, considering that we were lacking in ex perience. We could have done a lot better, but once again you’ve just got to get your squad work ing together.”
