Sports & recreation
Cottage Grove Sentinel
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
South Lane County Sports and Recreation
Golf blogger
boasts about
local course
Section B
Contact Sports, 942-3325 or e-mail zsilva@cgsentinel.com
Fall sports back in action
By Zach Silva
zsilva@cgsentinel.com
There aren’t many – if any
– who are more familiar with
nine-hole golf courses across
the United States than Scott
Springfield. Upon retiring in
2013, Springfield, who resides
in Colorado, decided to spend
his time touring the country's
nine-holes of golf at a time. In
that time, he has played over
140 nine-hole courses across
34 states.
Last month he was able to
check off Cottage Grove’s Hid-
den Valley Golf Course from
his list giving the course that
has been around since 1929
an “Ace” rating accompanied
by a rave review for his blog
Always Time for 9.
“This course is exactly why
I visit and write reviews about
9-hole golf courses,” Spring-
field wrote in his post. “Good
Courses – Good People!”
In addition to the pleasant
people he met, Springfield was
impressed with the layout of
the course, how the holes are
designed and the overall at-
mosphere of the round of golf.
“Certain courses, like this
particular course, I talk about
the ambiance. What’s the at-
mosphere around the course?
I had a fun time. And I just
happened to run into the
men’s club out there and like
I said in the article, they were
a bunch of characters,” said
Springfield in a phone inter-
view.
For 16-year Hidden Val-
ley owner Dan Nord, it was a
pleasant surprise to see what
was written about his course.
“When I saw the write-up,
I was thrilled,” he said. He
continued, “people like Scott
really help us because we may
not have many players on a
day like today but to see that
review makes it all the more
worthwhile to do what we do
and bring a good experience
for the people who do have
time to play our course.”
Springfield began this pur-
suit of nine-hole golf courses
around the country with an
insistent push from his former
boss. The now 68-year-old was
often asked what he wanted to
be when he grew up and so he
looked to follow his passion of
travel and golf which turned
into a blog rating golf courses
from “Double Bogey” to “Ace.”
“I got tired reading in Golf
Magazine or Golf Digest about
all these courses that most
people really couldn’t play.
Now either they didn’t have
the time or the money to fly
or to play places like Pebble
Beach. So, I started looking
at nine hole courses,” he said.
“I’m, you know, a senior cit-
izen basically and as we get
older the guys I play with and
help me out, we don’t really
want to play 18 anymore so we
end up playing nine.”
This pursuit has taken him
from Maine to Florida to
Washington and seemingly
everywhere in between sans
a stretch of southern states.
Along the way he has experi-
enced a range of memorable
courses including a stop in
Wyoming that had sand in-
stead of greens and was on an
oil-field that included a work-
ing pumpjack, a machine that
extracts oil from the ground,
stationed on the sixth hole.
But for Springfield it’s not
about the cream of the crop
courses but it is looking up a
new course online, being able
to play a two-hour round of
golf and getting to explore the
surrounding area.
“It’s a community effort in
towns like Cottage Grove to
keep something like that go-
ing and having people have
fun with it,” said Springfield.
Incoming senior Rodas Rodas Martin of Cottage Grove sends a shot to the back of the net on Monday morning during the first official practice of the soccer season.
Monday marked the first day of practice for all OSAA fall sports. For more pictures, see B12.
Finley leaves Lions, back to Alaska
Cottage Grove
basketball coach
departs after one year
By Zach Silva
zsilva@cgsentinel.com
After one year of leading the
Cottage Grove boys’ basketball
team, Nick Finley has stepped
down from his position as head
coach. The Lions finished 16-8
last year and ended the season
with a loss to Baker in a play-
in game. Finley took over the
job from Donn Pollard who
coached the team for more than
30 years.
“I think (Finley) did a real-
ly good job. He came to us in
a pretty tough situation taking
over for Donn who had been
doing it for quite a while. It’s
been quite a while since we’ve
had a coach of our basketball
program that didn’t have ties di-
rectly to the Cottage Grove bas-
ketball program. I think he did
a good job,” said CGHS Athletic
Director Gary Roberts.
According to Roberts, Finley,
who played basketball for Cre-
swell High School, has plans to
take over a youth sports pro-
gram in Alaska.
“We’re obviously disappointed
that he’s leaving but we under-
stand…you have to take care of
your family first and this is just
an opportunity that you can’t
pass up. It’s not like he’s leaving
us to go coach another school,
he’s leaving us to provide more
for his family which now has a
third kid since he just had a son
over the summer,” said Roberts.
“We totally get it, you know, just
sad. We thought he did a good
job and we thought he was set-
ting a pretty good foundation.”
Following girls’ basketball
coach Kevin Yoss and track
and field coach Ricky Knutson,
Finley is the third CGHS head
coach to leave in the past year.
Despite multiple requests
from The Sentinel, Finley has
declined to comment on the sit-
uation by the time of this pub-
lication.
A solo cycling journey through Europe
Local cyclist Jim
Harrison completes
five weeks abroad
By Zach Silva
zsilva@cgsentinel.com
A
Pictures from Harrison’s blog from his time biking through
Europe. From top: the first campground he stayed at, a bike path
winding through Austria and a path he rode in Switzerland.
Athlete of
the Week
fter landing in Lyon,
France at the end of
June, the only agenda item that
was set in stone for Jim Harri-
son, a 64-year-old from Cottage
Grove, was his return flight that
would be leaving from Buda-
pest – some 700 miles away as
the crow flies – in five weeks.
With a sense of excitement and
freedom, he had all he needed
to enjoy his trip around Europe:
an open schedule and his bike.
“Having done traveling there
two years ago…I knew the miles
and the straight through way
were doable, all I had to do was
(decide) how to spend the time
in between,” he said. “What was
the most appealing way to do
that? That worked out and then
it was delightfully selfish. So
where do I feel like going? Do I
want to go farther today or not
farther? Do I want to go down
this way or up that way?”
Weaving and wandering
through France, Switzerland,
Germany, Czech Republic, Slo-
This week's athlete of the
week is Collen Winebarger
who walked away with
a pair of victories at the
Cottage Grove Speedway last
weekend. For more about his
races, see B2.
vakia and then Lichtenstein “for
about 20 minutes” he put in
about 2,000 miles of cycling on
his journey. But for Harrison,
who has done trips that were
both farther and faster, it was
certainly not about the distance
or the speed that he traveled.
“None of this is competitive.
The competition is to have the
most fun, not who goes the
farthest or carries the heaviest
bag. The mistake is to try and
prioritize some of that,” he said.
He added, “My other trips have
been longer. I’m kind of proud
of this one being shorter be-
cause, as my wife has said, ‘I’m
too stupid to stop’ otherwise (I
just keep going). But this time
I made more of a point of stop-
ping and looking and enjoying.
Spending more time in cities,
more rest days’ kind of stuff.”
That means when he was in
Prague he veered off the estab-
lished bike path to check out a
small city that caught his eye.
And after going through the
mundane familiarity of rows
upon rows of trees in Hungary,
it was turning a different direc-
tion than planned to find some-
thing exciting.
More than anything else,
what allows Harrison to pick
each path he wants to travel is
the fact that he decided to go
alone on this trip. This freedom
gave him the choice to decide to
stop for a rare hot meal or pick
something up from the store.
To stay at this campground or
maybe a hostel (that made him
keenly aware of his age com-
pared to the other guests) just
up the road. For each choice he
made, he got to choose and had
only himself to consider.
“However one travels in-
volves some kind of compro-
mise… So it’s sort of what kind
of compromises do you want to
make. So when you travel with
somebody, the compromise is
that you’re making collective
decisions. You have two people
to take care of,” he said.
Being alone, he was in charge
of everything, even tasks that he
would have maybe shrugged off
to someone else on a different
trip. He had to rely on his lan-
guage skills to speak with those
he met and he had to make sure
he saw each relevant street sign.
“Traveling the way I do with
tent, usually I carry 12-24 hours’
worth of some kind of food.
There’s really not much that can
CYCLING see B2
Collen
Winebarger
and friends
pose with his
winnings.
PHOTO C/O CG
SPEEDWAY