SIX-PAGE PULLOUT
B3
S PORTS
THE BULLETIN • FrIday, JULy 23, 2021
bendbulletin.com/sports
PREP SOFTBALL
Bend High players
are All-Americans
A pair of Bend High
softball players were
named to the Underclass-
men MaxPreps All-Amer-
ican Softball Teams on
Thursday.
Addisen Fisher (first-
team pitcher) and Gracie
Goewey (second-team
infielder and pitcher)
were the only Orego-
nians to be named to the
34-person teams made
up of only freshmen and
sophomores. Bend High
was also the only team to
have two players named
to the underclassmen
all-American team.
“You have a big sea-
son and the awards keep
coming,” said Bend High
softball coach Tom Maul-
din. “They are unique tal-
ents and work really hard.
They are two of the hard-
est working kids I know
and they are wonderful
teammates.”
There may need to be
a larger trophy case built
for Fisher considering all
the awards she’s won fol-
lowing her freshman cam-
paign with the Lava Bears.
She was first-team
all-state as a pitcher, the
Oregon Softball Gatorade
Player of the Year, and
was recently named Ore-
gon’s USA Today Softball
Player of the Year, as well
as the state’s Rising Star
of the Year among all Ore-
gon high school athletes.
She finished the year
with a 9-0 record in the
circle, 127 strikeouts in
56 innings, and a 0.25
earned run average.
The sophomore
Goewey, also first-team
all-state and a finalist for
the the Oregon Softball
Gatorade Player of the
Year, set several Bend
High records in the bat-
ter’s box: 10 home runs, a
.574 batting average, and
39 RBIs in 19 games. She
also struck out 46 batters
and finished with a 0.62
ERA in 222/3 innings of
work as a pitcher.
Though no postseason
was played due to the
pandemic, the Lava Bears
were arguably the state’s
top softball team after
finishing the season 18-1.
Basketball
BY CHRIS HANSEN • The (Eugene) Register-Guard
E
UGENE — The last time Maarty
Leunen was back on campus, the
Oregon men’s basketball team still
played in McArthur Court and Ernie Kent
SEEING
GREEN
was the coach.
That’s pretty much how Tajuan Porter
remembers it as well.
So when those two joined former teammate
Bryce Taylor on the court at Matthew Knight Arena
earlier this week for the first practice with the Al-
ways Us alumni team, it took some getting used to.
“It’s like a foreign country here because I’ve never
seen all of this,” said Porter, the No. 6 scorer in Ore-
gon history.
“These guys are spoiled now,” smiled Redmond’s
Leunen, the Ducks’ No. 2 all-time rebounder. “They
have no idea what we had to go through at Mac
Court. ... But it’s well-deserved. The program is at a
very high level and I kind of feel like we were a huge
part of starting this whole process. This was being
talked about when we were playing, so to see it first
hand is pretty sweet.”
Leunen, Porter and Taylor, who were all starters
on the 2007 Elite Eight team, are teammates once
again as they join nine other former Ducks on a
team that will play in The Basketball Tournament
(TBT), a $1 million winner-take-all single-elimina-
tion event that begins for Always Us at noon Sunday
in Peoria, Illinois.
Always Us is the No. 4 seed in the 16-team Illinois
regional and will open against the No. 13 Peoria All-
Stars.
Also on the team are Casey Benson, Dwayne
Benjamin, Shakur Juiston, Elijah Brown, Jalil Ab-
dul-Bassit, Johnathan Loyd, Mikyle McIntosh, Paul
White and Mike Moser, who is in his first season as
an assistant coach on the Oregon women’s team.
See Basketball / B4
Redmond’s Maarty Leunen joins
Oregon alumni team in The Basketball
Tournament, a $1 million winner-take-
all single-elimination event
Submitted photo
Redmond’s Maarty Leunen has played professional basketball in Italy for the past 11 years. He is joining other for-
mer Oregon Ducks players on a team that will play in The Basketball Tournament (TBT), which begins for the Oregon
alumni team Always Us at noon Sunday in Peoria, Illinois.
OLYMPICS
Smith, Carlos, Berry demand change in Olympic protest rule
BY EDDIE PELLS
AP National Writer
— Bulletin staff report
NBA
Bucks celebrate
title with parade
MILWAUKEE — Thou-
sands of fans lined down-
town Milwaukee streets
on Thursday to catch a
glimpse of their beloved
Bucks in a parade to cel-
ebrate the city’s first NBA
championship in half a
century.
The procession in-
cluded a hook-and-ladder
fire truck, occasionally
blaring its horn, and open-
air buses and flatbed
trucks carrying Bucks stars
including Finals MVP Gi-
annis Antetokounmpo
and Jrue Holiday, as well
as the trophy they cap-
tured Tuesday night with
a Game 6 victory over
Phoenix.
Antetokounmpo held
his son, 1-year-old Liam,
atop a bus as fans along
the route chanted “MVP!”
“Milwaukee, we did it
baby! We did it!” Antetok-
ounmpo said to a cheer-
ing crowd in the Deer Dis-
trict, the area outside the
Bucks’ Fiserv Forum.
Neil and Rachana Bha-
tia, both 34 and from sub-
urban Waukesha, brought
1-month-old son Zain to
the Deer District.
“It unifies the city and
puts the city on a global
stage,” said Neil Bhatia. “It’s
just bringing everybody
together to celebrate
something that hasn’t
happened in 50 years,”
he said.
— Associated Press
Charlie Riedel/AP file
Gwendolyn Berry holds her Activist Athlete T-shirt over her head
during the medal ceremony after the finals of the women’s hammer
throw at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene in June.
TOKYO — Tommie Smith,
John Carlos and Gwen Berry
are among the more than 150
athletes, educators and activists
who signed a letter Thursday
urging the IOC not to punish
participants who demonstrate
at the Tokyo Games.
The five-page letter, pub-
lished on the eve of the Olym-
pics, asks the IOC not to sanc-
tion athletes for kneeling or
raising a fist, the way Smith
and Carlos did at the 1968
Mexico City Games.
Berry, the American ham-
mer thrower who triggered
much of this debate, has said
she intends to use her Olym-
pic platform to point out racial
inequality in the United States.
She turned away from the flag
when the national anthem
played while she was on the
medals stand at the Olympic
trials last month.
The IOC has made changes
to its Rule 50 that bans political
demonstrations at the Games,
and has said it will allow them
on the field, so long as they
come before the start of action.
Players from five Olympic soc-
cer teams took to their knees
Wednesday before their games
on the opening night for that
sport.
But the IOC did not lift the
prohibition on medals-stand
demonstrations, and has left
some of the decision-making
about punishment up to indi-
vidual sports federations.
“We do not believe the
changes made reflect a com-
mitment to freedom of expres-
sion as a fundamental human
right nor to racial and social
justice in global sports,” said
the letter, which was posted on
the website of the Muhammad
Ali Center and also signed by
Ali’s daughter, four-time box-
ing world champion Lalia Ali.
The letter disputed the IOC’s
long-held position that the
Olympics should remain neu-
tral, arguing that “neutrality is
never neutral.”
“Staying neutral means stay-
ing silent, and staying silent
means supporting ongoing in-
justice,” it said.
The letter also took issue
with an athlete survey con-
ducted by the IOC athletes’
commission that found wide-
spread support for Rule 50.
The commission cited the
survey as a central reason for
making the recommendation
to largely keep the rule intact.
See Protest / B5
Sounds of the Games: NBC does
not plan on adding crowd noise
BY JOE REEDY
Associated Press
One of Molly Solomon’s fa-
vorite memories from the 2018
Pyeongchang Olympics was
watching Lindsey Vonn in the
start house.
Cameras would focus on the
skiing great, with microphones
picking up her breathing while
she listened to final instruc-
tions.
With no spectators in the
stands during the Tokyo
Games, Solomon is hoping to
pick up on more of those mo-
ments.
The NBC Olympics execu-
tive producer said that the net-
work will not add additional
crowd noise to its coverage.
The hope is that fans will hear
the Games as they haven’t been
“We’ve pivoted to know that we’ve got access to all of these
fields-of-play microphones. So, we really feel like we can
enhance the sounds of the Games. You’ll hear it as the
athletes hear it.”
— Molly Solomon, NBC Olympics executive producer
able to before, whether it is
the action in the pool during
swimming or conversations be-
tween competitors and coaches
during gymnastics.
“You look at gymnastics and
think about the distinctive in-
tricacies of each apparatus, and
we really feel like we’ll be able
to bring the viewer closer to the
athlete’s experience here in To-
kyo than ever before,” said Sol-
omon, who is working her 11th
Olympics for NBC.
The only crowd noise that
viewers may hear is ambient
crowd noise that venues might
use to generate atmosphere for
the athletes.
With more than 300 events
at the Olympics, it would be a
logistical nightmare for NBC
and Olympic Broadcasting Ser-
vice, which provides the world
feed, to layer in crowd noise, es-
pecially with each sport having
its own cadence and pace.
See Sounds / B5
Manu Fernandez/AP
People sit in an empty tribune during a volleyball team training ses-
sion at Ariake Arena at the 2020 Summer Olympics Thursday in Tokyo,
Japan.