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FOUR-PAGE PULLOUT S PORTS A5 Stay connected with local sports! Get text alerts with up-to-date scores and schedules from Central Oregon high school sports events. Sign up at bendbulletin.com/text or scan the QR code. THE BULLETIN • THUrsday, OcTOBEr 21, 2021 bendbulletin.com/sports COLLEGE SPORTS Prep volleyball UO to build new practice facility EUGENE — The Ore- gon Ducks will have a new indoor practice facility. UO unveiled plans for a new 170,000-square foot facility where the current outdoor football practice fields are. Current plans call for a 130,000 square- foot practice field and 40,000-square-foot con- nector between the field and the Hatfield Dowlin Complex to be built by 2024. The connector will include an “expanded weight room and players’ lounge” and outdoor ter- race for team use and to host events. The new facility will create “additional access to the Moshofsky Cen- ter” for Oregon’s other sports teams, which share the 23-year-old facility with the football team. Opened in 1998, the Mo- shofsky Center was the first indoor practice facil- ity in the then-Pac-10. The cost of the new indoor practice facility is not specified and will be funded “entirely with private philanthropy and will be managed through the UO Foundation,” per a release. The exterior shell will be made from Northwest timber in the form of the Oregon “O,” with the the center of the roof made of tinted polymer panels supported by a steel ca- ble system, “which allows natural light to reach the field without glare while insulating against heat,” according to the release. A ventilation system will be available for use to mitigate air quality issues from wildfires, though the new facility will largely rely on natural ventilation and daylight and be pow- ered with renewable en- ergy generated on site. Ravens reclaim IMC title And the Lava Bears clinch their first Mountain Valley Conference championship BY BRIAN RATHBONE • The Bulletin REDMOND — Three sets was all it took for Ridgeview to recapture the Class 5A Intermountain Conference volleyball title Tuesday night against Crook County. It is the Ravens’ third IMC title in four years, reclaiming it from the Cowgirls, who won the conference during the pandemic-shortened sea- son last spring. INSIDE “We worked re- ally hard for it,” said • High school senior libero Kylee scores and results in Rost. “I hope every- Scoreboard, one appreciates how A6 cool it is to be IMC champs. Especially after last year when we lost to Crook County for the IMC, so that makes it even better.” In a clash between two of the top teams in Class 5A, the 3-0 (25-22, 25- 20, 25-16) final score did not show how close the match was. Each of the three sets were close, as Crook County held a lead in all three sets at one point before the Ravens were finally able to pull away from the short-handed Cowgirls. “They gave us a run each time,” said Ridgeview coach Randi Vig- giano. “Crook County hustled, we matched their hustle, and at the end of the day we got the job done. It feels really good.” Both the Ravens (13-4 overall, 9-0 IMC) and the Cowgirls (13-7, 7-2) are headed to the postseason. Crook County will have a tough test Brian Rathbone/The Bulletin The Ridgeview volleyball team celebrates clinching the Class 5A Intermountain Conference title with a victory over Crook County on Tuesday night at Ridgeview High School. “We worked really hard for it. I hope everyone appreciates how cool it is to be IMC champs. Especially after last year when we lost to Crook County for the IMC, so that makes it even better.” — Kylee Rost, Ridgeview High senior libero against Redmond on Thursday with playoff-seeding implications, while Ridgeview, with a conference title in its back pocket, will enter its final match of the regular season still with a goal to accomplish. “We want an undefeated con- ference championship,” said Vig- giano, adding that the Ravens went unbeaten in IMC play in 2019 and ended up with a state title. “Then we get a week of practice to work and fine tune some of the little things and get better. Now we get to host a playoff game, which is amaz- ing.” Also sealing a conference title Tuesday evening was Bend High, which clinched the program’s first Class 6A Mountain Valley Confer- ence championship since it joined in 2018. See Volleyball / A6 — The Oregonian COLLEGE FOOTBALL Lawyer: Rolovich firing ‘unlawful’ Former Washing- ton State football coach Nick Rolovich’s termina- tion for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccination was unlawful and an attack on his Catholic faith, his attor- ney said Wednesday. Attorney Brian Fahling also said in a statement that Rolovich intends to take legal action and that the litigation will detail what the attorney called athletic director Pat Chun’s “animus towards Coach Rolovich’s sincerely held religious beliefs” and his dishonesty at the expense of the former coach. Rolovich and four of his assistants were fired Monday for not comply- ing with the governor’s mandate that all state employees be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The attorney said Rolovich was escorted by campus police to his car and not allowed to speak to the team or visit his office af- ter his dismissal. Rolovich had re- quested a religious ex- emption but it was de- nied Monday, the state’s vaccination deadline. The statement didn’t specify Rolovich’s religious grounds for seeking an exemption. Pope Francis and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have stated that all COVID-19 vaccines are morally ac- ceptable and that Catho- lics have a duty, responsi- bility or obligation to be vaccinated. — Associated Press COLLEGE FOOTBALL | OREGON STATE NBA League struggles during 1950s, QB Chance Nolan ‘just begins its rise later in decade little things away’ from a bounceback performance BY BRIAN MAHONEY AP Basketball Writer A career in the NBA seemed such an uncertainty as the 1950s arrived that Bob Cousy considered driving school a better option than playing for a team he didn’t even know how to find on a map. “Basketball was at the bot- tom of the totem pole,” said Cousy, one of the sport’s few bankable stars at the time. The NBA, known today as a leader when it comes to culture and racial issues, was anything but at a time when segregation divided the coun- try. It was a powerless, fledg- ling league trying to find its footing. Franchises were fold- ing and few paid much atten- tion to the NBA. When Jackie Robinson be- came Major League Baseball’s first Black player in 1947, Cousy remembered it being major national news. Three years later, Cousy’s Boston Celtics made Chuck Cooper the NBA’s first Black player to be drafted. “And to this day I have yet to read a story about Chuck Cooper breaking the color line in the NBA, because as I say nobody gave a damn what color we were or what we were doing,” said Cousy, now 93. The powerless NBA largely sat idly by, watching events like the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Educa- tion challenging racial segre- gation in public schools, Rosa BY NICK DASCHEL The Oregonian AP file New York’s Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton (8) and Boston’s Bob Cousy (14) race for a loose ball in an opening period of a game Nov. 12, 1955, at Madison Square Garden, in New York. Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and national guard troops being sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation and protect the Little Rock Nine at Central High School. However, a foundation was being built for what, as the NBA begins its 75th season, is one of the most influential sports leagues in the world — on and off the court. The 1950s would bring in the league’s first Black stars. The decade also saw the advent of the 24-second shot clock, which sped up the game and made it a more attractive product. Outspoken and fiercely in- dependent Black stars like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor became part of the NBA fabric in the 1950s. They brought a higher level of all-around skill and athlet- icism — along with attributes that would later make the Hall of Famers social and cultural icons off the court — and pre- decessors for today’s All-Stars. “I think one thing that’s true in sports throughout time is that our heroes are people that, on some level we identify with them,” said Johnny Smith, a professor of sports history at Georgia Tech whose research focuses on the history of sports and Ameri- can culture. “But if you go back to the ’50s and the ’60s, this was a moment of the civil rights movement, when Black ath- letes were breaking through, integrating professional sports leagues — the NBA, the NFL, you go back to Jackie Robin- son and Major League Base- ball — and they became sym- bols of racial pride, symbols of Black achievement and that mattered to folks in the Black community,” Smith said. See NBA / A7 CORVALLIS — Nine games into his career as a starting college quarterback, Oregon State’s Chance Nolan already sounds like a veteran. There’s no ‘I’ in team, and there’s rarely an ‘I’ in Nolan’s answers. It’s about we. Nolan’s successes are Ore- gon State’s successes, and his struggles are part of the offen- sive unit. It’s been a mixed bag for No- lan this season. His first few starts were razor sharp. Throws were crisp and accurate, quar- terback runs were used spar- ingly but effective. But of late, the passing game has stalled, forcing the Bea- vers to heavily lean on their running game to move the ball. Eventually, that’s not go- ing to be enough, and perhaps as soon as Saturday when the Beavers face Utah. The Pac-12 South leaders aren’t known to allow offenses to gash their de- fense with the running game. With Oregon State on a bye last week, Nolan spent the ex- tra time getting back to funda- mentals and figuring out how to make the Beavers’ passing game a threat again. “Offensively, we can be a lit- tle bit sharper. There’s some things on my end, a lot of things on my end that I can clean up,” Nolan said. “We’ve got to get back to what we do. We had success early on in the year. There’s a lot of things where, we’re just right there. We’re just little things away from putting a lot more points on the board.” If that sounds heavy on vague and light on specifics, it is. That’s much how offensive coordinator Brian Lindgren described OSU’s troubled pass- ing attack the past two games, against Washington and Wash- ington State. Nothing major, but a lot to clean up, from details of cer- tain pass routes to timing of throws and protection issues. Lindgren said some of it’s as simple as finding the pass plays and routes that work, and build off those. And the ones that ar- en’t working, either fix or junk them. Yes, the passing game is about we, but it starts with the quarterback. And Nolan — who completed 18 of 40 passes for 206 yards collectively against UW and WSU — has had a hand in the misfiring. Lindgren believes he’s see- ing improvement from Nolan since the Washington State loss on Oct. 9. “I really like the way he’s been practicing. When you struggle at times, you’ve got to go back to work on the practice field,” Lindgren said. See Nolan / A6
