Posts Tagged ‘sports’

10 Jun

Busy Sports Weekends Can Be Fun to Cover

Posted by EL PASO SPORTS in El Paso Sports. Tagged: , , , , , .

What a weekend.
On Friday night, there was the celebration of the life of late Ysleta High School, UTEP and Green Bay Packers football great Jesse Whittenton at the Larry K. Durham Center.
Saturday afternoon there was the Belmont Stakes with I’ll Have Another trying to complete the Triple Crown.
And Saturday night there was the 2012 El Paso Boxing/Martial Arts Hall of Fame induction banquet.
On Sunday, today, I’ll probably collapse.

BUT HEY, it’s fun. The most touching of the events was, of course, Jesse Whittenton’s. I was lucky to have followed and covered his amazing career from the time he was in high school through his outstanding play at what was then Texas Western College and finally as an all-pro defensive back with the Packers.
At six feet of solid muscle, ruggedly handsome and freewheeling he made women swoon and men envious. It’s been great listening to and recounting the many stories about his life on and off the football field. I hope to share some of them in columns to come.

ALSO AT THIS writing I don’t know if I’ll Have Another won the Belmont Sakes Saturday. I knew I was going to root for him. A Triple Crown winner would be great for horse racing.
Horse racing as a whole has been great for the country, including El Paso. Like racetracks are at other places, Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino has been a big asset. It employs hundreds of people, is generous to charities and provides excitement like no other sport. I mean, when you play the races, you’re a participant, not just an onlooker.
I was dubious about its legitimacy, as many others were, when Sunland Park Racetrack opened in 1959. Now, I’m one of its biggest fans.

AS FOR THE El Paso Boxing/Martial Arts Hall of Fame Saturday night, I can’t say enough nice things about Tom McKay, its founder and current president
Did you ever try to hold back a hurricane? When McKay goes into a project he goes all out
The Hall had been dormant for eight years. Mostly, it was because McKay had been battling serious health problems. But he’s back, and he flooded the news media this year with endless press releases and photos and phone calls.
And yes, the El Paso Boxing/Martial Arts Hall of Fame returned in all its glory.
People like McKay not only make the world turn, they make it turn for the better.

OH, YES, this week also included my birthday. I wrote my first sports column for the El Paso Herald-Post in January of 1950. That’s 62 years ago. Today, it seems like yesterday. Time seems to go faster as you get older.
I’ve written a sports column at least once a week, and sometimes three or four columns a week, ever since. I’ve gone through several typewriters and a few computers.
But like I’ve said, hey, it’s been fun.

CORRECTION: This it’s a bit late but it’s never too late to correct a mistake. I once wrote that Nemo Herrera was the only high school coach who had coached in El Paso and had won State high school championships in two major sports. He won two state titles in basketball at San Antonio Lanier High School and then won a state title in baseball at Bowie High School. Jewell Wallace coached El Paso High School to the state title in basketball in 1941 and Central High School in San Angelo to the state crown in football in 1943.

10 Jun

EPCC Caddy Honored For 70 Years of Service

Posted by EL PASO SPORTS in El Paso Sports. Tagged: , , .

Refugio “Cuco” Lujan has set an El Paso golf record that may never be broken. No, not as a player, but for longevity. He started caddying at El Paso Country Club at age 11 and is still working in the caddy shack at the club 70 years later.
Amazing.
Some very nice ladies at the club have taken notice and honored him recently for his dedication and long service. Members of the El Paso Country Club Tuesday Ladies Group showered him with gifts, money, a luncheon and a golf tournament, which they titled “A Salute to Cuco Tournament.”
Cuco was full of gratitude. “People at this club have always been nice to me,” he said, “and especially these ladies.”

WELL, NOT quite always. Born during the depression in Smelter Town in 1931, Cuco and some of his little friends would sneak onto the country club grounds at night while growing up looking for lost balls.
“Those were hard times,” he says. “Balls were worth something and we could sell them. But there was a big guard or watchman or whatever he was who would shoo us away. If he caught us, he would call the police. He caught me once and I was taken to jail. But I was in jail for just a short time and when I got out I went back to looking for balls.”

SOON, CUCO learned that he could make “real money” working as a caddy. He packed his first bag in 1942. “The bags weren’t as big as they are now and didn’t weigh much,” he recalls. “They were small and round and the clubs weren’t very heavy, either. They all had wooden shafts.”
What was “real money” then? A quarter. “That’s how much we got for a round of caddying,” he says. “And sometimes we would be tipped a few pennies.”
Cuco could wind up with as much as 60 cents a day by caddying in the morning and again in the afternoon.
And he could enhance his income even more by looking for lost balls, now legally. World War II was on and there was a shortage of rubber so a golf ball in top condition could bring in the “astronomical” sum of as much as a dollar.

EVENTUALLY, Cuco took up the game himself. And he did it with a passion. He would hit balls down by the Rio Grande River for hours and got so good he carried a single-digit handicap.
But he never gave up his caddying. He has toted bags for some of El Paso’s most influential people and some of the world’s greatest golfers.
And with the help of Bill Eschenbrenner, the club’s golf pro at the time, he was made caddy master in 1976 and was responsible at one time for as many as 30 to 40 caddies.

NANCY AND VAL Brown, sisters-in-law who married brothers named Brown, led the festivities honoring Cuco. Here’s what they said at the luncheon:
“Today we celebrate an outstanding achievement for a man who has been a wonderful friend to us all. Although you (Cuco) have not been a salaried employee at El Paso Country Club for all these years, considering you were only 11 when you started working here, the fact remains that you have been a mainstay at this club for an incredible 70 years.”
Now 81, married and living in the Ascarate Park area, Cuco shows up faithfully to take care of what he calls his members. “It’s the only job I’ve known,” he says, “and I’ll just keep on doing it as long I can.”

10 Jun

Remembering the Big Man of UTEP’s Champs

Posted by EL PASO SPORTS in El Paso Sports. Tagged: , .

Here’s how I described David Lattin in my book, “Basketball’s Biggest Upset,” which was published in 1991:
“If Bobby Joe Hill was the steering wheel of the 1966 basketball champions, David Lattin was the axle. He was not only big and strong at 6 feet 7 and 240 pounds but he could run and he could jump. He dominated the area under the boards with such muscle and finesse that his smaller but quick teammates could revolve around him like bees around a hive. Sports information director Eddie Mullens nicknamed him ‘Big Daddy D.’ There was no doubt he was the big man of the team.”

BUT WHY, you ask, am I bringing this up? It’s because the big man of Texas Western College’s 1966 NCAA champs may finally be inducted into the UTEP Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Hall is a relatively new entity on the El Paso sports scene. UTEP athletic director Bob Stull wisely started it in 2002.
Coach Don Haskins was inducted the first year, and fittingly so, while Bobby Joe Hill was inducted the third year. Lattin, however, hadn’t even been nominated until this year. He has made this year’s top 10 on the nominations list and may make the top five on the final ballot which will be determined any day now.

WE CAN HOPE. Who can forget Lattin’s thundering dunk early in the finals of the NCAA tournament that sent a message to the heavily favored Kentucky Wildcats that the Miners were not going to be intimidated? Or that he led the Miners in scoring during the playoffs with a 19-plus average?
Even Bobby Joe was in awe of him. As Hill was quoted in the book, “I’ve never seen anyone who could dunk a ball with such force. He could virtually tear down the rim. He was a good ballhandler and dribbler, too.”
Despite Lattin’s terrifying presence on the court he was a clean living man who didn’t smoke or drink and sang in his church choir while growing up. He would call his mother, Elsie, often when away from home and she was the first person he called after the championship game.
He left us great memories – and a national championship.

OTHER TOP 10 nominees, all worthy candidates, in alphabetical order:
Troy Bassham (a 4-time All-American in rifle shooting), Gary Brewster (outstanding basketball player in the 1970s), Ed Bunn (who led the nation in punting in 1992), Andy Everest (one of UTEP’s greatest linemen from 1947-51), Greg Joy (former high jump national champion), James Munyala (3-time national steeplechase champion), Brian Natkin (former All-American tight end), Gerald Rogers (first UTEP basketball player to receive All-American recognition in 1951) and Kim Turner (former national 100-meter hurdles champion).
Stay tuned. Daniel James Veale, UTEP Assistant Director for Athletic Development, will be announcing the final five soon.

TRIVIA QUESTION: Can you name the top five career Major League homerun hitters in order before the steroids era? Answer at end.

ARE LOCAL golf courses happy or what? The grass was beginning to grow, the greens were getting better, trees were blossoming. Then came last week’s rains and they couldn’t have happened at a better time.
I’m especially impressed with Dos Lagos Golf Club, the little friendly course in the upper valley. The course all but completely lost its greens during the ice day of several months back. I played the back nine last week. You should see the greens now. They’re plush and smooth and a putter’s dream.
Maybe miracles do happen. Or maybe it’s just that Dos Lagos has a great greenskeeper crew in Beto Morales, Luis Enriquez, Sam Moreno and Juan Rodriguez.

ANSWER to trivia question: Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Harmon Killebrew.

6 May

Hall of Fame Stars Have Great Stories to Tell

Posted by EL PASO SPORTS in El Paso Sports. Tagged: , , .

One of the things I like best about being on the board of directors of some of the sports halls of fame in town is that I get to hear some great stories from inductees. Like some of the ones I heard during El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremonies last week. For example:

I ASKED Bobby Dibler, who officiated many NCAA basketball games including three Final Fours, who was the coach who gave him the toughest time. He laughed and promptly answered, “Don Haskins!” But, he added, one of the most satisfying moments of his career came when he won a dispute over Bob Knight, the ferocious coach at University of Indiana.
“One of his players went in for a layup and was fouled,” Dibler said. “The ball he threw up rustled the net as if the ball had gone through the hoop but it hadn’t.” Dibler called a foul on the opposing player but ruled no basket.
Knight came storming toward Dibler and fumed and raged that the ball had gone in. “I don’t give a damn about free throws, I want the basket,” he growled. Dibler stood his ground.

SOME GAMES later Dibler was officiating another Indiana game. Knight shook all the referees’ hands before the game – all except Dibler’s. However, Knight must have seen the video replay because he apologized on his way back to the bench. He whispered as he went by Dibler, “You were right. The ball didn’t go in.”
As for athletes, Dibler well remembers Michael Jordan. Dibler officiated the game where Jordan made the jump shot that won the national title for North Carolina. “It was amazing how Jordan could stop on a dime and go high in the air,” Dibler said.

MICHAEL JORDAN is also well remembered by another El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame inductee of this year, Rafael Palomar. The former Ysleta High star, who still holds the state record for most rebounds in a game at 41, played for Mexico in the Olympics and in many international games. He played against Jordan in some of the latter.
“Whenever Jordan would get the ball in a game it seemed like the world would come to a stand-still,” Palomar says. “The audience would hold its breath wondering what he was going to do next and there was an eerie silence. And oh, how he could jump.”
Palomar is close to 6 feet 8 but, he says, “Jordan went so high I actually saw the soles of his shoes on some occasions.”

CARILYN JOHNSON, a world class runner inductee who has competed in two world championship tournaments and helped the United States win a silver medal in Italy in 2009, says her career was tougher on her family than on her. She was on the USA 24-Hour Run Team and members of her family would stay up nights to help her train for it. “They would be there to hand me food and water and encouragement as I ran by,” she says.
She is the daughter of former El Paso mayor Larry Francis, who was at the induction banquet. Emcee Kevin Lovell asked him what made him most proud of his children. Francis brought the house down with laughter when he aswered, “They’re all making a living.”

EL PASO’S outstanding high school athletes were also honored at the induction banquet. Luis Zuniga, KINT-TV sports anchor who was inducted in the media category, was in awe of them. “They’re wonderful,” he said. “I wonder why UTEP doesn’t keep more of them.”
Other inductees included former UTEP basketball star Beto Bautista, incredibly successful swim coach Steve Flato, super cross country coach Felix Hinojosa and, posthumously, incomparable runner Kiki Contreras.
All had great stories to tell, too, but space is limited here. I’ll treasure them and perhaps in future columns …

Newer Entries »