Sports

By Charles Hallman Staff Writer Less than 10 percent of Division I athletics directors are women, and only two percent are women of color. Schools can’t say they can’t find Black women to fill these roles when openings occur. They can’t say that there aren’t qualified candidates, especially since the NCAA regularly holds training opportunities […]

I took it easy this past week and watched five former metro-area prep basketball players help their college teams to key victories. Check this out! Sophomore center ROYCE WHITE (Hopkins), Mr. Basketball in 2009, had 18 points and nine rebounds in leading Iowa State to a 73-64 upset of fifth-ranked Kansas. Freshmen sensation RACHEL BANHAM […]

It is known as a sophomore slump when a second-year player struggles, but thus far there is no known term when this occurs during a player’s third season. Call it what you want, but this is what U-M junior guard Leah Cotton currently is experiencing.  Cotton averaged nine points in five non-league games, but since […]

By Charles Hallman Staff Writer Gopher basketball has previously had parent-sibling combinations on its bench: Former head coach Clem Haskins hired his son Brent as an assistant, and Saul Smith currently is an assistant coach on his father Tubby Smith’s staff. But K-Anna Loyd is the first Black female team manager on the school’s women’s […]

This week I saw two of the state’s top 4A teams in the state. Each team, representing the girls and boys respectively, showed why they are among the state’s best. Tuesday January 17, 2012 Bloomington Kennedy, the No. 4-ranked Class 4A team in the state, scored a 72-49 victory over Prior Lake. The Eagles, who […]

Last week Todd Bozeman was reinstated as Morgan State men’s basketball head coach. He had missed three games after being suspended because he was alleged to have hit a player during a January 7 game against South Carolina State. Bozeman says he didn’t hit Larry Batsfield, but South Carolina State President George Cooper, who claimed […]

Storylines can sometimes make you scratch your head in disbelief. One such story is that of two brothers, John and Jim Harbaugh, both head football coaches of two of the 12 NFL teams that qualified for the 2012 playoffs, getting their teams within one victory of coaching against each other in Super Bowl XLVI in […]

Ricky Rubio, the Minnesota Timberwolves rookie guard, is learning to play in the NBA and is determined to win.

Last week I saw three boys’ basketball contests. Two went into overtime, and two teams served notice that the Minneapolis and St. Paul City Conference titles won’t be that easy to reclaim by the defending champs. Tuesday, January 10, 2012  Forward WAYLAND JOHNSON II sent the game into overtime with a freethrow with two seconds […]

Rather than being featured on morning drive or some other desirable and prominent time slot at his station, Henry Lake is heard during America’s most segregated hour — 11 am Sunday mornings. Since he joined the station in 1998, Lake is KFAN-FM’s most underused personality while other less-talented folk get prime air time. Lake recently […]

GREEN BAY — Will history be kind to the Green Bay Packers, considering they were defending Super Bowl Champions, 15-1, the number-one seed in the playoffs for the first time since 1996, second-highest-scoring team (560 points) in NFL history and winners of 19 straight games? The cruel reality of the National Football League is that […]

This past weekend I witnessed a classic high school boys’ basketball game, watched three former all-metro players in NCAA Division I action, and learned that one of the state’s top football players made a collegiate commitment. Check this out! Friday, January 6, 2012:  Sophomore center IAN THEISEN’S freethrow with 1.6 seconds left gave Osseo a 70-69 victory […]

By Charles Hallman Staff Writer The Big Ten for several seasons has assembled 16-game regular-season schedules in which each team has six single-game opponents each year. Minnesota, for example, only plays Indiana, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and Northwestern once each this season. Now that the conference has 12 teams, one would think a return […]

Why do mainstream media love “outing” female athletes whether they are single or married, gay or straight, but won’t do the same with their male counterparts? “I think it is a fair question,” said the University of Minnesota Tucker Center’s Austin Stair Calhoun, who has researched such double standards in some depth. In a recent […]

NEW ORLEANS — Be careful when you give someone a rematch. The motivation of the agony of defeat can make a huge difference. We saw it when Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Frazier in the rematch. We saw it when the New York Giants shocked the previously unbeaten New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Monday […]

PHOENIX — It’s over. The worst season of Vikings football since 1984 has come to an end, 17-13 to the Chicago Bears. Back in 1961 when it all started for the Vikings in Minnesota, they beat George Hallas and the Chicago Bears. Well, Sunday at Mall of America Field at the Metrodome the Chicago Bears […]

By Charles Hallman Staff Writer Seimone Augustus last week became the first Black female and the third Black athlete to be named the Minneapolis daily newspaper’s annual sportsperson of the year since the recognition began in 1998. The paper’s selection of the Minnesota Lynx superstar simply cosigned what the MSR consistently said all throughout the […]

I decided to start out the New Year with five pictures featuring five prep basketball players in the metro area who I saw play before winter break.