Ranking the top players

I challenged myself to rank the top female basketball players I’ve covered since I began working at the El Dorado News-Times in 1991. I’ve had the privilege of watching some incredible talent, including Cheryl Ford (LA Tech), Sytia Messer (Arkansas) and Kimberly Wilson (Arkansas), from Summerfield, Waldo and Hampton, respectively. I’ve seen (LA Tech) Brooke Lassiter from Hamburg and (LA Tech) Jamie Scheppman from Van Cove. I covered (LA Tech) Erica Smith from Palestine-Wheatley, (Arkansas State) Caroline Starr from Benton and (Oklahoma) Krista Sanchez from Springdale. When it comes to high school girls basketball in Arkansas over the past 20 years, I’ve seen most of the best players, if not in high school then definitely at the collegiate level. I’d like to think I have a fairly good sense of what an outstanding player looks like. I know the attributes I value most - competitiveness, skills, attitude and athletic ability - in THAT particular order. Let’s break those categories down. Competitiveness, to me means simply, a burning desire to win. That’s the most important thing for any athlete. The game is about winning and losing, after all. The name of the game is to win. I love watching players who will do anything to win a game. Without this trait, I have a hard time respecting an athlete. Skills: Basketball, especially, is a game of skills. I’m not just talking about dribbling the ball behind your back or shooting 3-pointers from 30 feet out. Catching the ball is a skill. Passing the ball is a skill. The ability to use both hands is an advanced skill, unfortunately. The best player is usually the one who has developed the most skills. Skills can make up for a lack of athletic ability, which is why it ranks higher on my list of priorities. Attitude, to me kind of goes with competitiveness. A winning attitude is a competitive attitude. But, attitude also includes getting along with teammates. Basketball is a team game, after all. No one player can do it all by herself. Everyone needs teammates. A positive attitude is essential to being a team leader. No one wants to follow someone who has a crappy, selfish attitude. You aren’t a leader if no one is following you. What’s that saying? A leader without any followers is just walking alone. Finally, athletic ability is a necessity to winning at basketball. Being the quickest person on the court is a valuable tool. Being the tallest person or the person who can jump the highest can erase a lot of mistakes. I believe skills are more important than raw athletic ability. But, in a matchup of equally skilled, highly motivated players the better athlete has the advantage. Sadly, during my tenure in Union County, referees often rewarded athletic ability over skills. Basketball games sometimes came down to a pushing and shoving contest. It doesn’t matter how crafty a ball handler you are, when a bigger, stronger defender hip checks you out of bounds, even John Wooden can’t give you any advice to overcome it. As I consider all of the athletes I’ve covered, I will use the categories in MY order. Feel free to come up with your own factors and share your list with me. I hope you look forward to seeing what I’ve come up with in the next couple of days.

Football is rough?

Did anyone else realize that football is a violent sport prone to injuries? I knew this but apparently the folks at ESPN showed up late to the dance. All the talk lately, especially since the Saints' Bounty-crap, has been about the violence in the NFL. Junior Seau's recent suicide has folks speculating that it could be attributed to the hits he took on the football field. I ain't no doctor so I'll stay away from the Seau stuff. I will say, however, that I find it hard to believe athletes in the NFL don't know the risks they are taking. I realized during third grade recess that football (and tackle-tag) was one of the roughest sports a human being could ever play. It didn't take long to figure it out, either. Gilbert Burch slung me to the ground and I hit my head so hard I saw stars. They were white, by the way. I tried to tackle Johnny Belin and the sucker stiff-armed me in the face. He had about two fingers in my mouth and another five or six were jammed up my nostrils. I know that's a lot of fingers from one stiff-arm but, hey, I was a kid and that's what it seemed like at the time. Anyway, it didn't take long to separate the kids at Hermitage Elementary into two groups - boys that played football at recess and the boys who didn't. I played football because I liked it. Others didn't play because they didn't enjoy the pain that came with the sport. That is the point. Football is a sport that centers around pain and punishment. Who can dish it out and who can take it? For these athletes to try to sue the NFL for injuries occured during the course of a football career, I have to ask - how did you not know what you were getting yourself in? These guys knew the risks they were taking. But, at the time, the size of those paychecks outweighed any possible future damage to the bodies or brain cells. Now that the body is broken and the checks have stopped, they want to file a lawsuit and pretend they didn't know the sport was so dangerous. Well, boo-freaking-hoo. Unless these guys skipped the third grade and went straight to the NFL, I ain't buying it.