Advertisement
football Edit

The Cougar Lounge - Swim Meet Fizzies

"He said 'nobody expects you to be here, you have nothing to lose, and just go out and prove to everybody that you belong here'."
- Wazzu senior outfielder Jared Prince, recounting some words of encouragement from former Wazzu men's hoop athlete Daven Harmeling shortly before the Cougars proved they belonged in the NCAA baseball tournament with a 3-2 win to eliminate Wichita State.
Advertisement
"I'm super excited. It's an honor to go and try to make the team."
- Current Wazzu men's hoop athlete DeAngelo Casto after being selected to the USA U19 Men's Basketball Tryouts.
"I think the economy has given us a wake-up call and I think schools are going to start trying to reduce their spending on athletics."
- Transylvania University [yes, a real place, it is in Kentucky – surprised?] accounting professor and NCAA financial consultant Dan Fulks. University of Washington AD Scott Woodward responded by cutting swimming while putting down new FieldTurf for the football team …oopsy daisy.
"Does anything immediately spring to mind when you think or say this word? Well, now something does. Thank you very much Billy Ray Cyrus' spawn."
- Writer Rebekah Hunt, explaining the existence for the word and/or state of Montana.
The Lounge is a protagonist of summer. There are no two ways about it. We love summer. We love heat [but not so much the humidity]. Well, as long as it does not get too hot – no triple digit action, that is too hot for just about anything except lying very, very still. Plus it gives us many opportunities to lie around in the backyard pool and think of real hard words to spell like ecossaise, hydargyrum and diacoele like the national spelling bee winner, Kavya Shivashankar, did last week. Of course, we were particularly fond of blancmange.
We do not mind if people stop by and offer us brain enhancers - preferably in the form of flavored vodka – and watch us while we work but we think it is a little weird that ESPN apparently feels the same way about some of their lab work scheduled to open this fall in Orlando. Babs, the Disney tour guide can take tourists in her super-sized golf cart and watch while ESPN's graphics artists create scintillating new graphics for strike zones and football plays – it will be fun! Look ESPN, watching – or possibly even joining - the Lounge poolside whilst thinking up difficult words and consuming tropical-themed adult beverages is fun. Watching techno-geeks working at their computers is not. "Hey look at that shift key dexterity he just used when installing that software, Johnny!"
If people are going to pay to sit and watch anything, it will be movies – especially on the West Coast where eight of the top 10 cities to watch movies are located. The only non-West Coast locations where people like to watch movies as much are Detroit and Chicago. The Lounge found it odd that New York City was not represented yet we are constantly barraged by the NYC lifestyle and/or themes in movies. Seems to us as though many movies are based in New York City but nobody, evidently, goes to watch them there. They live them, perhaps that is enough entertainment.
Mindful that we cannot get enough good entertainment, ESPN [when they are not trying to make tourist attractions out of office space in Florida] has planned a massive 2010 World Cup campaign next year. All 64 matches will be carried from South Africa and this will give professional soccer actors from all competing nations that visible platform they will need when trying for that Academy Award performance while writhing around on the ground faking an injury. Perhaps budding actors and actresses should begin in less high profile venues like women's professional soccer, surfing competitions, professional lacrosse or minor league baseball. The opportunities are there and they could build up their resumes before rolling around on the ground and crying to the ref on national television.
Before we move on to baseball and track and field, one minor notation about former Wazzu men's hoop coach Tony Bennett going to Virginia. Now, hold your horses there, we are not rubbing salt in the wound nor are we purchasing any sour grapes but we do find it intriguing that he moved to a state where the Department of Motor Vehicles has banned smiling for driver's license photos because it is easier to track criminals in their computer models when they have "neutral expressions". Neutral? What is this, Switzerland? Anyway, all you criminal types out there get that memo? Do a crime in Virginia, make sure you are smiling, they will never catch you! That is the kind of state Virginia is. Just sayin'.
"How in the h-e-double baseball bats could he not get the Coach of the Year!?!" asks The Fisheyed Foo of Wazzu's head baseball coach Donnie Marbut being dissed by the conference coaches in the Pac-10 Coach of the Year balloting.
Well, Foo, the results of that voting process had us thinking back to the integrity of good old Florida-style voting procedures. Arizona State's Pat Murphy officially received the honor from the coaches after his Sun Devils won the conference – just like they have done the previous two years – but then, this is the same group of Nostradami who predicted Arizona would win the conference. Good call, coaches – and nice call on the Cougars for eighth, too. So, in retrospect, we are not exactly dealing with rocket scientists and brain surgeons here. Perhaps we were being too hard on the coaches when we expected them, in their consideration, to identify the facts that ASU played their first 21 games of the 2009 season at home [while Wazzu played only 27 games – total – at home] this year and that the wide temperature discrepancy between Tempe and Pullman can have significant advantageous qualities in a game played outdoors. But upon review of their initial predictions, this may have been asking too much. Nevertheless, our trick knee tells us that Marbut will receive some sort of recognition in the near future.
"11 is my new favorite number!" declares Salty Cheever after learning that Wazzu will send 11 athletes to the NCAA Track and Field Championships next week.
The Lounge clientele was in a good mood this weekend as they always are when the Cougars can send a double-digit contingent to the nationals with one of them being the defending national champion [that would be men's 400-meter hurdler Jeshua Anderson in case one happens to be living under a large boulder or in a similarly large cave and away from human interaction]. All the usual – or, at least, expected – entrants made it to the Big Dance version of track and field but making their first trips are junior men's 3000-meter steeplechaser Sam Ahlbeck, junior 1500-meter runner Lisa Egami and sophomore sprinter Marlon Murray - who made a trip to the NCAA as a member of the 4x400 relay team last year but will make the trip for the first time for individual events [100 and 200 meters].
Summer is a mere three weeks away and outdoor BBQ season has already arrived with last weekend's Memorial Day holiday so now you may need a cooking tip from Rachel Ray which we guarantee will enhance that BBQ summer experience – but you did not get it from us.
Meanwhile, the Lounge Scientists are back from holiday – but just barely – so the only research they have to offer is alcohol-based. They have found that an injection of alcohol into a vehicle's normally gas-powered engine, can make the vehicle more fuel-efficient. At least, that is what they said before the tequila and the new 30% fuel efficiency improvement by 2016 kicked in.
"With alcohol injection, you've got a great shot at it, it's a very viable technology," says Lounge Scientist #19, David Cole, a researcher at the Center for Automotive Research, who reportedly did not think the vehicle would consider itself to be invisible after four such alcohol injections.
Get your suits on – birthday or otherwise – because, summer, here we come.
+++++++sponsored by Clark's Restaurant+++++++++
Attention COUGAR fans and well-wishers! Summer is almost here and you have the hunger. How can you afford to go one day further without some tasty morsels from Clark's Restaurant in Grays Harbor – home of the Best Hamburger in Twin Harbors for nine consecutive years? Come in for the burger, fresh homemade fries and milkshakes concocted from homemade ice cream. Go ahead, we dare you to try and pass up more than 12 varieties of hamburgers to choose from, full dinners, lunch and full breakfast served daily. Clark's Restaurant 360.538.1487. Seven miles south of Aberdeen, Washington on Highway 101. Proud supporter of CougZone. Mention this ad for a free small hot chocolate.
Advertisement