Muara Teweh!

Like many high school football players in small towns across Oklahoma, Ronnell Lewis has often dreamed about playing for the Oklahoma Sooners.

The odds would seem to be stacked against him, considering his hometown of Dewar is barely a speck on the map. Not much is there other than about 900 hearty souls who live surrounding a central business district that consists of a convenience store and a Mexican restaurant.

But the area along Interstate 40 about 50 miles south of Tulsa has long been known as a mecca for football players. Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman was reared and played at nearby Henryetta, only about 3 miles from Lewis’ hometown. And the 6-foot-3, 220-pound OU commit could be poised to be the next big splash, though he has played eight-man football throughout his high school career.

His college-ready frame and athleticism have prompted the Sooners to deviate from a long-standing hesitancy of most Big 12 teams to ignore recruits who don’t play on 11-man high school teams. Lewis received the first scholarship offer of the Sooners’ 2009 recruiting class.
» Read more after the jump →

Stefan Bonneau says winning a national basketball championship for SUNY Orange would be wonderful but he has something else in mind when it comes to the highlight of his college career.

“Graduating,'’ Bonneau said. “That’s going to be the best feeling ever. Even if we win nationals, that would be great, but getting that degree will be even better.'’

Bonneau has already proven his talents on the basketball court. The former Middletown star is averaging 30.9 points per game and is one of the leading junior college scorers in the nation. That has attracted the attention of a host of Division I basketball recruiters, notably St. John’s coach Norm Roberts.

There’s one caveat: Bonneau has to maintain his grades, pass his classes and graduate before the end of summer. Two years ago, there was much doubt.

Academics weren’t a high priority for Bonneau, and he paid the price when he came up short » Read more after the jump →

In the summer of 2000, before football season began, Kelley sat in the office of Tom Williams, an assistant coach at the University of Washington. Kelley was in his third year at the UW, a 20-year-old linebacker with a dream of playing in the NFL.

Looking around the room, Kelley spotted a picture of his assistant coach in Spain. Williams had first traveled to Europe years earlier, he told Kelley. As an undergraduate at Stanford, he’d studied abroad in Italy.

An amazing experience, Williams told the young player. You should try studying abroad yourself.

But that’s unofficial, the assistant coach added. Don’t tell anyone around here I told you that.

At the UW, there’s the upper campus and the lower campus.

The lower campus, on the shores of Lake Washington, belongs to the football players and other athletes. This is where they play and practice. » Read more after the jump →

Hall of Famer Holovak Dies at 88

College Football Hall of Famer Mike Holovak, 88, died in Ruskin, Fla., last weekend after legendary college and pro football playing and coaching careers. He signed with Hall of Fame coach Frank Leahy and starred as a running back at Boston College. As senior co-captain in ‘42, he ranked second in the nation in rushing and received consensus All-America honors. He set records in the 1943 Orange Bowl for touchdowns (three) and average yards per carry (15.0) against Alabama. Holovak served in the Navy during World War II and later played professionally with the Los Angeles Rams and the Chicago Bears. Holovak returned to BC as head coach from 1951-59. He was coach of the New England Patriots from 1961- 68 and was later general manager of the Houston Oilers. He was a special assignment scout for several years before retiring in Florida.
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Scholarship of College Foodball can view on this page ather?

The lover football the college that was dedicated was prepared to hope for the arrival that was not hoped for. Their teams’s fate, anyway, there is to the training teenage child relatively small and played in front of the hostile crowd. The thing happened.

But even by its own unpredictable standards, college football this season has been totally nuts, and bowl season figures to be even nuttier. Since 1975, according to Las Vegas oddsmakers, only four teams that were underdogs of 35 points or more have ended up winning, and two of them did so this year. On six different weekends this fall, the second-best team in the country lost to an unranked opponent. Heading into December, West Virginia needed only one more victory to play for the national championship and promptly lost to Pittsburgh, a team it was supposed to beat by four touchdowns. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Mike Seba, a senior oddsmaker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants, which sets point spreads for casinos in Las Vegas. “Anybody can win now. It’s just incredible.” » Read more after the jump →

AN eagle holed with a sand wedge helped former world junior champion Matthew Giles land one of the last spots in the field for this week’s Australian Open.

Giles, 18, shot a three-under par 69 in pre-qualifying at Liverpool GC in outer Sydney, but had to survive a three-man playoff to earn his spot in the Open.

He did it in style, grabbing one of the last places in the 156-man field for this week’s tournament.

“I hit a nice drive and then a sand wedge that landed just past the flag and spun back into the hole,” Giles said.

Giles, who played the first two rounds of last year’s Open with Greg Norman, headed straight to The Australian GC, where he is a member, to get in some practice before afternoon showers cleared the course. » Read more after the jump →

Anders Carlsson remembers it well. Carlsson, who has been a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis for many years, played on one of the first high school soccer teams in Marin at Redwood High.

“I was on some of those early teams, and we had a good time,” Carlsson said. “But when I played in the late 1960s, Novato was the real power in the league.”

Times have certainly changed, considering the popularity of soccer in Marin and around California, but maybe not that much. Just like 40 years ago, Novato High is on top in the North Bay, having just completed a successful run to the section title.

Carlsson, who moved to the U.S. from Sweden with his family as a young boy, played on a Redwood team that also featured a midfielder named Robin Williams (yes, that Robin Williams), as well as an exchange student from Africa named Frances Kilonzo and three seniors who were » Read more after the jump →