Regional recruits key to YSU success

September 14, 2017

YOUNGSTOWN — Walking from your car, you see the imposing building from the outside. The Wolstein Center opens it doors and it feels more like a professional arena with its metallic turnstiles welcoming you in its gates. You walk in the arena and then feel a sense of being gypped. What happened to half of the place? A green curtain separates the empty half of any Cleveland State Vikings basketball game, begging the question if the great and wonderful Oz is willing to come out of hiding to mystify the crowd. Then you realize it, like the classic movie, it is all smoke and ...

Salute to Indians, colleagues

September 3, 2017

As football season gets started and the Cleveland Indians begin the regular season stretch run in what fans hope will be another deep postseason run, it is time to wish good luck to a couple of my Tribune Chronicle colleagues. Eric Murray, who has been our part-time sports reporter for the past two years, has taken a new full-time position as a sports reporter for the Eastern New Mexico Times in Portales, New Mexico. Eric did a wonderful job for us, including a lot of anonymous work that he did in the office. He usually was the one to answer the phone when someone called in a game ...

YSU must communicate in system of new coach

August 30, 2017

YOUNGSTOWN - Going into something new can be a daunting prospect, depending on the situation. It could be the first day of high school when you can’t quite remember your locker combination. You may have forgotten your favorite pencil at the start of fifth grade or the boy in the next row has already sunk his teeth into your writing instrument. Either way, those situations bring their own levels of trauma. Imagine you’ve played basketball, or for that matter, coached a certain way for a number of years. All of sudden, a new coach with his up-tempo offense and defense comes ...

We work to prevent mistakes in print

August 20, 2017

Mistakes are prevalent in sports. We keep track of errors and turnovers and we’ve seen enough mistake pitches hit for home runs and errant passes turned into pick sixes. Those of us in the business of writing about sports certainly are not immune to making mistakes. I can imagine the remarks being made right now by some of those folks who like to sit out there and comment critically on errors made in newspapers and by on-air radio and television announcers. Though all of us in the industry have been taught to be careful, and we have systems in place to try to spot errors before ...

Football is king when it comes to conferences

August 9, 2017

It was tough to accept the inevitable as a kid. Your life basically belonged to someone else — your parents or guardians — whether you liked it or not. They dictated whether you got to have a sleepover with your friends or stay up late to watch TV. In fact, pretty much every relevant decision you made was usually up to them. You could argue until you were blue in the face, but it wasn’t going to alter the chain of command. In a way, football has a similar stranglehold on Mahoning Valley schools. Well, when it comes to picking a conference, at least. Just like an angry kid, ...

Change is name of game

August 6, 2017

WHO remembers the Turnpike Conference? How about the Ohio Scholastic League, the Northeast Ohio Athletic Conference, the Ohio Big 8, the Grand River Conference, or the All-American Athletic Conference? Who recalls that Boardman was a charter member of the Tri-County League in 1932, along with Columbiana, Lisbon, Leetonia, Sebring and others? Or that Poland replaced Boardman in the TCL and competed for 21 years against those same schools. The first series of questions about defunct high school athletic conferences or leagues emphasizes the fact that the only constant in high school ...