Category: Where?

Super category to hold the state/city/towns categories.

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Eagles

I know, where have I been? So I haven’t been on the blog in a while. Sorry, not my thing.

Anyway, to catch up. I have had many eagles, but only 2 full shots into the hole and neither of them did I see go in the hole. The first was #10 at Chalet Hills where the green is elevated and no way you can see the ball go in the hole. I believe it was 150 yards uphill with a 7 iron. The other was #1 at Old Orchard CC in my league. I stiffed an 8 iron just past the hole. It backed up slightly and stopped a couple inches from the hole, or so I thought. I turned and put my club in my bag, turned back around and the ball was gone. It had been sitting on the lip and dropped when I turned my back.

As you may or may not know I am back in possession of the shirt. I kicked Ron’s ass (low net for all 6 rounds at Battle Creek). Wally and Ron tied for 2nd after Saturdar’d 36 holes and Ron won the tiebreaker to play the 18 hole match play Sunday. I believe the final was 5 and 4.

Last night was our graduation party for Nick. Most of the local family attended. It was a good time. Nick will be going to Harper for at least a year. Will see after that what he wants to do.

Since it’s been so long since I’ve been on here I did want to send a picture of the course we played in Nevada. Unbelievable course. I haven’t added any pictures before so here goes nothing…
Forget the pictures. Don’t know what happened to my disc.

Larry, hope your knee doesn’t become too much of a problem. I did have my knee scoped once and played golf about 10 days later. No big deal. Good luck.

Well, goodbye everyone. I’ll be back soon. Maybe I can get some pictures of the graduation party together.

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What does $2.5M get you these days?

The baseball park that was just built here was started through $2.5M in seed money by Anthony Lubrano, a former Penn State baseball player. As a result of his donation, the university choose to include his name when they named the ballpark “Medlar Field and Lubrano Park”.

So you would have thought that $2.5 million might have been enough to get people to pay attention to your name. Evidently not. Check out this sign from the concession area.

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We lost – but it almost didn’t matter

The new State College Spikes fell 5-3 to their “arch” rivals, the Williamsport CrossCutters. Starting pitcher Brad Furnish struggled earlier, walking the first batter, then hitting the second, as he fell behind 3-0 in the first inning. The Spikes tried to rally a couple of time but just fell short.

The real star of the game though was the ball park. It drew rave reviews from all. Doug Smith, a sportswriter from Grand Island NY said it best “I’ve been to 169 different professional ballparks but this one honestly is just different. It has this aura and feel with it that in my experiences is unmatchable.”

Minor League baseball has been doing stories on ball parks around the minors and Medlar Field was their featured story last night. In this photo from their article how can see how much the real stadium looks like the artist rendition that I used in my previous post.

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Take me out to the ball game

It’s Opening Day

For the last year or so, State College has been anxiously awaiting today. It’s Opening Day for the State College Spikes, a short season baseball team in the New York/Penn League. About 15 months ago, Penn State announced that they had structured a deal with a minor league baseball group (fyi – Jerome Bettis and Mario Lemieux are part owners) to build a new stadium that would be shared between the University’s baseball team and a, to-be-named-later, short season team.

That started a whirlwind of activity. Fifteen months ago, the deal to place a team here was announced. Thirteen months ago, they broke ground on the stadium. A year ago today, the site looked like this:

Six months later, things were taking shape:

Today we have this:


(ok – a slight lie – that’s an artist’s rendition but it does look exactly like it).

As hectic as building the stadium was, so was putting together a team. The plan wasn’t to put together a brand new team but rather to buy an existing franchise and move it to State College. Last summer was spent shopping around for the appropriate team and in December, it was announced that the group had bought the New Jersey Cardinals and would move the team from Augusta NJ to State College. The NJ ballclub is a St Louis Cardinals affiliate and the State College team will be also (at least it will be for one year, the duration of the contract that the team still has with the Cardinals – there is a substantial rumor going around that the Spikes will sign a new deal with the Pirates next year – that rumor is fueled in part by the fact that the Spike’s ball park dimensions are exactly the same as PNC Park, Pittsburgh’s home field – many think that’s no coincidence).

So by last winter we had a ballpark and its way and a team. Well, sort of a team – we had the rights to a team but really didn’t have any players. Short season teams are filled primarily with new players who have just been selected in Major League Baseball’s draft. This years draft was held Tuesday and Wednesday a week ago. Players were assigned to the team last week and started arriving in State College over the weekend. Stragglers are still coming in (example – tonight’s opening game starting pitcher arrived from California last night). The team’s actual roster wasn’t announced until Sunday night.

Everything culminates with opening night tonight and the town is abuzz. Tonight’s opener has been sold out for months (I have season tickets so I’m set) as have the next two weekends. The town definitely has baseball fever as witnessed by all these articles.

Spikes Run Starts Today

The excitement has been building, the tingling sense of anticipation turning central Pennsylvania baseball fans into kids on Christmas Eve.The State College Spikes open their inaugural season in a brand-new ballpark tonight.


League Absorbs Off Season Changes

The Renegades’ general manager, Dave Burke, said relocating the former Cardinals to the Keystone State will greatly benefit the league as a whole.”I think it was a fabulous move,” Burke said. “The hype in State College is unbelievable. They’re going to sell out most of their games.”

Pair of Spikes know how to adjust

Tulane baseball coach Rick Jones guarantees State College Spikes first baseman Mark Hamilton and outfielder Nathan Southard are prepared to handle the rigors of professional baseball.”There’s no question about it,” Jones said. “Baseball is a game of adjustments and these guys made the ultimate adjustment.”

Southard and Hamilton were forced to make the ultimate adjustment last August when Hurricane Katrina swept through Tulane’s New Orleans campus.

Spikes finally open season after whirlwind 13 months

Tickets were sold a month ago. Players arrived three days ago. The opponent will arrive sometime this afternoon.Yes, this professional baseball stuff in State College has finally become real.

Short season rosters constantly changing

The New Jersey Cardinals — the team the Spikes are replacing — used 51 players, including 27 pitchers, in 2005.Some players that appear in tonight’s opener against the Williamsport Crosscutters might not be here next week. Some players that are playing elsewhere this week could be here next week.

I’m hungry for baseball – even moreso after seeing the Spike’s concession menu. For dinner tonight I think I’m going to have a “Walking Taco” followed by a “Deep Fried Twinkie” for dessert. 🙂

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US Open

We run an interesting competition on US Open Sunday at my golf club. We normally have a Sunday skins game that anywhere from 10-20 of us will play. On US Open Sunday, we toss an extra five bucks into a winner take all kitty. The winner is determined by the lowest score of your net handicap score combined with the score of an Open player of your choice.

I’ve been playing pretty well recently (other than today) which makes me think I’ll have a good chance tomorrow. I decided to pick Jim Furyk as my pro thinking that I can go low on my handicap score and just have to pick a pro that won’t go high on me. Furyk is pretty consistent and I expect him to shoot around a 72 tomorrow. I plan on netting out about a 69 myself.

Tomorrow I’ll report back on whether I managed to live up to my boast or not.

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I made the local paper !!!

State College golfer pulls off rare feat
By John Dixon
For the CDT

OK – admittedly the headline isn’t about me. But buried down deep in the article is this blurb:

At Toftrees, State College’s Lanny Sommese collected his third career hole-in-one using a 25-degree hybrid club to ace No. 15, a 185-yard, par-3 hole. Playing partners were Tom Minisker, Larry Fall and Fred Riley.

Of course, as with most holes-in-one, there’s a story involved.

The hole is a long par three that’s fairly flat. As you can see, it’s well bunkered but there’s an open runway in the front of the green. The tee was located at about #3 in the photo and the pin was at the back of the green but centered so it was clearly visible between the two front bunkers.

Lanny thinned the shot and it never got more than maybe five feet off the ground. It just made the short fairway but was dead on line for the green. As it hit the fairway, Tom jokingly yelled “Get in the hole”. Amazingly, the ball kept rolling. As it got up onto the green, Tom remarked “You know, these are the kind that go in.”

Sure enough, it just kept rolling and rolling but it looked like it stopped right at the hole. We thought it was awfully close but we didn’t think it was in. Driving up the cart path, our view of the pin was hidden by the right front bunker until we actually got to the green. It was a real surprise when we got there and there was no ball in view – that’s when we realized it had gone in. It was pretty windy and I suspect that the ball was initially caught against the flagstick. Undoubtedly, the blowing wind shook the stick just enough for the ball to drop in.

When we got to the next hole, I turned to everyone and said “Any zeroes? No? I guess you’re up, Lannie.” I borrowed that line from my buddy Tod Jeffers who used it when he had a hole in one with me on one of our Florida Bowl trips.

I’ve never had a hole in one but I did hole out a 130 yard shot. I was playing a course in New York and hit my tee shot slightly to the right on a hole that had a blind landing area. The hole basically went out 180 yards, then went downhill into a valley. The drives collected at the bottom of the valley and then you had a blind uphill shot to the green. When I got down there, I couldn’t find my ball even though it clearly should have been in play. There was casual water near where the ball should have been and my playing partners said to just drop a ball. I said I wasn’t going to because technically my ball was lost and since I had a match going with a guy in the group behind us I was going to play it by the rules.

I went back to the tee and reteed. By the time I got to my ball my playing partners had all hit their second shots and were up around the green. Because I was low in a the valley my shot to the green was a blind one also. I took an eight iron and hit it pure right at the green. All of a sudden my buddies on the green started yelling “It went in!”. So the net result was a spectacular par (and, oh yes, I won the hole from the guy behind me that I had the match with).

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Crawfishfest

After choosing not to go to the Fest the last 2 years because of rain, I decided the kids were old enough to handle a little rain, so I committed to this year by buying tix in advance.

Sho ’nuff, rain!

The kids were champs. I was right, they could handle a little rain. It was the lotsa rain that came later in the day that they couldn’t handle. And I can’t blame them, I’d had about enough by then, too.

Saw the Rebirth Brass Band and Marcia Ball. Ate Red Beans & Rice, BBQ Shrimp, Cachon de Lait (roast pork), and we all had some Alligator Sausage.

We also got some cool hats.

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US Open Qualifier

Two friends of mine are playing in a local first round qualifier at Scotch Valley Country Club in Altoona for the US Open today so I’m headed over to watch them. There are 39 players contending for 3 sectional qualifier spots. The sectionals will be held June 5-6.

The two friends are Tom Koehle and RJ Porter. Tom used to be an assistant pro at my club Toftrees and has just taken the head pro’s job at Huntington Country Club which is about 25 miles away. RJ is the guy who I wrote about in some emails to a few of you last year who played against Michelle Wie in an US Mid Amateur qualifier.

I’ll be back later tonight to fill in details of their rounds.

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Chicago Bandits

A friend of mine will be playing for the Chicago Bandits this summer.

“Who?”, you ask.

“The Chicago Bandits women’s professional fast pitch softball team”, I answer.

UncleLar niece, Missy Beseres (bad photo in the link BTW), was drafted by the Bandits as a pitcher. She’ll join Chicago once her Penn State career end – Penn State is awaiting an invitation to the NCAA tournament expected to come later today.

Missy set a Penn State career record for wins this year – she currently sits at 53 over her four years here. A spot on the Bandits roster opened up when uberbabe Jennie Finch got pregnant. A couple of years ago Finch dethroned Anna Kournikova as ESPN’s Hottest Female Athlete.


Here’s a photo of Jennie in action (I don’t think this is an official Chicago Bandit uniform however).


Here’s a shot of Missy in action (that is an official Penn State uniform).

I suspect that Missy will only be on the roster until Jennie makes it back from her pregnancy (she had a baby boy a week ago). The Bandits have a powerful pitching staff and I’m not sure that Missy has quite reached that level yet.

What amazes me these days is the number of opportunities for women to play professional sports. If Missy makes the squad, she will be the fifth female I personally know who is a professional athlete. The others are Jess Brungo on the Connecticut Sun basketball team, and Syndie Nadeau and Ashley Pedersen who both play professional volleyball in Paris and Barcelona respectively, and Joanna Lohman who has played for both the New York Power and Washington Freedom professional soccer teams along with the US National team. I think it’s wonderful that these girls get an opportunity to continue to excel even beyond college at the highest levels in their chosen sports.

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Congrats to Veronica


We just received notification today that Veronica has been accepted to attend IMSA, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, starting in the fall. We are just floating on air after getting this news!

IMSA is a very unique high school in that it is a public high school funded by the state. Each year they accept the top 225 applicants from around the state. The students specialize in math and science and over their three years get to study and research at places like FermiLab, Argonne Lab, the Museum of Science and Industry, etc.. Most graduates go on to study at universities such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Northwestern, etc..

If you want to get a better understanding of just how unique IMSA is and how much of an accomplishment this is for Veronica, go to:

http://www.imsa.edu/

Way to go, Veronica!