Kickin' It
Kai Caddy

Well, what a week it was for the Echo sports department.

When I sit down to write these columns, I don’t always have an abundance of ideas. This week is no exception. I sat around most of the day today trying to figure out what I would write this week’s column about. Finally it hit me, just write about the week that was. This was a busy week for athletics at UCA and for the sports department here at The Echo.

Monday is our deadline day, for folks that didn’t know. During the basketball season it can be a trying time, since there are games on Monday nights and we’re also trying to put the paper to bed. Well, so far it has worked out great.

This Monday was no exception. Josh Goff and I rolled out to the Farris Center early to catch all the action. We were treated to two superb games. First the Sugar Bears defeated a Tech team that is nearly all the way back to what it should have been all season long and then the Bears just walloped the Wonder Boys. Tech fans were leaving the arena 10 minutes into the game.

After the games we were back up at The Echo and in a couple of hours we turned out what was one of the best sports sections this year. I don’t mean to sound cocky, but the amount of compliments we received on the section were far greater than those in previous weeks. Now if we can somehow earn the respect of our co-workers we’ll be in great shape.

Tuesday is always an interesting day. It’s mostly a day of rest for me. I work on the paper nearly non-stop from Friday to Monday and I just use Tuesday to go to class and catch up on some sleep. I do make a phone call every Tuesday to our Thursday night opponents’ sports information office to request some seats at the press table. It took me three tries to reach the Henderson State SID office, but I finally got through and got a couple of seats after being questioned about whether Josh and I would actually be covering the game or if we would be “fans.”

Wednesday is another big Echo day. After my last class I head back to the room to get a drink then start back to work. This week after failed attempts to get a meeting with Athletic Director Vance Strange, I headed up to the office to start work on the pages you are reading now.

Thursday was an interesting one. I always look forward to Thursdays because there’s more basketball and another road trip. The road trip part isn’t always the best, but based on our recent trips to Arkadelphia, it had signs of being a good one. It was another very interesting trip, but not one of the best. After the car nearly blowing up and the cops in Friendship, Ark. we finally made it to the HSU campus. We had missed three minutes of a disappointing game for the Sugar Bears.

I don’t know what it is, but the Sugar Bears are inconsistent right now. They can play with anyone some nights and just not hit a basket on other nights.

After witnessing a Sugar Bears loss, it was time to see the Bears take on the Reddies. In coach Rand Chappell’s first trip back to the HSU campus, the Bears just lost their heads down the stretch. Some of the calls were very questionable, but the guys need to handle it better, and they know that. The flow of the game was terrible, no thanks to the refs, but UCA was very much in it all the way through. Had it not been for five technical fouls, it could’ve ended up a much different story.

One great thing I took away from the trip to Henderson was the fact that our fans are not stupid, unlike other GSC school’s fans. The Henderson fans were spouting off chants like “We hate Chappell” or “Chappell sucks”. I bet when he was winning those four GSC championship banners that hang proudly in “The Duke” those fans had a much different perspective on the matter.

Also, I learned Henderson State is not the place to take the family to see a ball game. With the rowdy fans claiming every call against their team is “bullsh*t” or that a referee or player is a “f*ckhead”. So if you’ve got little ones, don’t take them to see the Reddies play.

One more thing about Henderson I thought was odd. The same SID who asked me if Josh and I were going to come as fans or reporters was a fan himself. So were his two helpers. I have never seen SID folks get so into a game. It may sound great, but it isn’t. As an SID or sportswriter, you’ve got to act professional. You can’t stand up and cheer when your team is doing well, you’ve got to let it go, keep the emotions inside. Also, if you want to throw t-shirts to the fans, freakin’ let the cheerleaders do it. He was a nice guy, just a little to cheery for me.

Anyway, the trip got more interesting on the way back when we stopped to look for the hubcap I had lost just one week ago. Thursday night was a chilly one. When Josh pulled out a hubcap from the side of the road, the rejoicing began. It abruptly stopped when we discovered it was for a Plymouth, not an ’86 Chevy Celebrity. So we got back at that tire I hit to lose the hubcap. We carried that sucker all the way back to the LaQuinta Inn and through it in Josh’s truck to rid the bad karma from that overpass.

Then there is Friday, the end of the week. It’s the greatest day ever invented. I rest until about 4 or 5 p.m. when it’s time to get a little Echo work done. Then I take the rest of the night off and most of Saturday before returning to the grind Sunday afternoon.

It’s a busy job, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else.