The monthly planning meeting of Tennessee Equality Project’s (TEP) Memphis chapter will be held Tuesday, February 23rd from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center (892 S. Cooper).
On the agenda: Updates on the city’s proposed ordinance to protect LGBT workers and planning for TEP’s Advancing Equality on the Hill day.
For more information, check out TEP’s Facebook page.
The empty seats at the finals of the men’s and women’s professional tennis tournaments at the Racquet Club last weekend are evidence of the perils of serving sports fans a ten-day feast. I’m not sure what tournament my journalistic colleague Geoff Calkins was watching when he described it today as a smash.
Frank Murtaugh says Olympic figure skating would be more fun with brackets, a la March Madness.
Can someone please distinguish for me a triple salchow from a triple axel? And where does a triple toe-loop come into play? The Vancouver Olympics will be centered this week around the ladies figure skating competition (Tuesday and Thursday nights). I’d like to be fully engaged as U.S. champion Rachael Flatt takes aim at 2009 world champion Kim Yu-Na of South Korea in what will surely be the most-watched sporting event not involving helmets this year. After Evan Lysacek last week became the first American man to skate his way to Olympic gold in 22 years, buzz is in the air for this most graceful of international competitions. But the truth is, despite 30 years spent refining my sports-viewing skills, I don’t know what to look for.
Evan Lysacek
I want to be delicate in crafting this column, for I know those who tune in for Olympic figure skating take it as seriously as any American Idol voter or New York Yankee fan. The slightest stumble — to say nothing of an actual meeting of keister and ice — is enough to spike blood pressure. This is a sport in which a pipe-wielding hit-man made news not that long ago. I know the gravity of the subject matter.
But I have a problem with a sport in which I can’t recognize a winner from a “loser.” The subtleties between Lysacek’s performance and that of 2006 Olympic champ Evgeni Plushenko may have jumped out — like a triple salchow! — for the judges entrusted with awarding medals in Vancouver. But from my couch? Two fine athletes, each able to do with their bodies on ice what I couldn’t do in a swimming pool. And synchronized to music. To crown one Olympic champion — again, in my view — is as subjective as awarding an Oscar or Grammy.
It doesn’t have to be this way. When the International Olympic Committee finally calls, here’s my solution for the figure-skating competition.
To begin with, the field will be drawn up in brackets, like a tennis tournament. National champions will be seeded higher, with an open draw to determine placement of other skaters. As we learn every March, nothing builds fan interest like a good bracket. Only regulation: skaters from the same country cannot face each other in the first round.
“Face each other?” you ask. Absolutely, and this is the game-changer in my new figure-skating format. Two skaters on the ice at the same time. Four-and-a-half minutes together, with music they are presented at the time of the draw (allowing skaters, at minimum, three days to choreograph their routines; we’re looking for skating champions, not dancing stars).
This would actually bring competition — an opponent — into the fold. Whether it’s another team, a clock, or even par on a golf course, an athlete needs to be confronting an adversary to truly achieve greatness in sports. Imagine the Olympic field being winnowed down to Lysacek vs. Plushenko in the finals, each to take the ice one last time, forced to perform his best routine of the tournament … without crashing into his rival. (A bracket format would require more routines to be skated by each competitor. If Olympic swimmers can handle three races in a day, skaters can take on some extra ice time.)
And finally, our new scoring system. Skaters would accumulate points for each jump and each technical maneuver, based on the value as determined by international judges. Unlike the current system, though, the points would show up on a scoreboard as the routines are being performed. “Plushenko takes a 15 point lead early, only to have Lysacek close the gap with back-to-back triple axels!” Can you imagine the drama if Ms. Flatt were trailing the favored Kim with 30 seconds to go in their routine, and the entire world knew she had to hit three flawless jumps to take the gold? I, for one, would be falling off that couch, screaming at my television, “C’mon Rachael! Jump, baby, jump!!”
All the artistry would still be there, all the beauty that makes figure skating so attractive to so many. But it would also feel like sports, where battling something a little more fearsome than a panel of judges is generally part of the mix.
“Jump Rachael! Jump!!”
The Memphis Tigers got some payback Saturday for a loss to SMU last month. Frank Murtaugh has the story.
The schedule for Sunday’s finals of the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships at the Racquet Club has been changed because both finalists are also in the doubles final.
The final singles match between Sam Querrey and John Isner will begin at 3 p.m., followed by the doubles final after a rest interval.
At 1 p.m. there will be an exhibition doubles match featuring a pair of University of Memphis players and two professionals.
The change was necessary because of the highly unusual circumstance of both singles finalists not only playing in the doubles final but also playing as partners.
The Tigers served up a frigid dish of revenge to the Mustangs tonight, thanks largely to some sizzling long-distance shooting. Memphis drained seven of 11 three-point attempts in the game’s first 12 minutes to take a 31-14 lead. With eight more triples over the course of the game, the Tigers never trailed, even with SMU going on runs of 14-0 in the first half and 11-0 in the second. The 15 treys were one shy of the single-game record for the program.
Wesley Witherspoon, Elliot Williams, and Roburt Sallie each made three of six from downtown. “Guys were just feeling it,” said Witherspoon after the game. “And they were falling, so why not?” Witherspoon finished with 15 points, eight rebounds, and six assists (with only one turnover). Williams showed no ill effects of a bruised right knee suffered last Wednesday at Tulane, scoring 16 points in 33 minutes on the floor. He said he played pain-free, and was only missing some power when he jumped.
After scoring 23 points with 14 rebounds three weeks ago in an SMU victory over Memphis, Mustang junior center Papa Dia was held to 10 points and 11 rebounds tonight. Like the Tigers, SMU did most of its shooting from beyond the arc, where they made 10 of 26 attempts. Derek Williams led the visitors with 18 points.
It’s hard to get people to focus on grand schemes like reinventing government in the face of day-to-day problems, says Branston.
John Branston says it’s a fine line between victory and defeat — and little things can make a difference.