20 Years Ago - A Championship Team

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/04/30/sports-rush-fire-and-ice-20-years-on/

One of Fort Worth’s greatest sports moments happened twenty years ago on this day. It came improbably and with gripping athletic drama.

On April 30, 1997, the Fort Worth Fire won the Central Hockey League title.

I call it improbable because nobody would have chosen the Fire as the favorite to win heading into that season. The new CHL (a predecessor of the same name had gone out of business in the 1980s) had started in 1992 and only Fort Worth had finished out of the playoffs every season. In addition, the previous year’s leading scorer, Kyle Reeves, had taken his 68 goals to the East Coast Hockey League.
Luckily, Fort Worth’s second-year head coach, Bill McDonald, knew how to build championship teams. He finagled the addition of some players who had helped him win Colonial Hockey League titles in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He supplemented them with some speedy youngsters, quality grinders, and an emerging young goaltender.

The season included a league-record streak without a regulation loss. Outstanding individual performances included Mark O’Donnell recording hat tricks in consecutive games, Mark Strohack scoring a shootout goal to clinch the franchise’s first playoff spot, and goalie Steve Plouffe earning playoff MVP honors.

The team beat the Tulsa in the first round of the postseason, eliminating the Oilers and nemesis Doug Lawrence. They defeated the Wichita Thunder in the second round, a team with whom they had brawled earlier in the year.

image courtesy CCT

The drama came when they faced the Memphis RiverKings in the finals. A back-and-forth series went the full seven games. Fan favorite Stephane LaRocque scored a tie-breaking third-period goal and the Fire held on for a 3-2 win in the Fort Worth Convention Center.

I was lucky enough to get to call the play-by-play that season on the club’s cable television broadcasts, and my cherished championship ring sits well-preserved in a safe deposit box. It was indeed a special season and special team. Incredible memories included Vern Ray convincing much of the team to shave their heads for the playoffs and later shearing PR director Brad Horn’s hair to match in the aftermath of the title; playing a few games in the superb hockey venue that is Will Rogers Coliseum; The Toadies jamming the national anthem before Game 1 of the Finals at the FWCC; and getting beer poured on my head while attempting to conduct postgame interviews from a delirious locker room.

image courtesy CCT

I got to see a lot of great hockey, too, with championship-caliber players like Terry Menard, Todd Howarth, Ryan Black, Mike Sanderson, Dwight Mullins, Brian Caruso, Murray Hogg, and the rest of a tight-knit roster showing strong skills and stronger work ethics. I also got to broadcast alongside a great crew, including boothmates Paula Caballero, Darrin Scheid, and the late Richard Durrett. Bill Orcutt, Mitchell Brooke, Suzanne Wilemon, and many more contributed camera shots and replays to help those at home follow the action. Afterward, we created a documentary program about the season, which one can view here.
We couldn’t know that within two years the Fire would have folded, and that today we would have no professional hockey teams in Cowtown. While it would have been nice to have retained a team and have built a storied tradition that endures today, such is rarely the case in sports, and especially at the minor league level. Those of us who enjoyed and became emotionally invested in that ’97 Fire team will always have an incredible and, as it turns out, unique, memory of one of our hometown’s most outstanding sports moments.


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

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Turco Behind the Mask (or Masque)

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there :  https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/04/27/behind-the-mask-or-masque/

After retiring from playing hockey, former Dallas Stars goaltender Marty Turco has maintained the affinity for nonprofit work he had as a player. Turco serves as president of C5 Youth Foundation of Texas, an organization that works with at-risk youth to shepherd them from eighth grade through high school graduation. Their track record includes nearly all of their graduates advancing to college.

Part of Turco’s job includes fundraising, and he has an event coming up May 11th that draws inspiration from his hockey equipment. The Behind The Masque Gala, presented by Aimbridge Hospitality, is a masquerade ball. In this video interview, Turco explains a few details about the event and delves into his own experience of wearing custom-made masks when he played. He also talks about why he feels C5 Texas to be such a worthwhile organization.

To learn more about C5 or to support them by purchasing Behind the Masque tickets, visit c5texas.org.



Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

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Wings On The Rise

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there :  https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/04/18/sports-rush-dallas-wings-on-the-rise/

You know something’s happening when you see balloons.
 

Thursday at Arlington’s College Park Center, whomever had to blow them all up had to have been out of breath. (or hopefully they used a tank). The Dallas Wings held their 2017 WNBA Draft party, and in addition to multiple balloon towers, they had a stage, a huge video screen, big Wings logo gobos, and a stage populated with a podium and comfy chairs. They brought in former WNBA players, plus members of their current roster and assistant coaches to address crowd. Play-by-play voice Ron Thulin emceed the affair.

In between Q&As and on-stage announcements, ESPN’s broadcast of the draft played on the center screen as well as the ones affixed to the arena’s scoreboard. Fans occupied seats on the floor and in the lower bowl. Nachos were available for purchase at the concession stands. A handful of media members turned out.

So the Wings went to a bit of trouble to create this draft night event. What did they get from it?

With the third, fourth, and tenth picks overall, they chose three Southeastern Conference players. The Wings first picked Evelyn Akhator from Kentucky. Allisha Gray and Kaela Davis, both of whom just won an NCAA title in Dallas with South Carolina, went fourth and tenth, respectively.  They took Breanna Lewis from Kansas State in the second round and finished their draft by selecting UConn’s Saniya Chong.

After watching the team last year, my impressions had been that they needed more athletic post players and a pass-first point guard to support Skylar Diggins. Akhator and Lewis addressed the former need and Chong and mid-season acquisition Tiffani Bias may help with the latter. The stats indicated they also needed defensive help and three-point shooting, and Gray and Davis should be good at both of those. The Wings will also bring in undrafted frontcourt players Kalani Purcell and Kelsey Lang for a training camp look.

After watching the team last year, my impressions had been that they needed more athletic post players and a pass-first point guard to support Skylar Diggins. Akhator and Lewis addressed the former need and Chong and mid-season acquisition Tiffani Bias may help with the latter. The stats indicated they also needed defensive help and three-point shooting, and Gray and Davis should be good at both of those.

Perhaps the biggest addition that could push the Wings to the playoffs is a robust Diggins. The former All-Star had an up-and-down 2016 season coming off a knee injury. Thulin pronounced her “100% healthy,” which Diggins confirmed in her on-stage interview. She and Bias spoke to Davis and Gray via computer hookup, with Diggins encouraging applause from the crowd to help welcome her new teammates.

In addition to augmenting their roster the Wings also hope they enhanced their attendance for the upcoming season. Placards adorned lower bowl seats available for season-long purchase and reps stood ready to sell multi-game packages and individual game tickets.
Teams always look for opportunities to engage fans in the off-season, especially in prime ticket-selling situations. The draft fell at a good time during the sales season, and having three first-round picks made for a balloon-worthy setup. And while regulations mandated that the helium-filled variety could only add to the atmosphere outside the arena, the Wings hope their future in Tarrant County is indeed on the rise – on-court and off.


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.




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A Texas-Sized Niche

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/04/11/sports-rush-a-texas-sized-niche/

Fort Worth has a sports niche. It’s a legendary, bighoss-sized one.

We saw it on display this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, home to the gargantuan video screen known as Big Hoss TV. TMS hosted automobile races in NASCAR’s two top classifications. The world’s best stock car drivers and crews all assembled in north Fort Worth to compete on a beautiful Texas spring day.

They’ll return in November for another set of races. In between, the Verizon IndyCar Series and the Camping World Truck Series will visit June 9 and 10 (the trucks will also run again in November). For fans, these weekends represent a major event, with the campers and RVs parked across the speedway’s infield and external lots representing a testament to the amount of time and resources they devote to attending. I saw a man wearing a shirt that read Saskatchewan Roughriders (a Canadian football team) on its front. We can’t know if he truly visited from Regina specifically to watch (mostly) American race car drivers, but many attendees no doubt come from outside the area (including UK rocker Ozzie Osbourne and his son Jack, who instructed the drivers to start their engines Sunday).

The races also bring in national broadcasters, with Sunday’s contest carried on the Fox Network. Events that feature all the best competitors in a given sport draw audiences from beyond the areas where they happen, kind of like all-star games. For some sports, mostly individual ones, they play on a neutral site every week (notwithstanding TMS’s positioning itself as “Your Home Track”). One can make a case that these sorts of events have become Cowtown’s forte.

 

While it doesn’t attract the big four broadcast networks any more, the rodeo held every winter in conjunction with the Fort Worth Stock Show features world-class PRCA cowboys and WPRA cowgirls. For someone in the region who wants to see the top steer wrestlers or barrel racers, the FWSSR offers the best way to do it.

May’s DEAN & DELUCA Invitational annually supplies North Texas (and a nationwide TV audience) the world’s top male golfers. At one time, Colonial Country Club also hosted a top-flight men’s tennis tournament.

Fort Worth has put on a few one-off big events, too, like the NCAA Gymnastics Championship and even tennis’ Davis Cup final in 1992. What it hasn’t staged a lot of lately is professional team sports.

 

LaGrave Field has descended into disrepair and it looks like it will be a while before the city sees Fort Worth Cats baseball again. The minor league hockey teams that tried to make the Fort Worth Convention Center home are gone, too. The Arena Football League lasted only the 1994 season before that franchise disappeared. The golf tournament, on the other hand, has survived more than 70 years. Texas Motor Speedway has made it 20+. The rodeo, as they say, is legendary.

Team sports aren’t totally dead in Cowtown. TCU draws sustainable crowds for a few of its programs. The Frogs’ biggest draw, though, is its football program, a sport that plays only half a dozen home games yearly with many of those coming against opponents with regional appeal.

 

Municipalities love to bring in visitors to buy hotel nights and purchase meals and tip local musicians. Only sports teams playing at the highest levels attract visitors and national media outlets to their cities, and even then only in limited quantities. Since existing arena deals, sales tax caps, and perhaps basic economics indicate Fort Worth won’t induce the local big league franchises to relocate from Dallas, Arlington, or Frisco any time soon, Fort Worth will likely have to stick to its sports niche.

That niche is the single big event. Given the quality of the racing Sunday (Jimmie Johnson steered his way to a win that featured drama and strategy all the way to the end) and the tens of thousands of people who watched it, that niche can be both exciting and substantial. Legendary, even.


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.




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Big Doings in Big D

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/04/05/a-big-deal-in-big-d/

A big deal in sports happened here over the weekend. We know this because we saw people roaming local streets wearing multiple color schemes not native to the area’s teams. We saw a clear indicator when prominent athletes from other sports, in this case Russell Wilson and Dak Prescott, attended. And we can guess at its national import because ESPN brought 25 cameras to cover it.

The event that sold out the American Airlines Center Friday and Sunday was the NCAA Women’s Final Four. Basketball teams representing Stanford, South Carolina, Mississippi State, and the University of Connecticut competed in the Division I national tournament semifinals.
Could UConn win a fifth straight title and continue a 111-game winning streak? Would the Samuelson sisters (the Cardinal’s Karlie and the Huskies’ Katie Lou) become the first siblings to oppose each other in a national title game? South Carolina prevented the latter with a win in Friday’s opening semi, and MSU stymied both, courtesy of a Morgan William overtime buzzer-beater in the nightcap.

Those results created intriguing new plotlines, including which of two Southeastern Conference schools would become the first from its conference besides Tennessee to win a title. (Current member Texas A&M was still in the Big 12 when it won in 2011.)

Pat Lowry adjusted on the fly to the changing circumstances. She served as one of two coordinating producers for ESPN’s Women’s Final Four broadcasts and had to plan how her crew would convey the weekend’s ebbs and flows. While there is no home team, she still believes the event can have an impact on its host region.

“I think you get exposed to the highest level of women’s basketball,” she said. “If you like basketball, when you see this, it’s going to open a new door for you, because you’re going to see that women’s basketball is a little different than men but equally as entertaining and competitive.”

Getting sports fans to view women’s basketball happenings as significant is an ongoing process. While the men have had a Final Four since 1939, the NCAA didn’t officially sanction women’s basketball or any other sports for female students until 1981, when about 9,500 fans watched Louisiana Tech win the first women’s NCAA title in Norfolk, Va. Since then, those involved in promoting the game have made progress in turning it into a big deal, one that can sell out NBA arenas. That the local venue should host the spectacle is appropriate and overdue, according to basketball pioneer Nancy Lieberman.

“This city deserves the Final Four,” said Lieberman, who played for the Dallas Diamonds of early women’s pro leagues in the 1980s and believes North Texas has been ahead of the curve in embracing women’s hoops. “You should be rewarded for your foresight and rewarded for giving women something before it was the chic thing to do.”

Area fans supported those Diamonds teams, though their leagues folded when other cities failed to muster the same level of patronage. The women’s pro game reappeared in North Texas last year, with the WNBA’s Dallas Wings playing in Arlington’s College Park Center. At a reception Thursday evening, NCAA Vice President of Women’s Basketball Championships, Anucha Browne, said the competition she supervises is likely to return as well.

“If we have an opportunity to bring the Women’s Final Four back to Dallas, we’re coming back, because we love what this community means to women’s basketball,” she said in front of a crowd that included Wings head coach Fred Williams and point guard Tiffani Bias. “When we decided that we would select Dallas, it was because of the history.”

The history of this particular tournament will read that South Carolina won its first-ever NCAA title in the sport of women’s basketball. For those like Browne, who believe “women in sport changes life” when it inspires young girls, the event’s legacy may be whether the area continues to support the women’s game in the manner to which it has become accustomed: like it’s a big deal.

For more of my filings from the 2017 Women’s Final Four, including video interviews with Holly Rowe of ESPN and Aerial Powers of the Dallas Wings, visit Blotch at Fwweekly.com.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.


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Good Games

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/04/05/sports-rush-good-games-this-weekend/

One of the good things about sports is losing.

UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma lost this weekend. He might have forgotten how it felt, as it hadn’t happened in the Huskies’ previous 111 games.

“I understand losing, believe it or not. We haven’t lost in a while, but I understand it. I know how to appreciate when other people win.”

Grace in defeat is commendable. The coach also praised his opponent, suggesting Mississippi State “deserved to win. They beat us.”

Auriemma’s team was supposed to have lost already this season. The core of four straight title teams graduated and he built this squad around young players.

“I’m proud of what they’ve been able to do, how much they changed from last October, you know. When we started October 15th to where we are today, as I said, these kids were way older than they were supposed to be. They should have shown their age early on in the season.”

Helping young people mature as people and learn life lessons, including how to deal with setbacks, is part of what amateur athletics should be about.

“This is an education process,” said Mississippi State coach Vic Schaefer after his team, in turn, lost to South Carolina in the final. “I try to hold people accountable.”

photo by Dave French

South Carolina didn’t win everything this weekend. The school’s men’s team lost to Gonzaga in their semifinal. Afterward, head coach Frank Martin said his players “impacted our community in an unbelievable way, which is worth so much more than the score of a game. It’s what it’s all about. These kids are great role models. There’s a lot of young kids that want to be the next Sindarius Thornwell, Justin McKie, and I don’t get to coach them anymore, but they’re part of my life forever.”

The tough coach teared up as he spoke, clearly emotionally invested in the students he’d supervised. A shared sports experience can build powerful bonds that become lifelong relationships.

Also this weekend, I spoke with a friend who is a team doctor for one of the Women’s Final Four teams, and she told me about a student-athlete she had treated. The player at one time had wanted to be a surgeon, but had for various reasons abandoned that career path. My friend didn’t juts repair her physical injury. She counseled the young woman and inspired her to revisit the goal, and the student is back on track for medical school. My friend enjoys fixing damaged knees and shoulders, but her level of job satisfaction peaks when she feels she has helped a young person advance in life.

As I spent much of my weekend absorbed in the Women’s Final Four in Dallas, and monitoring the men’s version on TV, I was reminded that the college athletic experience is about more than determining the best team on the court, rink, or field.  It was a lesson I originally learned many years ago from my father, who spent his life as a professor, coach, administrator, and mentor to college students. While he’s one of the most competitive people I know, and aches to win at any contest, he always emphasized that the university athletic experience is, first and foremost, about positively affecting the student-athlete. It was a really good thing to see that college sports remains capable of achieving that goal. 

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

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