Blocking the Sun

This post originally appeared in the Blotch section of the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To consume it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/06/27/sports-rush-defeating-the-sun-in-more-ways-than-one/


I had a couple of things I wanted to talk to Theresa Plaisance of the Dallas Wings about in this video interview.

Firstly, we needed to cover the team’s current four-game winning streak. It’s evened their record at 8-8, putting them squarely into a crowded playoff mix with a little more than half the season remaining. The fourth-year frontcourt player scored in double figures in three of the four games, and posted a career-high nine rebounds in Sunday’s win over Connecticut. Plaisance has gotten more playing time as a result of an injury to Courtney Paris and the Louisiana State product has taken advantage of it.

Secondly, I wanted to follow up on a conversation she and I had had after a recent game - a discussion, which interestingly enough, involved WNBA President Lisa Borders and Wings Chief Marketing Officer Nicole Smith. We talked about suntans or lack of same, and it turns out that Plaisance’s mom had certain rules regarding her daughter’s application of sunscreen. Since I was with the Wings outdoors during Monday’s team visit to the Dallas Zoo, I thought it appropriate to ask her to relay the story, and you’ll hear it in this video.

Side note #1: The funniest remark of the zoo visit was offered by assistant coach Bridget Pettis. As we approached the giraffe enclosure, she proclaimed “We finally found someone who can guard Brittney Griner,” referencing the imposing former Baylor post who puts up big numbers for the Phoenix Mercury.

Side note #2: The WNBA team that plays in Connecticut is named the "Sun." Plaisance recorded three blocked shots against them on, appropriately enough, Sunday. So in a sense, Plaisance blocked the sun twice in two days. And her mother’s a basketball coach, so DoBee Plaisance can probably claim some of the credit for both victories.


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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Fort Worth-Dallas - A Hotbed of Hoops?

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/03/13/sports-rush-a-hoops-hotbed/

Wow. All of a sudden, basketball is a big deal.

OK, it’s one of the world’s most popular sports, but this area has not necessarily been a college basketball nexus. Until now.

An upset of top-ranked Kansas in the Big 12 tournament, which Texas Christian pulled off Thursday should make one sit up and take notice. Have you checked out Texas-Arlington? How about Southern Methodist? There have been a lot of balls ripping nets this year. If you haven’t been paying attention, the local men’s college basketball teams have been making some noise all season. Historically so, in fact.

TCU lost to eventual champion Iowa State in the Big 12 semis. UTA won the Sun Belt regular season before falling in the tournament semi-finals. SMU won the American Athletic Conference regular season and tournament. Among the area’s Division I teams, only Denton’s University of North Texas had a subpar year, finishing 8-22.

The Frogs, Mustangs, and Mavericks will all take part in the postseason. SMU earned a number six seed in the NCAA Tournament, playing Providence or the University of Southern California on Friday afternoon in Tulsa on truTV. TCU will host Fresno State in the National Invitation Tournament at 8pm Central Wednesday. At that same time, the UTA Mavs have an NIT first-round matchup against Brigham Young in Provo, with the game televised on ESPN2.

Each team has had good seasons in the past, but one can make the case that the area has never before had so much success in the sport all at once. The NCAA and the NIT are the top two postseason tournaments in men’s college basketball, and the North Texas region has participated sporadically. In the 1950s, when UTA was still a two-year institution called Arlington State College, SMU and TCU both had some good teams, but never made it into the postseason at the same time (though there were fewer berths available in those days). The two Southwest Conference schools again posted some winning records in the 1980s, Texas Christian under coach Jim Killingsworth and Southern Methodist under the since-disgraced Dave Bliss. UTA played a game in the 1981 NIT under Bob “Snake” LeGrand. However, 1986 and 1988 were the only previous years in which as many as two local teams made the two big tourneys. In 1986, TCU was defeated by Florida in the second round of the NIT while SMU lost to BYU in the first round of the same competition. In 1988, SMU made the second round of the NCAAs before falling to Duke and UNT also lost to an ACC team, North Carolina, in the first round of the big tournament.

In 2012, UTA dropped a first-round game to Washington in the NIT while TCU made it to the second round of the third-tier College Basketball Invitational (a tournament won, incidentally, by current TCU head coach Jamie Dixon’s University of Pittsburgh team).

Never before, though, have we had three teams qualifying for end-of-season tournaments at once.

In addition to their postseason berths, all three teams have recorded wins over big-time opponents. TCU and UTA went a combined 3-0 against the University of Texas, though admittedly in a down year for the Longhorns. TCU beat Iowa State during the regular season. UTA defeated four NCAA tournament teams. SMU won 30 games, with no losses to teams not in the NCAA or NIT draws. Add to that the fact that Texas Wesleyan made the 32-team NAIA field (they play Cumberland Thursday) and it’s not hard to make the case that there has never been a better men’s college basketball season in North Texas.

So pay attention this week, and hopefully beyond, to the glut of area teams playing in the postseason tournaments. It doesn’t happen very often. Or ever.

On the other hand, the four NCAA teams expect to lose a total of only sixteen players off these rosters. And none of their leading scorers are seniors. So maybe we can expect the same next year. For basketball fans, that probably sounds like a pretty good deal.

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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What A 9-Year Old Wants to Know About The Olympic Experience

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : http://www.fwweekly.com/2016/09/07/sports-rush-winging-it-to-rio/

Dallas Wings guard Erin Phillips left the team for a month earlier this season for a trip to a popular vacation destination. Phillips didn’t take a holiday and she didn’t spend her time sunning on the beach. She went to Rio de Janeiro to play hoops for her native Australia in the Olympic Games.

Sports should inspire kids, and they often look up to pro athletes. Indeed, driving young people to participate in physical activity is ostensibly one of the Games’ most important purposes. So for the interview about her Olympic experience, I sought the input of one of those aspiring athletes – someone who might draw inspiration from how the 5’8” Phillips has succeeded in a sport where she often looks up at taller players. My 9-year old niece Eva (who herself stands a bit over four feet tall), came up with these interview questions (with a little guidance on phrasing from Uncle Rush) and supplied them to me to ask while she was in school.

Eva: Who inspired you to want to be an Olympic athlete?
Erin: I wouldn’t say there was any just one particular person. There are a couple of specific moments in an Olympic event that I thought, “Wow that’s pretty special.” There was one where Cathy Freeman won gold (Freeman won the 400-meter dash in Sydney in 2000). Another strong athlete, Kieren Perkins, who won gold, I think, was in the 1500 (Perkins won two golds and two silvers swimming in three Olympics). Those I remember vividly just, well, how inspiring, that must be really cool to win an Olympic gold medal.

Eva: Did you feel special pressure when playing because it was the Olympics?
Erin: Yeah, there’s always an extra element of pressure, but I wouldn’t say was anything off-putting. It was more inspiring, I guess. I think it was more use in a positive way than a nervous way, but I think getting butterflies before a game is really good. It just obviously means that whatever you’re about to do is pretty important to you.

Eva: How was it different from any other basketball games?
Erin: Just the world’s watching you. That’s about it. It’s the pinnacle of the sport to be in the Olympic Games and being an Olympic athlete, so, like I said, there’s an extra element of just how important it is and just the amount of attention that the Olympics gets itself. So, yeah, it’s definitely different.

Eva: Which adjustments did you make to get better during the tournament?
Erin: When you start off at any tournament, really, you do some warm-up games pre-Olympics and you really want to take that momentum and carry it through to the Olympics, because you can’t just start okay first game, you haven’t played for a while. So we’ve got to make sure that we’ve played, we’re in a rhythm. And then every team that you play, that’s why, again, it’s unique, is every team that you play is different. It’s a different country. It’s a different style of basketball that you’re playing against, from Japan, who is just unbelievably quick and fast, and then you have a team like Turkey, who’s more half court. So you kind of just adjust and evolve with every team that you play against. We make adjustments when we watch film postgame and watch some things that we needed to be better the next game and we will go on and generally practice and get ready for the next.

Eva: Did your family stay with you the whole way through (meaning, did any of them physically go with you, or if not, how did they support you)?
Erin: My family stayed at home. We kind of found out pretty late that we were in the team. I generally don’t like it when they come to foreign countries, because it’s like I feel like I worry about them a little bit, so I wasn’t too fussed. Of course, I’d love them to have been there, but at the same time I felt like they were in a way, because they were at home every game now watching live. I was getting phone calls and texts from them of support and so they would take pictures and videos of my nieces and nephews wishing me good luck writing cards and things like that. It was cool.

Eva: Did you keep up with other sports, and if so, which ones?
Erin: We tried to. We couldn’t get out to many sports because of our crazy schedule, but I followed the swimming pretty closely, the men’s basketball – obviously, we have a close attachment with them. I liked the cycling, the soccer, well, the football, as they call it. Anything that I could try to get to and watch and support, I tried to do it and it was a good way of taking the focus off your own kind of agenda.

Eva: What team activities did you do in Brazil other than just playing?
Erin: Really nothing. It’s really like you live in a bubble for basically two weeks and you’re just completely focused on what you’re there for. I’d say the only thing that we really did was Australia does a really good job of having an outside entertaining area away from the village that families can meet the athletes in a neutral spot, because, obviously, they’re not allowed in the village. It was called The Edge, so we got out to The Edge a couple of times and they had, like, a virtual golfing range. They had table tennis. They had a barista coffee machine, which was a very popular thing. So we got to spend a little bit of time there, but really it was all business. 

Eva: Did you try any new foods, and if so which ones? And if not, why not?
Erin : Unfortunately, I’m actually pretty close to being a vegan, so my diet is – it was extremely difficult at times over there. I spent a lot of time eating plain rice and a lot of vegetables and fruit, but actually the one thing I did try was star fruit. It wasn’t really great, but I tried it because it’s obviously native to Brazil. They have a good amount, so I was, like, okay, I’ll give this a try and maybe I got the wrong one. So I’m not going to say don’t eat star fruit, just don’t let me choose it for you.

For the record, Eva is generally on board with trying new foods and might well be inclined to take bite of carambola, aka star fruit, if presented the opportunity. The jovial Phillips told me she has seven nieces and nephews of her own.

Phillips already owns a silver medal from 2008 in Beijing. Her team fell just short of the medal round in 2016, losing to eventual runner-up Serbia in the quarterfinals. She’ll play in the Wings’ final home game of the season this Sunday afternoon at UTA’s College Park Center. Eva will continue her after-school tennis program.


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.


RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

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Not Your Mother's Basketball

This article originally appeared in the Blotch section of the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To read it on that site :http://www.fwweekly.com/2016/04/27/sports-rush-my-mothers-basketball/

The WNBA’s Dallas Wings want you to know this is not your mother’s basketball game.

“My style of play is to get a lot of shots up and run,” said Wings head coach Fred Williams.

When I say “your mother’s basketball game,” I definitely mean your mother, not my mother. My mom once scored 57 points in a 1950s high school hoops game in Virginia. It was the old six-on-six version of the sport, but we can still surmise she got a lot of shots up and moved a good bit that day. So watching women’s hoopsters getting up and down the floor will be nothing new to her, but if you (or your mom) were expecting a plodding game from the area’s new women’s pro team, the Wings expect to show you differently.

“We get a lot of stereotypes as women playing in the professional ranks that our game is slower and less athletic,” said Wings forward Plenette Pierson. “Just to have a fast-paced game really changes things.”

Williams described his squad’s style of play as “up-tempo, fast break, you’ll see us do a little run-and-jump defense, a lot of traps.”

As he began training camp with Sunday’s open practice at UT-Arlington’s College Park Center, Williams mandated a number of full-court drills as he started implementing his preferred approach.

“It’s an up and down style. We want to try to get to 90 possessions each game,” guard Skylar Diggins said. “Coach Williams wants us up and down the court and to push the tempo. We want to control the tempo on both sides of the ball. That’s why you see us going up and down a lot in the first practice, getting ready for that.”

Diggins will play her third season in Williams’ system in 2016, having been part of the team when it was based in Tulsa. She missed much of last year with a knee injury, including an opening-round playoff loss. With the former All-Star back, Williams expects his core to be a strong one.

“We’ve been one of the top-scoring teams in the league the last couple of years with the same personnel,” he noted of a group that led the Western Conference in points-per-game in 2015. He also expects some off-season additions will improve his club’s ability to execute his preferred style of play.

“We’ve added some speed with (1st-round pick Aerial) Powers in there with us and I think with (2nd-round pick Ruth) Hamblin in there in the middle, it’s going to open it up for our shooters from the outside.”

One of those shooters came to the team in March via a trade with the Los Angeles Sparks.
“You’ve got to have a nice veteran player who has won championships in this league that can step in in the perimeter area and knock down some threes for you,” said Williams of new guard Erin Phillips.
The Australian Olympian, who already had a house in McKinney, feels Williams’ preferred tempo will fit her game.

“I’m a shooter, so the faster the ball moves, the quicker it gets in your hands and the quicker you can get a shot off as well. It gives you more space to play,” she said. “It’s a really fun way to play as a player.”

Williams hopes his players aren’t the only ones who find his favored pace enjoyable.

“I call it a fan-friendly atmosphere for the family. If (the players) do that (play up-tempo) and play well, these fans will come out and watch us,” the coach suggested.

If you do, you’ll see some fast-breaking ball. In truth, if you thought modern women’s basketball was a slow game, you probably should have realized long ago those stereotypes weren’t accurate. Some folks have known since the 1950s.

You can see for yourself when the Dallas Wings open their regular season home schedule May 21.


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 his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.


RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports