Brooks Hatch: Monday update

category: Brooks' Musings

Brooks Hatch: Monday update 711CommentsBrooks+Hatch%3A+Monday+update2009-10-19+22%3A44%3A25Brooks+Hatch

Ran into one of The Blog’s all-time favorite Beavers at a youth soccer game in Sherwood on Sunday: No. 87, ex-linebacker Tony O’Billovich, whose daughter’s team was playing in the game before my son’s game at the Sherwood Sports Park/Complex.

He’s living in suburban Portland and still follows OSU football closely, although he can’t make as many games as in the past because of weekend family commitments that keep he and his wife on the move.

BTW, a note to OSU women’s coach Linus Rhode: Tony’s daughter scored at least once in the game, and she wore orange cleats. Just guessing here, but should she be a recruitable athlete three or four years down the road, she might be an OSU lean.

And a double BTW, that complex in Sherwood is sweet, with a FieldTurf, lighted soccer field . Some of the Corvallis parents were thinking it would be great to have a year-round venue like that in our fair city, perhaps at the site of the now-abandoned softball fields at Walnut/King Park, since the fields at Kendall Farms or on the various other parks in town aren’t usable year-round and there’s only one other synthetic outdoor field (Spartan Stadium) in the entire city.

Walnut/King Park already has plenty of parking and there are no neighbors to hack off if the field was lit and used until 10 or 11 p.m. (but then again, who am I kidding, this is Corvallis. Somebody who lives three miles away will claim they’re impacted somehow, and once again it would be, hello, LUBA).

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Former OSU men’s basketball recruit Ryan Hare has been dismissed from the team at Southern Illinois.

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Oregon State’s Diego Velasquez is Golfweek’s College Player of the Week for his victory this past weekend at the Bank of Tennessee Intercollegiate tournament at East Tennessee State.

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And the Corvallis Knights’ 2010 West Coast League schedule has been released, and team officials are very happy with how everything turned out.

Here’s a preview from our story that will appear in Tuesday’s paper, and online later Monday night:

The Corvallis Knights will open their 30-date West Coast League home schedule with a June 15-17 series against Bend, the team they eliminated the past two years in the West Division playoffs.

The Knights will play 24 WCL home games, five games against opponents from the affiliate WCL Portland league, and the annual exhibition against the Corvallis Richey’s Market American Legion program.

They open the season at Kitsap on June 4-6, and have 11 off days. They played 57 games in 62 days in 2008.

“I love our schedule,” team president Dan Segel said. “We have nice breaks, most of our home games are in late June and in July and we close at home in August.

“We were also fortunate to get another July 3 home date,” for the popular Fireworks Night, which last season drew a WCL-record crowd of 3,506.

The Knights will not repeat last season’s June 18-July 3 grind, when they played 16 consecutive home games. The four smallest crowds of the summer came in the middle of that stretch.

“We really appreciate that,” Segel said.

The 2008 Knights ranked third in the WCL in total (31,536) and league (27,198) attendance. They averaged 956 fans over 33 home dates, an increase of 49 percent from 2008, when they averaged 640 per game.

The WCL has returned to a balanced schedule and the Knights will play the eight league opponents three times at home and three times on the road. The WCL has expanded to Kelso-Longview and Walla Walla, Wash.; Spokane will go dark for a year while the it finalizes a relocation to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, for 2011 or 2012.

“The addition of the two new clubs will add more variety, and the balanced schedule format is really big,” Knights general manager/manager Brooke Knight said.

A highlight will be the June 29-30, July 1 series against Wenatchee, which swept the Knights in the 2008 WCL Championship Series. The AppleSox did not play in Corvallis in 2008 under the old scheduling plan.

“We look forward to playing each team an equal number of times,” Knight said. “This also provides a more competitive atmosphere. From an entertainment perspective, allows our fans to see every club in our league.”

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711CommentsBrooks+Hatch%3A+Monday+update2009-10-19+22%3A44%3A25Brooks+Hatch

kersting13 says:

October 20, 2009 at 9:23 pm

How is a grass soccer field not usable year round??

When I was a kid, we played in mud, slogging along through downpours and whatnot.

No one NEEDS a fieldturf field to play on in poor weather.

For spring baseball, I suppose it is necessary. But for youth soccer??

Reply
- brookshatch says:
  
  October 20, 2009 at 9:50 pm
  
  The baseball/soccer fields at Kendall Farms/Crystal Lake are closed after a certain date for the winter, and are often underwater because they're in the Willamette River floodplain.
  
  The grass fields at Corvallis Parks and schools are also closed to organized activities like Parks & Rec flag football, AYSO soccer, Ultimate Frisbee, etc., as they can get chewed up by continuous play in December, January, February and March.
  
  Fields generally aren't opened to AYSO teams until spring break, and Sunset Park and other parks are generally closed to soccer/softball/football practices until late March or early April at the earliest.
  
  Soccer is very popular in Corvallis. So if you want to have a place for year-round practice by numerous teams, it's either CHS or the Corvallis Indoor Soccer Park, which already has leagues almost round the clock in non-school hours and weekends.
  
  Reply

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