Fun in the trenches

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“This event is for you guys in the trenches,” shouted Arizona State head strength coach Ben Hilgart to a gathering of about 150 offensive and defensive linemen from 17 high school football teams around the Valley. “You are here to compete and work hard, but also have some fun.”

Most people don’t know this, but the Arizona high school football season started in early May. High school teams are allowed three weeks of non-contact practice without pads before school lets out. June is the month for passing leagues, which are low-contact, no-pads games with seven players on a side. There is no blocking, no tackling and no running plays. These are controlled scrimmages in which each team gets to run 15 or 20 passing plays at a time.

Many Valley high school teams will play four to six passing league games against other schools and also participate in one or more of the passing league tournaments put on by ASU, UofA and NAU. The tournaments attract teams from around the state and allow the coaches for the universities sponsoring the tournament to walk around and evaluate some of the top football talent in the state. At ASU’s tournament on June 9, ASU head football coach Dennis Erickson spent a couple of hours walking around the fields.

Because offensive and defensive linemen are left out of passing league games, the tournaments came up with the idea of “Big Man” competitions, or what ASU strength coach Hilgart calls the “Trench League.” These competitions resemble a mixture of football strength and agility training and a Scottish Highland Games.

At ASU’s Farmington Stadium softball field, the linemen for 17 high school teams participated in five drills: the Farmer’s Walk, a relay race involving dragging 180 pounds of iron chains behind you; a clean-and-press weight lift:, an agility running drill; the Tire Flip, a relay race in which a player flips a 160 pound tire in front of him as he races back and forth; and the Backward Sledge, a relay race in which player run backwards while pulling several plates of dead weight across the field.

The 17 teams accumulated points for each of the five drills, which seeded them for the final competition — the tug of war. Chandler triumphed in the tug of war finals against St. Mary’s, while Liberty High School won the overall competition for the evening, followed by Chandler, Chaparral and Pinnacle.

My father’s high school football coach had a saying that is just as true today as it was 70 years ago, when players wore leather helmets: “If the offensive line does its job, the backs should have to pay admission.”

This fall, their teammates who play the “skill” positions, such as quarterback and running back, will undoubtably get far more attention than these players do. But on a summer night in June, the big guys had some fun.

The next major passing league tournament will be the Fiesta Bowl 7-on-7 Passing Tournament, which will take place next Friday and Saturday, June 25 and 26, at the Brophy Sports Complex at 4800 N. 7th Street.  Spectators are welcome and there is no admission.  — Story and photos by Dan Barr | Video by Robert Balint

The tug of war champion Chandler Wolves.

Xavier badminton team wins state championship

Julia Friedman (left) and Weslie Norris.

All eyes in gym were on them. The focus of state badminton championship between Xavier College Preparatory and Mountain Pointe, which had started an hour earlier with six simultaneous singles matches, was now squarely on the doubles match between each school’s number 3 ranked doubles teams. The first and second ranked doubles teams had just started to play their matches, but not many people were paying attention to them. Even the players for those doubles teams kept glancing over to court number 3, where Xavier’s Weslie Norris and Julia Friedman were playing Mountain Pointe’s Danielle Stewart and Nadya Zolotova.

Julia already had won her singles match, as had her teammates Carissa Pappas, Danielle Dozer and Danielle Mark, to give Xavier a 4-2 lead in the team competition. One more win would give Xavier the title and everyone in the crowd of more than 200 knew it.

Badminton is usually played in a quiet gym before a handful of people. There was nothing quiet about the Shadow Mountain High School gym, especially after Julia and Weslie won their first game 15-3 in just six minutes.

“It definitely made us more nervous,” Julia said, “but we tried really hard to keep our focus.”

“We had never played in front of a crowd like that before,” Weslie added.

Julia and Weslie were able to keep their focus for eight more minutes, which was the time they needed to win the second, and deciding, game 15-6. The shuttlecock had barely hit the net and fallen to the floor, when the Xavier players on the other two courts stopped in the middle of play and rushed over to hug their teammates.

“It’s the best feeling ever,” Weslie said of the moment she and Julia won the deciding match to win the state title.

The Dozer family.

Afterward, parents posed with their daughters around the championship trophy. Danielle Dozer’s dad, Rich, former president of the Arizona Diamondbacks, had posed for similar photos exactly eight years ago to the night, when the Diamondbacks won the 2001 World Series. Rich recalled how Danielle, then age 9, ran around the Diamondbacks clubhouse spraying champagne after the dramatic Game 7 win.

“I was much more nervous tonight because it is my own daughter,” Rich said.

The Diamondbacks winning the World Series may be the greatest moment in Arizona sports history, but I have a pretty good feeling that, for Rich Dozer, it now comes in second to his daughter’s team winning the 2009 5A state badminton title. — Dan Barr

Back row: Head Coach Nancy Meyer, Danielle Mark, Danielle Dozer, Cate Welch, Carissa Pappas, Assistant Coach Susie Murphy. Front: Julia Friedman and Weslie Norris.

Xavier College Preparatory's 5A State Championship badminton team.

You’ve got to show up

One of the great lessons that sports can teach is that you have got to get up after you have been knocked down.

Danielle Mark learned that lesson Monday night at the state 5A badminton semifinals at Shadow Mountain High School. Because she did, she and her Xavier College Preparatory Gator teammates will play for the state title this Wednesday night against Mountain Pointe.

Xavier badminton doubles team Carissa Pappas (left) and Danielle Mark.

Three weeks ago, I wrote about Danielle and her doubles partner, Carissa Pappas, when they played a Saturday tournament at Chaparral High School (“What most of us don’t know about badminton”). On that day, I asked Danielle what advice she would give young girls who wanted to play badminton.

“Our coach always says, ‘You’ve got to show up,’” Danielle told me on that day. “Show up both mentally and physically.”

Well, on Monday night, Danielle was nowhere to be seen in her singles match against Chaparral’s Joelle Fang, who displayed a deft touch with drop shots and placement. Danielle was skunked in the first game 11-0 and lost the second game 11-8. The match was over before it began. Danielle was frustrated, flustered and upset with herself.

About 45 minutes later it had all turned around. Now playing doubles with Carissa, who had previously won her singles match, Danielle looked like a different player. She was confident and assertive when only a short while earlier she had looked listless and confused.

With Xavier’s other doubles team losing and Chaparral threatening to pull even in the team match, Danielle and Carissa convincingly won their doubles match in straight games, 15-2 and 15-1, and in doing so propelled their team into the state finals.

“It’s not over yet,” said Carissa after the match, “but this is amazing.”

“We have been wanting this from the get go,” said Danielle of the state title. “And now we are so close.”

Xavier will have its hands full on Wednesday with Mountain Pointe, which beat Millennium 5-3 in a spirited group of matches on the other side of the gym. If nothing else, the Mountain Pointe girls should get the tournament award for “most creative team shirts.” Theirs are black and state on the back “We put the Bad in Badminton.”

The essence of a great teammate is showing up when your team needs you the most. Danielle got up after being knocked down on Monday night and now her team moves on.

The 5A badminton state championship will be at Shadow Mountain High School, 2902 E. Shea Blvd, at 6:30pm Wednesday. Admission is $5. The championship should be highly competitive. From what I saw on Monday, if any of the girls gets knocked down, they won’t stay down for very long. — Dan Barr