Just in case you don\u2019t follow soccer, and I\u2019m happy to say that I\u2019ve never played the game nor do I understand how people can stand around and watch 1-o games \u2026 well, just in case, the fierce North Park Vikings are the first team in history to beat the Wheaton Crusaders three times in a row at Wheaton. And the Vikings won the Conference. North Park considers whatever it does a success if it beats Wheaton. If you want to see genuine zaniness, watch the front row of a NPU-Wheaton basketball game when the game is played at NPU.
\nOn soccer, here\u2019s two thoughts. First, to make the game more interesting, make a bigger goal. More goals, more fun. Second, permit offsides. Imagine what football would be if you couldn\u2019t throw a pass to a receiver who got beyond the defenders. Football, by the way, is way more exciting than soccer. And let me add a third thing I\u2019d do for soccer to make it more interesting: make a smaller field \u2014 I find those long kicks a lot of silliness. If you are in trouble and fear getting scored upon, you shouldn\u2019t be able to kick the ball out of the reach of other players. Cheesy, I say. Tough it out.
\nKris and I are now official women\u2019s basketball junkies. I played basketball as a kid and even laced \u2019em up in college a few times, but the game is getting out of hand. It is too physical, too much shoving, too much jumping and dunking, not enough shooting from the perimeter, too many tall guys and not enough short guys. It discourages the guards among us. Kris and I like basketball that focuses on passing and shooting from passes and ball movement. So, we are now fans of the NCAA Women\u2019s version of the game. The teams to watch for us this year will be Tennessee, with Candace Parker from Naperville, and Notre Dame, with Lindsay Schrader, from Bartlett (my sister-in-law, Pat Arnet, was a coach for her team).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just in case you don\u2019t follow soccer, and I\u2019m happy to say that I\u2019ve never played the game nor do I understand how people can stand around and watch 1-o games \u2026 well, just in case, the fierce North Park Vikings are the first team in history to beat the Wheaton Crusaders three times in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\n