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Show ft Xm Newspaper j . 1 53 ... ' ' I by Jim Murray Munnraty nim Spqpirfe Page 15 Muckers Knock Stripes Off Pocatello Zebras Thursday, August 7, 1980 By Richard Barnum-Reece It was the kind of day you write home about for Skip Schirf. He was kicking the ball through the uprights with abandon and it seemed there was little the Idaho Falls side could do to stop the assault of the Park City Club, and Schirf, who scored 13 points with his educated foot. "Skip scored five of seven extra point tries and then he kicked a three-point penalty play from the 12-yard line," said John Sundquist. "Our team was having a good day. We really wanted to beat these guys 'cause they beat us last time. So we wanted to show them that we were a better team than we showed them last time." The Muckers dumped the Idaho Falls Zebras 41-12. They ran the Zebras into the ground in the second half thanks, in part, to top performances per-formances from four Park City substitutes. Idaho Falls brought down 16 players and they were unable to substitute sub-stitute more than one player at half time. That told the tale for the Zebras, who split off last year from the Pocatello Bulls, taking the majority of their running backs with them. "A month ago they beat us 21 to 12, but we felt that score wasn't really very indkSjye of our ability, "Survfawst said. "We just kind of laid down and died the second half. We'd just driven all the way up there and people were tired. That's no excuse but, anyway, we were really up for it when they came down for the return match." Both teams agreed to have unlimited substitutions before the game started. Both teams also agreed to run 40-minute regulation halves. Idaho is a back-line oriented orien-ted team thanks to the experience ex-perience and strength of the backs who previously played for Pocatello. But, in the end, the Muckers weren't intimidated in-timidated by the quickness of the Zebras. It was an important im-portant win for Park City. "It sets our momentum up," Sundquist said. "We've got a big tournament coming up this' weekend in Lake Tahoe. Our season is still ahead of us and we needed that win." . , ft 7jp V ' JB V v i i '4 A A . A- rXs f ! ; w ici'-TTr Of the 80 minutes of play during the first game against the Zebras in Idaho Falls; the Muckers played about the first 10 minutes. "I'd say that for about 70 minutes we were out there loafing," Sundquist said. "It was different dif-ferent this time." Indeed. It was a runaway for the Muckers. Although the score at the half was a modest 15-8 for the Park City side, the worst was yet to come for Idaho Falls. Again, emphasizing the intent in-tent of the Muckers, Sundquist Sund-quist said: "We wanted to be sure that they knew who was the better team. We weren't going to pull back at all. So we didn't." John Sundquist scored three minutes into the game to draw first blood in the first half. Park City was marching mar-ching down into the end zone and the ball squirted out into the end zone where Sundquist Sund-quist pounced on it, alertly scoring. "To tell you the truth I wasn't even sure it was in the end zone when I started going for it," Sundquist said. "We were just in the process of regaining possession. " The extra point was good and Park City led 6-0. But the Zebras came back directly. They ran around -it - r - ' , 'fV. . - ' sf 3 . t 1' . ."vT i . ... ., m-- the weak side of the Mucker defense where some key tackles were missed and went into the end zone for the score. The extra point was missed and Park City now led by a slim margin of 6-4. Then, Idaho Falls seemed to be attempting a re-write of the early game as they went ahead 15 minutes into the game, repeating the end 1 k ) o 1 run around the Park City weak side. Again, a few key tackles were missed. There , was some disagreement as to whether or not the ball was in the end zone when possession was regained by the Zebras but the ref, from Park City, ruled in favor of the Idaho Falls club. Park City appeared to be letting up a bit as that score was made. Possibly, one of their players said later, they were too confident after the first score. Regardless, it was at that point that the team seemed to buckle down to the business at hand. Dave Sundquist scored on a good run the left side of the field. The scrum was taking the ball in and Sundquist, a hooker, picked up the ball 20 yards out and then wiggled his way past the outstretched hands of the defenders, taking the ball in under the goal post which gave Schirf perfect position for the point after. The score was 12-8 for Park City It was right after that that the Idaho Falls team gave up the ball on their own 12 yard line. Their runner, calling for a free kick, held onto the ball for too long, which gave the ball, igain, to Schirf, who reipoAued with another ball between the uprights. During the second half, the tournament-tough Muckers came back with four fresh players without losing in expertise. ex-pertise. Entering for Park City were Carl Dolhausen at outside center; Bruce Reed, lock; Mark Stocken, wing; and Dave Bodner, the Mucker's king-hell, break-loose break-loose forward. "The thing about our team this year that makes it better than in past years it we have good depth," Sundquist said. "It's a good boost for us when our subs come in ! " Bodner responded to the call with a super score, he, like the other substitutes, is in top condition. "We put the Capricious Judging Nothing New in the Olympics horses in and they ran the other side into the ground," Sundquist said. Scoring for Park City in the second half were Bodner, Doug Schewmaker, Mark Stocken, and Don Symmonds, the fullback. The Muckers team morale got a big boost with the performance per-formance of the team through the second half. The win sets up the momentum for the team as it moves to Lake Tahoe next weekend and then to Pocatello for a Labor Day tournament before a big tournament in Albuquerque, New Mexico, later this fall. The Muckers currently stand at 7-5 with three ties but most of the players seem to believe each of the losses were close and could have gone either way (except for the Utah State game, the first of the year, which was a blowout). "I think we're doing okay, but we could be doing better," bet-ter," Sundquist said. "We've played much better quality teams than in the past and we've had some good wins." Among the more significant victories this year was the July 4 win over the Dead Goat and a 11-4 win over Breckenridge at the Ski Town's Tournament in Sun Valley. "Rugby is just getting better bet-ter everywhere," Sundquist said. "We're playing better teams and the teams are in better condition overall." Some of the teams invited to the Park City Challenge Cup later this fall are the Dead Goat, Santa Cruz, Calgary, Albuquerque, Snake River, Montery, and Edmonton. In the future, Sundquist said, it's possible that the team will tour England or New Zealand. "It's not that hard to do," he said. "It's something we're thinking about for the future. And it would really be good for our club." Moscow On the night ol July 25, in Lenin Stadium, hard by the massive statue of the great architect of the Soviet system himself, spectators were treated to a curious sight. The great Brazilian triple jumper, Joao Carlos de pliveira, who had just fouled out of the competition, walked gravely to all of the judges who had fouled him out and shook their hands with elaborate politeness. Joao seemed to be congratulating them on a job well done for Mother Russia and maybe he was. These judges had just fouled his last three jumps and three out of four. You have to understand Joao did not pick up the event on his way to the stadium. He did not have the instructions to it written on his sleeve. He came to Moscow as the world record-holder, the bronze medal winner at the last Olympics and a long-time world-class international in-ternational jumper. Could a man of his command of the event and experience commit technical blunders on the three most important jumps of his life? Would Tom Seaver walk in the winning run in a World Series? Jack Nicklaus put clean off the green on the 18th hole of the Open? Track experts thought not. Also startling was that Ian Campbell, the Australian triple jumper, had fouled five times in six jumps. And one of them would have won the event by nearly a foot. It was noted a Russian was leading the event and trying to smuggle his gold medal safely into the clubhouse at the time and the Soviet idol, Viktor Saneyev, three-time Olympic winner, was having no difficulty at all with his jumps. He got off five of them, ultimately copping the silver. What was going on? Were the Comrades at it again? The old Siberian sting at work? Weren't more than 60 gold medals enough for them? What did they want a shutout? Would it hurt if a South American won just one lousy little medal? The incident touched off a curious sequence of events. Interested parties suddenly began to remember Soviet divers being given second dives after they did belly flops in their first, javelins being scored for distance for Russians even though they landed on their bellies, too. What had happened? Had Ivan been caught with five aces? Were they frisking the wrong people at Moscow? If you shook a Russian, would a short tape measure fall out? Wednesday, somebody pushed a button and, suddenly, the field at the resumption of track and field competition was flooded with red-coated appeal-jury members of the International Inter-national Amateur Athletic Federation. They had earlier absented themselves from the field in this Olympics because they didn't want to seem to be supervising the Russians, as if they were rookies. Embarrassing, don't you see? The IAAF types pooh-poohed the significance signifi-cance of the sudden emergence of the redcoats.-Oh, redcoats.-Oh, the president, Adrain Paulen, kicked off a Russian athlete for coaching a colleague on wind conditions. But boys will be boys. The Russians reacted as they always do when the cops show up. They queued up. And quit whatever they were doing. Western paranoia? The Tovarisches wouldn't do anything like that, would they? I mean, what about detente and all? Really. Capricious judging is nothing new in the Olympics. The host country almost always indulges in a bit of it. Recall Jesse Owens, in trying to qualify for the long jump in Berlin in 1936, had to take off two feet before the foul board on his last jump because the Germans had already fouled him twice? Imagine what that would have done to track history if they did it thrice? In 1972, George Woods' shotput hit the metal marker that had been placed out there to show Wladyslaw Kimar's winning put. The judges moved George's put one-half inch back. They took Bob Seagren's poles away from him the night before his event and almost made him vault ( to second place ) on a pair of canes he got from Abbey Rents. Locked in a Men's Room Which is why I like the saga of Miruts Yif-ter. Yif-ter. Miruts, in case you didn't know, is a distance runner. And there isn't much a judge can do about him. Unless he gets locked in a men's room on the way to a heat as happened to him at Munich. Like Dempsey used to say, Miruts carries hi:, judges with him . The first look you get at Miruts, you're tempted to say, "OK, Miruts, tell them again what you said to that witch doctor." I mean, he looks as if he had been shrunken. With a little lit-tle luck, he could be hanging off a rear-view mirror. First of all, there's that bald front head. Miruts has let his hair kind of grow forward well back of the middle of his pate, which gives it the look of a wheat field which has been cut down to make room for a parking lot, the somewhat comical look of Jiggs in Maggie and Jiggs. Miruts is 160 cenlimeters tall, which means he's over 4 feet but not much. His age is a secret, probably becuase Miruts doesn't know it either. His weight? Oh, easily 100 pounds. Miruts was raised in the mountains of Ethiopia, where he used to run to school every day and home again. It wasn't much. Probably no farther than Long Beach from L.A. Anyway, there weren't any buses. In that country, you learn to run fast. At that age, Miruts probably looked like a good hors d'oeuvre to the wildlife A Fast Pace Miruts came down to Addis Ababa one day from his hometown when he heard they were going to have a race there between the halves of a football game. A mysterious kind of a race called "10,000 meters." Miruts had no idea what that was but, so long as it involved running, he figured he could handle it. And he could. The coach didn't want to let him run. But the crowd hooted. They liked the funny-looking funny-looking little guy in the baggy shorts and the fringe haircut. The race started. Miruts ran like the wind. He was astonished to find he was opening up a huge lead over these experienced ex-perienced runners. He ran all the faster. For 400 meters. Then he collapsed. Miruts missed the finish line by 9,600 meters. But some say Miruts equaled the world record for 400 meters that day. He sometimes does it now, too. In parts or at the ends of the 10,000 or 5,000 meters. Miruts was ready for his big challenge of Lasse Viren at Montreal. But he kind of got locked in the bathroom again. Africa decided to boycott the Games. Since Miruts speaks no English, you have to find out in Amharic what he thinks of all this. That ain't easy. Miruts has already won the 10,000 meters here. He will probably win the 5,000. He is somewhere between 35 or 50 in age but when the London Sunday Times' Dudley Doust asked him his true age, Miruts answered, "You can take my money, you can take my women, but don't take my years." Miruts Yifter is what the Olympics should be all about. Not these cookie-cutter athletes stamped out in Leipzig or the Donets Basin, not a coach's or system's pawn, just a simple country boy who comes down from the mountains moun-tains with a pair of shoes tied round his neck and a note from his mother saying he's a good boy and, if found, please put him on a bus and point him home. No one taught him to run. Except, maybe, the lions. It's a pleasure to see him effortlessly pr.iting away these factory-built East Germans and North Russians, even though he's ,iever had a lesson or a sterioid in his life. In fact, he doesn't even need shoes. (c) 1980, Los Angeles Times 614 Main 649-9066 1378 PARK AVENUE m . . J, House For Sale, To Be Moved Includes: Washer and dryer Electric range Dishwasher 2 forced air gas furnaces Master bedroom has fireplace and oak floor Master bath jetted jacuzzi tub with redwood steam sauna 8 octagon fiberglass spa and deck Purchase price $20,000, All offers considered Contact Maureen, owneragent |