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Written by Dan McDonald Tuesday, 27 October 2009 09:54
So you thought it was football all the time in Louisiana during this time of year? Not so fast, my friends. Here’s some state happenings in sports you didn’t even know existed, or had forgotten about...
ICE GATORS’ RETURN: Hockey wasn’t dead in South Louisiana, it was just on hiatus.
Four years after the Louisiana IceGators were the last remnant of what used to be a solid contingent of state teams in the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL), hockey returned to Lafayette Friday night with a new incarnation in a new league and in a new location.
And even though the IceGators lost their first two outings in the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL) last Thursday and Friday, that didn’t diminish fan enthusiasm. An estimated 4,000 came out to refurbished Blackham Coliseum for Thursday’s 3-2 opening loss to the Mississippi Surge, and approximately 3,000 were on hand for Friday’s loss to the Pensacola Ice Flyers. Blackham seats approximately 6,000 for hockey, with every seat no more than 20 rows from the dasher boards.
“It’s a new era,” said coach Ron Handy, who came to Lafayette to play for the original IceGators 15 years ago. “The people that were here when I first stepped on the ice for the IceGators, they all have families of their own now. We have that original fan base, and some of their kids have never seen a hockey game here before.”
Granted, it’s not the cultural phenomenon of the mid-‘90s, when the team averaged over 11,000 for three straight seasons and crowds of 12,000 at the Cajundome were regular occurrences. The ‘Gators outdrew several NHL teams during their heyday. And while the ECHL had more than its share of respect among hockey insiders, the SPHL is considered a lower-level league.
“The league has that rap,”Handy said, “but I’m telling you there is a lot of talent in this league.”
The league has teams in Biloxi, Miss., Pensacola, Fla., Columbus, Ga., Huntsville, Ala., Fayetteville, N.C. and Knoxville, Tenn., in addition to the IceGators. Louisiana has home games Friday against Pensacola and Saturday against Mississippi.
Best part of the new team, especially for fans who look forward to the brawls: the new mascot, named InstaGator.
THAT’S JUST PITCHIN’: Monroe will be the capital of the horseshoe pitching world in two years.
The world tournament of the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association will be held at the Monroe Civic Center from July 18-30, 2011. Monroe submitted a bid at this year’s tournament held last week in Springfield, Ill., and won out over Knoxville, Tenn. – in what apparently wasn’t spirited bidding.
“We heard all Knoxville sent was a pamphlet,” said Monroe-West Monroe Convention and Visitors Bureau representative Scott Bruscato. “After we gave our presentation, they voted right in front of us.”
Not exactly the Olympic Games, but where Chicago came up short two weeks ago, Monroe was successful in bringing around 1,300 horseshoe chunkers to town. Supposedly it’s the most southern locale for the event in two decades, and a first in Louisiana.
Now all the local organizing committee and the national association have to do is teach some geography. Bruscato said that during his time in Springfield he was frequently asked the distance to New Orleans from Monroe.
SKI PARTY: In other major sports news out of Monroe, UL Monroe’s team won the National Collegiate Water Ski Association’s national title in Bakersfield, Calif., last weekend. ULM won its fourth straight title over 11 other Division I teams and won by more than 1,000 points in the incredibly-complicated coed points standings.
In a sign of the apocalypse, ski teams are apparently now recruiting internationally. ULM’s top performers in the national meet were Martin Bartalsky of Slovakia and Adam Sedlmajer and Daniel Odvarko of the Czech Republic, who finished 1-2-4 in slalom and 1-3 in tricks. In the women’s event, ULM’s Kate Adriaensen of Belgium had a first, a second and a fifth in her three events.
TOUGHEST TOURNAMENT: It went under most sports radar, but three players from Louisiana and another with state roots made it through the first stage of golf’s toughest event, the PGA Tour’s Qualifying School (“Q-School”) last weekend.
Lafayette’s Michael Smith finished second at the first-stage event in Port St. Lucie, Fla., with solid 67-69-68-69 scores, and was part of 22 players qualifying for Q-School’s second stage there.
Meanwhile, Chris Wells of Baton Rouge qualified on the number as one of 21 qualifiers from the first-stage event at Auburn, Ala., and Breaux Bridge native and Greenville, S.C., resident Brent Delahoussaye qualified out of the Florence, S.C., first-stage event.
Brett Bergeron of LaPlace and Greg Sonnier of Lake Charles both missed advancing to the second-stage qualifying by two strokes, Bergeron at Florence and Sonnier at St. Augustine, Fla.
Six more first-stage locations begin competition on Tuesday, each qualifying just over 20 players to the second stage of the grueling push for PGA Tour cards. Second-stage competition is scheduled Nov. 18-21 at six different locations, and qualifiers from there compete in the final qualifying stage Dec. 2-7 at Bear Lakes in West Palm Beach, Fla.
I-BOWL REDUX: Shreveport’s Independence Bowl will have a new look beginning next year. The bowl, which this year completes its contracts for the seventh selection from the Big 12 and the eighth selection from the SEC, will have tie-ins with the ACC and the Mountain West from 2010-2013.
The bowl will have the ACC’s seventh pick and the third selection from the Mountain West, which is not an automatic BCS conference.
The good news: Given the well-down-the-list picks from the Big 12 and SEC in the past, the I-Bowl has often wound up with 6-6 teams from those leagues – that is, when those leagues had enough bowl-eligible teams. Last December, neither league fulfilled its bowl obligations and the bowl wound up with a WAC-MAC matchup in La. Tech and Northern Illinois.
The bad news: Fans recognize the SEC and Big 12 as perhaps the nation’s best two college football conferences. They know the ACC and the MWC aren’t as good, and most couldn’t rattle off all the members of either league.
