Tripping up North

Story by: Tim Lane

Date Published to Web: 6/27/2007
GLADSTONE — Something was just a little off in Molalla’s Friday game against Gladstone. In the 12-2 loss, the 6-2 Indians loaded up the bases twice and failed to convert anything onto the scoreboard.

“The kids all came out a little bit flat,” Molalla baseball coach Rick Dishner said. “Nobody really came with their ‘A’ game, and I don’t know why. I don’t think that anyone knew why, we couldn’t figure it out.
Molalla gave up six runs in the second inning alone and committed seven errors on the afternoon, something that is decidedly unlike the Indians.

“We are usually a good defensive club,” Dishner said. “That is really unlike us. We haven’t had that many errors all season long. We just misplayed a couple balls.”
Molalla faced a pitcher that had given them fits during the high school season.
“They had a pretty good lefty on the mound,” Dishner said. “He did a nice job.”
Riley Falk pitched the first five innings of the game while Alex Cain went to the mound for the final two.

“Neither of the pitchers threw particularly bad,” Dishner said. “We did have a tough time of getting anything going, and Riley had a tough time with some of his mechanics.”

Falk was getting ahead of himself in his pitching motion which left his pitches very high in the strike zone.

“He left a lot of balls from belt to belly-button high,” Dishner said. “And that is a sweet spot, no matter who you are.”

Gladstone is a team that finished last season on top of the Capital Conference.

The loss was only the second in the Indians’ summer season; the other loss was against Lakeridge in the first game back from high school ball.

“We are feeling pretty good about our record,” Dishner said. “I mean, these are competitive teams.”

The win put Molalla at 4-1 on the week as they swept both Lake Oswego and Canby double-headers on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

“We are doing pretty well for summer-league,” Dishner said. “Sometimes I am not completely sure about who I am going to have to play because kids have other things going on, but that is just summer.”

The Indians played LaSalle on Monday and North Marion on Tuesday but results were not available at press time. From Friday through Sunday Molalla will play in the Philomath tournament.

Put me in the game, coach

Isn’t it funny how time distorts things?

Like a half-empty glass set over newsprint it stretches things here and it condenses things there.

I spent much of last week watching high school basketball players sprint up and down the court and a part of me wondered if they really knew how lucky they are.

Here they are, focusing strictly on sports with their parents and community cheering them on and they have the luxury of dedicating hours to a game—how cool is that?

For most of them, there will never be another period in their lives that duplicates these moments. Soon enough there will be kids and bills, marriages and mortgages to worry about. As I sat there, separated by a 3 X5 view finder, I longed for my hay-day when I was pushing myself to be the best that I could.

I wanted to be off the sidelines and in the game.

I wondered what great things I could accomplish if I threw down my camera, and jumped into the game and demanded the rock on the low block. A delusional fantasy of myself sprinting up and down the court and gliding to the hoop crowded the space between my two ears.

Forget drafting Oden or Durant—draft me.

Never mind the fact that I would be dropping lungs instead of threes if I got back on the court; I still wanted to go back and squeeze every last drop out of my time in between the buzzers of every quarter.

I imagined myself to be great.

I imagined myself to be dedicated.

Suddenly it was a distinct reality that I was a sports legend in my high school days (far from it) and that I held records that crowded out the white on walls (actually I only have one).

Then I realized that I had stopped watching the games, I had stopped doing my job.
So I took a deep breath and wiped my hands off on my pants and got back to clicking a camera.

Time is a pretty funny thing. Add a little bit of it to anything and you can get something completely new.

Childhood? Sprinkle on a few years and suddenly it was either super hard (walking to school, up hills both ways) or it is ecstatically happy (oh, those were the days).

Mix time up with a sports reporter and suddenly you get a history of how amazing he was back in the day. Soaking up the moment is key to enjoying life but dang-it I just wanted the high school glory again for a second.

Kids playing basketball, like any in prep sports, are in a unique spot, and they should enjoy it to the utmost, but they will soon discover that life won’t end at the buzzer—or even when the graduation gown is put in the closet. There will be other challenges and triumphs in the road. There will be a time when these high school kids are men and women and are defined by things other than points and wins.

And sometimes they will look back on their days through the half-empty glass on newsprint and they will see sections that seem bigger than they actually were and others that seem smaller than they really were and they might want to jump in off the sidelines to get back in the game.

The problem is that time spent on the sideline is as crucial as time spent on the court because life doesn’t listen to buzzers or refs.

So I am happy behind my lens because time is a shifty thing, and if I am not careful I will be looking back on now and thinking, "man that was sweet when I watched sports for a living."

I mean, I get paid to go to games—how cool is that?

The love you give comes back in the end.
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Baseball and Life

Baseball and softball are head games.

They are all about mental strength, fortitude and rhythm.

There isn’t the constant action of basketball or even football where athletes can play their way into or out of a slump. Baseball moves in jerky stop and start motion like a CD playing with scratch marks. A batter comes to the plate and swings away knowing that it will be a while before he will get up there again. There will be time to think and time to stew.

God forbid if that batter goes down swinging, slicing up a big hunk of air and winding himself up in a knot because then he is banished to the bench where he needs to wait for a chance to redeem himself. Hopefully that batter will be able to get back out onto the field for defense and make a solid catch or a good throw, and get his mind back to the right spot to compete. If not, then it will be a rough night.

Baseball and softball players are nervous creatures.

They chew seeds compulsively, they chatter amongst themselves on the diamond, pounding their mits with their fists to pass the time and chant little words strung together.

“Swing batter, swing batter.”

“One more, one more.”

They look for things to pass the time between action. Those moments when a batter is taking time at the plate and they are in the outfield and are set to stand at attention for action that might never come are crucial.

For many in today’s world, that is baseball’s biggest cross to bear—a lack of consistent action in an American society that has a tiny attention span.

That is however its biggest asset as well. People are drawn to innings, runs and outs because it does not come cheap. Like the affections of a cat it takes time for appreciation of the game to come. However, with time, I challenge anyone to say they can’t at least appreciate it. Baseball and softball are too alike to life to not be appealing. In baseball the action comes in truck-loads or not at all.

The same could be said about life.

So baseball and softball players cling to little things to string them along until the next big thing.

Chewing seeds, making idle chat is the same as following a TV show or repainting the bathroom. They are not crucial things, and they are not what it is all about, but they get you on the way there, they accent the real thing. In life you are defined by how well you can take advantage of the opportunities presented to you.

In baseball and softball it is the same—you need to be ready for when the ball comes flying at you, even though it might never happen.

You need mental strength, fortitude and rhythm.

Baseball and softball are head games.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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Liz Liechty Profile

Broken and Healed Again

By Tim Lane
Molalla Pioneer

A tale of being tough

In high school Elizabeth Liechty’s shoulder could be a bother sometimes. It had a tendency to pop out of its socket, making the painful process of pushing it back in a necessity for those around her.

“I just remember that dang shoulder,” Liechty’s high school basketball coach Ray Williams says. “When it first popped out I was mind boggled. Then I went over and felt it and I was stunned. I would have been crying but the other girls just said ‘oh, this happens all of the time,’ and they just popped it back in and she (Liechty) cringed a little bit and then got back out on the floor.”

She cringed a little bit and then got back out on the floor. She stopped, acknowledged the pain, and then pushed through it and got on with it.

Working through difficulties has been a trend in Liechty’s life.

Liechty knows pain and injury. It is something she has to deal with regularly.

Forget anticipating the worst, forget worrying if something dreadful might happen. For Liechty, she has been there, and the question in her life has always been, what now?

“We have always tried to instill in our kids that quitting is not an option,” Liz’s mother Melissa says. “Being part of what would be considered a large family by today’s standards our kids have always experienced patience and hard work because they competed with each other. None of what she has conquered has surprised me because she has always been tough.”

Liz had to be strong—she grew up in a household with four men, her father Paul, her older brother Dan, 22, and her younger brothers Aaron, 17, and Ben, 15.

“She had never quit anything in her life,” Melissa says. “She is tough. My husband always says she is tougher than all three of our boys.”

Tough like being able to keep playing a sport that knocks her shoulders out of whack.

“When I was in high school, I had two surgeries on my right shoulder,” Liechty says. “It still dislocates on a regular basis now.”

The next level

When Liechty graduated from Molalla High School in the spring of 2004, after the Indians finished fourth in the state, she decided that she wanted to continue playing.

“I got offered full tuition to play basketball and soccer at Treasure Valley Community College, but I decided that it was too far away,” Liechty says. “So I settled on Western Oregon because it was small and I really liked the campus.”

Liechty went to her freshman year of school with no guarantee that she would be able to play for the Wolves but she had a passion to compete that pushed her on.

That passion has been with her ever since she was young.

“Liz has always loved basketball,” Melissa says. “Liz slept with her basketball in grade school and middle school, hoping her ball handling skills would improve.”

After starting the sport in kindergarten and enduring two shoulder surgeries, making the Western Oregon basketball team did not seem like such a giant hurdle.

“My freshman year of college I stayed in shape and never really gave up the idea of playing,” Liechty says.

Along with the work that she put into staying in shape, Liechty also went to Western Oregon games.

“I went and watched (the) team play all their home games my freshman year,” Liechty says. “When I watched I said to myself I could be out there, I can do what they are doing.”

That spring of her freshman year, Liechty contacted the coach and started working out with the team. Those workouts and the show of dedication paid dividends as Liechty made the team as a walk-on her sophomore year of school. Then, a week before the Wolves’ first game, with about 10 minutes left in a practice something went wrong.

“I shifted my weight and my knee gave out,” Liechty remembers. “I tried to walk it off but I knew something was not right.”

After the trainer looked at her injury he agreed something was wrong and a doctor’s visit confirmed it—Liechty had torn her anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL.

“Liz’s Dad, Paul, and I were crushed when Liz called to tell us about her injury,” Melissa remembers. “She had made the cuts to play basketball and had been practicing for a couple of months (when it happened).”

Starting over

Liechty had surgery in November of that year and started throwing herself into the rehabilitation process when another obstacle was thrown up in her way—her basketball coach who had given her a roster spot on the team, resigned.

“I was told that because I had not played because of my ACL I was going to have to start at zero with a new coach,” Liechty recalls.

It was another setback, but also another chance to push through.

That new coach was Greg Bruce. Bruce came into the program looking to revamp the team into a winner.

He made it a priority to visit each one of the players on the team from the area.

“We didn’t have a lot of local kids on the team so I made it a point to visit each one,” Bruce says. “The thing that struck me the most about Liz was that she was honest and willing to do whatever it took to get on the team.”

So Bruce threw Liechty, and the rest of the team, into the fire with an intensive preseason training regimen.

“At the start of the year I went to 6 a.m. track workouts three days a week along with individual workouts in the afternoon and weights also,” Liechty says.

The workouts were no walk in the park for Liechty.

“I think that the preseason conditioning was a shock to most of the kids and I think that Liz struggled a little on the track and in the first few practices in the gym,” Bruce says. “What I liked about her though was that she accepted criticism and she allowed you to coach her. She is a ‘yes sir’ or ‘no sir’ kind of player.”

Hard work over talent

Liz’s dedication propped her up to success, even though she might not have been as naturally gifted as other players.

“If you want to stack talent on talent she was on the short end of things but through hard work she has been able to succeed,” Bruce says.

Once again, Liechty’s hard work in the face of challenge paid off and she made the team. Her goal this year was to start at least one game and she did it, along with leading the team in field goal percentage and scoring a career-high 10 points against Metro State in a tournament in Montana.

Like most of Liechty’s other goals, she earned her achievements and people around her have taken notice.

“I think Liz has truly been an example for everyone around her,” Melissa says. “She has faced whatever life has thrown her way with determination and drive. She is stubborn, she doesn’t give up. We were all extremely proud of her.”

On the flip side of that, Liz is just as thankful for the support her family has provided.

“My parents and extended family have supported me in every way and pushed me to always do better,” Liz says. “On average I had about 15 family members at every game. Whether I played 40 minutes or zero they were there. My parents have helped me the most. They always supported me and told me not to give up.”

For Liechty, the road to where she is now has been long, and at times bumpy, but the process has been worth the result.

“I never really had a low I guess,” Liechty says of working through pain and injuries on her way to becoming a college athlete. “It is weird but I enjoy practice so much. I try to go everyday and give all I have. Both my shoulders and knee still bother me but there is no way I am going to let that stop me from playing. I don’t hold anything back because I
have worked so hard to get where I am now.”

Liechty, along with playing for the Wolves, is an American Sign Language major with a minor in Physical Education. She hopes to work as an interpreter in an elementary setting.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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Dear Burly Fisherman

To Whom It May Concern,

Alaskan fishermen are tough mothers, I’ll tell you what.

I was out at the bars, having a few beers and fortifying myself with a false sense of strength when a burly and bearded man with arms bulging with muscles challenged me to arm wrestling.

Mano a mano.

I thought, I am tall, I have leverage, and I have beaten most of my friends at this before, so why not.

I plopped down and made a big show of stretching and getting ready and then clasped hands with the man who smelled of fish oil.

He creamed me and as he smiled and took a pull off of his hand-rolled cigarette I challenged him to a rematch in a couple of weeks.

“No time for that,” he said. “I am off fishing starting tomorrow. Will be gone for three months.”

I called my girlfriend, dejected and depressed.

“Did you bet me?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Well, then you are fine,” she said.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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Body Worlds 3 at OMSI---Welcome to the Club

See the Eyes


Death and life are often viewed as the hopeful beginning and the dreadful end.



Our relationship to our body, the instrument that is our filter to the outside world, is often ignored and clouded with fear and ignorance because of that beginning—but more likely because of that end.

I see through my eyes but I do not see my eyes.

Right now at OMSI you get the chance to see the eyes.
It is creepy and eerie in a way that is difficult to pinpoint, but nevertheless it is worthwhile.

Real skeletons strapped with muscle tissue and tendons, veins and organs flapping outward, kick-flip skateboards and jump hurdles down at OMSI in Portland, Ore. starting today.

Body Worlds 3, the brain-child of Dr. Gunther von Hagens, will be on display for anyone who has time to spare and a strong constitution in the stomach region.

If not, you might end up emptying your stomach onto a stomach.

The bodies are preserved, with consent from the donors, using a process known as plastination—developed and perfected at von Hagens’ own Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany.

Technicians inject different types of plastics into the body and replace the liquids, which preserves the body’s tissue in a pliable and creepy way that is supposedly permanent and makes it so the muscles and tendons shake and vibrate when people walk by.

Half of me expected the body’s eyes to dart and focus at me at any moment.
The exhibit is spread out over two floors in strategically lit rooms with large canvases draped down in the manner of great mansions or cathedrals displaying various quotes on death and our relationship with it made by some of the best thinkers our world has ever produced.

Suddenly death is not something marked with a tombstone and a few eloquent words etched in stone, it is a very real, very vibrant and colorful dissection of ourselves, to show that death is in an intimate and committed relationship with life.

At least that is what the exhibit conveys—death and how much a part of life it is.

However as I walked away from the collection of bodies posed in positions ranging from praying to running—all done with brains, livers, hearts and multiple other organs blown out the back so gawkers could amble by and stick their noses into someone’s else’s chest cavity—I had the much more profound impression of life and its relationship to death.

Here was an exhibit that showed me just exactly how the muscles lining the truck of my body bend and flex to keep me upright and balanced, a showcase that displayed just how negative a consequence smoking can be to the delicate tissues in our lungs.

And it came from the death and preservation of someone else.

We are living until we die and Body Worlds 3 blurs that line and shows just how close we are to the other side.

The “VIP” opening of the event coincided with the graduation ceremony of OHSU, so as I ambled around the completely exposed corpses of people long since dead, there were men and women in suits strolling beside me and making offhand medical observations on the form and function of the displays.

These were health workers who were “in the club.” They had been “seeing the eyes” for quite some time now.

As I leaned intently over a glass box containing the perfectly preserved enlarged heart of a person dead of a heart attack a very well dressed man with gold-rimmed glasses commented to his wife.

“I had a patient with a heart condition just like this one last week,” he said with a smile. “The guy croaked before we could get him into the O.R.”

Doctors and nurses and others intimately involved with the health industry have long dealt with life’s relationship to death while everyone else has voluntarily sheltered away from it.

We live everyday not really understanding how.

The health world knows and it is jaded, in a sense, to the point that they will smile and point out the reason a patient of theirs died last week.

Body Worlds 3 lets us into that exclusive club that sees the eyes, not just through them—even if we are not ready for it.

Welcome to the beginning of seeing the end… Or is it the other way around?

It is all in the eyes.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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Battleing the Red Tape Monster

Man, do immigrants have it tough or what?

Last week I was cycled through various public buildings in order to secure a visa to work and live abroad in the upcoming year. The granite structures ranged from the central police precinct to something called the Justice Building

I assume the Justice Building is the place where justice originates from. I imagine wearing a black cape.

I had to show various forms of identification, had to sign onto a list with my reason for coming and I had to wait in small little rooms lit by the flickering of a tired neon light who just wanted to get some rest. The light seemed cranky, and I was cranky and the guy who was helping me out? Well, guess what? He was cranky too.

We all just needed more sleep I suppose.

Little processing fees seemed to pop up at every corner like molehills in a freshly mowed lawn and I could feel my energy drain with the dollars in my bank account. My hand was stamped as I was ushered through turn styles much like the entrance of a night club, but unlike a night club, when I finally got through the craggy bouncer, the throng of others waiting and the various ID checks, there was no pulsing music, no excited ambiance and certainly no stiff drinks.

The last difference was especially appalling because I have found that once the red tape of any government establishment is navigated, you could use a stiff drink.

OK, I am exaggerating... Horribly.

The whole thing probably lasted less than thirty minutes, but at the end of the day it was pretty bureaucratic and if I had not done extensive research before I went as to what I should bring, the whole thing could have been truly painful—and this is coming from a guy who has been a citizen his whole life and has no criminal record.

I don’t have a better solution as to how the system should work. Part of the reason for having extensive hoops to jump through is to catch the people who should be caught. The unsavory characters in this world. The whole issue of red tape is probably just a necessary evil.

Still makes me think, if it can be such a pain for a citizen, what must it be like for someone here from another country. Someone who was fleeing a life of poverty to set up something better? They don’t have the little plastic cards that validate their presence, they don’t have the language skills to successfully navigate the bowels of public buildings and they have nothing in the way of practical experience to apply to the process.

Man, do immigrants have it tough or what?

The love you give comes back in the end.

Champion

At the beginning of the Linfield College softball season freshman Jessica Popiel knew that her new team was good—she just didn’t realize how good.

“We always knew that we were probably one of the best teams in the country, but I don’t think that we realized that we were the best team in the country,” Popiel said.

The Linfield Wildcats (37-11 overall, 22-6 conference) won the NCAA Division III softball title with a 10-2 win over Washington-St. Louis on May 22 at the Moyer Sports Complex in Salem, Va. It was the first women’s national team title in school history and Popiel was an intricate part of the success throughout the season.

“It is pretty surreal,” Popiel said. “I don’t think that it has all sunken in yet. I think that when we start getting stuff like our championship rings then it will feel more real. It is not overwhelming now, not yet.”

While Popiel sat out the championship series with an injury sustained in a game against the Redlands on May 13, she doesn’t think that the team felt too much anxiety in the big series.

“To be honest, it didn’t feel like too much pressure,” Popiel said. “It just felt like any other game, just another tournament. Afterwards, it didn’t feel like we should be done playing.”

After the Wildcats won their trophy, Popiel’s phone started ringing with calls from well-wishers.

“Everyone has been calling me—my family, my old coaches, my friends and the coaches of my friends—everyone,” Popiel said.

That thrill of winning has carried over to her fans as well.

“It was very exciting,” Jessica Popiel’s mother Irene said. “It was really fun to be able to go and watch (Linfield games during the season).”

While Irene was unable to make it to the championship series, she followed her daughter’s team intently.

Jessica, who played shortstop for the Molalla Indians in high school, switched into the outfield for Linfield, spending most of her time in the right field.

“It is a very different perspective out there,” Jessica said. “You are the last line of defense. Well, there is the fence back there, but if it gets there that is no good.”
Jessica was thrust into the new role out of necessity.

“We really had a need for our freshmen class to step in and help us in the outfield and with

Jessica’s ability to run and make plays she was a natural candidate for the position,” Linfield softball coach Jackson Vaughan said. “It was hard for her to break a lot of her infield habits but the more she worked at it the better she got and by the end of the season she was one of the better defensive outfielders in our conference.”

Proof of Jessica’s success is in her 41 starts, 43 games played, a .309 batting average for the season, 25 runs, 19 RBI, eight stolen bases with one home run.

That ability to excel from all spots in the field made her valuable.

“Jessica’s biggest strength is probably her athleticism and versatility,” Vaughan said. “She is very athletic and has the ability to play a number of defensive positions.”

The jump from high school ball to college ball has meant better treatment as a player for Jessica who does not miss riding to games in the classic yellow school buses.
“It is very different,” Jessica said. “It is an amazing feeling to know that you are flying across the country to play softball.”

Another difference for Jessica has been the jump in the ability of opponents.

“You have to realize real fast that everyone can play,” Jessica said. “In high school there are competitive people but there are also people out there to have fun. In college you are always playing to win, and everyone has the ability to do that.”

The best part of being on the softball team for Jessica has been the support it has provided.

“Everyone on the team is great,” Jessica said. “They are all supportive so the feeling is really awesome because you know if you have a problem you can come to them with it and they will fix it. The seniors were really encouraging to us. They didn’t make us do anything like carry their bags or anything like that. They did make fun of us a little bit though.”

There will not be much rest for Jessica to enjoy her new status as part of the best team in Division III softball. She will take two weeks off before jumping into a summer workout regimen targeted to improve her strength and conditioning. That will lead her right up into Fall ball where she will have three practices a week for four weeks with the rest of the team to hone that strength and conditioning before running right up into the 2008 season in January.

“In softball you are always doing something and then pretty soon the year is over,” she said.
Jessica should have a central role in the team’s future.

“Jessica has a bright future in our program,” Vaughan said. “She needs to continue to work hard and develop her skills as a hitter at the college level but with her work ethic and attitude we expect her to be a contributor for years to come.”

Preparation for that future begins now and Jessica is eager to play a pivotal role in the Wildcats’ bid to repeat as champions.

“We are very hungry to repeat,” Jessica said. “Once you get that feeling of what it is like to win, you just want it more.”

Set to join Jessica on 2008’s edition of Linfield softball is former high school teammate Kendra Guest who is coming off of a dominant season of pitching for the Molalla Indians where she was named a first-team all-league pitcher.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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