Along comes (a scholarship to) Mary

By Ron Kantowski

Thursday, May 29, 2008 | 8:13 p.m.

NOW

--- Tracy Lide, a football player and track star at Spring Valley High, has signed to play football and run track at the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D. While I don't know young Mr. Lide I am happy for him, if for no other reason that he's going to get a free education and an education, even if you have to pay for one, is important.

But that's not what attracted me to the news that he had signed to play football and run track at the University of Mary. What attracted me is the way the press release was worded.

Instead of saying that Tracy Lide had signed to play football and run track at the University of Mary, this is the way it began:

Tracy Lide from Las Vegas, NV, is one of hundreds of new students about to pursue a degree at the University of Mary, America's leadership university in Bismarck, starting the fall semester of 2008.

Then it went on to say he would play football and run track and that the Marauders' football team capped a tremendous second-place finish in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference of NCAA Division II with a victory in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis.

It would appear from the order in which these facts were presented that the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D., has its priorities in order.

You could tell that it is proud of its football team. And that Tracy Lide of Las Vegas, NV, will be expected to attend class now and then.

--- Then I got another press release, from UNLV. This one said that Xavier Scruggs, the Rebels' power-hitting first baseman, has been named a second-team All-American and that this a pretty big deal, because UNLV hasn't had an All-American since 2004. In other words, baseball All-Americans don't grow on the palm trees around here.

Then, in the next paragraph, there's a quote from Rebels coach (for a few more days anyway) Buddy Gouldsmith, saying that he couldn't be happier for Xavier who "adds to a long line of All-Americans here at UNLV."

Hmmm ...

Maybe there was a long line, and it just got shorter beginning in 2004.

THEN

--- You're not going to believe this, but I also have a personal University of Mary anecdote to share. I had actually heard of it before I received the press release about Tracy Lide.

In the early 1980s I was covering the NAIA basketball tournament in Kansas City where Mary College, as the university was known then, was playing one of those schools from Oklahoma or Missouri with a direction or an A&I in its name. Mary had a guard named Hank Taken Alive, and the crowd at Kemper Arena went crazy every time he scored a basket, mostly because the public address announcer was having such a good time saying his name.

Hank Taken Alive's name came up in a Google search I did after receiving the press release about Lide. He is quoted in Sports Illustrated's 50th anniversary issue in a story about the Lakota Nation's passion for basketball and Native American culture.

There's a picture of Hank's son, Ray Taken Alive, who was the star player for the McLaughlin High team that his old man coached -- further proof that the world, or at least the little corner of it in which I reside, is indeed a very small place.