Oct. 2 marked 10 years since the death of my mother, Laura (Willoughby) Hardesty.
So I’m right in the middle of reading Gerry Faust’s 1997 book “The Golden Dream,” detailing his tumultuous time as head coach at Notre Dame and the University of Akron, and it’s turning out to be quite the nostalgic experience for me — as well as a lesson in human nature.
The Kent State University athletic program has a long and rich history with the Olympic Games. And when the 2024 Summer Olympics get underway today in Paris, the Golden Flashes will once again be well represented.
Last week in Round Two, I discussed how almost nothing about college sports makes sense anymore, including simple math (the Big Ten Conference has 18 teams) and geography (two California schools, Stanford and Cal, are now in the Atlantic Coast Conference).
College football is my favorite sport.
Some of my earliest memories involve sitting in front of the television in the early 1970s watching the Ohio State-Michigan game and the Buckeyes playing in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. The eye-catching visuals of the Scarlet and Gray lining up against those dreaded maize-and-blue wing-tip helmets, and the magical way the Buckeyes’ own silver helmets gleamed in the Southern California sunshine, were powerful images that are indelibly etched in my mind.
Piggybacking off my most recent Round Two column centered around Memorial Day, and with yesterday being the 80th anniversary of D-Day, today I’m going to tell the story of three veterans I met on the World War II Memorial Battlefield Tour of Western Europe that my wife and I took in June 2002.
A stiff breeze whipped off the English Channel as its waves angrily crashed ashore behind me.
Welcome to Part 3 of my 30-year retrospective of my days shoeleathering around Portage County covering high school track & field. I could write a book on these experiences, which cover a period of roughly a decade from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, but, short of a publishing deal, a few Round Two columns will have to do.
With 2024 marking my 30-year anniversary of covering sports in Portage County, I figured I’d take a walk down memory lane and look back at the years I spent covering high school track and field (and cross country, too, since it’s pretty much the same coaches and athletes). The stories are endless, but I thought I’d cull a few of my favorites for Round Two.