Speaking of Sports

By John Fragodt, Sports Reporter

•• Life goes by much too fast  — I was a tennis player in 8th and 9th grade, playing first singles for the Benson Braves my freshmen year after playing second doubles as an eighth-grader.  I also competed in track during the summer and so, when the track coach asked if I wanted to compete with the varsity team during the district meet my 9th grade year, I jumped at the chance.  The tennis coach wasn’t as nice and made me decide between the two sports at the time and, despite being a tough decision, I went with track.

I remember running the 180 yard low hurdles at Appleton during the district meet in 9th grade.  Benson had a very good track team at the time and I was just happy to compete with those guys, including Ryan Lamppa and Jeff Eckhoff.  We didn’t have any 10th-12th grade hurdlers, so I got to run the 180 yard low hurdles, in addition to the 120-yard high hurdles and long jump.

I had always known the name, Alton Todd, from years gone by at BHS.  He was the recordholder of the 180 yard low hurdles.  I had a chance to beat his record that day at Appleton, but I ended up falling going over the last hurdle while in second place.

It would be the last time I ran the race because the 330-yard (or 300 meter) intermediate hurdles replaced the 180 low hurdles the next season in the spring of 1978.

However, I always remembered the Alton Todd name and I got a chance to meet him one day at the Benson Bakery.  Alton was a very tall and slender man, who appeared very energetic and full of optimism.  It was a great meeting and we agreed to meet every summer to reacquaint ourselves and get to know each other better.

Well, COVID took over and my wife and I moved fulltime up to Pelican Lake so I missed a summer or two of meeting up with him the last few years.  Sometime this winter, I was reading the Swift County Monitor-News paper and read that Alton Todd, age 84, of Mendota Heights, had passed away in August of this past year.

My heart sank and I immediately regretted not being able to meet up with him again.  It just goes to show you that life goes by too fast so make sure to enjoy every day as best you can and try to live without regrets.

•• NBA has got to make some changes — Basketball always has been, and always will be, one of my favorite 2-3 sports.  I have always enjoyed playing basketball, watching basketball and reading about basketball.  

However, my feelings of the NBA have changed a lot over the years.  In my early days, I enjoyed watching Walt Frazier, Dr. J, Larry Bird and others playing in the NBA.

When Dr. J got his first NBA championship ring, playing with Moses Malone, it was one of my favorite seasons of the NBA.  When the Celtics and Lakers were playing every season in the 1980s for the NBA title, the NBA reigned supreme in my sports universe.

That has changed big time lately as the NBA has grown stale, relies too much on only a few personalities and mostly, has grown too dependent on the 3-point shot.

The NBA first used the 3-point line in the 1979 season and the first season of high school using the 3-pointer was the 1988-89 season, if I remember right.

At first it was a novelty shot and one that was used at the end of games for a team to play catch-up.  No more!  Right now, it’s basically the main shot of most teams and in a lot of cases, teams are taking more than half their shots from 3-point range.

That’s not the best for NBA fans.  It means a lot of standing around, no short-range jumpers, not a lot of driving to the basket and a lot of long rebounds where only one or two players are positioned to go for a rebound.

I was watching a Boston Celtic game recently.  The Celtics won the NBA title last year.  Boston took 57 three-point shots during the game out of 89 total field goal shots.  That’s unheard of!  

High school athletes see that and immediately think they have to take a lot of 3-pointers; and that’s exactly what’s happening in high school.  Meanwhile, players aren’t as good handling the ball, shooting short jumpers or driving toward the basket because they don’t have to.

Yes, 3-pointers can be exciting, but they could also possibly spell doom for the NBA in the future if that’s what teams continue to do.

•• Still too many pins and forfeits in wrestling — I was looking over the matches from the Border Battle at Milbank, which the Lakers competed at two weekends ago.  During the four matches, which constituted 56 individual matches using the South