Sports fan’s Saturday to treasure
If your sports weekend is as busy as mine, you’ll appreciate that extra hour of sleep available when clocks turn back an hour early Sunday.
Whether it’s on a volleyball court, a football field or a racing oval, this is an especially busy Saturday on the local sports calendar. From Bank of the Ozarks Arena to Oaklawn Park — sashay down to Arkadelphia, if you like — something good is happening today at a local or area venue.
Local CEO Steve Arrison keeps providing reasons to visit Hot Springs, which today becomes the volleyball capital of Arkansas with the state overall high-school championships. Volleyball is serious business in the state’s northeast and northwest corridors, and the Class 7A matchup between Bentonville and Fayetteville and the Class 5A clash between Paragould and Valley View should be especially entertaining. Consider this a dress rehearsal for the Great American Conference tournament here in two weeks, another Arrison production.
With temperatures dropping, fans are advised to bundle up if headed to Arkadelphia for one or more GAC afternoon football games involving nationally ranked NCAA Division II teams. Southern Arkansas plays Ouachita Baptist at 1 p. m. at Cliff Harris Stadium, followed at 3 p.m. by Henderson State and Arkansas-Monticello at Carpenter-Haygood Stadium.
Fans attending both Arkadelphia games last weekend were reminded that small- college football at its best, while not on the Division 1 level, can be quite compelling. After their team’s 14-9 conquest of Arkansas Tech, some purple-clad OBU fans were spotted in the homecoming crowd at HSU, where Harding sprang a 28-24 upset that left the Tigers in first place with the only perfect record among state-college teams.
It’s an OBU homecoming for Benson Jordan, a first-year graduate assistant at SAU after quar-
terbacking the Tigers last year. Jordan, grandson of a legendary former OBU coach, expected to finish his playing career in Arkadelphia but wound up in Magnolia on Bill Keopple’s SAU staff after Kiehl Frazier transferred from Auburn.
A USA Today high- school player of the year at Shiloh Christian, Frazier starred in a signature victory over Harding, accounting for eight points with no time on the clock before the Tigers won on an overtime field goal.
Benson Jordan played on a state-championship team at Lake Hamilton and quarterbacked OBU in an epic Battle of the Ravine against HSU last year. Some fence-mending may be in order here.
“I know (family members) are still upset,” says an OBU graduate with strong ties to the school, “but I have to believe that a Buddy Benson would have accepted a Kiehl Frazier if he were wanting to play at Ouachita.”
Football fans who play the horses can make advance bets at Oaklawn or on the track’s advance-deposit wagering system, OaklawnAnywhere.com. The $5 million Classic, pushed back to 7:35 p.m. for an NBC primetime audience, is the main event, pitting a strong crop of 3-year-olds against a diminished group of older horses.
Shared Belief is 7-0 lifetime and 9-5 on the morning line. He should win if his strength wasn’t sapped last time at Santa Anita when a Bob Baffert-trained horse carried the winner extremely wide on the first turn — for which the former’s jockey was suspended seven days — while another Baffert horse, Fed Biz, ran a bang-up race for second.
Oaklawn handicapper Terry Wallace picks Shared Belief, twice calling the Candy Ride gelding “one of the great horses of our time” in a telephone conversation Thursday night. Oaklawn racing director David Longinotti concurs, thinking that California Chrome peaked in winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
“The best 3- year- olds weren’t around for the Triple Crown,” said Longinotti, noting that Shared Belief was recovering from an injury and Bayern, third in the Arkansas Derby, was playing catch-up after missing a Derby prep.
Longinotti sees Shared Belief, if not Belmont Stakes winner Tonalist, as this year’s Awesome Again, invoking the name of the late-blooming 1998 winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs after Real Quiet won the Derby and Preakness and then was denied the Triple Crown by Arkansas Derby star Victory Gallop.
There’s always a contrarian in the crowd, and Oaklawn announcer Frank Mirahmadi, recruiting for the hometown track while performing some TV duties this week in his native California, likes the Bill Mott- trained Cigar Street as an upsetter. Mirahmadi has the ear of Baffert and gives Bayern a big chance, Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens speculating that 4-year-old Moreno, and not Bayern, will set the pace in the mile-and-a-quarter Classic.
It’s too bad that Will Take Charge, Palace Malice and Beholder — but especially twotime Horse of the Year Wise Dan — aren’t around for the party, but who can argue with the guest list.
In a perfect world, I’ll be playing with house money after Carpe Diem, a colt with a future, wins the Juvenile and Work All Week, an Oaklawn stakes winner with a lot of heart, takes the Sprint at a price. Whatever happens, I’ll have an extra hour Sunday to count my winnings or analyze where things went wrong.