Fast Break
Football
Defender Keefe returns to Shock
Defensive specialist Rob Keefe, second in the league last season with 11 interceptions, will play again for the Spokane Shock, the arenafootball2 team announced Tuesday.
Keefe, 6-foot and 190 pounds, started all 19 games and had 97 tackles.
Rowing
Redman makes machine scream
Ice on the Eastern waterways hasn’t stopped competitive rowers, including Jamie Redman of Spokane, who stepped inside and stood out in the crowd at Boston University on Sunday by blitzing 2,000 meters in 6.56 minutes on a high-tech rowing machine.
Redman placed fifth among 279 competitors in the open women category of the World Indoor Rowing Championships, which attracted more than 1,850 rowers. A former Lewis and Clark High School cross country runner, Redman took to the water in college and made the Yale varsity rowing team as a freshman.
Basketball
Russell stumps for Sonics arena
NBA legend and former Seattle SuperSonics coach Bill Russell went before skeptical lawmakers to urge them to support a plan to build a new $500 million multipurpose arena in the Seattle suburbs – with the help of $300 million in taxpayer money.
Russell appeared in Olympia Monday with Clay Bennett, who leads the team’s new Oklahoma-based ownership, which is seeking to leave KeyArena in Seattle and build a new facility in Renton, just southeast of Seattle. Russell said he had talked to NBA commissioner David Stern about the Sonics having financial difficulties.
“The purpose of this is to have a facility to bring people in all year round,” said Russell, who has lived on Mercer Island near Seattle for 34 years. “It’s the only way it’s going to be economically viable.”
Baseball
Jeter, Bush, Mantle in card
Derek Jeter drew quite a crowd for this at-bat – President Bush waving in the stands, Mickey Mantle studying from the dugout.
It made for a perfect picture on Jeter’s new baseball card. Of course, the game never happened.
Instead, this Topps triple play was just someone’s idea of a visual gag. It was a card trick – somebody at the company produced it through digital manipulation.
The card will be changed when Topps issues a complete set at midseason, spokesman Clay Luraschi said.