Letters to the editor

There have been some great articles in the paper concerning high school wrestling and how tough it is in the Inland Empire. However, one area that has given no support to the great sport of wrestling is SWX television.

SWX will show many high school basketball games. Wrestling usually will get one shot each year except this year when there was not one match shown on television. Why? Wrestlers in our area compete very well with the best in the states of Idaho and Washington.

To quote Matthew Modine, who played the part of Loudon Swain in “Vision Quest,” written by former Shadle Park graduate Terry Davis, “Wrestling is one of the most difficult sports I’ve ever had the pleasure of participating in. If you want to get to know who you are, really are, take up wrestling.”

That last quote should be in all schools and wrestling rooms. I could not have said it any better. Come on, SWX, step on the mat next year by having several matches on your channel.

Rich Tschirgi

Spokane

I agree that water polo is an aggressive sport, having played at the collegiate level at UC Davis in the 1960s. However, I disagree with coach Collingham’s statement (Polo party, Feb. 1), “If you’re not fouling, you aren’t doing your job.”

As in most sports, ball-handling skills and swimming techniques unique to the sport, especially at the entry levels, should be emphasized. If they occur, fouls shouldn’t be intentional and certainly not “encouraged.”

I suggest that one way to introduce folks to the sport is to play coed inner tube water polo, a collegiate intramural sport invented by my teammates and the intramural athletic department at UC Davis in 1969. Great fun and good exercise. The local YMCA does a rather sedentary form of this with foam tubes, but players in inner tubes add a whole different level of action to the game if played in a larger pool.

Galen Denio

Spokane

C’mon, all you sports scribes out there, can’t you give the young man (Cam Newton) a break?

All his life he’s been told by coaches and fellow players that to win the game is the only important thing, yes, ever since a famous coach put it like this, “Winning is not the best thing. It’s the only thing.”

So do we jump on him when he loses a big one and shows he’s sore about it?

The other thing they always taught him was that he was the best and most important man on the team. Therefore, he was not to take any chance whatsoever of getting knocked out of the game. And when he does exactly that by not risking a collision with Denver’s T. J. Ward on a fumble, he did what his coaches and fellow players had taught him he must do.

A nickel will get you a dime that if the Panthers had won the game those people today would be praising Newton for not diving in.

James Vasquez

Spokane

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