Sports Archives - Page 40 of 54

Shoni Schimmel Leads Team with 21 Points in Victory; Jude Schimmel Out with Ankle Injury

Levi Rickert, Native News Network

LOUISVILLE — Louisville Cardinals Shoni Schimmel scored 21 points on Saturday to lead her team in a 64-45 victory over Cincinnati on Saturday at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville.

Saturday’s game was the third in which Schimmel has scored more than 20 points in a game. Her season-high was 30 points against Colorado two weeks ago.

The 5’9” senior guard had five three-pointers as part of her 21 points.

Jude Schimmel out with injured ankle.

Her sister, Jude, a junior guard did not play Saturday due to an ankle injury she sustained during practice on Friday nig

“Jude sprained her last night as she was shooting extra shots in the gym. She put a shot up and got the rebound and came down on her ankle. We had some x-rays done and we are waiting to get the results completely read. They looked at the x-rays here and didn’t see anything, but we will send those off to a specialist,” said Louisville Coach Jeff Walz.

The two sisters are tribal citizens of the Confederated Tribe of Umatilla Indians.

With the win over Cincinnati the Cardinals have won eight straight games, the longest winning streak since the beginning of the 2012-13 season when Louisville won eight to open the season.

The No.7 Cardinals improve to 15-1 this season with a victory over Cincinnati, which ties the record for the best start in the first 16 games of a season. Louisville was 15-1 during both the 2006-07 and 2008-09 seasons.

The next Cardinals game is next Saturday, January 12, 2014 against USF in Tampa, Florida at 3:00 p.m. – EST. It will be televised nationally on ESPNU.

Umatilla Schimmel Sisters Play on National Television Sunday – ESPNU

Both sisters are expected to start on Sunday’s nationally televised game

By Levi Rickert, December 27, 2013, Native News Online

LOUISVILLE — The pride of Indian country, Umatilla sisters Shoni and Jude Schimmel, will play on national television Sunday at 3:00 p.m. on ESPNU as their Louisville Cardinals women’s basketball team play SMU at the KFC YUM! Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

The Cardinals have a 12-1 record this season and have a five-game win streak going. SMU has a 9-2 record. The two teams last met on November 29, 1996.

The two Umatilla sisters won the hearts of many in Indian country as the Louisville team advanced to the NCAA Division 1 women’s basketball title game in April. The Schimmel sisters are the only American Indians to ever play in a NCAA Division 1 basketball title game. They are tribal citizens of the Confederated Tribe of Umatilla Indians, based in Pendleton, Oregon.

Both sisters are slated to start for the Louisville Cardinals.

Shoni Schimmel, No. 23, is a 5-9 senior. Last Saturday, she led the Cardinals to victory over Colorado with a season high 30 points. She is averaging 16.1 points per game this season and is sharing the team lead in assists with her sister Jude at 4.2 per game.

Jude Schimmel, No. 22, is a 5-6 junior. She is a guard. In addition to her assists, Jude is averaging 7.5 points per game this season with 3.6 rebounds. She gained her first start earlier this year against Austin Peay. Jude dished out a career-high of 9 assists against Wright State.

The Cardinals will play in eight nationally televised games this second half of the season, so check your local listings for exact channel information.

Editor’s Note: NDNSports.com contributed to this article.

Prep boys basketball: Tulalip Heritage 72, Orcas Island 41

Source: The Herald, Friday, December 27, 2013

DARRINGTON — Keanu Hamilton scored a team-high 14 points and Shawn Sanchey added 12 as Tulalip Heritage defeated Orcas Island in a Darrington Holiday Tournament game. Next up for the Hawks is tournament host Darrington on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

At Darrington H.S.

Orcas Island 7 11 15 15 — 41

Tulalip Heritage 27 14 9 22 — 72

Orcas Island–Dimtri Pence 9, Gage Horlow 13, Aidan Kavnze 15, Bullock 4. Tulalip Heritage–Brandon Jones 2, Dontae Jones 7, Payton Comenote 9, Robert Miles 10, Shawn Sanchey 12, Keanu Hamilton 14, Brad Fryberg 2, Willy Enick 2, Mike Leslie 4, Alan Enick, Ayrik Miranda 10. 3-point goals–Miranda 2, D. Jones, Comenote, Sanchey. Records–Orcas Island not reported. Tulalip Heritage 8-0.

Like our high school sports page on Facebook, follow @HeraldNetPreps on Twitter and look for updates on our Prep Zone blog.

Prep girls basketball: Orcas Island 70, Tulalip Heritage 66 (OT)

Source: The Herald

DARRINGTON — Katia Brown and Kaela Tyler made a combined 10 3-pointers as Tulalip Heritage nearly overcame a 23 point halftime deficit to fall to Orcas Island in overtime of a Darrington Holiday Tournament game.

At Darrington H.S.

Orcas Island 12 21 17 8 12 — 70

Tulalip Heritage 4 6 23 25 8 — 66

Orcas Island–A. Susol 15, V. Nigretto 12, K. Rogers 8, E. Minnis 0, A. Dean 11, S. Rogers 18, L. Miller 0, H. Gayles 6, H. Thompson 0. Tulalip Heritage–Katia Brown 22, Adiya Jones 17, Shania Moses 0, Paris Verda 0, Desirae Williams 2, Aliya Jones 3, Deztiny White 0, Kaela Tyler 21, Santana Shopbell 1. 3-point goals–Brown 6, Tyler 4, Susol, Nigretto, K. Rogers. Records–Orcas Island not reported. Tulalip Heritage 5-2.

Like our high school sports page on Facebook, follow @HeraldNetPreps on Twitter and look for updates on our Prep Zone blog.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker Takes ‘Big Step Backward’ With Mascot Bill

ICTMN Staff, 12/23/13

On Thursday, Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) signed a controversial “mascot” bill making it harder to force public schools to drop tribal, Native nicknames.

The law requires at least 10 percent of a school district board members to sign a complaint which would be reviewed by the Department of Public Instruction, with hearings in front of an administrative law judge. The new law also places the burden on those who file a complaint to prove that a race-based mascot or team name promotes discrimination, pupil harassment or stereotyping. Under the old law, the burden of proof was on the school district.

Many Native groups are outraged.

“[The bill] is an example of institutionalized racism in content and process,” Barbara Munson, an Oneida Indian who chairs the Wisconsin Indian Education Association’s mascots and logos task force. She also told the Associated Press, “It’s a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to all Wisconsin tribes, and it is an act of discrimination leveled directly at our children.”

Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians said in a press release that these mascots do not honor Native people. “I was deeply saddened to hear that Wisconsin Governor Walker signed a misguided bill that protects racist stereotypes reinforced by using Native American names and images as school mascots,” Cladoosby said. “Wisconsin just took a big step backward in the journey toward a more inclusive and respectful society.”

The bill, which was proposed by state Republicans, passed the Wisconsin legislature in November, but sat on Walker’s desk for several weeks. It officially became law yesterday despite challenges from state Democrats and many other groups that the law was “racist.”

In a statement, Walker said that he signed the law because he didn’t want to stifle speech by preventing schools from choosing their mascots. He also said that a person’s right to speak doesn’t end just because what they say is offensive. “Instead of trying to legislate free speech, a better alternative is to educate people about how certain phrases and symbols that are used as nicknames and mascots are offensive to many of our fellow citizens.”

The new law repeals a measure passed by a majority-Democrat legislature in 2010. That law was signed into law by former Democratic Governor Jim Doyle.

The 2010 law was the first of its kind in the United States to set up a process that allowed a single school district resident opposed to a race-based mascot, nickname, logo or team name to file a complaint with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, which would decide whether to take action against the district.

Native 8-man Football Teams Dominate in Washington

Andy Bronson/Bellingham HeraldLummi's Deion Hoskins misses Neah Bay's Josiah Greene in the 1B Washington State Football semifinal game at the Tacoma Dome last month. — Andy Bronson/Bellingham Herald
Lummi’s Deion Hoskins misses Neah Bay’s Josiah Greene in the 1B Washington State Football semifinal game at the Tacoma Dome last month.

Jack McNeel, 12/20/13, ICTMN

Neah Bay High School and Lummi Nation High School are rival Native high schools in Washington State. But they have a few more things in common.

Neah Bay won the Washington State 1A Football Championship this fall for the second time in three years; Lummi Nation won it in 2010, and has made it to State several years in a row.

Lummi High has about 100 students and Neah Bay Jr./Sr. High has about 168 and because of these small enrollment numbers, 8-man football is preferred for these rival schools over the traditional version of that varsity sport.

“There is no difference as far as the rules,” said Lummi Nation Head Coach Jim Sandusky. “There are three less guys on the field, so instead of seven guys on the line, you have to have at least five. That’s pretty much it.”

Lummi Nation is a tribal school located just a few miles from the Canadian line. Neah Bay, a state school, is located on the northwestern tip of Washington. Both football teams came into prominence in recent years and their proximity to each other has created a friendly rivalry.

And arguably, the success at each school can be traced back to the two coaches: Tony McCaulley at Neah Bay and Sandusky at Lummi Nation.

Sandusky, a Colville descendent, coached Ferndale youth football. He built a football field on his own property because there was no place for the football players to practice. His son Rocky was on the youth team that he coached, as well as Jake Locker, now quarterback for the Tennessee Titans in the NFL.

In 2003, Sandusky was hired as Lummi’s coach and athletic director. That year, they went 4-5 and missed the playoffs in the last game of the season. “Ever since [2004], we’ve made it,” said Sandusky, explaining that the team has made it to the playoffs every year since then.

McCaulley’s coaching career was somewhat similar to Sandusky’s. His son Ty started youth football and McCaulley coached him. He coached and played at Clallam Bay, a rival school just down the road from Neah Bay. He’s been coaching Red Devils for six years.

“We’ve been to the state semi-finals five of the six years. The worst year I had [was when] we lost in the state quarter-finals,” McCaulley said. But, Neah Bay was dominant this year. “We were undefeated and blew a lot of teams out,” McCaulley said.

Many of the Red Devils players have played together since eighth grade and all but one of the 39 players are Makah tribal members. Two players in particular are looking to play college football next year. One is the coach’s son, Ty, who plays fullback and the other is Josiah Greene, the quarterback.

At Lummi, only a few players have been on that team since 8th grade. “Dean Hoskins started for me ever since he was an 8th grader,” Sandusky said. “He just got All-State selection along with two other of our kids.”

Note the similarities: Each community had youth football programs with fathers coaching the kids. Sandusky and McCaulley were then hired by the schools to coach high school football. Since those two coaches have taken over, each program has had rather remarkable success: high ratios of wins to losses, and state championship wins with teams made up almost entirely of Native American players.

If Jake Locker can make it to the pros, then why not Ty or Josiah or Dean or Rocky or one of the other outstanding 8-man Native American high school football players.

Begay Cuts Ribbon on World-Class Golf Course He Helped Design

By Lee Allen, ICTMN

The ‘ka-ching’ of cash registers and golfers hollering ‘Fore’ made last week’s opening of the Sewailo Golf Course outside Tucson a resounding success.

Sewailo (Flower World in the Yaqui language) is an 18-hole, par 72 course that measures 7,400 yards from the championship tees (with five tee boxes on each hole to accommodate players of all abilities). According to Sewailo’s general manager, Dan LaRouere, “The $28-million course will employ up to 90 workers, many of them tribal members.”

Notah Begay III, who designed Arizona’s Pascua Yaqui tribe’s course, said that Sewailo “will revolutionize golf in this part of the country as one of the top courses in Arizona. The course design, from routing of the holes to landscape architecture, will put us in strong consideration for a top ranking.”

Begay won four PGA tourneys, became a businessman and a philanthropist before morphing into his day job as a commentator for NBC’s golfing events. He is also president of NB3 Consulting, the group that designed Segwailo.

Begay walked what was once a desert before conceptualizing a layout for the course – it’s the third course he has designed.

“These projects start from the standpoint of culture and it’s important we maintain a respect for culture and tradition in the communities in which we work,” Begay said. “I asked for guidance from our Creator as we shaped this course.”

During the official ribbon-cutting ceremony, a parade of speakers, many of them members of the tribal council, took turns at the podium to praise those who helped make it happen.

“We’ve gone from predictions that ‘you can’t do anything with this barren land’ to what we’ve already built – and we’re not going to stop here,” said Chairman Peter Yucupiccio.

Ty Butler collaborated with Begay on the course design and told the opening day crowd of some 300 attendees, “Vision and leadership from the tribe gave Notah and I a path to walk down, and as a result, we have a world-class golf course that will make an impact, not only in Southern Arizona, but nationally.”

Before hitting the ceremonial first tee shot, Begay said, “When I first came here, there was a lot of uncertainty about what a world-class golf outlet might do for the community, how it might stimulate economic growth. Times got tough between groundbreaking on 12-12-12 and ribbon-cutting a year later, but this is a true collaboration. True in the sense that when times got tough, nobody ran. We stayed together and worked through it because we believed in the worth of the outcome.”

“I’ve seen the best courses in the country. I’ve played the best courses. And things don’t get any better than what you’ll find at Sewailo.”

Jude Schimmel Nominated for the Allstate Good Works Team

Native News Online, December 4, 2013

LOUISVILLE – Louisville women’s basketball junior guard Jude Schimmel was nominated for the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Allstate Good Works Team, announced on Tuesday.

Schimmel is a tribal member of the Confederated Tribe of Umatilla Indians, based in Pendleton, Oregon.

The award recognizes a select group of college basketball student-athletes who have made significant contributions to the greater good of their communities through volunteerism and civic service. In its second year, the Allstate WBCA and NABC Good Works Teams® honor players at all levels of college basketball who represent the sport’s finest in the areas of leadership and charitable achievements amongst their peers. The student-athletes nominated for this prestigious award embody the true spirit of teamwork and giving back.

From the 84 WBCA nominees and 118 NABC nominees submitted by coaches and sports information directors across the nation on behalf of their schools, special voting panels will select two 10-member teams comprised of five student-athletes from the NCAA® Division I level and five student-athletes from NCAA® Divisions II, III and the NAIA. The final roster of 20 award recipients will be unveiled in February.

The 2014 nominees uphold impressive service resumes detailing unique and inspiring stories of servitude. From volunteering with sick and underprivileged children to lobbying state legislature for new laws that could help save lives, this exceptional group of young men and women demonstrate the positive impact student-athletes can have on and off the court.

Schimmel has been a leader on the basketball court and an active member in the community as well as a role model in the American Indian community. When she began playing at Louisville, Schimmel made occasional speaking appearances at reservations and conferences around the country. After the Cardinals’ run to the 2013 national championship game, Schimmel traveled to speak at 17 Indian reservations in nine states, shaking hands, taking pictures and delivering an encouraging message to American Indian populations.

“When Native Americans come to our games, they are like, `Our kids look up to you. You are the biggest inspiration’,” said Schimmel. “It means a lot to us. We’re just trying to do better and be better not only for us but because we want other Native Americans to know they can do it, too.”

Schimmel has become one of the most reliable ball handlers, scorers and defenders for Louisville this year. She also won the Elite 89 academic award last season as the player with the highest grade-point average (3.737) participating in the Final Four.

Notah Begay III: Leading by Example

By Lee Allen, ICTMN

All kinds of platitudes are applicable here, like, “Lead, don’t follow” or “To thine own self be true.”

Notah Begay III, perhaps the most ubiquitous Native American in contemporary society, subscribes to many of them—“The whole thing comes full circle,” says the good-looking man who tells a rags-to-riches story about becoming the first Native American on the Professional Golf Association Tour.

Now an NBC golf analyst, entrepreneur and philanthropist, Begay grew up with the sport after being introduced to the game by his father. How he got from a scrawny kid youngster in Albuquerque to a resounding success on several fronts should provide initiative to other young Natives chasing a dream.

“At the age of 6, I started collecting and recycling aluminum cans to raise enough money to buy a bucket of balls. By age 9, still a skinny little Indian kid, I introduced myself to the club pro and told him I’d work for nothing if I could practice on off-hours. From then until I went to college, I’d show up at 5:30 every morning and put in a couple of hours performing meaningless tasks like emptying trash, sweeping floors and parking golf carts. Then I’d get to practice from 8 a.m. till 6 p.m. every day—at no charge. I thought it was the greatest job in the world, because I got to hit as many golf balls as I wanted.”

By age 17, he was the No. 1 junior golfer in the country (with friend and later Stanford college roommate Tiger Woods at second). “There weren’t a lot of brown guys out there at the time, just me and Tiger,” he says.

Graduating with a degree in economics, Begay went on to immediate professional success, winning four tournaments before he got injured. Then depression set in with a stint in jail for drunken driving. “Sometimes fate presents opportunities,” Begay said. “I landed on my feet and made the appropriate changes in my life to become better.”

Today the 41-year-old star gets to talk about the sport he loves as a commentator as well as designing new golf courses—like the Pascua Yaqui tribe’s 18-hole course set to open next month in Tucson.

Begay’s fame and fortune allowed him to expand his horizons through entrepreneurship (KivaSun Foods) and philanthropy (The Notal Begay III Foundation, a.k.a. NB3F), both directly connected with Native health.

In 2010, he and a partner invested in a company selling bison meat, “a challenging project,” he says, and one that again called on him to persevere.

“I thought because I was Notah Begay that I could do anything, and I found out quickly that’s not the case. In the extremely competitive food industry, nobody cares how far you can drive a golf ball, they just care if the product tastes good and is priced right.

“There were some dark days with the company nearly at the point of being down to our last dollar. We hung in there, solved problems and formed industry partnerships [sourcing bison from the 57-tribe InterTribal Buffalo Council]. Today we’re looking to surpass $5 million in sales and should approach copy0 million in sales in the next two years.”

Which brings us to the concept of cultural full-circle. “All the stuff in the for-profit world transferred into our non-profit work with the NB3 Foundation,” he says. A percentage of KivaSun sales gets donated to NB3 to support Native American health efforts through sports and education. “This is a lifelong commitment for me,” Begay says. “I’ll be doing it for decades to come, because that’s how long it will take to provide services to our Indian communities to address childhood obesity and the diabetes epidemic.

“If we don’t start making changes in our lifestyle choices, our people’s lifespans will continue to get shorter. Native American lifespans are the shortest of any U.S. minority group, and it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Asked to offer up something the general public doesn’t already know about him, Begay says he tries to set an example for others by being a good role model. “Marriage and fatherhood are not static commitments, and I work diligently to be a better husband and father. Home and family is the starting point of my day—it’s where I get my strength. And if I can’t set a good example within my own home, how can I help anybody else’s child?”

The man-who-made-it offers a message to Indian children trying for their own successes: “Don’t limit your dreams. Educate yourself, take care of yourself, push yourself to fulfill your goals.”

Hawks secure another victory

By Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News

Tulalip Heritage Hawks win 70-33 against Shoreline Christian. More to follow