Rodeo is a great event for spectators, media

I've had the opportunity to cover some different sports in my time.

In Florida I covered jai alai. It is a sport, used for pari-mutual wagering. Guys play a game like racquetball, but they use a hard ball, called a pelota, which is made of goat skin and hard rubber. The wall is granite or concrete and the and wicker basket players throw and catch the ball with is called a cesta.

The sport originated in Spain and became popular in Florida for wagering with Spanish players. Many South Florida communities had jai alai buildings.

I also covered polo. Wellington Country Club in Palm Beach County has a large polo grounds and Prince Charles often would play.

I covered lacrosse and field hockey too.

I say this so, my dear reader, you will understand when I state - I love rodeos.

Rodeos are great for taking pictures. From a media standpoint, rodeos are gold. Cowboys are often humble, hard-working and willing to put up with any of us as long as we will put up with them.

Bull fighters are amazing. They put their lives on the line for the cowboys. When a bull rider gets thrown, the bull fighter will get the attention of the bull to give the cowboy time to get away.

Rodeo fans are often patriotic, enthusiastic and willing to put up with a photographer standing in the way for a little while.

The animals are beautiful. Powerful bulls and bucking horses. Talented, trained horses for the calf ropers and team ropers. Majestic speed demons in the barrel racing.

Rodeo entertainment between segments is family friendly. There are no R-rated routines, just good, clean, wholesome fun.

Polo uses horses, too.

Michigan's Future - 412 Lax

The announcement has aged. What’s next for the Wolverines?

Written by David Casselman for The Michigan Daily :

Michigan men’s lacrosse coach John Paul graduated from Ann Arbor Pioneer High School in 1984 without having played a single organized game of lacrosse.

A quarter century later, with several MCLA championships in his swollen trophy case, Paul leads the newly announced varsity men’s lacrosse team into the competitive and bureaucratic challenges of NCAA lacrosse.

In the beginning, playing catch with friends at Burns Park in Ann Arbor, some bystanders mistook Paul’s lacrosse stick for a Jai alai basket. Others wondered if he was going fishing with his peculiar-looking net.

“I knew I wanted to play in high school, but at the time there were maybe 13 high school teams in the state,” Paul said. “Pioneer didn’t have a program yet, but there were a number of us trying to get a program going. I had a stick in high school, and I had buddies who had grown up around lacrosse.”

In the past 25 years lacrosse has exploded in popularity, rising from an East Coast-dominated sport to a national and even international phenomenon.

“Lacrosse has changed incredibly and there are a number of reasons for that,” Paul said. “It’s a spring sport and there is not another spring sport like it.

“In the winter you have basketball and hockey, teams sports that are flowing and contact sports. In the spring you had baseball and track, and so lacrosse started to appeal to kids, outside of the hotbeds in the East where it had always been popular, as an option in the spring.”

Paul attributes the growth of lacrosse to cultural considerations as well.

“The 90s brought on this opportunity for new sports, even though ours is a very old sport,” Paul said. “All these sports that weren’t considered sports now became mainstream. It provided a cultural opportunity for new sports.”

And no one’s mistaking lacrosse for Jai alai anymore.

“Now you go to Burns Park in the summer, and there’s youth lacrosse leagues,” Paul said.

In the mid-1980s, Paul transferred from Albion College to Michigan, where his father was a professor and dean of the College of Pharmacy, and began playing club lacrosse.

“When I played it was very much a club team,” Paul said. “You showed up when you wanted to show up. We’d hop into each other’s cars to get to games.

The Ultimate Crossword Word-Phrase Finder, Revised Edition: A Unique Source for Cruciverbalists

Sports and games of the 18th and 19th centuries

The Rotarian

Gambling in America, an encyclopedia of history, issues, and society

The encyclopedia of sports