Hansen's Sunday Notebook: On Hemmila's sudden passing, Dalbec's rise, Hunley's greatness
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Twenty years after UA football player Jerry Krohn died of a brain aneurysm, his brother, former Amphitheater High School and UA quarterback Jim Krohn, wrote a tribute to the former Wildcat linebacker. He titled it “O Brother, Where Art Thou.”
“I still have a picture of (Jerry) in his UA football uniform, helmet on the ground, on one knee with his arm across his leg,” Jim Krohn wrote in 2002. “It seems that when someone dies, time freezes. I can’t imagine him being 42. It is still a struggle of why someone so young has to die.”
When Jim Krohn heard that 22-year-old UA senior center Zach Hemmila died in his sleep last week, he thought back to the day of his brother’s graveside service in May of 1982.
There are many questions. No answers.
Jim Krohn was Arizona’s starting quarterback from 1977-79, a big name in Tucson, having led Amphi to the 1975 state championship. On May 22, 1982, his brother, John, found Jerry unresponsive in bed. Jerry was taken off life support a day later.
UA coach Larry Smith met with several reporters that afternoon. He broke down and cried. I remember looking away, wiping tears from my eyes. I couldn’t process the death of someone as young and full of life as Jerry Krohn, who in 1980 was the UA’s defensive player of the game against Notre Dame.
Many years later, on my birthday in 2000, I got a call telling me that former Sabino High School baseball standout Kelsey Osburn, an inspirational walk-on success as an Arizona baseball player, had been critically injured in a summer league baseball game in New York.
Kelsey, who was only 20, was in a coma and died eight days later.
His UA coach Jerry Stitt and teammates, including Shelley Duncan, Keoni DeRenne and Brad Hassey, traveled to a hospital in Rochester, N.Y., to be with Kelsey.
I talked to Stitt on the phone. He tried to explain that Kelsey had been hit in the head by a line drive during batting practice and never regained consciousness. Stitt was overcome by emotion and said he would call back later.
Zach Hemmila. Jerry Krohn. Kelsey Osburn. It doesn’t seem fair.
“We have not had the chance to visit Hi Corbett since the UA has made it their home but we look for Kelsey’s jersey and retired number on the outfield wall every time we see a photo or video of the field,” his father, Seattle architect Mike Osburn, said last week. “We have pride, but a profound sadness engulfs all of us.”
An endowment fund in Kelsey Osburn’s name funds two UA baseball scholarships each season.
“Kelsey was full of life, a natural leader and loved young kids,” his father said. “So I would speculate that he would have gone on to coach or teach something. We miss him dearly but he lives on through all of us.”
To honor Hemmila, the UA has changed the title of its football program Twitter feed to #Forever65.
To honor Jerry Krohn, his family paid tribute by wearing red socks to a graveside funeral service that drew more than 500 friends.
“At a relative’s funeral a few years prior, Jerry had showed up late,” Jim Krohn said. “He had to be seated toward the front and when he sat down, his black pant legs were hiked up to reveal the brightest red socks you can imagine.”
The Krohn family removed their red socks and tossed them into Jerry’s grave.
As his brother wrote 14 years ago, it is still a struggle why someone so young has to die.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Tucson athlete of the week: Tucsonan Bryanna Caldwell Coté won the PWBA Lexington Open last month, part of the Professional Women’s Bowlers Association tour. The 2004 Canyon del Oro High School grad won the finals with a 228 score. The event will be televised by CBS Sports Network Tuesday at 5 p.m., Tucson time. Coté thus becomes the third Tucsonan ever to win a pro bowler’s tour championship: Pete Tountas won the PBA event in 1964, 1966 and 1968, and Catalina High School grad and PBA Hall of Famer Paul Colwell won nine championships, most in the 1970s.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
UA baseball coach Jay Johnson didn’t kick back and bask for long, if at all, after the Wildcats reached the College World Series championship game. In the last two weeks, Johnson received commitments from two top pitching prospects, including Dallas Jesuit High School senior J.J. Montenegro, who pitched a perfect game in April and struck out 57 in 49 innings for a Texas state championship team. Johnson also continued making an impact in Phoenix, getting a commitment from Class of 2018 right-hander Connor Thurman. The Mesa Red Mountain High School product was a standout in the national Perfect Game summer series, striking out 22 in 14 innings.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Now that he concentrates solely on hitting, former UA third baseman/pitcher Bobby Dalbec has reduced his strikeout rate in his first 15 minor-league games for Single-A Lowell (Mass). As a pitcher/hitter, Dalbec struck out in 31 percent of his plate appearances for Arizona in 2016 as his batting average dropped from .319 with 15 homers last season to .260 with seven homers this year. Dalbec struck out in 22 percent of his plate appearances to open his minor-league career strictly as a third baseman.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Pac-12 Networks is creating a series “The 12 Greatest,” trying to determine the 12 leading football players from every conference school. It asked me to submit my vote. Here’s what I sent: 1, Ricky Hunley; 2, Chuck Cecil; 3, Tedy Bruschi; 4, Art Luppino; 5, Chris McAlister; 6, Byron Evans; 7, Darryll Lewis; 8, Max Zendejas; 9, Rob Waldrop; 10, Mark Arneson; 11, Ka’Deem Carey; 12, Mike Dawson. The league also asked to vote for the UA’s top coach. I couldn’t decide. From 1980-86, inheriting an NCAA punishment and total chaos, Larry Smith was superb. But from 1992-98, Dick Tomey was the Pac-10s premier football coach.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Power forward prospect Ben Davis Jr., the son of Arizona’s 1996 All-Pac-10 power forward Ben Davis, is taking a recruiting visit to Wake Forest on Aug. 25. Davis and Wake Forest coach Danny Manning have been friends for 20 years. Ben Jr. visited San Diego State last week. The young Davis, who played high school basketball in Salt Lake City, will play at Virginia’s Oak Hill Academy this season, which is where his father played in the early 1990s.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Even though he did not start and averaged just 3.9 points at San Diego State last year, ex-UA center Angelo Chol signed to play for Illiabum Clube, a pro basketball team in Portugal’s top EuroBasket league last week.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
If you watch closely, you can see Arizona’s 2014 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Aaron Gordon in a new Nike commercial being played during the Rio Olympics by NBC. It’s a testament to how far-reaching one spectacular night at the NBA All-Star weekend dunking competition can be. Gordon averaged just 7.7 points per game in his first two NBA seasons.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Pitted against 35 other junior Olympian high-jumpers aged 17-18 who qualified for the 2016 USATF National Championships in late July, Mountain View High School grad Justice Summerset won the national title in Sacramento. The incoming UA freshman and state record holder cleared 7 feet 2 ½ inches to win. His coach is Janet Harvey, wife of UA head track coach Fred Harvey, who flew to Rio last week to coach UA hurdler Sage Watson at the Olympics this week.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Sabino football coach Jay Campos was the youngest head football coach in Tucson when he became the Sabercats’ head coach in 2003. He has since gone 121-33 and reached three state championship games. When the Sabercats play host to rival Sahuaro in the Coaches for Charity Classic Thursday at 7 p.m., it will likely mark Campos’ last season at Sabino. He is entering his first year as an assistant principal at the school. “The expectation is that I will focus on administration full-time after this season,” he told me. “TUSD has never let an assistant principal be a head coach before this.” Of Tucson’s current prep football coaches, only Salpointe’s Dennis Bene, has been on the job longer (he is 138-37 in 15 seasons) than Campos. How things have changed: After a significant enrollment decline, Sabino is now a 3A school in a division that includes Empire, Tanque Verde and Pusch Ridge. More change? The Sabercats now play American Leadership Academy of Queen Creek on Sept. 2.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Arizona’s 2010 All-Pac-10 center Jordan Hill was on campus this week, working out at McKale Center. How time flies. Hill, 29, is now with his fifth NBA team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and has played in 426 NBA games. Hill, who has earned $28.2 million to date, is guaranteed $3.9 million this season.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Trina Jackson, a 1996 Atlanta Olympics swimming gold medalist, was one of the top recruits in UA history. She was a 12-time All-American under Frank Busch. Now 39, married with two children and living in Scottsdale, Jackson is a fitness instructor. She was honored by the Arizona Diamondbacks before an August 5 game at Chase Field along with Olympic gymnastic legend Olga Korbut.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Good to see that Sahuaro High grad and former UA receiver Skip Peete – Rodney Peete’s brother – is back in the NFL. Skip was hired to be the Los Angeles Rams’ running backs coach in late July. He was out of football in 2015. Peete’s resume’ is a long one: he has been an assistant coach for the Cowboys, Raiders, Lions and at UCLA, Michigan State and Pitt.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
The Arizona Cardinals don’t need the Tucson market. Home games are routinely sold out. They’re runaway kings of the Phoenix sports scene and, as with coach Bruce Arians, considered cool.
But they gained considerable respect in Tucson last week when they offered Arizona the use of their indoor training facility during monsoon-related issues on campus, and in the wake of the tragic death of UA football player Zach Hemmila.
That was good enough. But the Cardinals went a step beyond, painting a red Arizona script in the end zone and displaying UA logos in the locker room and elsewhere.
What NFL team does that? And on a day’s notice, at that?
Over the years, the Cardinals have never been viewed as Tucson’s team. The Cowboys, Broncos and Steelers probably get the most interest here.
The only time the Cardinals reached out to Tucson was 2000, when they held a two-day June mini-camp at Arizona Stadium. At the time, the Diamondbacks owned this state and the Suns weren’t far behind.
“The main thing is, we need to think about other ways we can be involved in this community,” team president Michael Bidwill said then. “Frankly, this is something we should have thought of a little bit earlier.”
Bidwill has since transformed the Cardinals from chronic losers to thoughtful winners. It’s not difficult to see why or how.
- Greg Hansen
Twenty years after UA football player Jerry Krohn died of a brain aneurysm, his brother, former Amphitheater High School and UA quarterback Jim Krohn, wrote a tribute to the former Wildcat linebacker. He titled it “O Brother, Where Art Thou.”
“I still have a picture of (Jerry) in his UA football uniform, helmet on the ground, on one knee with his arm across his leg,” Jim Krohn wrote in 2002. “It seems that when someone dies, time freezes. I can’t imagine him being 42. It is still a struggle of why someone so young has to die.”
When Jim Krohn heard that 22-year-old UA senior center Zach Hemmila died in his sleep last week, he thought back to the day of his brother’s graveside service in May of 1982.
There are many questions. No answers.
Jim Krohn was Arizona’s starting quarterback from 1977-79, a big name in Tucson, having led Amphi to the 1975 state championship. On May 22, 1982, his brother, John, found Jerry unresponsive in bed. Jerry was taken off life support a day later.
UA coach Larry Smith met with several reporters that afternoon. He broke down and cried. I remember looking away, wiping tears from my eyes. I couldn’t process the death of someone as young and full of life as Jerry Krohn, who in 1980 was the UA’s defensive player of the game against Notre Dame.
Many years later, on my birthday in 2000, I got a call telling me that former Sabino High School baseball standout Kelsey Osburn, an inspirational walk-on success as an Arizona baseball player, had been critically injured in a summer league baseball game in New York.
Kelsey, who was only 20, was in a coma and died eight days later.
His UA coach Jerry Stitt and teammates, including Shelley Duncan, Keoni DeRenne and Brad Hassey, traveled to a hospital in Rochester, N.Y., to be with Kelsey.
I talked to Stitt on the phone. He tried to explain that Kelsey had been hit in the head by a line drive during batting practice and never regained consciousness. Stitt was overcome by emotion and said he would call back later.
Zach Hemmila. Jerry Krohn. Kelsey Osburn. It doesn’t seem fair.
“We have not had the chance to visit Hi Corbett since the UA has made it their home but we look for Kelsey’s jersey and retired number on the outfield wall every time we see a photo or video of the field,” his father, Seattle architect Mike Osburn, said last week. “We have pride, but a profound sadness engulfs all of us.”
An endowment fund in Kelsey Osburn’s name funds two UA baseball scholarships each season.
“Kelsey was full of life, a natural leader and loved young kids,” his father said. “So I would speculate that he would have gone on to coach or teach something. We miss him dearly but he lives on through all of us.”
To honor Hemmila, the UA has changed the title of its football program Twitter feed to #Forever65.
To honor Jerry Krohn, his family paid tribute by wearing red socks to a graveside funeral service that drew more than 500 friends.
“At a relative’s funeral a few years prior, Jerry had showed up late,” Jim Krohn said. “He had to be seated toward the front and when he sat down, his black pant legs were hiked up to reveal the brightest red socks you can imagine.”
The Krohn family removed their red socks and tossed them into Jerry’s grave.
As his brother wrote 14 years ago, it is still a struggle why someone so young has to die.
- Greg Hansen
Tucson athlete of the week: Tucsonan Bryanna Caldwell Coté won the PWBA Lexington Open last month, part of the Professional Women’s Bowlers Association tour. The 2004 Canyon del Oro High School grad won the finals with a 228 score. The event will be televised by CBS Sports Network Tuesday at 5 p.m., Tucson time. Coté thus becomes the third Tucsonan ever to win a pro bowler’s tour championship: Pete Tountas won the PBA event in 1964, 1966 and 1968, and Catalina High School grad and PBA Hall of Famer Paul Colwell won nine championships, most in the 1970s.
- Greg Hansen
UA baseball coach Jay Johnson didn’t kick back and bask for long, if at all, after the Wildcats reached the College World Series championship game. In the last two weeks, Johnson received commitments from two top pitching prospects, including Dallas Jesuit High School senior J.J. Montenegro, who pitched a perfect game in April and struck out 57 in 49 innings for a Texas state championship team. Johnson also continued making an impact in Phoenix, getting a commitment from Class of 2018 right-hander Connor Thurman. The Mesa Red Mountain High School product was a standout in the national Perfect Game summer series, striking out 22 in 14 innings.
- Greg Hansen
Now that he concentrates solely on hitting, former UA third baseman/pitcher Bobby Dalbec has reduced his strikeout rate in his first 15 minor-league games for Single-A Lowell (Mass). As a pitcher/hitter, Dalbec struck out in 31 percent of his plate appearances for Arizona in 2016 as his batting average dropped from .319 with 15 homers last season to .260 with seven homers this year. Dalbec struck out in 22 percent of his plate appearances to open his minor-league career strictly as a third baseman.
- Greg Hansen
Pac-12 Networks is creating a series “The 12 Greatest,” trying to determine the 12 leading football players from every conference school. It asked me to submit my vote. Here’s what I sent: 1, Ricky Hunley; 2, Chuck Cecil; 3, Tedy Bruschi; 4, Art Luppino; 5, Chris McAlister; 6, Byron Evans; 7, Darryll Lewis; 8, Max Zendejas; 9, Rob Waldrop; 10, Mark Arneson; 11, Ka’Deem Carey; 12, Mike Dawson. The league also asked to vote for the UA’s top coach. I couldn’t decide. From 1980-86, inheriting an NCAA punishment and total chaos, Larry Smith was superb. But from 1992-98, Dick Tomey was the Pac-10s premier football coach.
- Greg Hansen
Power forward prospect Ben Davis Jr., the son of Arizona’s 1996 All-Pac-10 power forward Ben Davis, is taking a recruiting visit to Wake Forest on Aug. 25. Davis and Wake Forest coach Danny Manning have been friends for 20 years. Ben Jr. visited San Diego State last week. The young Davis, who played high school basketball in Salt Lake City, will play at Virginia’s Oak Hill Academy this season, which is where his father played in the early 1990s.
- Greg Hansen
Even though he did not start and averaged just 3.9 points at San Diego State last year, ex-UA center Angelo Chol signed to play for Illiabum Clube, a pro basketball team in Portugal’s top EuroBasket league last week.
- Greg Hansen
If you watch closely, you can see Arizona’s 2014 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Aaron Gordon in a new Nike commercial being played during the Rio Olympics by NBC. It’s a testament to how far-reaching one spectacular night at the NBA All-Star weekend dunking competition can be. Gordon averaged just 7.7 points per game in his first two NBA seasons.
- Greg Hansen
Pitted against 35 other junior Olympian high-jumpers aged 17-18 who qualified for the 2016 USATF National Championships in late July, Mountain View High School grad Justice Summerset won the national title in Sacramento. The incoming UA freshman and state record holder cleared 7 feet 2 ½ inches to win. His coach is Janet Harvey, wife of UA head track coach Fred Harvey, who flew to Rio last week to coach UA hurdler Sage Watson at the Olympics this week.
- Greg Hansen
Sabino football coach Jay Campos was the youngest head football coach in Tucson when he became the Sabercats’ head coach in 2003. He has since gone 121-33 and reached three state championship games. When the Sabercats play host to rival Sahuaro in the Coaches for Charity Classic Thursday at 7 p.m., it will likely mark Campos’ last season at Sabino. He is entering his first year as an assistant principal at the school. “The expectation is that I will focus on administration full-time after this season,” he told me. “TUSD has never let an assistant principal be a head coach before this.” Of Tucson’s current prep football coaches, only Salpointe’s Dennis Bene, has been on the job longer (he is 138-37 in 15 seasons) than Campos. How things have changed: After a significant enrollment decline, Sabino is now a 3A school in a division that includes Empire, Tanque Verde and Pusch Ridge. More change? The Sabercats now play American Leadership Academy of Queen Creek on Sept. 2.
- Greg Hansen
Arizona’s 2010 All-Pac-10 center Jordan Hill was on campus this week, working out at McKale Center. How time flies. Hill, 29, is now with his fifth NBA team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and has played in 426 NBA games. Hill, who has earned $28.2 million to date, is guaranteed $3.9 million this season.
- Greg Hansen
Trina Jackson, a 1996 Atlanta Olympics swimming gold medalist, was one of the top recruits in UA history. She was a 12-time All-American under Frank Busch. Now 39, married with two children and living in Scottsdale, Jackson is a fitness instructor. She was honored by the Arizona Diamondbacks before an August 5 game at Chase Field along with Olympic gymnastic legend Olga Korbut.
- Greg Hansen
Good to see that Sahuaro High grad and former UA receiver Skip Peete – Rodney Peete’s brother – is back in the NFL. Skip was hired to be the Los Angeles Rams’ running backs coach in late July. He was out of football in 2015. Peete’s resume’ is a long one: he has been an assistant coach for the Cowboys, Raiders, Lions and at UCLA, Michigan State and Pitt.
- Greg Hansen
The Arizona Cardinals don’t need the Tucson market. Home games are routinely sold out. They’re runaway kings of the Phoenix sports scene and, as with coach Bruce Arians, considered cool.
But they gained considerable respect in Tucson last week when they offered Arizona the use of their indoor training facility during monsoon-related issues on campus, and in the wake of the tragic death of UA football player Zach Hemmila.
That was good enough. But the Cardinals went a step beyond, painting a red Arizona script in the end zone and displaying UA logos in the locker room and elsewhere.
What NFL team does that? And on a day’s notice, at that?
Over the years, the Cardinals have never been viewed as Tucson’s team. The Cowboys, Broncos and Steelers probably get the most interest here.
The only time the Cardinals reached out to Tucson was 2000, when they held a two-day June mini-camp at Arizona Stadium. At the time, the Diamondbacks owned this state and the Suns weren’t far behind.
“The main thing is, we need to think about other ways we can be involved in this community,” team president Michael Bidwill said then. “Frankly, this is something we should have thought of a little bit earlier.”
Bidwill has since transformed the Cardinals from chronic losers to thoughtful winners. It’s not difficult to see why or how.
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