The Heat is off. The Arizona Heat National Pro Fastpitch softball team will not field a team this summer, which makes a lot of sense. The club has no coach, no general manager and no players under contract.
Club offices at Hi Corbett Field have not been open for weeks, and the club's phone number now automatically switches to the offices of 2005-06 owner Robin O'Neal of First Chiropractic.
Although league president Pat Linden did not respond to messages, Joey Arrietta, owner of the Akron Racers, said Saturday "we have suspended play in Arizona until 2008.''
My hunch is that Tucson Sidewinders owner Jay Zucker will take control of the Heat and field a team in 2008.
The NPF last week added a franchise in Washington D.C., which gives the league six teams for 2007. Don Proulx, who was part of the Heat's front office in 2006, said that some of the players expecting to return were "notified by text message that the Heat would not field a team this year."
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Attendance at last year's home games was typically about 200 per game. The Heat finished sixth with a 20-28 record.
ua baseball
Squeeze play: Late '08 start will put Wildcats in a bind
Andy Lopez's UA baseball team plays its eighth game of the season today. In 2008, the Wildcats won't be allowed to schedule any games before March 1, as part of the NCAA's attempt to give snowbelt colleges a more competitive advantage.
"We don't even get to start practice until Feb. 1 next year," said Lopez. "Of course I don't like it. We'll now have to compress 56 games into three months instead of four."
As a result, the UA will play many more midweek series next season and thereafter. That's in addition to the 24-game Pac-10 schedule. Think of all the missed class time.
For example, the Wildcats will play a 2008 home-and-home series with Oklahoma State. That means flying to Oklahoma on a Monday afternoon, playing two games, then flying back to Tucson late Wednesday night.
The geographically isolated Arizona and New Mexico schools will suffer most. USC and UCLA, for example, can fill their nonconference schedules against nearby Pepperdine, Cal State Fullerton, Loyola Marymount, San Diego State and on and on. Same goes for Stanford and Cal.
"We're going to lose a lot of rivalries because of this," said Lopez. "Texas, for example, won't play us home-and-home any longer because they'll have to be midweek games with travel issues and classroom problems."
Short stuff
Ex-Cat Johnson will enter national golf hall of fame
Tucson golfer Christa Johnson was one of three women selected to the National Golf Coaches Hall of Fame last week. She will be honored at a New Orleans banquet next winter. Johnson, who opens the LPGA season at Hawaii's SBS Turtle Bay Open this week, is a nine-time LGPA winner who graduated from the UA in 1980. She has won $3.6 million on tour. … The LPGA's official season opener includes ex-Wildcats Marisa Baena, Jenna Daniels, Erica Blasberg, Lorena Ochoa, Leta Lindley, Natalie Gulbis and Sahuaro High School grad Cindy Rarick. The only ex-Cat to pass on the season opener: Annika Sorenstam. … Santa Rita High School grad Anthony Sanders, who played in the big leagues for the Toronto Blue Jays and on the 2000 Athens Olympics gold medal-winning USA baseball team, is retiring from baseball. The Colorado Rockies last week hired Sanders to the coaching staff of their short-season Class A affiliate, the Tri-City (Wash.) Dust Devils.
While ex-Cat Furyk builds it, they will come … to Gallery
Jim Furyk, the world's No. 2 ranked male golfer, will have a special attachment when the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship moves to the Gallery Golf Club this month. Furyk, a former Arizona golfer, is building a home on the Gallery property. … The Match Play championship not only offers $8 million in purse (up from the old Tucson Open's $3 million prize money) but it attracts more high-profile people. At last week's Media Day festivities, James Kramer, director of communications for the PGA Tour, made a special trip to Tucson. About 40 people were in attendance. A representative from the governor's office also attended. That pales next to the day 1992 Tucson Open champ Lee Janzen returned for '93 media day and only two people showed up to interview him. … Michael Garten, executive director of the Match Play championships, estimates that 900 local volunteers will be needed to help operate the day-to-day tournament. At last year's Match Play event in La Costa, Calif., about 700 volunteers were in action.
Fox Sports Net can improve its Pac-10 hoops coverage
No matter how preferable a Pac-10 package with ESPN would be, the league gets better time slots and more money from Fox Sports Net. But FSN programmers still need to do much better than not televising last week's USC-UCLA game. Planning ahead would work, right? And this week's Pac-10 games on FSN are a joke. Arizona State's games against USC and UCLA both will be televised as part of the league package. Yawn. But the cable sports network will not show the Washington State at Washington game nor the Oregon at Stanford game. … Jeff Scurran's return to coaching, at Santa Rita High School, gives the Eagles one of the top staffs in Tucson. In the three major sports, football, basketball and baseball, Santa Rita now has three state-championship coaches; Scurran, basketball's Jim Ferguson and baseball's Dan Moore. "Some of the reason I'm coming back is boredom," said Scurran. "I'm busy, but it's not the same kind of busy. I need to have my hands full." Catalina Foothills High School, with a football coaching vacancy, blew it by dawdling as Scurran chose the Santa Rita job. … The D-backs' pitchers and catchers report to Tucson Electric Park on Saturday and among them will be former Pima College pitcher D.J. Carrasco, who pitched for Kansas City in 2004-05. A Safford native, Carrasco, 29, is more likely to open the season in Tucson than in Phoenix.
college football hall of fame
Ex-NFL lineman Fina keynote speaker at organization's March banquet at UA
Former Salpointe Catholic High School, UA and Buffalo Bills lineman John Fina will be the speaker at the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame banquet March 4 at the UA Student Union at 5 p.m.
The annual scholarship-awards banquet will honor 13 Southern Arizona football players: UA kicker Nick Folk, high school scholar-athletes Joe Arreguin of Cienega, Ben Bachelier of Nogales, Ed Blair of Willcox, Michael Clark of Mountain View, Kenneth Don of Catalina Foothills, Max Fritz of Salpointe, Rudy Padilla of Amphi, Koby Patterson of Willcox, Matt Simon of Mountain View, Michael Stefferson of Ironwood Ridge, Ahmed Taleb of Palo Verde and Aaron Tevis of Canyon del Oro.
The dinner costs $25. Information: Ted Schmidt, NFF president, at 545-1670.
ua football
Stoops' recruiting job falls short in losing key receiver
UA football coach Mike Stoops is steamed because Oregon, Utah and Colorado kept recruiting (and ultimately signed) prospects who earlier had made commitments to play at Arizona.
Recruiting has worked that way forever. One would hope that Stoops and his staff do the same things, and evidence is that they do.
Stoops continued to recruit receiver Anthony Boyles, who had committed to Washington and eventually signed with the Huskies. What's more, the UA signed Texas running back Joe Reese, who last summer committed to Texas A&M. The star recruit of Arizona's class, Los Angeles linebacker Apaiata Tuihalamaka, originally committed to Colorado.
It's a two-edged sword and Arizona has won some, lost some in the frustrating game of flopping.
The most bothersome thing about Arizona's recruiting class is that it couldn't get its top receiving prospect, Los Angeles' four-star stud Reggie Dunn, away from Oregon State. Dunn eschewed the UA's new spread offense, promising immediate playing time, in a city with good weather, a dry surface, the promise to catch 60-75 balls a year and a 55-minute flight home. Oregon State offers none of those things.
My two cents
Snubbing slam-dunk event a bad decision by Iguodala
Former UA basketball player Andre Iguodala declined an opportunity to be one of four players in next weekend's NBA All-Star weekend dunk contest. Iguodala finished a disputed second last year.
It's not that Iggy has such a high profile that he can afford to skip a high-profile, made-for-TV event. The pay isn't bad either: $16,225 just to show up and $35,000 to win it.
Thankfully, Iguodala, who earns $2.2 million on his Philadelphia salary this season, isn't typical of NBA stars. Ex-Wildcats Gilbert Arenas and Jason Terry accepted invitations to be part of Saturday's Three-Point Shootout. Neither needs the money or exposure, but they understand the importance of All-Star weekend and are giving up free time to be there.
Perhaps Iguodala is waiting to be voted into the actual All-Star Game itself. That could be a long wait.
