‘Maybe you ought to surf somewhere else’
November 10th, 2009 | Sports The Pacific | Posted by Andrew Scutro
The looming U.S. military build-up in Guam has some asking how everyone will fit on the Pacific island. Surfers, as it turns out in this story, are also wondering how everyone will get along when more non-locals try to catch waves too.
Mids at the World Series. Too bad Army’s not playing
October 29th, 2009 | Naval Academy Sports | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Naval Academy color guard, here presenting the colors in 2005 in Philadelphia, will do its thing at game two of the World Series tonight in New York // JO1 James Pinsky/ Navy
Halloween is this weekend, the skies are turning iron and giant flocks of migrating birds are doing touch-and-goes outside on the Parking Lot of Excellence. In short, autumn is hitting its stride, and yet thanks to the greed generosity of America’s TV networks, baseball season still hasn’t ended. Wednesday night was game one of the World Series, which saw two great Cleveland pitchers taking on hitters from New York and Philadelphia, and for game two Thursday, the Navy is getting into the act.
The Naval Academy’s color guard will present the colors at Yankee Stadium before the opening pitch, the academy announced Thursday morning, although it wasn’t clear whether that would be part of the televised broadcast. Just in case you can’t catch them on TV, the midshipmen who’ll be taking part are:
Midshipman 1st Class Dan Sauer of Kirkland, Wash., carrying the Brigade of Midshipmen flag; Midshipman 1st Class Luke Leveque of Kodiak, Alaska, carrying the flag of the United States Marine Corps; Midshipman 1st Class Jason Mazzoni of Salisbury, N.C., carrying the flag of the United States Navy; Midshipman 2nd Class Bryen Roder of Little Falls, N.J; and riflemen Midshipmen 2nd Class Zishan Hameed of Norfolk, Va.; and 2nd Class Hannah Allaire of San Antonio, Texas.
New blog After Action brings you the world of mil-sports
October 20th, 2009 | Blogs Life at Sea Sports The deckplates | Posted by Phil Ewing
Sports are often compared to war — linemen “battle” for the gridiron; bad pitchers get “shelled;” and in the backfield, the secondary provides “optimized, time-critical network-centric support for the joint defense.” So it’s no surprise that the military is chock-full of great athletes and, generally, that the services are permeated by a culture of sports and competition.
In that spirit, Military Times brings you After Action, a new joint blog from all four colors of the rainbow (green, light blue, regular blue and red) about sports in and around the armed services. Check it out here, let us know what you think and send us tips about anything sports-related going on with your service, your local command, or just who won the paper football game in the DFAC last night. And send pictures!
Air-sea battle scheduled for Saturday
October 2nd, 2009 | Naval Academy Sports | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Air Force Academy Falcons, as represented by The Bird With No Name, come to Annapolis this weekend for a battle on the gridiron. Observers expect bone-crunching hits // Air Force
The Air Force Academy Falcons football squadron comes to Annapolis this weekend to renew what has been a comparatively low-observable rivalry with the Naval Academy Midshipmen. Navy’s big marquee nemesis is Army, but in recent years Air Force has been the Mids’ biggest competitor for the coveted Commander-in-Chief’s trophy.
Not too recent, though — Navy has won its past six match-ups against the light-blue lads, and the Mids will enjoy home-field advantage this year at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium. Indeed, the sold-out audience is being urged to create a “sea of blue” by wearing their Naval Academy regalia, and to deafen the Falcons with cheers, in hopes the noise will disrupt the Air Force offense’s command-and-control capabilities.
It’s going to be a good game: Both teams are coming off wins, and the Falcons players will no doubt appreciate the thick air along the Severn after the thin gruel they’re used to at 6,035 feet. Then again, Navy may have an edge in predicting Air Force’s plays after looking at these intelligence reports about life at the Air Force Academy. And Navy warships have already infiltrated the Air Force campus.
The deadliest football in the world
October 1st, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Life at Sea Naval Academy Sports | Posted by Phil Ewing
MC3 Eduardo Zaragoza/ Navy
When the Navy Midshipmen take on the Army Black Knights this December in Philadelphia, one of the game balls they’ll use will have more combat experience than most of the players on the field.
On Tuesday Cmdr. Max McCoy, the executive officer of VFA 86, the “Sidewinders,” carried the ball aboard his F/A-18 Hornet on a sortie from the carrier Nimitz. That gives the ball at least one catapult shot, about six or seven hours in the jet, who knows how many targets destroyed, and then a trap back aboard the ship — hopefully on the 3 -wire. After that, being kicked through Army’s uprights for a Navy field goal should be no problem.
What might have been: Army-Navy in Indianapolis?
September 15th, 2009 | Naval Academy Officers Sports | Posted by Phil Ewing
Midshipmen celebrate after 2006's Army-Navy game in Philadelphia. This year's game will also take place in Philadelphia -- but one city that tried to get it was Indianapolis. // Navy
Scoop Deck was just a wee slip of a blog when it told you about the next few years’ venues for the Army-Navy Game, announced all those months ago, and now here’s an interesting thought experiment: Naval Academy athletic director Chet Gladchuk gave a presentation at the school’s Board of Visitors meeting Monday in which he talked about the places the game could’ve gone.
The Naval Academy had proposals from Pittsburgh; Boston; the Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia and — Indianapolis!
Wouldn’t it have been weird for the game to be in land-locked Indianapolis? Sure, Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indy Colts, is a brand new athletic venue, but just think how long would it have taken for the cadets to run there from West Point and all those mids to run from Annapolis. The game has taken place in the Midwest only once: in 1926, when the Midshipmen tied the Black Knights 21-21.
Back to reality: Gladchuk said the Army-Navy game’s later date this year, which makes it almost the only football game on TV that Saturday, could mean double the viewership of a normal year’s game, and consequently more exposure for the Naval Academy and West Point.
“If you’re a college football fan, and you’re looking for a college football game, we’re going to be the only game in town,” he said.
The amateur submarine hunter
August 19th, 2009 | Historical Sports Submarines | Posted by Phil Ewing
Ernest Hemingway and his friend Carlos Gutierrez stood in the pilothouse of Hemingway's fishing boat, the Pilar, in 1934. During World War II, Hemingway and his friends played sub-chasers in the Caribbean, seeking and not finding German U-boats to sink // John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
Ah, for the days before magnetic anomaly detectors, sonobuoys, unmanned underwater vehicles, air-independent propulsion — the days when hunting submarines could be a gentleman’s sport. Back in World War II, for example, a famed novelist could climb into his wooden fishing boat in the Caribbean and spend his days chasing German U-boats, feeling as though he were contributing somehow to the war effort.
Ernest Hemingway’s play-time submarine patrols are the subject of a new book out this week by Terry Mort, which details Hemingway’s oddest hobby. Living in Cuba at the time, he volunteered himself and his boat, the Pilar, to join an ad-hoc “Hooligan Navy” prowling the sea for subs, and they had exactly zero successes. But Mort’s book makes clear that, like a dog chasing a car, it’s probably best Papa And His Pals never actually caught a German sub. From a review in the Washington Times:
After months of tangling with red tape, Hemingway was issued electronic gear and a fairly crude arsenal of fragmentation grenades and submachine guns. He was assigned an area north of Cuba and proceeded to patrol it, having rehearsed his crew of cronies in a bizarre scenario should they encounter a German submarine. Posing as innocent buddies in a fishing boat (which Pilar was), they would lure the U-boat to the surface, then somehow get close enough to toss grenades down the conning tower and … well, let your imagination finish the script.
Huh — wonder why that never worked.
Peace through superior slapshot
August 13th, 2009 | Carriers Chiefs Sports The Middle East | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Information Systems Technician (AW/SW) Christopher Conley, a crewman on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, tends goal during a brief practice while on deployment in 5th Fleet. The team split a two-game series while in port in the Persian Gulf.//Photo by Sheila Vemmer, Navy Times
The San Diego-based carrier Ronald Reagan boasts a number of sports teams, including an actual ice hockey team. They are in a competitive league back in home port and they played two games during a recent port visit in the Persian Gulf. They lost the first game 12-0 against the Abu Dhabi Scorpions but came roaring back to vanquish the Dubai Mighty Camels 17-9 in the second game.
The team practices on a small patch of plastic flooring placed over the non-skid in the hangar deck. One of the goalies is the command master chief, Mark Rudes. A Lake Placid, N.Y., native, Rudes says team comes before rank on the ice. “I get pointers all the time in the net,” he said. “Our only weakness is we don’t practice enough together as a team.”
A hull tech fabricated the goal and Aviation Ordnanceman 1st Class (AW/SW) Toby Snowden managed to find a space in the hangar to store their pads and gear. “It smells really, really bad in there right now,” he said.
And in case you are wondering who produced hockey players in the desert for the Scorpions and Mighty Camels, “It’s all ex-pats. Twelve Canadians, one Turk, one American, a Swede and one from Finland. Two are American Hockey League-level and one is an NCAA player,” Snowden said.
The team does not have a name, though “Hellcats” is under consideration, stemming from the ship namesake’s 1957 movie, “Hellcats of the Navy.”