maly, too: Valley's Girls Improve Their Record To 14-1 By Handing Iowa City West Its First Loss, 65-56. It Was the Tigers' Fifth Victory Of the Season Over a Ranked Opponent. 'We Get Battle-Tested Every Night In the CIML,' Valley Coach Joe Sigrist Says. 'We Have Five Of the Top Six teams In the State In Our League, and It Seems Like One Of Them Is On the Schedule Every Night.'

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Valley's Girls Improve Their Record To 14-1 By Handing Iowa City West Its First Loss, 65-56. It Was the Tigers' Fifth Victory Of the Season Over a Ranked Opponent. 'We Get Battle-Tested Every Night In the CIML,' Valley Coach Joe Sigrist Says. 'We Have Five Of the Top Six teams In the State In Our League, and It Seems Like One Of Them Is On the Schedule Every Night.'

The Des Moines Register was in its typical form today--publishing nothing--not one word--on a Valley High School girls' basketball victory. And this one was a huge victory. It was another example of horrible newspapering by the Register. Thank goodness the Iowa City Press-Citizen, like the Register, a Gannett Co., paper, sent reporter Ryan Murken to Saturday's game. Here's his story:

West Des Moines Valley came to Iowa City for a top-five showdown with West High Saturday, sharpened by a daunting CIML conference schedule.

The Tigers left with a win.

Class 5-A No. 5 West Des Moines Valley (14-1) used some hot early shooting and a key third-quarter run to slip past third-ranked West High, 65-56, in a non-conference matchup at West High.

The win was the fifth this season over a ranked opponent for Valley and capped an eight-day stretch where the Tigers played three consecutive games against teams ranked in the top eight of 5-A.

"We just get battle-tested every night in the CIML," Valley coach Joe Sigrist said. "We have five of the top six teams in the state in our league and it seems like one of them is on your schedule every night, so I'm glad we got these guys because that is a heck of a team too."

Grace Vander Weide had a game-high 16 points to lead three Valley players in double figures as the Tigers shot 48 percent from the floor.

West High kept up with a torrid offensive pace early, trailing by a point after the first quarter and 39-35 at the half.

However, 3-for-14 shooting in the third quarter let the Tigers pull away as West High dropped its first game of the season.

"They are really aggressive, and they have to be like that in their conference," West High senior Dani Craig said. "Our conference is good but their conference is really, really tough, so they have to be strong and we are going to take it as a learning experience and use it to our advantage."

West High trailed just 44-39 after a Rachel Saunders basket with 6:03 left in the third quarter, but Vander Weide and the Tigers had an answer.

Valley rattled off a 6-0 run that started with a Vander Weide basket and ended with a Emily Smith layup off a Vander Weide feed that made the score 50-39.

Vander Weide's layup with a minute left capped the third-quarter scoring and gave Valley a 10-point cushion entering the fourth.

"They threw a punch at us in the second half and we weren't exactly ready for it," Craig said.

West High got as close as five points in the third quarter, pulling to within 59-55 on a pair of Emily Halverson free throws with 2:52 left.

However, Vander Weide again had an answer, scoring four points during a 5-0 Valley spurt that pushed the lead back to 10 points.

After shooting 52 percent in the first two quarters, West High was just 7-of-30 from the field in the second half, including 0-of-7 from beyond the 3-point line.

"In the second half we didn't really do much offensively and we were in a five-point game in the middle of the fourth quarter," West High coach BJ Mayer said. "It was one of those nights where we didn't make any shots and you have to give them a lot of credit because I thought they played pretty well."

Mikaela Morgan led West High with 14 points while Craig added 11 for the Women of Troy.
Lexi Merritt hit 4-of-5 3-pointers and had 12 points for Valley while Courtney Carr finished with 10 for the Tigers.

"They are a very good team," Craig said. "All five players they had on the court all the time were really good."

Reach Ryan Murken at 319-339-7369 or rmurken@press-citizen.com and follow him on Twitter at @rmmurken.

West Des Moines Valley (65) –Whitney Fuller 2-8 3-9 8, Jackie Feldt 2-2 0-0 5, Grace Vander Weide 6-10 2-4 16, Emily Smith 2-4 4-4 8, Courtney Carr 5-8 0-0 10, Hannah Fuller 1-9 4-6 6, Lexi Merritt 4-5 0-0 12, Team 22-46 13-23 65.

West High (56) – Bella Lozano-Dobbs 2-5 0-0 4, Grace Tafolla 2-6 2-2 6, Ali Tauchen 4-8 1-2 9, Rachael Saunders 2-7 0-0 4, Dani Craig 5-17 0-0 11, Logan Cook 0-0 0-0 0, Jessie Harder 0-1 0-0 0, Mikaela Morgan 6-12 0-0 14, Emily Halverson 1-2 6-8 8, Team 22-58 9-12 56.

WDM Valley	19	20	14	12	— 65
West High	18	17	8	13	— 56

3-point field goals –WDM Valley 8-15 (Vander Weide 2-2, Feldt 1-1, W. Fuller 1-4, H. Fuller 0-3, Merritt 4-5), West High 3-18 (Lozano-Dobbs 0-1, Tafolla 0-1, Saunders 0-2, Craig 1-8, Harder 0-1, Morgan 2-5). Rebounds – WDM Valley 29 (Vander Weide, C. Carr 5), West High 38 (Morgan 11). Turnovers – WDM Valley 14, West High 15. Total Fouls – WDM Valley 11, West High 19. Fouled Out – Lozano-Dobbs (ICW). Technical Fouls – None.

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.