So, who would you choose as the Top 10 high school athletes in Wisconsin history? While we may have nor turned out as many as Florida or Texas or California…the top ten put together by a number of folks at USA Today-Wisconsin can stand with any state in the country. The criteria used judged the athletes on what they did in high school…not future success, although most of them did go on to greater accomplishments. Also, they chose mostly older folks who's success has stood the test of time. No one on the list graduated in the 2000's. So here is their list in alphabetical order:
Alan Ameche-Kenosha class of 1951. Three year football star, two years all-state, 821 yards and 18 touchdowns on only 102 carries as a senior. Also won a state track title in the shot-put. Played for Wisconsin and in the NFL
Michael Bennett-Milwaukee Tech class of 1998. won the 200 meter state track title as a freshman. As a senior set a state meet record of 10.33 in the 100 that still stands. His record in the 200 lasted until last spring. Also all-state in football, rushed for 4200 yards and also had 20 interceptions on defense. Played for Wisconsin and 11 seasons in NFL.
Rocky Bleier-Appleton Xavier class of 1964. Two time all-state in football, also all-state in basketball and a standout track athlete as well. He was a first team running back on the Milwaukee Journal's Team of The Century. Won a Super Bowl with Pittsburgh.
Suzy Favor-Stevens Point class of 1986. Three time Olympian. She won 10 individual state track/cross country titles and the first female to win four state cross country titles
Bud Grant-Superior class of 1945. Maybe better known as the coach of the Minnesota Vikings. and a two sport pro athlete, Grant was a four year starter in football and also starred in basketball leading the school to the 1942 state tournament
David Greenwood-Park Falls class of 1979. He earned 12 letters . He won six state treack and field titles including four straight in the high jump. He played baseball for two seasons and hit .600 and of course was a football star who went on to star at Wisconsin as well
Sonja Henning-Racine Horlick class of 1987 Girls basketball standout who scored 2,236 points in her career and later started on Stanford;s national championship team. She also played tennis and ran track winning state titles in the 400 & 400 relay.
Elroy Hirsch-Wausau class of 1941. Crazylegs was a three sport athlete in football, basketball and baseball. Played in college at Wisconsin and Michigan and made it to the NFL Hall of Fame. He was named a starter on the Milwaukee Journal's Team of the Century.
Mike Jirschele-Clintonville class of 1977. Won a state basketball title as a senior. Quarterback in football and finished second in the state in 1976. He was recruited for football and baseball at Wisconsin but signed a minor league deal with Texas out of high school.
Pat Richter-Madison East class of 1959. high school All-American in football and basketball. Led his school to state hoops title as a junior. He played football, basketball and baseball at Wisconsin where he remains the schools only nine-time letterman since 1927.
So, let the arguing begin. Who did they miss?
Spent Saturday with a great group of folks at the Central Waters Brewery's 21st Anniversery party. The brew a special beer every year and hundreds of people descend on Amherst Junction to smaple and purchase the brew. Crazy busy…lines stretching out the door in sub zero cold, boxes of beer carried out the door at $90 a six pack! Limos and your buses bringing the faithful to the frothing taps. You have to give the Brewery's marketing people credit. 1500 people paid $15 a head to come and buy their products. Thanks to my buddy Jeff Adams for inviting me along.
On the same trip we discovered a tasty little joint in Rosholt called McZ's Brew Pub. Good panini's and pizza…on main street.
We know that Fiserv Forum has helped rejuvenate the Bucks and their fan base, but it has also altered the concert scene in Milwaukee for the better as well. The Journal Sentinel did a big story last week on the difference between Firserv Forum and the Bradley Center when it comes to concerts…and its no comparison. In just three months in 2018 ist sold 128,850 concert tickets–10,000 more than the Bradley Center sold in all of 2017. The music business is booming at the arena and expect it to expand going forward. The building could see 30 events in 2019. The strongest year of the Bradley Center was 2008 with 18 concerts. And they are getting the big names that might have bypassed Milwaukee in the past. Justin Timberlake grossed 2.3 million back on Sept 21st, his first show in Milwaukee in 15 years. The Eagles did more business than trhey did in Detroit and almost as much as they did in Chicago. It's also healping the smaller venues like the Pabst and Riverside Theaters as Milwaukee becomes a destination point for many agents and promoters. The arena also has twice the number of lower bowl seats compared to the Bradley Center allowing them to sell more higher-priced tickets and, of coursde, make more money. I'm heading down to a Bucks game in February and will report on the new Fiserv Forum which, from all indications, looks like a winner.
This is the 34th anniversery of the “We Are The World” recording session: Leave your ego at the door…you might have forgotten how many big stars participated in this
Also today in 1967 the Jimi Hendrix Experience played their first concert in London. Here is an early appeance on TV in Europe. The band would explode in America that year at the Monterrey Pop Festival
The fastest skater in the NHL skills competition at the All-Star game was…um…Kendall Coyne Schofield. Brianna Decker won the passing drill too. Maybe they should include the top women players in the All-Star game itself since there is no checking in the game anyway.
Here is the medical marijuana ad that CBS refuses to air in this week's Super Bowl
Quotes Of The Week:
“Drawing attention to a social divide is not the same thing as creating one. Activists are often considered to be divisive or troublemakers by those who have become accustomed to the privileges that social divides provide them.”-Munroe Bergdorf
“White people find the term “white people” uncomfortable because they're used to being the default definition of “people.”-Allegria
“In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.”-Jonas Mekas
“If by “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people–their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties–someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by “Liberal”, then I'm proud to say I'ma a “Liberal”.”-John F. Kennedy
“When it comes to passing tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, McConnell bends the rules, cancels hearings and delivers the votes. But when it comes to hundreds of thousands of workers, he delays, equivocates and blocks the vote. The contrast couldn't be clearer.”-Robert Reich
“Its hard to understand how patriotic transgender Americans can be barred from serving our country. How they can be barred by a POTUS who used his rich daddy's connections to fabricate bone spurs to dodge the draft is even harder to understand. And its shameful.”-Ana Navarro
“The consensus is that the Trump ass-kissing McConnell will go down as the worst senate leader to ever hold that title. A spineless, ass-kissing sycophant living in fear of crossing the worst president in history. Even he must know how bad this is.”-Carl Hastings
“Black teens get gunned down on the streets for wearing a hoodie while white teens have expensive PR teams that gaslight us through respected journalists and make us second guess racist actions seen on video. This is the nature of white supremacy. It's powerful and insidious.”-Dr. Eugene Gu
“Legalizing pot isn't about pot. It's about prisons, who goes to them and who profits from them. What we need to criminalize is making money off of people going to jail.”-Ethan Nichtern
“In 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act to honor Martin Luther King's memory. In 1973, Donald Trump and his father were sued by the Nixon Administration for repeatedly violating that same civil rights law.”-Kevin McCuse
“May who tweeted about my father today would have hated him 50 years ago. He was for eradication of poverty and caring for poor people. No human was an alien to him because he believed this is a World House. And he asserted that inequality in healthcare is most inhumane.”-Bernice King
“The silence around the execution-style murders of five women in a Florida bank is deafening. We are this used to gun violence. Those women were shot in the head after being force to lay face down. And then executed. In a bank. In America.”-Emily Wood
“We are close to a month in since the new House took over and Republicans still have yet to name their members of the House Intel Committee. They are doing this to delay investigations.”-Ed Krassenstein
“If Trump really wanted to see Hilary locked up, he should have hired her to work on his campaign.”-William Legate
“The reporters best prepared to cover Trump and his administration are the ones who realize they are covering crime not politics.”-Steven Beschloss
“Its like we are living through a real-life civics course,,,as imagined by Rod Serling.”Dan Rather
“Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them. Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced and whose bigots haunt the airwaves. Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero, and aims to rule the world with force and torture. Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no other culture but its own. Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed. Pity the nation–oh pity the people who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away. My country tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”-Lawrence Ferlinghetti (written in 2007, based on a Khalil Gibran poem from the 1930's)
Songs Of The Day (these are tow of the songs that have been inducted into the Grammy hall Of Fame this year)
