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CONTACT THE ENTERPRISE Jocelyn Robinson, Copy editor jrobinson@heraldnet.com

Duo's sportsmanship an adventure

By Frank Stanley
Enterprise reporter

The first time I heard that Central Washington University, my alma mater, had made ESPN news, it was in October of 2005, when our football team set a new NCAA record for most points scored in the shortest amount of time – 27 in 79 seconds.

Even if it was one of the last things the SportsCenter anchor said before the show ended, it was definitely rewarding to know that our small Division II school in the relative middle of nowhere could garner a splinter of national attention.

Three years later, you could imagine the feelings I had when I heard that CWU softball players Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace carried an injured Western Oregon outfielder, Sara Tucholsky, around the bases after she hit her first home run ever.

At the time, I was the editor-in-chief at my college newspaper and heard of what happened the following weekend (the game was on a Friday). I actually didn't think much of it; it was a great thing to hear but I first heard that we lost the game due to their actions.

Call me spoiled.

What's worse is that my second thought was if we got any other footage of it other than the story, and hearing that our photographer left before the act happened only made me angrier about the whole thing.

Call me an idiot.

The Monday following what happened, I saw the headline on ESPN's front page just as the paper's sports editor and broadcast news director told me that the crew from Good Morning America were coming to interview the girls on campus, followed by SportsCenter a day or two later.

We also managed to get our hands on a couple photos taken from parents at the game.

I spent the next few days going over all of the footage they appeared in and the coverage they received; a couple of us collected several newspaper clippings and blog printouts from across the nation on this act of pure, selfless sportsmanship and pride.

For a few weeks, all of campus was proud to be a Wildcat.

The trio's tour continued throughout the summer: an appearance on "The Ellen Degeneres Show," the first pitch at a Mariners game, and it all hit its grand peak this past weekend, when Holtman and Wallace won the ESPY for the year's Best Sports Moment, beating out Danica Patrick's first IndyCar win and Boston Red Sox pitcher beating cancer and pitching a no-hitter.

Although I missed watching the ESPYs on Sunday, I'm sure that Mallory continued to reflect the same demeanor that she's had throughout this whole experience: anyone on her team would have done it; it was the right thing to do. While we still wax estatic over how big this is for her, she kept humble. That, right there, is true pride.

I will admit that for the majority of the ordeal I took a back seat and let the sports staff take the credit for their work, but I can't help but feel that I accomplished something in all of this, even if it was just something as minute as being there.

Call me a dreamer.

Now it's funny to walk around a sporting event, be it pro, semi-pro or college, and have someone point at my Central shirt and say, "Hey, the softball girls went there, right? You know, carried the girl around the bases?" It's happened a lot more than I would have thought.

It will always be nice to know that many of the people I talk to, when we talk about sportsmanship in today's professional sporting world, that Holtman and Wallace set a new bar in showing what sports is all about. Every time I bring it up with my uncle, all he can say is "That's what sportsmanship should be, right there."

If nothing else, it's a comforting thought to know that people now know of the school in little ol' Ellensburg, which happens to be more than one street full of fast food joints en route to the Gorge or Spokane.

Call me relieved.



Frank Stanley, who is about to graduate from Central Washington University, is a summer intern at The Enterprise.